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| Posted by ccmcacollister chesspeak.com 11/19/2008 23:28:57 Play online chess |  Subject: Going Both Ways; Corr. & OTB ChessMessage: from IONADOWMAN and some recollections for me. So here we are. I WOULD LIKE THIS THREAD TO BE RELATED TO PLAYERS WHO HAVE PLAYED OTB CHESS BUT ALSO POSTAL CHESS OR SOME FORM OF CORRESPONDENCE PLAY, SUCH AS NOW INCLUDES MANY ONLINE SITES WHERE THERE ARE MULTI-DAY GAMES PLAYED... I AM ESPECIALLY INTERESTED IN GM'S WHO HAVE PLAYED CORR aor POSTAL. ALSO PLAYERS WHO HAVE MASTERED BOTH FORMS. (Eg. From Iowa or Nebraska alone are these who have Master(ed) in both OTB & CORR., just that I am aware of: C.T.Campbell aka BOGG, Mitch Weiss, Siamack Bondari, Anton Sildmets, David Bragg, possibly Carolle Schmidt & Alfred Post. I failed in OTB, only reaching Expert, or Candidate Master as FIDE has called it.) BUT ALSO about ANY OTHER(s) player(s) involved in OTB PLUS POSTAL OR other CORR. PLAY, such AS HERE AT GAMEKNOT / CHESSCOLONY dot com's~! For instance, are any of you in the process now, of trying to attain both Master titles? Or Expert? Do you find one or the other more rewarding? Or perhaps complementary, as I do? (It seems to me that each can improve the other. The Danger being too much time use in OTB trying to decipher a position I could in Postal but not in OTB! Conversely, being too shallow or trappy in CORR games!? That problem I Don't have since ALL my games are shallow now! ha. But mostly just as enjoyable :)) OR ANY OTHER COMMENTS YOU HAVE ABOUT PLAYING BOTH, OR ABOUT THOSE WHO DO ...IF YOU DO NOT. And IF YOU DO NOT, then WHY NOT~! ?? Is it access to OTB events? OR ...? Here is the PASTE from that LATVIAN THREAD, brought me to here. And A LINK will follow this. ***** Isn't Kon Grivainis a quite highly rated Postal Chess player ...? Or once was, if retired now? Brings to mind the game of Fischer with Berliner. Trying to recall if it was also he who played Penrose from England!? Of course, Fischer himself, and Keres were at one time Postal Chess players as well. And Fischer apparently thought highly enough of Corr. play to remark what a great instructor of Chess was WC (of postal play) Purdy, from Australia. Believe I will start a thread on players that have gone both ways . . . and I DID. THIS is IT. }8-) | ||||||||||||
| Posted by ccmcacollister chesspeak.com 11/19/2008 23:32:12 Play online chess | LINK / HyperLink to Latvian thread Message: gameknot.com/fmsg/chess/4234.shtml  gameknot.com
}8-) | ||||||||||||
| Posted by bhidragon chesspeak.com 11/20/2008 05:04:52 Play online chess | Rating System? Message: Regards ——— Chess notes — A couple of weeks ago we wrote about anthropologist Robert Desjarlais’s musings in his work “Counterplay - An Anthropologist at the Chess Board’’ in respect to the mystical motives to play chess, an area of activity in great part outside of economic incentives. A recently developing illustration of playing for the love of the game is the monthly Grand Prix tournaments at the Boylston Club. There have been seven so far, and they offer only small prizes for those who have earned the most points at the end of the year. The entry fee is a mere $7 for club members and $10 for nonmembers. They have been immensely popular. Although these chess tournaments are not a draw for players dependent on chess for ... Posted by ccmcacollister | chesspeak.com 11/20/2008 05:42:28 Play online chess That's True~! Message: USCF for the OTB bit of it. But surely not for Postal or Corr, since some other orgs proved equally as strong as USCF ratings in the 1st National Team Championship of Postal play in the USA ...or comparing ratings of theirs to USCF ratings of the same player also. EG APCT & CCLA compared well or favorably for strength. As far as online, I was thinking places like GK where the ratings are reasonably comparable to other Elo systems of official national orgs, and such. And not so much of sites where the highest rated player is 3800 for instance. But still, maybe that just means their Master is at 3200 !? But really, I am happy for anyone who can do a Double anywhere. And there are usually ways of converting ratings into approximating those of other sites. Player to player comparison, standards of deviation, or algebraic conversion formula. One other reason for the flexibility in my thought being that so many players would start corr in USCF for instance, but into their career somewhat switch to another leaving their USCF corr rating to gather dust. Also, especially with ONLINE sites; they can come and go away after a few years, like several I can think of. So I'd just as soon hear it all ... and if someone wants to remark on an opinion of inflation/deflation of some site they bring up, or of how to convert it to terms of GK or FIDE or ICCF, that's just as well to me. Mostly I think it is a good thing to be able to note the achievement as it is. And maybe hear a bit about how they got there, if it is a GK player. Or other thoughts. It is intended as a broad topic, insofar as possible. ——— Showdown in China Highlights Busy Month — There is no peak season for chess, but several overlapping tournaments are keeping top chess players busy. The events include the World Team Chess Championship, featuring 10 of the top national squads, in Ningbo, China; the Biel International Chess Festival in Switzerland; the Sparkassen Chess Meeting in Dortmund, Germany; and an elite invitational tournament for women in Hangzhou, China. The talented rosters include Magnus Carlsen in Switzerland; Levon Aronian, Sergey Karjakin, Vassily Ivanchuk and Teimour Radjabov in Ningbo; Vladimir Kramnik and Hikaru Nakamura in Dortmund; and Hou Yifan, the 16-year-old women’s world chess champion, in Hangzhou. Such a wealth of competition has ... Posted by blake78613 | chesspeak.com 11/20/2008 09:26:15 Play online chess Message: The problem with CC ratings is that some players use them for different things. Some players use them as training for OTB and don't move the pieces when they analyse and also use them as a method of learning openings. ——— Michael Adams and Nigel Short ready for rare battle — The British chess championship, which starts in Sheffield on Monday, is the strongest in the chess event's 107-year history, with almost all of England's top grandmasters taking part. There will also probably be a rare head-to-head between the former world finalists Michael Adams and Nigel Short, who are both in good form. Adams tied first at the World Open in Philadelphia, Short at the Commonwealth Open in South Africa. The other interesting prospect is a clash of generations as the long supremacy of Adams, 39, and Short, 46, is challenged by the ambitious and fast-rising David Howell, 20, and Gawain Jones, 23, who aim to take over the top boards in the national team. It is hard to see beyond ... Posted by ionadowman | chesspeak.com 11/22/2008 23:30:50 Play online chess Some players prefer to specialize... Message: On the world stage, I recall a couple of years back discussing Paul Keres's early correspondence games. It seems he used them to train up his imagination. In around 1960 Keres played a pair of CC games with New Zealand's then top player Ortvin Sarapu (himself an Estonian by birth). Both were hard-fought games. The only correspondence game I've heard of Mikhail Tal playing was one between himself and the readers of a Soviet schoolboy paper "Pionerskaya Pravda". The thing ended in a draw, but I've sometimes wondered if maybe Tal was being generous to the readers... Cheers, Ion ——— Chess on the China road — Greetings from China! I am writing this column from my hotel room in Ningbo as I attend the 2011 World Team Chess Championship, which runs from July 16 to 26. Although I lived in Europe for four years (1988-92), this is my first trip to Asia. I feel privileged to witness the U.S. team as it battles hard against a tough field in an attempt to earn a medal and represent our nation on the world chess stage. I was invited to be a coach for the U.S. team, which is made up of three-time and reigning U.S. Chess Champion Gata Kamsky, 2006 U.S. Chess Champion Alex Onischuk, 2008 U.S. Chess Champion Yury Shulman, four-time U.S. Chess Champion Yasser Seirawan and 19-year-old chess phenom Grandmaster Robert Hess. A formidable ... Posted by ccmcacollister | chesspeak.com 11/27/2008 18:02:19 Play online chess Specializing ... Message: although I played OTB tournaments for much longer than Postal, I found the latter was just more more congruent with my talents for research & new ideas. *** Corr. permitted much better analysis due to both time factor difference & simply being able to shuffle pieces. Thus my corr Class or Title was at least a level above my otb play. "A"/Expert, then Expert/Master. And tho always a goal to play creatively in both modes, Hopefully artistically, I realized corr Chess was my own best chance to ever try emulating the level of an OTB GM ...perhaps play some publishable games. Certainly better for seeking perfection, illusive (aka Impossible :) as it is. Those can be real attractions for many, I suspect. *** I'm not the only one to find themself better at corr. I recall an OTB "A" being Master in Postal [ back in "Computers-are-duffers days too.] named Kingston Taylor or Taylor Kingston. (Why can I never remember that? Perhaps the same reason I tend to forget move 32, or was it 33?, in my OTB Ruy !?...) He wrote for ICCF newsletter for a time in the past. Conversely, some who ARE OTB Masters can find it unachievable in corr. play. I have seen many give up corr due to incompatible temperment; calling it "too slow". Or a lack of patience. Or just inability or unwillingness to adapt their play to requirements of good corr play. A bit different in nature for many. EG., I had to remove much trappiness from my own game, unless the line was sound enough to keep some 'plus' even if played against well; to start seeking The Best move I could find, to do well in Postal. {Tho Fischer said of OTB that it is necessary to find a GOOD MOVE each turn; implying that it is insufficient mixing BEST or even BRILLIANT moves with BAD ones. Surely we all find, ONE BAD MOVE can spoil a game...even tho it often takes 2 or 3 to lose; other than critically sharp positions or diminished endgames.} Had to sharpen my openings for corr to the max, so to allow opponents maximum opportunity to err, which could also exceed my own ability to analyze in an OTB mode. [...mainly in terms of Breadth, rather than Length of analysis. That was okay for the most part. There is seldom a need to analyze a forcing line in otb longer than about 8 full-moves. Or even more than 4, for most of a game. ] *** I read a past article this week on the ICCF-USA site, that Dan Fleetwood of the USA made ICCF GM this summer~! And so, want to mention that and say "Congratulations~!!" to him. Dan, I don't know if you play any GK, but "Well Done!" in any case. And I don't know what his OTB strength is now, but not GM ...so another with their niche in corr. play. And he is also another who started corr & played quite strongly before computers were an influence. *** ——— Chess: Ulf Andersson, positional master — Andersson rarely makes a direct attack: he wins by subtle improvements in position. DK: I've been wanting to tackle positional play in this column for some time, but couldn't think of a good way into a topic that is just too vast – until inspiration came with the arrival of Grandmaster Chess Strategy, by Jurgen Kaufeld and Guido Kern (New In Chess, £19.95). The title is bland, but the strapline reveals the content: "What amateurs can learn from Ulf Andersson's positional masterpieces". Andersson is, for me, an enigmatic chess player: he rarely makes a direct attack on his opponent's king, preferring to exchange pieces and gently improve his position – and against strong chess players this frequently leads to ... Posted by ionadowman | chesspeak.com 11/27/2008 23:13:51 Play online chess My reason for quitting CC Chess...Message: I do sometimes wonder what sort of player I might have become were it not for that loss of interest that led to my playing a game or two a week for 4 months in a year, and then stopping. And what caused that "don't want to know" feeling anyway? Posted by bhidragon | chesspeak.com 11/28/2008 04:24:48 Play online chess Agree with CraigMessage: I also play on ICCF through the USCF. You would think that with a "10 moves in 50 days" time limit one would be able to reach a "near perfection" understanding of a particular position ... of course that doesn't happen due to a multitude of reasons. The point is this: CC gives you the opportunity for seriously deep analysis that borders on some sort of zen concentration exercise. That we don't take advantage of that opportunity is simply another human failing. |