A completely different song comes to mind by an old 60’s band called the Loving Spoonful. “Did you ever have to make up your Mind? Say yes to one and leave the other behind? “

Good Luck ~ BP

You know what I'm thinking about your stepping away from chess Nezha? I think maybe you're scared.

If in a single tournament a person has a performance rating of 2900 it doesn't really count for much because everyone knows that doesn't mean he's actually that strong. To have the rating you have to do it over and over again. You have to hold that rating.

GMs and IM have to make the norm three times before they get the title. You popped up into 1800 and then stopped playing because you've seen how your rating has wobbled and zigzagged and stagnated. You know you'll lose that 1800 in few games maybe only one. Then the trek through the mud starts all over again.

But you haven't really got that rating yet. You just reached the number once and had you continued playing we might be saying you reached it once briefly and haven't seen it since. You're almost like Krammnik. Only one match against Kasparov then run like hell because we know lighting won't likely strike twice (At least that's Kasparov's opinion which I will adopt primarily for the purpose of illustration.) You've haven't made you're norm and proven you deserve the title.

Do you think that just maybe it was just luck. That for brief moment you won the coin toss and the magic number appeared.

In your game against JohnnyRio doesn't it bother you that the game is dead lost for black after only 16 moves. But he gave you a gift by playing the truly inexcusable Qxg4 and not Be3.

Marcellus Wallace.

To: Marcellus Wallace

Hey, nice meeting you. This is the maybe the first time I got a comment from you?

About the stepping away thing:
Well, maybe you're right. I don't know. Its just that when I got to 1800 I suddenly lost interest.

Maybe it'll come back again. Or at least lets hope it does.

Anyway, please chess to you too.

(Btw: No, it doesn't bother me if I got lost somewhere during a game.Most of my games are like that. Cant remember a game where I was in control from move 1)

Since you put it that way perhaps a better analogy then is that of Pete Sampras who pushed himself so hard to make the record of most grandslam victories in history (which ironically, may soon be wiped away by Roger Federer) and then essentially collapsed from strain and exhaustion. The run to the top was so much that when he got there he just stopped too (I lost a certain amount of respect for him when I saw this. It would take a while to explain why.)

By dropping the subject of chess you are alienating your primary blog demographic. Be glad you don't work in television or radio. Notice that interest in the blog seem to be falling.

I posted in two previous blogs

Tuesday, January 09, 2007. "Art of calculation."

And

February 25, 2007 "Today is a Red Letter Day" Where the game against JohnnyRio is listed.

I like your blog because it reminds me of what it was like while I was first trying to figure out the game. I see some similarities and some major differences. I never bought a whole slew of instructional books on chess I always meant to but I didn't get around to it. Primarily I played the game and played over Grandmaster games both with and without annotations. I bought only one book on tactics. Combinations the heart of chess by Irving Chernev and I only read through it twice trying to anticipate moves and noting why I had not etc. Then the book was destroyed. That was all of my major tactics training. I always found it sufficient.

What I find most surprising is how insightful and accurate your blog is given the fact that you seem fairly low on the chess playing ladder. When I first saw your blog and your approach I thought you should be a really good player. At the very least you are aware of things that I have assumed some stronger players don't really grasp based on what I see in their play and general approach.

Occasionally, in my opinion, you do miss the mark. During games you found it difficult to implement a blunder check routine. You got caught up and distracted with the game. This shows a lack of concentration and discipline. Instead of overcoming it you created an excuse to give in to it. I disagree seriously. (Which is not to say I endorse or oppose the idea of a blunder check.)

Also I saw a post where you stated that Anderssen and Zuckertort were tactical players supposedly without a real positional understanding. Just briefly I want to push you away from that sort of mythology. I'm not sure, given the volume of available chess history (To say nothing of common sense), why this sort of thing perpetuates. It's not true at all.

Fischer himself noted that Staunton (who preceded Steinitz) understood all the positional rules we hold dear today. But I will add that in the works Philidor and his contemporaries like Ercole Del Rio we find again that they understood all of positional strategy.

There was quite a long list of books and papers on the game and chess academies in Italy. "If you see a good move look for another" can be found in Ercole Del Rio as well as the importance of rapid development. (Which are commonly attributed to Lasker and Morphy respectively.)

Chess clubs existed everywhere Spain, Italy, England, France, Germany et al. In a time before television and movies these men took the game quite serious. They traveled to other cities and countries to find the best opponents and they played matches for stakes. Money to be won or lost concentrates the mind quite wonderfully. They had good reason to try to know the game better than the opponent.

"When I saw the gold," said De la Bourdonnais to ourselves(George Walker), "I felt quite a new man; I went at it in earnest, and out of twenty-one pools, won eighteen!"

If Philidor was alive today, the evidence strongly supports that he would be among the top Grandmasters. I stop short of saying the best only for lack of sufficient data. He was the best of his day and they understood strategy fully at that time.

Don't forget that in the year 1800 chess was game over 900 years old. It was not in it's infancy. It was full grown. The modern form of the game was about 400 years old. America is not 400 years old but look at the the advances we have seen. Make no mistake it did not take mankind 900 years to figure out chess strategy. Morphy only played about 10 years. Those men would not have any difficulty competing in today's environment

"Hard?! You thought that was hard? Man, this is the easy stuff. Hard ain't even got started yet."

Marcellus Wallace