tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Sep 5, 2011, 8:11 am
Why are some positions more difficult to see than others? Take for instance, this position I played a while back online. I am White. For some odd reason, I totally missed the shot. The Black king attacks my Knight and I played the most "natural" move... 1. exf6?? Looking at it now, I just cannot und...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Aug 25, 2011, 6:21 am
I've finally gotten a chance to sit down and watch Karsten Müller's Endgame Vol 8 - Practical Rook Endgames. It's taken him a couple of Chessbase DVDs but Müller now is able to smile on camera and is definitely very relaxed. He is in a particularly jovial mood and his presentation on camera i...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Aug 19, 2011, 8:22 am
Sorry for the long time in not updating my blog. I've been terribly busy with work and had not had much time with chess. In the meantime, I've been playing the occasional online blitz games. Here's a collection of puzzles (no solutions! - I decided to put the solutions after all) that you might...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Jun 28, 2011, 9:08 pm
As I've reported earlier on the ongoing saga regarding Rybka as a legitimate chess engine, the International Computer Games Association (ICGA) has just officially disqualified and banned Rybka and its programmer Vasik Rajlich from previous and future World Computer Chess Championships. In additio...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Jun 26, 2011, 7:53 am
Sometimes, we get ourselves deeper into the abyss. Take for example this blitz game that I just finished. White played too passively and is paying the price. The White king is exposed, the Black Knight has infiltrated into White's camp and the White pieces are not well-placed. Black to play. Here, I...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Jun 21, 2011, 3:02 am
Hi folks, I'm currently not in Sydney - have not been there for the past 2 weeks. In fact, I'm back in the sunny tropics of Singapore visiting my parents, my brother and my in-laws. So far, it's been a blast. I've brought along my chess tactics book but sad to say, I've been doing nothing the past w...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Jun 5, 2011, 8:20 am
In order to find the correct move, it is necessary to first find out the correct plan. There are 2 ways to formulate a plan. a) Work forwards ie. if I play this, my opponent plays this and so on and evaluate. A nicer common idea is to: b) Work backwards. Find out if the current board position matche...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Jun 2, 2011, 9:01 am
I just finished off an online blitz game. I thought that I had played well until I ran it past Fritz..... and what a surprise I got!!!! In the following puzzle, Black is under a huge pressure as below. Now we can all see what is coming. But that is not the question I want to ask. What I want to ask...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - May 24, 2011, 1:31 am
What is REALLY happening here? a) Grischuk is offering a draw at move 0 b) Gelfand is offering a draw at move 0 c) They mutually agreed to draw at move 0 and will now go to the back of the hall to post-analyse this game together
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - May 14, 2011, 1:30 am
A new book I ordered just arrived at my desk today. It's Yakov Neishtadt's "Improve Your Chess Tactics". Before I start my review, I'll just give a brief blurb. I am familiar with Neishtadt's older tactics tome "Test Your Tactical Ability" from 1981 so I would do a bit of comparison with this new bo...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - May 9, 2011, 12:22 pm
In the rapid match playoffs, Aronian blundered in time trouble as his position grew progressively worse as Grischuk piled on the pressure. He's now out of the Candidates. Aronian realises he is dead lost At the moment, Kramnik is still playing against Radjabov. In a nail-biting climactic game with ...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - May 8, 2011, 12:19 pm
Topalov v Kamsky Chess is an extremely tragic game. I've been following the Candidates Matches. In Round 4, Veselin Topalov in his final must-win game against Gata Kamsky, blew a win on move 44. Kg1. To be fair to him, this was an extremely complicated game and the correct move is not easy to find ...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Apr 28, 2011, 9:30 am
I lost my final game against Rex Simmonds at Norths. Rex to his credit played well and I blundered in the most crucial moment - well, that's what you get for playing sharp lines, one misstep and down you go. So I ended up with +4-3=4 .... a very very average mid-table performance and nothing worth ...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Apr 24, 2011, 9:20 am
These are actual games I've played (don't scroll past the diagrams if you don't want to look at the solutions). Game 1 - Winning Attack Black (Me) has a winning attack, time to bring home the bacon.... (Black to play) Game 2 - Find The Best Move White had traded a Knight+Bishop for a Rook+Pawn ...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Apr 22, 2011, 11:13 pm
Just a short blurb, with my final game for the North Sydney Reserves A due next week, I'm up against Rex Simmonds as Black. This week, my game against 2nd placed Chris Sparks ended peacefully. That leaves me on 3rd place with John Pepping (winning his game against Peter Brennan). With 1st placed Cli...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Apr 10, 2011, 8:58 am
In case, anyone is wondering whatever happened to Aruna (Vishy's wife) and why she has been conspicuously absent for the last few months, well, the current World Champion just had a son to add to his list of achievements! Congratulations to the new parents! More details at Chessvibes.
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Mar 28, 2011, 8:07 pm
I've gotten a day off from work today so I finally have time to catch some breath. I thought this would be a good time for some down time to continue my chess studies. I could not help but feel that my chess skills have regressed. I used to be able to do my tactics puzzle with relative ease and toda...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Mar 18, 2011, 7:26 pm
Apologies for the lack of updates. So far, I've had 2 successive losses now at the North Sydney Reserves A Club Championships. My friend even remarked to me that I look quite haggard in recent weeks, which is not surprising. This week's game against Robert Pike had me totally flat out before the gam...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Mar 8, 2011, 2:27 am
Hmm.... it's been 2 months since my first outbreak of chicken pox and my face is still punctuated with chicken pox marks (although a lot has since subsided). My good wife has constantly encouraged me to apply whitening cream, moisturiser, toner.... etc. etc. and so far, it looks like it does help to...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Mar 1, 2011, 8:08 am
Something just hit the fan and it's not pretty. I had been quiety monitoring the Talk Chess forums for sometime now and the it appears that the dam has finally broken. http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=37762 The creator of Fruit, Fabien Letouzey has filed an official complaint to ICGA c...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Feb 24, 2011, 4:48 pm
ChessOk has released "Play Like Botvinnik" (using the new Peshka interface) for free (for about a month now and I finally managed to get around to playing it). So head on to their website and download it! :) Play Like Botvinnik Download For those of you who are unaccustomed the new Peshka interface,...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Feb 22, 2011, 2:30 am
I don't know why but the thought of playing in a competition fills me with dread sometimes. I like the royal game but quite often, the competitive side of things weighs on my mind. I've seen chess players practically "lose" it in the heat of competition and I wonder to myself,"Do I want to behave li...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Feb 16, 2011, 9:40 pm
Last night was the third and concluding night for the Ryde-Eastwood Rapids (we play 3 rounds each at 25 min controls). My brother-in-law Steven participated as well. I'll give a quick recap of the previous 2 nights. The first night (2 weeks ago) went: Valenzuela (1184) 0-1 Me My game against Valenzu...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Feb 15, 2011, 6:05 pm
The last few years have seen a recent revival of chess. With the Nanjing and London Chess classic, in addition to the Bilbao Masters, we thought a new era of chess has arrived. However, the new year of 2011 has delivered a very hard blow to chess. Next year Amber will be gone from the calendar. This...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Feb 15, 2011, 1:03 am
In another 2.5 hours, I will be playing against John Pepping (Rated: 1522). Last week, my board was next to his and from time to time, I glanced at the position. John carried out a pretty nice attack against Rex Simmonds but unfortunately, Rex managed to counter his attack with a tactical combo, win...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Feb 14, 2011, 6:19 am
Yes, I finally decided to treat myself and got an ebook reader. It's definitely not the top-of-the-line model but a simple relatively inexpensive one that does the job remarkably well. It reads EPUB books fine and I've been busy away from chess, reading the many free ebooks available from the web (...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Feb 10, 2011, 8:42 am
How does one choose a move in the maze of so many possible moves and variations? I find that nowadays, when I look at the position, I first look for something to do (where my position is still safe and the kings on both sides are safe) is to in order: a) look for loose pieces, b) pieces that can ...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Feb 8, 2011, 2:12 am
Tonight is the start of the North Sydney Club Championships. I didn't really know who I was supposed to play against till my brother-in-law Steven called up to tell me that the pairings were already done last week. Ooops! Given my lowly rating of 1472, I was expected to be placed in the Candidates B...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Feb 6, 2011, 6:36 am
We've all done it from time to time, we make automatic moves on what we think are forced moves. This is a game I had just a few minutes ago. When I ran it through Fritz, imagine my surprise. White had recaptured the pawn on c4 with 22. dxc4. What should Black play? 22.... Nxb4 looks nice. Winning a ...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Feb 1, 2011, 5:38 pm
I went last night to the North Sydney's Chess Club at Cammeray. Unfortunately, they were having lightning chess which I didn't feel like playing as the time controls were a bit too fast for me. My brother-in-law Steven did play. Most of the regulars of North Sydney turned up together with Michael Mo...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Jan 29, 2011, 6:42 pm
One of the reasons (amongst many others) why my patzer rating is as it is today is because of my poor tactical vision and strategical skills. In other words, the ability to calculate accurately is still some thing I find extremely hard to get better at. From looking at some of my games, I find that ...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Jan 25, 2011, 6:43 pm
In case people have been wondering where I was. I came down with chicken pox and have been recovering at home. I was warded at the hospital under observation for a week before the doctors found it safe I would not infect anyone else. This was followed by another suggested 2 weeks of rest by the doct...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Dec 17, 2010, 8:21 pm
While surfing the web, I happen to come across a very neat free chess program called Lucas Chess (Website: http://lukasmonk.110mb.com/). This nifty chess program does something very well. It trains you and allows you to play against progressively strong chess engines (using commercially free chess ...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Dec 13, 2010, 8:22 am
It's quite funny... I just finished an online blitz game and I thought I performed the game quite well. However, upon turning on the silicon machine, Fritz immediately discovered that my opponent was winning with a huge advantage of over +3.00!! It so turns out that my opponent had missed a vital mo...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Dec 9, 2010, 1:29 pm
The London Chess Classic is now online. What may interest people is that the games are commented live (complete with video feeds) by GM Daniel King. Yesterday, we had IM Lawrence Trent and today, GM Chris Ward joined the live commentary. But what is of particular interest is that for every game, Kin...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Dec 6, 2010, 7:48 am
I've not been playing in tournaments for the past 9 months now and have been just playing the occasional online blitz (usually 10 min or 5 min + 12 sec increment). I noticed that as I played more and more blitz, my analysis skills became shallower and shallower, resorting to short calculations or va...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Nov 27, 2010, 8:04 am
This game is complicated. I am Black. In this online game, White threw everything except the kitchen sink to conjure up an extremely powerful attack on Black's king. It is Black's turn. If this was a blitz game, there is no way anyone could see the motifs and the correct move. If Black can hold on t...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Nov 18, 2010, 11:41 pm
7 men ticketed for playing chess in playground by cops in bulletproof vests Reminds me of a scene from Dirty Harry: Callahan: Are you trying to tell me that ballistics can't match the bullet up to this rifle? DA: It does not matter what ballistics can do. This rifle might make a nice souvenir. But i...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Nov 16, 2010, 10:34 am
For readers who have been wondering where I have gone, I have been reading some of the books I bought the last 3 months. And I've just finished reading Botvinnik-Petrosian - The 1963 WCC Match by Mikhail Botvinnik. I started reading the book 2 months ago and despite it being a somewhat thin book, it...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Nov 5, 2010, 4:06 pm
I guess the biggest news now in the chess world is Magnus Carlsen withdrawing from the World Championship cycle. Instead, Magnus favours the tournament method (link to Chessbase article)? I'm sorry Magnus but you've lost me. The matches have been a mainstay and the main attraction of the chess worl...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Oct 20, 2010, 10:39 pm
.... what would you do? A Tattoo Too Far (weblink opens a video interview)
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Oct 14, 2010, 8:16 pm
It's been slightly more than 13 years since Kasparov lost to the computer Deep Blue. What this monumental impact it had on the chess world has been nothing short of incredible. We now know that the best chess mind in the world is no match against the best chess engine in a tactical slugfest. That's ...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Oct 9, 2010, 1:47 am
Do you feel guilty of buying too many chess books and not getting around to reading them all? I'll be the first to put my hands up for this. I've so far in my possession a couple of books on my bookshelf that I did not get around to finish reading them. And last week, I just bought another chess boo...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Oct 6, 2010, 5:13 pm
Now we all know that if we were to approach chess learning the same way we do in school - that is, through consistent effort, diligence, hard work and motivation, there's no reason why we cannot succeed in chess. So if we were to approach chess the way we study, what kind of books and is there any k...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Oct 3, 2010, 10:14 am
.... well actually, free. :) Unless you happen to be a chess professional or a serious chess enthusiast/player and absolutely want the latest and greatest chess engines, ranging from Hiarcs 13 to Rybka 4 and you have a bit of moolah to spend, then you probably don't want to read this blog post. An a...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Oct 1, 2010, 4:12 pm
In the game "Mortal Kombat"(or as I affectionately like to call it - More-Dull Combat), the finishing blow to win over your opponent in this computer game is to land a killer blow (called a "Fatality"). So what has is got to do with chess? Well, is there anything worse than losing a chess game? Yes,...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Sep 28, 2010, 5:22 am
A well deserved and my heartiest congratulations to Quality Chess and to GM Jacob Aagaard. The English Chess Federation has awarded the 2 volume work Attacking Manual 1 and 2 as ECF Book Of The Year. I know what some readers might think. What's so great about these 2 books on attack that hasn't been...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Sep 27, 2010, 10:05 am
When anyone mentions training on endgames, one of the names that frequently pops into conversation is Germany's very own chess mathematician and Chessbase presenter Dr Karsten Müller. At times, his name has become so synonymous with endgame technique that I find it hard to separate one from the ot...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Sep 25, 2010, 10:27 am
The 7th World Chess Champion Vasily Vasilyevich Smyslov was one of the strongest players and some might argue, the strongest player in the 1950s, eclipsing Mikhail Botvinnik. Just how good was he? When you consider that he played 3 World Championship matches with Botvinnik in 1956, 1957 and 1958 and...
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tan c. posted an article on Lousy@Chess - Sep 24, 2010, 3:04 am
There's a new chess website catering to translations of interviews from Russia called ChessInTranslation.com. It is fast becoming one of my favourite chess websites. In it, you can find English translation of Russian interviews. With the Chess Olympiad now in full swing, this website has now become ...
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