Bob Dobbs Teaches Chess: On the Vital and Universal Principle of Slack

You may have noticed my new profile pic.  This is of course not my public visage but my "true" face:

If it strikes a chord of recognition, congratulations!

If not, you need to read Le Wik's take on the Church of the SubGenius.  Whatever you do, do not click on this link direct to heaven on Earth, for you are not ready.  Believe me, don't click on this link.

What does this have to do with chess, you ask?  Merely everything.  Wikipedia's tame description of slack does not do this important topic justice.  Think about it--the only reason you can get a glove on and off of your hand, is slack.  Why can you hit a golf ball 300 yards without ball and club exploding into pieces?  Slack.  How did the initial Singularity that spawned the Universe as we know it explode into matter and antimatter, most of which cancelled each other out, with just enough matter left over to make galaxies, stars, planets, people?  By now you well know...SLACK.

Slack is the reason chess is still interesting after hundreds of years of study; there is just enough slack in chess that LOTS of looking has never revealed a White forced win, and a player a pawn down can often still draw the game. Thousands of different opening sequences are "playable" just within the first few moves.  Attackers, defenders, positional players, wonderful weirdos like Nimzowitsch and upright physicians like Tarrasch, magicians, politicians, spooks, cops and criminals--all can touch for a moment the Universal Slack through the chessboard.

Will this knowledge make you a better player today?  Perhaps, if used intelligently.  Feel the Slack in the position, be creative and when in trouble, trust in the positional Slack that allows so many bad positions to be saved; at least you'll enjoy the game more, if you just keep the above picture in mind.  Try not to laugh out loud during the game however.  Your opponent may not yet be in on the Joke...

By the way, if you want some thing that ROCKS, this ROCKS:




ADDED 1/27/10:  For those who don't speak German, here is a rough translation (Feuer frei!" is the German expression used to order weapons to be shot, as in "Fire at will !". Literally it is "Fire freely")

Priceless Chess Training Video

Via Liz Vicary, who credits Jason Luchan, who I don't know...anyhow, only the creators of this priceless chess training video deserve the credit. And we get to see it for free. How cool is that Internet thingy?

Chess and Baseball: The Thinking Man's Games (?)

"Interchangeable Skills?"

You decide as Yankee's manager Joe Girardi talks about the two games.

Sorry no embed, permalink here.

Back in Business, and Ain't It Grand

Hiatus over.



I played a few blitz games last night on FICS and felt like a rusty nail in an acid bath, won one or two and dropped a bunch. That's okay, I think the break has made me Hunger for chess, and blogging, again.

Chessloser hit Vegas, castled long (0-0-0) in the last three rounds after starting 3-0, and he's feeling a little down about it. As who wouldn't? A natural, healthy reaction. In the comments, I advise a break. We ALL need a break, from time to time. Things go in cycles, including the Sun; it would be really, really HIlarious if it turned out that increasing carbon dioxide levels were the only thing between us and the next Ice Age. (h/t Instapundit)

To everything, there is a season.

I'm playing in the Tournament of the LEPers II starting in a week or so, I feel like I'm having fun again with chess, after swearing off the five-hour grind. It's amazing how rusty I've gotten after just a few weeks with no tactics work, no games and no studying of any kind, but I'm also not all wound up with the wins and losses and rating points. I could lose all the games in the LEPers event and I'll be all right. Amazing.

I've postponed my LSAT, mentioned in the previous post, until October. After a lot of research and practice, I've decided I'm going to spend another 150 hours of prep. Unlike chess, this is a game that seems to work in a roughly linear fashion, time spent studying to final score. Not true when you get to the very right edge of the bell curve, but close enough to make it worthwhile. Maybe I'll get a great score and go to some really stuffy law school back East and become a wealthy shark in a three piece suit--or maybe I'll just stay where I am for the next twenty years and have a great life. Law school, I can take it or leave it, like chess.

I'm very relaxed these days.

I'll get back to posting games soon--in addition to some mildly interesting stuff from the final stage of my five-hour grind career, I've got some older contests that might amuse, and even instruct. I'm going to start using the excellent Glenn Wilson's ChessFlash.

An Object Lesson

First round of the Reno Chess Club Championship Swiss last night, and I lost to Kevin Gafni aka drunknknite (2020 USCF) when I squandered a position the exchange up; besides any mistakes in calculation I had what I'd call an attitude problem.

Allow me to explain.

After an interesting opening (I was Black in the Center Counter) we reached a position where he had two rooks and a bishop against my two rooks and a knight, he overlooked a knight fork and I won a clear Exchange.

So what did I do then, you ask? Instead of opening up the game for my two rooks, pieces which can only show their stuff with open lines, I wasted lots of time shuffling my king over to "get in front of his passed pawn" and keeping my rooks back "to cover any possible weaknesses" while he did what good players do in this kind of situation, activated his pieces and clamped down on my pawn breaks. I drifted around a bit more and pretty soon his passed pawn was dangerous, seeing as how I had scurried around like a timid little mouse. And I had a hallucination that lost a rook, and it was over.

If you've got seven minutes, please watch the clip before proceeding:
(Warning, strong language follows)



"You can't play in the man's game, you can't CLOSE them, then go home and tell your wife your troubles."

The encouraging thing about a game like this is to remind me that I'm in a tournament with a bunch of Experts and A-players now, and I can play with these guys, I know I can, but when you get an advantage against them you've got to be a--Relentless. Fucking. Closer. Trying to avoid "risk" didn't work, it usually doesn't; I'm going to start watching this clip each week before my game to remind me what it takes to finish, to close.

Otherwise I'm just another fish with delusions of being a shark, and I'm just not going to let that happen.

My chess blogging friend tanc(happyhippo), who is not really Lousy@Chess, pulled out the old Nietzsche quote in commenting on my last post; "What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger." Fuckin' a.

Now, bring on next week and a new challenge.

ADDENDUM 04/04/08: Even some of the greatest players experience this kind of thing occasionally. From How to Beat the Russians by Edmar Mednis (1978), this note on the game Sax-Polugaevsky, Hilversum 1973 (after move 20): "Thus the game here starts an interesting psychological turning point. Sax feels 100 percent certain of an imminent loss, and with nothing to lose starts playing freely. Polugaevsky, sure of a win, tries not to take the slightest chance. Objectively, White is lost for many moves to come, but he has the important factor of momentum. On the other hand, Black becomes less and less certain of the position, and his nerves finally go completely to pieces."

When I post the game soon, you'll see how accurately that describes this one, too. Me and Polugaevsky, two peas in a pod. Heh.

Look Ma, I'm a Video Star!

Okay, I'm not a star but Game 5 of my match with Steve Kesti for the Reno CC Class B. Ch. (see here) has been video annotated by the excellent Josh Specht at chess-videos.com. What a fine job he's done with it--it was one of my more interesting games, and he points out a lot of improvements. I'm proud of the original Exchange sacrifice concept, but the execution was pretty spotty!

I'm enjoying and learning a lot from the videos over there--it seems to be a medium that resonates with my learning style.

Anyway, here's the direct link to the video on my game, but I recommend you watch them all when you have a chance, and join the site and comment as well.