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| Posted by jstevens1 intochess.com 6/28/2008 07:16:11 play online chess |  Subject: Chess and the Wizard of OzMessage: The Land of Oz or the Wizard's Kingdom = The Land of Expertdom for those players with ratings of 2000+, which at the moment for me is ......... Somewhere over the Rainbow! The Yellow Brick Road = The Road to Expertdom. The Wicked Witch of the West = Enemy Queen, the chessplayer's chief nemesis who will do everything in her power to halt that chessplayer's path along The Yellow Brick Road. Glenda, Good Witch of the North = Friendly Queen - this is what I call my queen, who is doing everything in her power (by protecting her beloved husband Dear Ole 'Enry with all her might and main) to prevent the Wicked Witch of the West from pushing me backwards on the Yellow Brick Road. "The North" is also significant, because this is where the Yellow Brick Road is heading. We chessplayers all want our ratings to head DUE NORTH!! Ok, well I have annotated a few games based on this story. One is called "Glenda Saves the Day" against a chessplayer called ronlum with a rating in the low 1500s. I was two pawns down in a queen and piece ending but Glenda got in some very useful checks, winning back one of the pawns and enabling me to exchange queens into a drawn opposite bishop ending. The second one, against the same opponent is called "Stealth and Wealth" where I quietly amassed a queenside attack on a castled position and won oodles of material. I then annotated another two games against two different opponents, one who had a rating of 1480 in Old Matey Strikes, Part 1 (in which Glenda played a useful back up role) and another who again had a rating in the low 1500s called Old Matey Strikes, Part 2. In both games I delivered checkmate. I hope you all enjoy your weekend and have a good read! Cheers and bye for now. Joanne |
Chess news: It’s Gelfand vs. Ponomariov for the World Chess Cup -- Boris Gelfand of Israel and Ruslan Ponomariov of Ukraine will meet in the final of the World Chess Cup in Khanty Mansiysk, Russia. Gelfand easily beat Sergey Karjakin of Ukraine in the semifinals, winning his match 2 to 0, while Ponomariov outlasted Vladimir Malakhov of Russia in a playoff to grab the other final spot. Ponomariov actually fell behind in the tie-breaker, losing the first game, but he then came back to win the last three. Gelfand and Ponomariov were more experienced than their semifinal opponents, so their victories were not really a surprise. In fact, at the start of the World Chess Cup, the two were clearly among the favorites. Gelfand was the No. 1 seed, while ... Bennett and King on chess: Carlsen-Nakamura, BNbank Blitz, 2009 -- The London Chess Classic, the strongest chess tournament to be held in this country for 25 years, begins today at Olympia. Magnus Carlsen, the brilliant 19-year-old Norwegian, is one of the favourites, but he was dealt a psychological blow when he lost to one of the other participants, US chess champion Hikaru Nakamura, in a blitz tournament in Oslo 10 days ago. Carlsen played the classier chess, but Nakamura proved to be the better hustler. This was the game that turned the match around. Carlsen is threatening to queen the pawn, but Nakamura, with just a few seconds on his clock, found a win. RB: One of the first chess books I owned was Practical Chess Endings by ... Soviet training methods still reign in the chess world -- Two decades after the USSR broke up, Soviet training methods remain potent at the chess board. When the field of 128 was reduced to the quarter-finals in the current World Chess Cup, all eight grandmasters remaining had their education from Soviet coaches. The final four-game match now in progress to decide who qualifies for the 2010 candidates is between Ukraine's Ruslan Ponomariov, who won the 2002 World Cup as a teenager, and Boris Gelfand, the 41-year-old top seed. In the semi-finals Ponomariov beat Vlad Malakhov 4-2 while Gelfand eliminated Sergey Karjakin 2-0. In both the semi-final and in the game below the Israeli chess veteran defeated ... | |