The Help Channel on FICS

Here's a screen shot of a little conversation on FICS from tonight.

Is there some inside joke switzer was trying to make? I fingered him and from the looks of his rating it would seem his comments have some deeper or cynical meaning.

Then again, he might have just been acting facetious. There are lots of "those" on FICS.

I should have castled earlier

Here's my first draw at Red Hot Pawn. Interestingly enough, when I started this game, my opponent was rated 921. By the time we finished he was 1459.

I haven't fully examined the game, but all I have to say right now is I should have castled earlier.

Alice Chess Set

I found this via Neatorama. It is a chess set "inspired by the novel 'Alice through the Looking Glass' where the pieces magically turn transparent when they touch the board."

Neatorama Link.

Original Link.

The Dark Knight

Check out this link.

I just returned from a screening and I wanted to commit this to a public forum as quickly as possible. Heath Ledger gives a blockbuster performance in the new Batman movie. His work, as The Joker, will absolutely be nominated for an Oscar, and at this point in the year, Ledger is also a hands-down favorite to win it posthumously. Ledger offers perfect pitch, perfect tone, his Joker hits all the right notes. 'The Dark Knight' is among the better super-hero movies of all time, and Ledger is THE BEST villain in a super hero movie of all time. Really. It will only add to the conversation of all that Ledger could have accomplished had he lived. Amazing work.

One of the "better super-hero movies of all time"

"THE BEST villian in a super hero movie of all time"

Wow! I really can't wait for this one to come out.

J.K. Rowling Quote on Failure

The Benefits of Failure

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default.

Never give up and never be afraid to try.

Link to entire commencement address.

Full-fledged Red Hot Pawn Member

Right before our vacation, I purchased a year supscription to Red Hot Pawn. I did so because I was going to get one anyway and the timing was right because I didn't want my games to timeout.

Correspondance chess is perfect for my schedule. I can make decent moves at my own pace without having to sit down for one whole hour or two. If the kids are breaking out into a brawl, I can pause my anylyzing, stop the fight and establish the peace again and then get back to the game.

I've only lost two games so far, but I'm sure as the competition gets stiffer, those losses will increase. If you want to start a game, let me know. I play 7-day moves with a 7-day time bank. I'm no longer restricted to playing 6 games at once.

I'm still working on tactics at ChessTempo. The site has greatly improved since I first found it. The problems are getting better too.

Top Tagger

Chess Tempo has been upgraded a bit and I like what I see so far. All the gory details can be read here.

But what really suprised me was seeing my handle at the top of the taggers list. I'm a top dog at Chess Tempo ... at least for now.

Live Blogging of Chess Tempo Session

1:42pm
so I'm working on tactics at chess tempo and I thought I'd live-blog a short session. I'm doing blitz problems. My rating right now is 2051. For the last four days I've been hovering between 2030 and 2070.

1:45pm
I just finished two problems that I had recently seen before. This seems unusal as chess tempo claims to have over 25,000 problems. I know I've not seen all the problems. Maybe because of my rating I don't see the really low and really high rated problems. The highest rated problem I've seen was just over 3000. I failed that one. Anyway ... the last two problem were problems I've seen before. I missed them both last time I saw them. Fortunatly I "tagged" them and I got them right this time. They were 29960 & 11726.

1:50pm
DAMN IT! I get to move six of a mate-in-seven and I screw it up. I am bothered by the fact that I miss too many tactics on the very last move ... I'm humming along, making all the right moves and I think I've got the sucker ... them bam!! I screw it up. Rating's at 2048

1:55pm
Ever see a really high rated problem, miss it and then smack yourself in the head? This one was over 2700 and it was a simple pin. I think I let the rating intimidate me sometimes.

1:59pm
I hate it when the server dishes out problems that are rated over 800 points below my rating. I just got a 1227 ... an easy 3 points. Rating's 2050 (again).

2:04pm
I missed a problem and I'm suspicious of the solution. I copy the position using DiagTransfer 2.0 and feed it to Fritz 8. Herr Fritz takes a baseball bat and whacks me upside the head and says, "are you a nutless, brain-dead possum?" Rating's 2047

2:09pm
I finally break even on the problems for this session (11 right, 10 wrong) Rating's 2058

2:11pm
My first instinct is to take the bishop with my rook, but then I think there might be a better move. I only have 12 seconds. Thinking, thinking ... I go with my second thought-of move ... wrong. My first instinct was correct - take the bishop. I do that alot. Rating's 2062

2:15pm
I just did it again ... the whole instinct thing. Rating's the same

2:16pm
I take 24 seconds to solve a 14 second problem and my rating goes down a point.

2:17pm
WOW! I solved a 2375 whose avg solution time is 103.8 seconds and I got it in 51 seconds! I jumped up 7 points to 2067.

2:20pm
I'm done with the last problem of this mini-session. I got it correct and finished at 2070 which means I'll probably miss 3 or 4 in a row next time I log on, have my rating drop back down to 2030 and I'll spend 30 minutes trying to get it back up to 2070.

Losing Streak Over

The last time I played a longish game was April 10 and I won that game ... it was my one win in the LEPers tournament. I've not played much at FICS since then. I've been focusing on my chess correspondance play at Red Hot Pawn as well as spending a lot of time at chesstempo. I just lost my 2nd game at RHP, by the way.

Tonight I logged into FICS and dinked around. I finally found a 20 5 game. My opponent kept making these annotation type comments. I usually ignore chat messages during a game. But some of his comments sounded like smack. If I remember correctly, his first comment was something like "Black up in material, White up in space and tempo" or something like that (I was playing Black). I wasn't too distracted, other than a passing thought in my head ... "wait until I shove your king into your blowhole after I deliver checkmate ya frickin' idiot!" I didn't let his smack bother me.

Pretty soon I had pretty good spacing and felt really confident. That's when he made another comment ... something like "e5 is a weak spot in the Sicilian." I probably should have paid more attention to his subtle hints. He wacked my e5 pawn and my d6 pawn could not recapture else his rook would capture my queen. Pretty soon, his white-squared bishop was hounding my king and his knight was forking my queen and rook. By this time, all dreams, hopes and aspirations of kicking this cocky SOB to Australia were dashed. I simply resigned. I had no gumption to finish it. His last comment was something to the effect that the score is now 1-1. I didn't understand at first, but then I issued a "hstat rockyrook [opponent]" and found that I had beat this fellow before. Either he issues the same command during most of his games or he must have remembered the last time I beat him (probably very soundly). That was my first longish game in a month.

Here's the game in all it's bloody glory.




The other three I played tonight were against a decent chap. The first game was kind of close until the end game. His queen and rooks really put the pressure on me. I gave it one last effort, sacrificing my rook to let my other rook and queen try to finish him off, but he defended well and I lost on time.

The 2nd game was quick and very painful. I blundered in under 7 or 8 moves. I let his queen and bishop zoom in on the f7 pawn and I could not defend it. I resigned.

The last game was a battle to the finish. I only won because I gobbled up a couple of his pawns during the course of the game. Otherwise it was pretty even. Because of the pawn advantage, I was able to trade pieces and let my pawns do the walking. He resigned. And thus the pitiful losing streak ended. My ego was almost crushed in a night of defeats, but I managed to salvage some respect before heading to bed.

When I retire ...

... from my career, I want to do what Arthur Meether does.

he has spent the past four years volunteering his time as a chess mentor at the public library.

Heck, on my days off this Summer, I might even take my 8-year-old and 6-year-old down to the library and play and study chess for a couple of hours a day. We might even interest a few other kids to play too.

There's nothing like sitting and playing chess (or reading a good book) in a good solid wood table and chair in the quiet of the library.

Link via Susan Polgar's Blog.

Hillary and Rocky

No, I'm not endorsing Hillary.

I just saw on the headlines that Hillary likened herself to Rocky Balboa.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton says she has something in
common with legendary film boxer Rocky Balboa—she's not a quitter. Recalling a famous scene on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art from the 1976 Oscar-winning film "Rocky," Clinton said that ending her presidential campaign now would be as if "Rocky Balboa had gotten halfway up those art museum steps and said, 'Well, I guess that's about far enough.'"

"Let me tell you something, when it comes to finishing a fight, Rocky and I have a lot in common. I never quit. I never give up. And neither do the American people," Clinton said in excerpts of prepared remarks to be given Tuesday to a meeting of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO.

You know what ... she is right on. She will go the distance and she will lose. Indeed, Rocky didn't quit. All he wanted to do was go the distance. He went the distance, but in the end, he lost his first fight with Apollo Creed.

LEP Round 5 and "Thanks!"

Again, no big suprise or upset. Polly ate me like a cracker. It was more of a blitz than a rapid game.

I also wanted to thank DK and Chess Teacher for the helpful suggestions. I've increased the number of posts displayed on the main page and I fixed the height of the chesspublisher so that you don't have the scroll bar to the right.

Not much chess for me this past week or this week ... the kids are on Spring Break and I'm working the night shift, so I'm spending lots of time at Chess Tempo.

LEPers Round 4: Another Loss

No suprise here. Kevin TCB and trashed me. I personally was impressed I lasted as long as I did. The game wasn't really special, so I won't bother posting it.

RockyRook v. ChristofRomyuod

So I got a 60 5 game in this week. My opponent was about 150 rating points higher than me. It was a close game. He had a chance to close the game early at with 31 ... Qxc3 but he let me off the hook. I rallied back and made it interesting, but his advanced pawns were too much for me to manage in the end.

This is my first time using chesspublisher. I hope it works.

3-Way Chess

Check out this version of chess . I've heard of this, but had not really seen it before. Click on the link here to see this blog post on it.

I searched 3-way chess at wikipedia and found a link to Three-handed Chess.

From the above wikipedia page, I found more information on Three Player Chess. It looks like sometime in the mid 1990's this chess variant was invented.

I can hardly manged the normal chess board and complexities. But adding a third player to the mix makes for a very interesting and complex game. As one of the posts pointed out, if two of the players don't like the 3rd, then the 3rd player is doomed.

The Dimock Theme Tournament NY 1924

I stumbled on this fantastic site today. It has all the annotated games from a tournament of strong US players, including Marshall, from 1924. From that site there are other links to chess stuff. I might be hanging out at that site for quite some time.

Match Request: March 6-8 @ 18:00 FICS

As usual, I'm looking to play a 60 5 game on FICS.

I'll be available March 6th, 7th and 8th at around 18:00 FICS (Pacific) time.

I'd prefer to play someone in the 1700-1800 range, but will play anyone over 1600.

I NEED the practice! :-)

If you're interested, leave a comment.

Three Rounds, Three Loses

OK. The bright side of this predicament is that things can only go up from here. If I lose, then my streak continues (which is fine ... I like streaks). If I win, then it will be the biggest upset of the tournament. I mean if you can't beat me, then you must really suck! :-)

I played really fast in the last two games. In the last game against LEP, I think I had over 21 minutes on my clock when he check-mated me. I should probably work on time management a bit. But what's even more frustrating is taking all that time, thinking deliberately, being careful and having my clock drip down to a minute, and then I make a mistake ... it floors me every time. But if I treat it like a blitz game, then I can always fall back to the excuse, "well, I was playing fast. No big deal." And if I take that approach, the frustration of losing is much, much less.

Bottom line: I'm a slow thinker and learner. I have to take my time every move or else I will foul it up. And even if I take lots of time, I'm still known to make critical mistakes ... all the more reason for me to play longer games (and why I like correspondance chess so much).

But to all the LEPers ... don't take this the wrong way. If this tourny were a 45 45 or G90, chances are I'd still be 0-3.

How to Think Article

Very interesting stuff.

Link.

Entire article:

How to Think
Managing brain resources in an age of complexity.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

When I applied for my faculty job at the MIT Media Lab, I had to write a teaching statement. One of the things I proposed was to teach a class called "How to Think," which would focus on how to be creative, thoughtful, and powerful in a world where problems are extremely complex, targets are continuously moving, and our brains often seem like nodes of enormous networks that constantly reconfigure. In the process of thinking about this, I composed 10 rules, which I sometimes share with students. I've listed them here, followed by some practical advice on implementation.

1. Synthesize new ideas constantly. Never read passively. Annotate, model, think, and synthesize while you read, even when you're reading what you conceive to be introductory stuff. That way, you will always aim towards understanding things at a resolution fine enough for you to be creative.

2. Learn how to learn (rapidly). One of the most important talents for the 21st century is the ability to learn almost anything instantly, so cultivate this talent. Be able to rapidly prototype ideas. Know how your brain works. (I often need a 20-minute power nap after loading a lot into my brain, followed by half a cup of coffee. Knowing how my brain operates enables me to use it well.)

3. Work backward from your goal. Or else you may never get there. If you work forward, you may invent something profound--or you might not. If you work backward, then you have at least directed your efforts at something important to you.

4. Always have a long-term plan. Even if you change it every day. The act of making the plan alone is worth it. And even if you revise it often, you're guaranteed to be learning something.

5. Make contingency maps. Draw all the things you need to do on a big piece of paper, and find out which things depend on other things. Then, find the things that are not dependent on anything but have the most dependents, and finish them first.

6. Collaborate.

7. Make your mistakes quickly. You may mess things up on the first try, but do it fast, and then move on. Document what led to the error so that you learn what to recognize, and then move on. Get the mistakes out of the way. As Shakespeare put it, "Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt."

8. As you develop skills, write up best-practices protocols. That way, when you return to something you've done, you can make it routine. Instinctualize conscious control.

9. Document everything obsessively. If you don't record it, it may never have an impact on the world. Much of creativity is learning how to see things properly. Most profound scientific discoveries are surprises. But if you don't document and digest every observation and learn to trust your eyes, then you will not know when you have seen a surprise.

10. Keep it simple. If it looks like something hard to engineer, it probably is. If you can spend two days thinking of ways to make it 10 times simpler, do it. It will work better, be more reliable, and have a bigger impact on the world. And learn, if only to know what has failed before. Remember the old saying, "Six months in the lab can save an afternoon in the library."

Two practical notes. The first is in the arena of time management. I really like what I call logarithmic time planning, in which events that are close at hand are scheduled with finer resolution than events that are far off. For example, things that happen tomorrow should be scheduled down to the minute, things that happen next week should be scheduled down to the hour, and things that happen next year should be scheduled down to the day. Why do all calendar programs force you to pick the exact minute something happens when you are trying to schedule it a year out? I just use a word processor to schedule all my events, tasks, and commitments, with resolution fading away the farther I look into the future. (It would be nice, though, to have a software tool that would gently help you make the schedule higher-resolution as time passes...)

The second practical note: I find it really useful to write and draw while talking with someone, composing conversation summaries on pieces of paper or pages of notepads. I often use plenty of color annotation to highlight salient points. At the end of the conversation, I digitally photograph the piece of paper so that I capture the entire flow of the conversation and the thoughts that emerged. The person I've conversed with usually gets to keep the original piece of paper, and the digital photograph is uploaded to my computer for keyword tagging and archiving. This way I can call up all the images, sketches, ideas, references, and action items from a brief note that I took during a five-minute meeting at a coffee shop years ago--at a touch, on my laptop. With 10-megapixel cameras costing just over $100, you can easily capture a dozen full pages in a single shot, in just a second.

Cite as: Boyden, E. S. "How to Think." Ed Boyden's Blog. Technology Review. 11/13/07. (http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/boyden/21925/).

Match Request: February 22 @ 18:00 FICS

Anyone up for a 60 5 game tonight on FICS at around 18:00 FICS (Pacific) time?

Leave a comment or just log on to FICS tonight and look for my seek.