One would expect that with the advance of the internet, buying quality software would become easier. In my experience, it is actually the other way around!
Choosing good software is surprisingly becoming very time consuming and there's simply too much information to look for. There are literally hundreds of sites with reviews, and it's very hard to tell whether the people who wrote those reviews have any connection with the company who creates the software or they're just home users who have
In April this year I was in tokyo for a few days and gave a couple of lectures. I also played a simul Exhibition.
One day I'll play an unforgettable game which everyone will remember , till then, here are these 2, I'm white.
[pgn] 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nf3 d5 4. Nc3 Be7 5. Bg5 Nbd7 6. e3 O-O 7. Rc1 h6 8. Bh4 c6 9. Bd3 Re8 10. O-O dxc4 11. Bxc4 Nd5 12. Bg3 Bf6 13. Ne4 Be7 14. Bb3 N7f6 15. Nc5 b6 16. Nd3 Bb7 17. Nfe5 Rc8 18. Qf3 c5 19. e4 Nb4 20. Nxf7 Kxf7 21. Ne5 Kf8 22. Bxe6 g5 23. d5
It's been a while since a last saw a game which left me with my mouth open .
Norwegian GM Magnus Carlsen has just played one of those games in Mexico against no other than GM Morozevich. Carlsen's 12th move (Nde4) is a Novely and it is a very intereting move indeed. It's not hard to see that if black goes 12... f5 then the g5 square becomes weak, but did you expect white's next move?
17.d7! is a powerful move also. After all the fireworks, Magnus is just one pawn up, but he converts his a
Yes, Carlsen has his own blog, no kidding!
How does he find the time to prepare for his games, play those tough games, rest and... write a blog?
Hang on a minute, this is not Magnus Carlsen's blog we're talking about, is it? True, but it comes close: it's his dad's!
Still, a very interesting source of information with plenty of photographs, family stories, honest and witty. Henry is doing a great job. Highly recommended.
Read it here!
Ever need to call overseas? yes, I know VOIP (voice over IP) is a serious alternative to calling directly, but you need a microphone or one of those pc handsets and the quality is not very good.
Recently I found out about Jajah. The great thing about this system is that a Caller simply types in his own number and his desired destination number in a Web form. The Jajah service first rings the caller. After the caller picks up the phone the destination number is then dialled and the connection i
Short's visit to Montreal has become a nightmare. After 7 rounds, he's on just one point.
In this game, he self pinned his knight with 17.Ng6??, a move which soon resulted in one of the shortest defeats in his whole career.
[pgn]Short,N (2683) - Harikrishna,P (2664) [C01]
8th It Montreal CAN (2), 20.07.2007
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nxe5 d6 4.Nf3 Nxe4 5.d3 Nf6 6.d4 d5 7.Bd3 Bd6 8.0-0 0-0 9.h3 h6 10.Nc3 c6 11.Re1 Re8 12.Rxe8+ Nxe8 13.Ne5 Nd7 14.Bf4 Nf8 15.Qh5 Be6 16.Rb1 f6 17.Ng6 {??} Bf
That picture above is my Nokia6600. I've always used Nokia phones. Anyway, last week I started getting messages from people in my contact list, they said things like:
"What??"
"What do you mean??"
"?"
etc.
After some research, I found that I had lost all the credit in my prepaid account (only 20$, lucky I'm not on a contract!). Anyway, to cut a long story short, my phone had a virus and, "on its own" initiative, was sending multimedia messages to everyone in my contact list (i
What's the best move you've ever seen?
On my QF6 (that's not Queen to f6! ) flight from Singapore to Sydney this morning, I could not get any sleep and had to switch on my pocket pc to review some great endgame compositions. I then found the following beauty. What would you play here as white and, more importantly, why?
btw, either Airfrance or Qantas have managed to lose my suitcase. I only have a pair of trousers and a shirt to wear now...
The following game has won the prize for the best game at the Gibraltar Telecom Masters. If you're wondering, personally, I don't like it. Why? I don't think it's anything special, simple tactics and a rudimentary Queen Sac. Surely there must have been better games than this played at Gibraltar! oh well... here it is:
Sulskis,Sarunas (2525) - Quillan,Gary (2354) [A00]
Gibtelecom Masters Gibraltar (1.27), 23.01.2007
[pgn]
1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e5 c5 5.a3 Bxc3+ 6.bxc3 Ne7 7.Qg
[Event "Amber Blindfold"]
[site "Monte Carlo MNC"]
[Date "2007.03.20"]
This happened in the game Vallejo - Svidler after black's 23rd move. You'd never guess white's next move. Think about it for a while. When you've found a really bad move, put your mouse pointer over the black line. But wait! Something else happened!
If you didn't guess white's 24th, there's no chance you'll guess white's 25th!! you don't believe me? check it out!
For the record, 24. e5! would have
Although I had been an Australian resident for aproximately 10 years after my arrival in Sydney back in 1982, I had my visa cancelled after not returning to Australia in the alloted 5 year period that I was given when I moved back to Spain. That was a long time ago...
My mum, sister, brother and nephews all live here (Sydney, I mean) and got their Australian Citizenship long ago. I can speak the language, support myself, and had been offered a job. When I lodged my resident application 2 years
Since it has been clearly proven that it's extremely difficult to organize what is supposed to be the most important competition of the year in this country (Australia), perhaps we should ask New Zealand to organize it for us. Call it the "Championship of Australia and New Zealand" or something. What do you think? I trust New Zealanders when it comes to organizing national events...
If they refuse, there's also Samoa Island, Papua New Guinea and other countries in the region. It would definit
After 4 rounds GM Anand is leading Morelia-Linares with 3/4. Playing the black side of a Ruy Lopez against the Anand probably sounds as the closest thing to a slow torture, particularly if you choose one of the main lines, like Morozevic did. However, the Russian GM defended solidly and at one point could have obtained a slight initiative. The position after white's 31st move is critical. 31...Bh6! seems like an improvement. I have annotated the game and you can download it here: anandmoro.cbv o
I was kibitzing some blitz games on the playchess server last night and was surprised by the unexpected result of this game. There's a couple of errors on move 29 for black and 30 for white, but other than that the game is pretty good. The interesting moment comes on move 41, when Nigel tries to make some progress on the Kingside overlooking black's chances on the Queenside. By means of a nice sacrifice black was able to get a passed pawn and win the game.
With a FIDE rating of 2248, 18 year o
White to play and checkmate in 10 moves, BUT, with 2 conditions:
a] No pawn moves allowed.
b] It must be a knight mate!
Your chess engine doesn't help? tough luck! use your brain instead!
Solution:
I'm currently adding new links to the links section of this site.
I've created a new section called "Country specific", for I didn't know where else to put all the Australian Links that I know about.
My intention is to create links for other english speaking countries: US, UK, etc. but first things first.
Anyway, one of the Australian Links that I've come across is the one from the Hakoah Chess Club in Sydney, where I played for many years. I even defended their first team on board 1 for
See that beauty above? It can reach peak speeds of more than 300 Km an hour. It's called "AVE", spanish for "Bird" and also an acronism meaning "Spanish High Speed" (Alta Velocidad Español). Today I travelled from Madrid to Zaragoza (350 km) in 75 minutes. I didn't even have time to take a short nap!
But then again, isn't that what's happening all over the world? isn't everything going and happening a lot faster than it ever was? tranport, internet connections, food gets cooked in a matter of
It's strange how people have their own interpretation of songs. I always thought "Hotel California" was a metaphor of hell. Reading Don Henley's comments: "We were all middle-class kids from the Midwest. Hotel California was our interpretation of the high life in Los Angeles." perhaps I wasn't so far away.
Click HERE to check what this song means to many different people.
"Hotel California" (The Eagles)
On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair
Warm smell of colitas, risi
GM Alexi Shirov has just won one of the strongest rapid chess events ever held: Festival Cañada de Calatrava (Spain).
Shirov, who plays for Spain, played some very nice chess there.
Personally, I was quite happy on two accounts: 1, on seeing him win a tournament again, and 2, on seeing him playing a tournament where he didn't play the Petrov! (He played a Sicilian against a weaker player and he beat Ivanchuck as black on round 8 playing against the Ruy Lopez. In the rest of the games his op
My free electronic book, "Learn chess Or Call Me An Idiot!!" has reached the first spot in the free ebooks billboard: Check it out here!.
Brought up in a catholic culture, I've been programmed to behave modestly, but life's so short and there are so few things to cellebrate sometimes... what the hell, I'm happy!
