Spring Break - Friday

Sadly, my last Spring break is coming to an end.

Game Theory

I had to start reading last night. I printed off the syllabus yesterday. We have to read the first two chapters of Thinking Strategically by Monday. So after watching who got booted from American Idol (I'm pulling for Chris Daughtry), I went upstairs and read the first chapter.

Within the first few pages, the authors were already mentioning chess. I think this is the main reason I like game theory so much ... a lot of it is just plain fun. The first chapter talked about 10 "tales" of strategy. In each one, he talked about a real-life story that demonstated some form of strategy. I think I'm going to like this book and I think it will help me with with what's really important ... chess.

PTAP

I need to read the first two chapters in the book for this class, go over the slides and I think there is a paper I have to read too. I don't have class until Tuesday, so I'll probably read Sunday and then again on Monday before my game theory class starts.

Quixote Update
Chapter 18

Quixote and Sancho leave the inn. They babble on for a while and some of the conversation is pretty funny. It's almost like two kids who are playing make-believe. They just think up stuff and then pretend it really happens. But the sad part is that the rest of the world isn't going along with their game ... and that is what makes this book so funny.

After talking about making a magical sword and other things, the two are caught between two clouds of dust. They think the clouds are caused by two approaching armies. In fact, the clouds of dust are caused by two herds of sheep! Anyway .... Quixote and Sancho think the armies are fighting over a girl ... some prince and girl wanted to marry, but the king (daughter's dad) doesn't approve ... or something like that. By this point in the chapter, I was pretty tired so I went to bed.

Chess Update

I am going to play tonight for sure. Today is the last day I'll have some "free time" to play chess. I need to read for my classes, but I am still going to set aside some chess time too. After today, I won't be playing too often until my next break in May.

I'll still keep working the the chessgames.com daily puzzle despite classes starting up again.

Today's puzzle is 26. ? I think the knight needs to move so that the queen can open an attack on the king. It might go something like this 26. Ne6 Nxe6 27. dxe6 Ba4 28. Qd4+. I can't think how it'd be done, but I'd like to get the bishop on d5 and the queen on h6. To do this, I'd have to get the d5 pawn on e6 (using above knight move) and then I'd probably move g4 in an effort to move my f pawn to f5. That would by my strategy.

Ideally, I'd like this to happen: 26. g4 hxg4 27. hxg4 fxg4 28. Ne6 Nxe6 29. dxeg Ba4. At this point, I'd think it would be set up to get the queen up to h6 and the bishop to d5.

The answer is Bxh5. This clears the pawns on the king side and opens it up for the queen to attack. Check the game for the end game ... it is really great!