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| Posted by ccmcacollister wordiness.com 11/19/2008 23:28:57 Play online chess |  Subject: Going Both Ways; Corr. & OTB ChessMessage: from IONADOWMAN and some recollections for me. So here we are. I WOULD LIKE THIS THREAD TO BE RELATED TO PLAYERS WHO HAVE PLAYED OTB CHESS BUT ALSO POSTAL CHESS OR SOME FORM OF CORRESPONDENCE PLAY, SUCH AS NOW INCLUDES MANY ONLINE SITES WHERE THERE ARE MULTI-DAY GAMES PLAYED... I AM ESPECIALLY INTERESTED IN GM'S WHO HAVE PLAYED CORR aor POSTAL. ALSO PLAYERS WHO HAVE MASTERED BOTH FORMS. (Eg. From Iowa or Nebraska alone are these who have Master(ed) in both OTB & CORR., just that I am aware of: C.T.Campbell aka BOGG, Mitch Weiss, Siamack Bondari, Anton Sildmets, David Bragg, possibly Carolle Schmidt & Alfred Post. I failed in OTB, only reaching Expert, or Candidate Master as FIDE has called it.) BUT ALSO about ANY OTHER(s) player(s) involved in OTB PLUS POSTAL OR other CORR. PLAY, such AS HERE AT GAMEKNOT / CHESSCOLONY dot com's~! For instance, are any of you in the process now, of trying to attain both Master titles? Or Expert? Do you find one or the other more rewarding? Or perhaps complementary, as I do? (It seems to me that each can improve the other. The Danger being too much time use in OTB trying to decipher a position I could in Postal but not in OTB! Conversely, being too shallow or trappy in CORR games!? That problem I Don't have since ALL my games are shallow now! ha. But mostly just as enjoyable :)) OR ANY OTHER COMMENTS YOU HAVE ABOUT PLAYING BOTH, OR ABOUT THOSE WHO DO ...IF YOU DO NOT. And IF YOU DO NOT, then WHY NOT~! ?? Is it access to OTB events? OR ...? Here is the PASTE from that LATVIAN THREAD, brought me to here. And A LINK will follow this. ***** Isn't Kon Grivainis a quite highly rated Postal Chess player ...? Or once was, if retired now? Brings to mind the game of Fischer with Berliner. Trying to recall if it was also he who played Penrose from England!? Of course, Fischer himself, and Keres were at one time Postal Chess players as well. And Fischer apparently thought highly enough of Corr. play to remark what a great instructor of Chess was WC (of postal play) Purdy, from Australia. Believe I will start a thread on players that have gone both ways . . . and I DID. THIS is IT. }8-) | ||||||||||||
| Posted by ccmcacollister wordiness.com 11/19/2008 23:32:12 Play online chess | LINK / HyperLink to Latvian thread Message: gameknot.com/fmsg/chess/4234.shtml  gameknot.com
}8-) | ||||||||||||
| Posted by bhidragon wordiness.com 11/20/2008 05:04:52 Play online chess | Rating System? Message: Regards ——— Gelfand to Play Grischuk in Candidates’ Finals — The final two players in the World Candidates Matches in Kazan, Russia, were anything but expected when the chess event began. Alexander Grischuk of Russia and Boris Gelfand of Israel won playoffs on Monday to advance to the final, which begins on Thursday. Grischuk beat Vladimir Kramnik of Russia, a former world chess champion, and Gelfand defeated Gata Kamsky of the United States. Kramnik was one of the favorites before the candidates matches began, but he could not beat Grischuk in the regulation part of their match. He came close in the fourth and last game, until an oversight by Kramnik allowed Grischuk to escape from a losing position. From the beginning, Grischuk’s strategy seemed ... Posted by ccmcacollister | wordiness.com 11/20/2008 05:42:28 Play online chess That's True~! Message: USCF for the OTB bit of it. But surely not for Postal or Corr, since some other orgs proved equally as strong as USCF ratings in the 1st National Team Championship of Postal play in the USA ...or comparing ratings of theirs to USCF ratings of the same player also. EG APCT & CCLA compared well or favorably for strength. As far as online, I was thinking places like GK where the ratings are reasonably comparable to other Elo systems of official national orgs, and such. And not so much of sites where the highest rated player is 3800 for instance. But still, maybe that just means their Master is at 3200 !? But really, I am happy for anyone who can do a Double anywhere. And there are usually ways of converting ratings into approximating those of other sites. Player to player comparison, standards of deviation, or algebraic conversion formula. One other reason for the flexibility in my thought being that so many players would start corr in USCF for instance, but into their career somewhat switch to another leaving their USCF corr rating to gather dust. Also, especially with ONLINE sites; they can come and go away after a few years, like several I can think of. So I'd just as soon hear it all ... and if someone wants to remark on an opinion of inflation/deflation of some site they bring up, or of how to convert it to terms of GK or FIDE or ICCF, that's just as well to me. Mostly I think it is a good thing to be able to note the achievement as it is. And maybe hear a bit about how they got there, if it is a GK player. Or other thoughts. It is intended as a broad topic, insofar as possible. ——— Chess: When going gung-ho doesn't work — Subtlety is often the key to unlocking pawn endgames. We continue our theme of pawn endgames. White may be a pawn up, but care is required to force a win. RB: It's tempting simply to go 1 Kb4, gobble up Black's queenside pawns and hurl the a- and b-pawns down the chess board to promote. But that would mean allowing Black to capture the two e-pawns and queen on f1. White would still have an extra pawn, but in a queen endgame it would take more technical skill than I possess to be confident of victory. So instead I'm looking at 1 Kd3 and 1 e4. I think both work, but I'm going to go for the immediate pawn advance because it has the added advantage of ... Posted by blake78613 | wordiness.com 11/20/2008 09:26:15 Play online chess Message: The problem with CC ratings is that some players use them for different things. Some players use them as training for OTB and don't move the pieces when they analyse and also use them as a method of learning openings. ——— Underdogs on Top in World Chess Championship Candidates Matches — The first round of the World Chess Championship Candidates Matches in Kazan, Russia, produced several surprises. The biggest was the elimination of Levon Aronian, who is ranked No. 3 in the world, by Alexander Grischuk (No. 12), whose recent play has been inconsistent but who prevailed in the tiebreaker games. Gata Kamsky, fresh off winning the United States title, produced another upset by beating Veselin Topalov, a former world chess champion. Topalov (No. 7) has not played much in recent months, and that hurt him. He was outplayed by Kamsky (No. 18) in Game 2, which Kamsky won, and in the last game, when Kamsky forced a draw. Boris Gelfand (No. 16), who will be 43 next month and ... Posted by ionadowman | wordiness.com 11/22/2008 23:30:50 Play online chess Some players prefer to specialize... Message: On the world stage, I recall a couple of years back discussing Paul Keres's early correspondence games. It seems he used them to train up his imagination. In around 1960 Keres played a pair of CC games with New Zealand's then top player Ortvin Sarapu (himself an Estonian by birth). Both were hard-fought games. The only correspondence game I've heard of Mikhail Tal playing was one between himself and the readers of a Soviet schoolboy paper "Pionerskaya Pravda". The thing ended in a draw, but I've sometimes wondered if maybe Tal was being generous to the readers... Cheers, Ion ——— Bobby Fischer: from chess prodigy to pariah — He played some of the most sublime chess ever seen. Then, as a new book and film illustrate, he disappeared from view. What made such a brilliant mind go into freefall? In 1999, I spent three days sitting in a variety of thermal baths dotted around Budapest. As grand and attractive as the Hungarian capital's spas are, I wasn't stewing myself for therapeutic or leisure purposes. Instead, I was waiting for someone I'd been told frequented the baths, someone who was said to be a genius and a paranoid obsessive, the greatest chess player who ever lived and an obnoxious crackpot. I was looking for Bobby Fischer. For the last four decades of his life, that's what people ... Posted by ccmcacollister | wordiness.com 11/27/2008 18:02:19 Play online chess Specializing ... Message: although I played OTB tournaments for much longer than Postal, I found the latter was just more more congruent with my talents for research & new ideas. *** Corr. permitted much better analysis due to both time factor difference & simply being able to shuffle pieces. Thus my corr Class or Title was at least a level above my otb play. "A"/Expert, then Expert/Master. And tho always a goal to play creatively in both modes, Hopefully artistically, I realized corr Chess was my own best chance to ever try emulating the level of an OTB GM ...perhaps play some publishable games. Certainly better for seeking perfection, illusive (aka Impossible :) as it is. Those can be real attractions for many, I suspect. *** I'm not the only one to find themself better at corr. I recall an OTB "A" being Master in Postal [ back in "Computers-are-duffers days too.] named Kingston Taylor or Taylor Kingston. (Why can I never remember that? Perhaps the same reason I tend to forget move 32, or was it 33?, in my OTB Ruy !?...) He wrote for ICCF newsletter for a time in the past. Conversely, some who ARE OTB Masters can find it unachievable in corr. play. I have seen many give up corr due to incompatible temperment; calling it "too slow". Or a lack of patience. Or just inability or unwillingness to adapt their play to requirements of good corr play. A bit different in nature for many. EG., I had to remove much trappiness from my own game, unless the line was sound enough to keep some 'plus' even if played against well; to start seeking The Best move I could find, to do well in Postal. {Tho Fischer said of OTB that it is necessary to find a GOOD MOVE each turn; implying that it is insufficient mixing BEST or even BRILLIANT moves with BAD ones. Surely we all find, ONE BAD MOVE can spoil a game...even tho it often takes 2 or 3 to lose; other than critically sharp positions or diminished endgames.} Had to sharpen my openings for corr to the max, so to allow opponents maximum opportunity to err, which could also exceed my own ability to analyze in an OTB mode. [...mainly in terms of Breadth, rather than Length of analysis. That was okay for the most part. There is seldom a need to analyze a forcing line in otb longer than about 8 full-moves. Or even more than 4, for most of a game. ] *** I read a past article this week on the ICCF-USA site, that Dan Fleetwood of the USA made ICCF GM this summer~! And so, want to mention that and say "Congratulations~!!" to him. Dan, I don't know if you play any GK, but "Well Done!" in any case. And I don't know what his OTB strength is now, but not GM ...so another with their niche in corr. play. And he is also another who started corr & played quite strongly before computers were an influence. *** ——— On Chess: Computers hardly a threat to game — Some chess grandmasters have lamented that computers take the creativity out of chess, but their concern for the future of the game of chess is off the mark. An excessive use of chess computers undeniably dulls a player's mind - especially if the reliance on computer analysis leaves no room for hardscrabble human inquiry. The games of top chess players such as Levon Aronian, Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura vividly demonstrate that free-flowing, swashbuckling creative chess might thrive even more in the age of computers. It is, however, no longer possible to hide behind time-tested lines of play based on years of personal exploration and expertise. Computer analysis usually can ... Posted by ionadowman | wordiness.com 11/27/2008 23:13:51 Play online chess My reason for quitting CC Chess...Message: I do sometimes wonder what sort of player I might have become were it not for that loss of interest that led to my playing a game or two a week for 4 months in a year, and then stopping. And what caused that "don't want to know" feeling anyway? Posted by bhidragon | wordiness.com 11/28/2008 04:24:48 Play online chess Agree with CraigMessage: I also play on ICCF through the USCF. You would think that with a "10 moves in 50 days" time limit one would be able to reach a "near perfection" understanding of a particular position ... of course that doesn't happen due to a multitude of reasons. The point is this: CC gives you the opportunity for seriously deep analysis that borders on some sort of zen concentration exercise. That we don't take advantage of that opportunity is simply another human failing. |