Hey we have a chess reference from a major sports website

Here is the interesting part.

"Waitzkin's teacher, on the other hand, taught him through playing. Rather than play with a full chess board, they played with three pieces: two kings and a pawn to start. Once Waitzkin was comfortable with the movement, value and power of a pawn, his teacher changed the pawn to a bishop and a rook and so forth, until Waitzkin internalized the movement, value and power of each piece."



Perhaps this method might be used before doing the tactical exercises? Or perhaps the tactical exercises, ala the circles teaches us in the same manner the power of each and every piece. Anyway you look at it, learning something by starting to learn it from its most fundamental atomic value, in this case, learning what each of the pieces do is highly effective.

I remember when I was starting to play chess. My mind couldnt cope with the entire board. I would forget where a piece was played or worse couldnt see anything but a jumbled tangle of pawns. Like a maze I would get lost and only come out from out of it if enough peices were to be traded to reduce the number of things to juggle (Maybe this is why beginners so love to eat everything in sight?)

I actually wanted to do something like this during those times. Only there was no-one to play with me with "just" a few pieces. They want to play are real game, and so we did. But were it possible I would have done exactly what waitzkin did.

Do you now what a MUD is? its an online text-based game. Yep, that's right, text-based. No graphics, no music, no nothing. You play by entering commands like "Pick gold" and "Move to the north". You may ask, how anyone can play such a thing, and the only reason I can think of is the same reason why anyone would choose to read a book instead of watching the movie.

Anyway, right now, I am getting addicted to this game. But this is not what I wanted to write about really. What I wanted to write about was that, in this game, and in this world you can play - wait for it.. chess! yay!! (But of course its still text-based so you have to enter your moves via commands like "move e1 to e4")

Anyway, I played it inside that world against a so-called "Chess master" and soundly defeated him (or her/it) and I did it by capitalizing on the queen-side pawn majority. And you know, I was so happy because I won using a "strategic" technique instead of just pure tactics.

So what happened was I got inspired to play at FICS again. Maybe I can win some using this new found "clear head" thinking. I mean, during the game I found that I am not thinking of anything. No tactics, no strategy. I've not played for such a long time that not thinking about such thing is the only option. But the irony of it all is that, by not thinking of any particular tactic or stragy, I found ideas coming to me during the game. How every "zen-like" so to speak.

So I put on a seek and within a minute a player named BehemothTheCat or something, rated 1901 answered it. Of course I lost but I didnt mind because at the end I only had 1min to my time and he, only 4. A sign of a very tense, very good game. There was no major tactics until the very end, and is because my calculating powers have lessened so much it goes on only a few moves deep (The tactic that felled me was a counter-combination to a combination) Nothing a few more games can cure.

Well anyway, maybe I will continue playing again. Inside lusternia, or in FICS from time to time. But I dont think I will study. Just play for my enjoyment, and to test certain techniques that I've developed all on my own :)

Huh!? What do you mean teach you the techniques!?

You dont want me to teach you. Why? the answer is found at the right corner of this blog. In the "About me" section.