This rocks so hard it will shake the very foundations of your weltanschauung. Seriously, as a cello player myself (admittedly, mostly inactive since high school) I can't tell you how proud I am to share this with you:
2Cellos, "Welcome to the Jungle"
Wednesday, November 09, 2011
Tuesday, November 08, 2011
November Chess Carnival is UP
The Prodigal Pawn has it.
A post of mine is not in it because I forgot to submit one until after the deadline...so it goes. There is a bunch of Chess.com stuff, which reminds me I need to figure out what to do about Chess.com. I have such limited time for chess right now, probably nothing. I play a bit on FICS and once in awhile play real live people here in my town. For study, I have maybe 50 books in my collection that I've bought over the years and never spent any time on...I guess I don't really need Chess.com, but there is apparently a good bit of fine content there.
The next, December, Carnival will be hosted by long-time Manager Blue Devil Knight, and you can submit here. After that, he is going to let someone else take over or the Carnival is going to lie fallow. Let him know if you're interested. I'm thinking about it.
A post of mine is not in it because I forgot to submit one until after the deadline...so it goes. There is a bunch of Chess.com stuff, which reminds me I need to figure out what to do about Chess.com. I have such limited time for chess right now, probably nothing. I play a bit on FICS and once in awhile play real live people here in my town. For study, I have maybe 50 books in my collection that I've bought over the years and never spent any time on...I guess I don't really need Chess.com, but there is apparently a good bit of fine content there.
The next, December, Carnival will be hosted by long-time Manager Blue Devil Knight, and you can submit here. After that, he is going to let someone else take over or the Carnival is going to lie fallow. Let him know if you're interested. I'm thinking about it.
Wednesday, November 02, 2011
Chess Stories in Our Heads
From a NYT article on neuroscientist Dr. Michael Gazzaniga:
The left hemisphere takes what information it has and delivers a coherent tale to conscious awareness. It happens continually in daily life, and most everyone has caught himself or herself in the act — overhearing a fragment of gossip, for instance, and filling in the blanks with assumptions.
The brain’s cacophony of competing voices feels coherent because some module or network somewhere in the left hemisphere is providing a running narration. “It only took me 25 years to ask the right question to figure it out,” Dr. Gazzaniga said.
“One of the toughest things in any science, but especially in neuroscience, is to weed out the ideas that are really pleasing but unencumbered by truth,” said Thomas Carew, former president of the Society for Neuroscience and dean of the New York University School of Arts and Sciences. “Mike Gazzaniga is one of those in the field who’s been able to do that.”
Dr. Gazzaniga decided to call the left-brain narrating system “the interpreter.” The storyteller found the storyteller.
Emergent Properties
Knowing the breed well, he also understood its power. The interpreter creates the illusion of a meaningful script, as well as a coherent self. Working on the fly, it furiously reconstructs not only what happened but why, inserting motives here, intentions there — based on limited, sometimes flawed information.
The whole article (and the whole field) is interesting to me, but let's briefly relate it to chess.
Waaay back four years ago I wrote about Jonathan Rowson's book Chess for Zebras and briefly noted his references to "myth-making" and the stories we tell ourselves about what's going on in an individual game and what "kind" of chess player we see in ourselves. This brain research seems to back this up. Not only do we tell "stories" about the game of chess we're playing, it's probably impossible not to do so.
On the other hand, as my hero the late Grandpatzer Dr. Kenneth Mark Colby wrote, one way to get beyond patzer level is to emulate the computer in calculation and take "ego" out of the equation. One of the phenomena of blitz chess that intrigues me is how wonderfully it focuses the mind on the game. There is no time to look around at other boards, eat snacks or feel much emotion (until the game is over and one exclaims, "How could I make such a stupid move?!).
It occurs to me that at longer time controls, perhaps the ideal is a blitz-like total focus for a few minutes while calculating, and after the move is made let "the storyteller" of the left hemisphere have its way for a bit before becoming more of a "computer" again when it's your turn to move.
(NOTE: The great book Secrets of a Grandpatzer, which I wrote several posts about (link above) was out of print for years but has been reissued with a new introduction and...Japanese page headers? That's trippy. But the text looks the same. Highly recommended)
The left hemisphere takes what information it has and delivers a coherent tale to conscious awareness. It happens continually in daily life, and most everyone has caught himself or herself in the act — overhearing a fragment of gossip, for instance, and filling in the blanks with assumptions.
The brain’s cacophony of competing voices feels coherent because some module or network somewhere in the left hemisphere is providing a running narration. “It only took me 25 years to ask the right question to figure it out,” Dr. Gazzaniga said.
“One of the toughest things in any science, but especially in neuroscience, is to weed out the ideas that are really pleasing but unencumbered by truth,” said Thomas Carew, former president of the Society for Neuroscience and dean of the New York University School of Arts and Sciences. “Mike Gazzaniga is one of those in the field who’s been able to do that.”
Dr. Gazzaniga decided to call the left-brain narrating system “the interpreter.” The storyteller found the storyteller.
Emergent Properties
Knowing the breed well, he also understood its power. The interpreter creates the illusion of a meaningful script, as well as a coherent self. Working on the fly, it furiously reconstructs not only what happened but why, inserting motives here, intentions there — based on limited, sometimes flawed information.
The whole article (and the whole field) is interesting to me, but let's briefly relate it to chess.
Waaay back four years ago I wrote about Jonathan Rowson's book Chess for Zebras and briefly noted his references to "myth-making" and the stories we tell ourselves about what's going on in an individual game and what "kind" of chess player we see in ourselves. This brain research seems to back this up. Not only do we tell "stories" about the game of chess we're playing, it's probably impossible not to do so.
On the other hand, as my hero the late Grandpatzer Dr. Kenneth Mark Colby wrote, one way to get beyond patzer level is to emulate the computer in calculation and take "ego" out of the equation. One of the phenomena of blitz chess that intrigues me is how wonderfully it focuses the mind on the game. There is no time to look around at other boards, eat snacks or feel much emotion (until the game is over and one exclaims, "How could I make such a stupid move?!).
It occurs to me that at longer time controls, perhaps the ideal is a blitz-like total focus for a few minutes while calculating, and after the move is made let "the storyteller" of the left hemisphere have its way for a bit before becoming more of a "computer" again when it's your turn to move.
(NOTE: The great book Secrets of a Grandpatzer, which I wrote several posts about (link above) was out of print for years but has been reissued with a new introduction and...Japanese page headers? That's trippy. But the text looks the same. Highly recommended)
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Chess Blogger v. Chess Blogger! ChessAdmin-RLP 10.15.11 1/2-1/2
I've had the pleasure of playing a few serious training games on FICS with ChessAdmin recently and we agreed that annotating the most recent one might be fun and instructive for both of us. Hopefully, it has some value for the rest of the chess world, as well. Okay, for the .001 of 1% of the chess world who frequent our blogs.
ChessAdmin has posted his analysis at Annotated Game #15: Blogger Throwdown (RLP). While we seem to have pointed out many of the same moves and lines, there are some interesting differences, too. It's a game worth examining and I invite you to check out his comments. (Editor--it might be helpful for folks to know that the time control is 60 5. Thanks, Ed.)
ChessAdmin is a player of about equal strength to me (somewhere in USCF Class B) so the games have been pretty closely fought. I've managed a plus score but but mainly I've enjoyed the stimulating chess and the friendly atmosphere. The game from last Saturday was a good battle and featured a fighting middle game where I obtained some advantage, and a queen ending that could have been almost unbearably complex. You'll see the mind bending variations and the surprising finish below...
This was our third game and knowing I was scheduled for black I gave some thought to the opening, since he has written some very good posts about his repertoire and how he approaches it. I expected 1. c4 and for much of my career played the King's Indian Defense against it, with 1. ..e5 being my other main choice. Lately I've been employing the Tarrasch Defense against the English, and in our first game that had led to a nice win for me. But since he had written about the kingside v. queenside "race" in the Reversed Sicilian recently I thought I might go back to that scenario, fun for and practice.
I did it through a rather cagey order of moves, and instead of putting all my verbiage in the small print of the annotations below I give the first eight moves here, with comments:
1.c4 g6 (A little jest, in that I didn't at all expect 2. d4, but if he surprised me I was okay with a KID) 2.Nf3 Bg7 3.g3 Nc6 (Still shadowboxing a bit, giving one last chance to go d4. But he sticks to his knitting) 4.Bg2 e5 5.Nc3 Nge7 (To leave the possibility of f5 on the table. Nf6 is probably a perfectly good move but I prefer the imbalances created by the text) 6.O-O O-O 7.d3 d6 8.Rb1 Bg4 and we now return you to your scheduled program:
ChessAdmin has posted his analysis at Annotated Game #15: Blogger Throwdown (RLP). While we seem to have pointed out many of the same moves and lines, there are some interesting differences, too. It's a game worth examining and I invite you to check out his comments. (Editor--it might be helpful for folks to know that the time control is 60 5. Thanks, Ed.)
ChessAdmin is a player of about equal strength to me (somewhere in USCF Class B) so the games have been pretty closely fought. I've managed a plus score but but mainly I've enjoyed the stimulating chess and the friendly atmosphere. The game from last Saturday was a good battle and featured a fighting middle game where I obtained some advantage, and a queen ending that could have been almost unbearably complex. You'll see the mind bending variations and the surprising finish below...
This was our third game and knowing I was scheduled for black I gave some thought to the opening, since he has written some very good posts about his repertoire and how he approaches it. I expected 1. c4 and for much of my career played the King's Indian Defense against it, with 1. ..e5 being my other main choice. Lately I've been employing the Tarrasch Defense against the English, and in our first game that had led to a nice win for me. But since he had written about the kingside v. queenside "race" in the Reversed Sicilian recently I thought I might go back to that scenario, fun for and practice.
I did it through a rather cagey order of moves, and instead of putting all my verbiage in the small print of the annotations below I give the first eight moves here, with comments:
1.c4 g6 (A little jest, in that I didn't at all expect 2. d4, but if he surprised me I was okay with a KID) 2.Nf3 Bg7 3.g3 Nc6 (Still shadowboxing a bit, giving one last chance to go d4. But he sticks to his knitting) 4.Bg2 e5 5.Nc3 Nge7 (To leave the possibility of f5 on the table. Nf6 is probably a perfectly good move but I prefer the imbalances created by the text) 6.O-O O-O 7.d3 d6 8.Rb1 Bg4 and we now return you to your scheduled program:
Monday, October 10, 2011
What Do You See?
I took this photo a few years ago from my office window. It is posted for no reason other than enjoyment.
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