Chess

[Michael Holmes]

I took Alex to a Chess tourney a few months ago. He did win a couple of games so I am hoping to get him more involved in Chess. I will start buying more books on Chess for him and get him a coach (as I do not have the same skill level in chess as I do in Checkers).

If anyone has any suggestions please feel free to let me know.

[George Hay]

Michael, I really like Fred Reinfeld as a chess author. I'm really glad he wrote a book on checkers, as chess and checkers go together like salt and pepper! First Book Of Chess (with I.A. Horowitz) was recently republished. It covers the endgame and middle game, and has a surprisingly good survey of openings! How To Be A Winner At Chess is probably his most read book. The book is easy and funny, yet covers the basics very well! Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess is also good, as it has many elementary exercises to develop basic chess skills.
--George Hay

[Danny_Alvarez]

At least Chess gets respect .... i got 3 mates who years and years ago got full scholarships (tuition + board) and some even got money thrown for living expenses

If memory serves me right they attended University of Texas, Texas A& M , and University of Maryland...
they made me tryout.... but i didn't make it to the last round of selection (my chess skills were not up to it)
I haven't seen them in years now, 2 of them stayed in the states living there permanently.

Chess could be mighty useful for a younging nowadays

[Patrick Parker]

huge chess problem book has something about polgar sisters on it

[Ingo_Zachos]

Sorry Michael that my reply is very late,

what you need for a beginner is books about tactics, tactics, tactics.
There are now hundreds of puzzle/problem books,
Those by John Nunn are always good, but all of them can not be dangerous, just try to solve the diagrams with a board first, and later without a board "from the sheet" In chess, visualization is as aimportant then in checkers, but it is more based on seeing more then seeing deeper.
To get a first glimpse of combinations in chess try to get Tarrasch`s "The Game of Chess", and work especially through the numerous examples of the combinative motifs.

What else?
At first an overview of openings will do in one volume, and you have to try a lot openings, to find out which you like best. Probabaly you find a book with an overview evben in public libraries, so dont pay too much for it.
Later when the player has found his pet openings, he should look for special books on that opening, but for the first years you dont really need them.

Next, endgame theory is boring, but it pays out.
My choice for a beginner would be one book with essential endgame positions like "Chess Endgame Training" by Bernd Rosen or "Chess Endings Made 'Simple" by Ian Snape.
Also "Tactical Chess Endings" by John Nunn is great, as it has a diffrent approach: it teaches different tactical motifs that are essential in all endgames, instead of teaching key positions.

For strategy there is still no better book then Aaron Nimzovitch`s "My System". There is no such book in checkers, and it is easily the best books ever written on any mind sport.

Also, it can be great to look at a book about the greatest palyer of all times.

Reuben Fine wrote "The World's Great Chess Games", which is great. See if you can get it anywhere. Also Irving Chernev wrote "The Most Instructive Games of Chess Ever Played" which is also great, as is "Mammoth Book of the World's Greatest Chess Games" by John Nunn.

Absolutely any book by John Nunn is good btw, but some are very special on opoenings or rook endings.


Greetinx from rainy old Europe,

Ingo Zachos

[MostFamousDane]

Sorry Michael that my reply is very late,

Those by John Nunn are always good, but all of them can not be dangerous, just try to solve the diagrams with a board first, and later without a board "from the sheet" In chess, visualization is as aimportant then in checkers, but it is more based on seeing more then seeing deeper.

Ingo Zachos

If he is supposed to start by understanding chess notation that takes care of the first couple of years of training, undestanding all the special cases and exceptions . Standard chess notation is completely absurd it is completely beyond me how it could become the standard. Wtf is wrong with the obvious notation of [From Square]-[To Square] (eg. a1-a2) like we have in draughts ??????

[Ingo_Zachos]

Sune,

in chess there is long notation like my pet move:

1.N g1-f3

meaning in move one (always use move numbers!) the knight (K= King, N = kNight) from square g1 moves to square f3 (without a capture, indicated by X or :, without a promotion indicated by (Q) or (B) or (R) after the square the piece ended up, and without a draw offer indicated by (=) in the end.

For instance

39. ... e2xf1(N)+ (=)

would translate:
at move 39 the black pawn from e2 took on f1 and was promoted to a kight (N), checking the white king (+).- This move was made with a draw offer (=).

But it is common to use short notation like:

1.N f3

indicating that aknight rended up at f3, which can only be the one from g1.
In case it is not clear which piece ended up on the square, you have to indicate the line or rank from which it came. like

12.Rab1 meaning the rook from a1 moves to b1, not the other one.

Chess notation is more difficult, as there are 6 different kinds of pieces on the board from the beginning, and it is possible to promote to four different kinds of pieces.
Furthermore, the rules actually also require to indicate a draw offer ("=") , a check ("+") or a mnate ("#")

BTW:
There are different kind of chess notations, and when I was young I had to use the ICCF code, which indeed uses numbers only.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICCF_numeric_notation

Legend has it, that some correspondence chess players were arrested by intelligence services in different wars, as they could not decipher the numbers, and thought it was a secret spy code

The moves I sent to Romania were stamped by a special department of the Securitate, as I was shown by my opponent from these times after the east block had collapsed...

BTW II: Chess notation was invited around the same time as checkers notation (ca. 1750)
BTW IV: In Brazilian Checkers, Czech Checkers and Shashki they use the algebraic ("chess") notation as the standard notation.

But it is just a convention in any case, and several other notations are possible, in chess and in checkers/draughts


Greetinx from a German lunch break,

Ingo

[MostFamousDane]

Hi Ingo

I realize that since the game rules of chess are a bit more complicated than checkers then the move notation will have to be a bit more complicated. What I don't like about the notation is that they leave out the square being moved from and that is just inferred like if the move is Ne3 then you have to start looking at the board to see where the knight came from and then sometimes several knights can move to the same square so you need special notation to break the ambiguity.

In draughts from and to square is not enough so sometimes you need to print intermediate squares to differentiate the moves, in chess it seems like from and to square would cover all of the disambiguation rules for regular moves and remove the need for special notation for en passant, castling, captures etc. You would still need special notation for promotions but overall it would be MUCH simpler.

[Ingo_Zachos]

I am sorry Sune,

but you are completely wrong,

In correct notation both the squares the piece came from and the square it moved to is recorded, just like in checkers/draughts.

However, just like some in checkers only give "X" (without square numbers) to indicate that the compulsary capture was made (big sigh, as some use it even if there are choices how to take!!), some use a "short" notation, and leave the square they came from out, but that is not the correct, long, way of recording the move.

In books and magazines, for space purpose, short notation, is extensively used, but that does not mean that correct ("long") notation does not include both squares.

Just like in most checker books, the pieces are wrongly placed on the white squres, this is a trick, but it would be correct to use long notation or to print the pieces on white squres.

You just made a logical mistake to assume that the books are "always" right
Sometimes they almost all make it wrong...

And with a bit of practise, you somehow "see" from which square the piece came from on your own, just as you were playing "blind", which is in fact only the extention of visualisation like to calculate a given line over a whole game.

Greetinx from cloudy, but dry Dortmund,

Ingo

[MostFamousDane]

I am sorry Sune,

but you are completely wrong,

In correct notation both the squares the piece came from and the square it moved to is recorded, just like in checkers/draughts.

However, just like some in checkers only give "X" (without square numbers) to indicate that the compulsary capture was made (big sigh, as some use it even if there are choices how to take!!), some use a "short" notation, and leave the square they came from out, but that is not the correct, long, way of recording the move.

In books and magazines, for space purpose, short notation, is extensively used, but that does not mean that correct ("long") notation does not include both squares.

Ingo

I agree that long form is correct but I think you and me are the only ones .

PGN is the standard in chess and it uses short form http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Game_Notation.

[Ingo_Zachos]

Sune,

pgn is much like pdn, a (common) standard for chess playing or database programs for information interchange from different platforms.
Note that ChessBase and ChessAssistant both use a different standard for their programs, though they read and write pgn.

And that in checkers/draughts both Aurora Borealis and Turbo Dambase dont use pdn as standard, though they both read and write pdn.

For correspondence chess, I already gave the ICCF standard above.

BTW:
there is no "standard" notation in checker literature as far as I can see. At the beginning many books even used 1 as the starting square for the white pieces, with a black man on 32. Most skip move numbers, some are arranged in colums, others in packages, some very chaotic. Some give "X" tom indicate a capture, some use ":" for a capture, some "-" for a capture, some no sign for a capture at all, and no-one gives any indication of a promotion, though this is a valubale infotrmation for any 40 move count
pdn is a standard for the net, but in books it would be very useful as well to have some standard.

Maybe we should start a discussion about a notation standard required in books and on score sheets for our game, what do you think?

Greetinx from Dortmund, home of the best German football club,

Ingo

[MostFamousDane]

Sune,

Maybe we should start a discussion about a notation standard required in books and on score sheets for our game, what do you think?

Well we have enough trouble with:

1. Convincing people that recording and publishing games has value.
2. Convincing people that it would be helpfull to increase the likelyhood of recording correct moves

As long as we have correct from and to squares I'm happy .

[liam stephens]

The old Chess notation was quite easy to follow:
like: P-QR4 Pawn to Queen's Rook 4
P-KR4 Pawn to Kings Rook 4
etc.,

(could it be a two move restriction in Chess )

[Ingo_Zachos]

The old Chess notation was quite easy to follow:
like: P-QR4 Pawn to Queen's Rook 4
P-KR4 Pawn to Kings Rook 4
etc.,

(could it be a two move restriction in Chess )

That is called descriptive notation. It was very common in the USA and the United Kingdom, but today algebraic notation combined with symbols for the pieces prevails in literature, mostly in short notation.

For recording games, long notation is recommended, but short notation is also used by those who are lazy.

There are also other notations like Code Uedemann or ICCF notation, that could also theoretically applied to Checkers/Draughts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_notation

In Checkers we use numerical notation, but in Shashki and Czech Checkers they use algebraic notation.
Oldbury used diagonal notation, and others are also possible.

I would say numerical notation is a standard, but move numbers and promotions and captures must be indicated in order to make a 40 move count possible.


Greetinx from a sunday,

Ingo Zachos

[George Hay]

Checkmate! by Gary Kasparov is a fine beginners' book. It is published by Everyman Chess, the publisher of Richard Pask's Starting Out In Checkers. Checkmate! covers opening basics and endgame basics, including King and pawn vs King. There are plenty of middle game problems from actual games....During "lockdown" I finally got to watch Game Over on Netflix. It was painful to watch World Chess Champion Kasparov defeat himself with his own emotions against Deep Blue! Yet, Gary's "perpetual check" blunder, by resigning a game too soon, alleged in the movie depended on Deep Blue making a mistake of its own. Years later Gary Kasparov did a TED Talk about the match and was able to joke about it!

--George Hay