Belgium Toasts a Beer Knight

According to U.S. based National Public Radio, a.ka. 'NPR', the impact of the Knights [direct audio link to story] are now being felt worldwide:

World Belgium Toasts a Beer Knight

Weekend Edition Saturday, September 1, 2007 · Beer is among Belgium's top exports and a source of cultural pride. Belgians take the subject of suds seriously enough to bestow knighthood on those who are particularly knowledgeable about the nation's 700-plus beer varieties. American Bill Catron became Sir Bill this weekend at a ceremony in Brussels. He tells Scott Simon about the honor.















More soon, this corner, where I have already drafted most of two of these planned posts--one on 'real chess' (BDK meter=1.7), and one more 'idiosyncratic' (BDK meter 11.2).

[For those not already in the know, in our 'chess improvement' blogging circle, the term "Knight Errant" indicates a group of bloggers in chess, who seek to improve their chess, in using copious if not exhaustive repetition in subjecting their results to the scrutiny of fellow bloggers, for comparison or utility.]

warmly, dk

Seven Circuses

Life is filled with mysteries and charm

This morning starts my annual summer vacation, and, in so doing, will have time to write more. Kind readers, in staying posted, aught to see in the next 18 days--in no particular order below--the following posts by me:

My own version of the tags. Something I have been rummaging on in my brain in the last two months, and much preferred to the other version, with my own idiosyncratic answers to odd but colorful questions. ChessPawnography started something similar days ago, and this reminded me that the time was ripe to do this.












Priceless charm of youth and limitless possibility, how swiftly does it go but all the more dear...

Blunderprone: Essay Ten, or Kant Help It: Prolegomena to a Future Chess Improvement Blog

A Treatise on ratings, reproduced with permission of the author. A master explicates the significance of chess improvement from class B to master: Wildcard, Essay Eleven.

My plan: a clean account, no fuss, no muss, on the current state of my chess study, what I am doing, not doing, where I soar, and where I falter.

DK-on the Pacific Rim Subduction Zone: how close I live to the major fault line on a major break in the geotectonic plates, along the ring of fire, and what it says to chess.

Eighty Seven Percent at Chess Tactical Server

Burning Man, which starts tomorrow in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada...

Eighty-Seven Percent attained tonight. It has gotten to where these milestones at Chess Tactical Server, at the current 95 to 98% daily rate, are occuring so often that I sincerely am not even noticing them till after they happen, as distinct from before when I watched their emergence with 'baited breath'.












All I need do now is another 6,160 tries at 93.7662% to get to exactly a true 88.00% at 40,000. I have all this in a spreadsheet, recorded daily, as well as of course, with plans for 40,001 to 50,000 at 93.621% to attain 89.276% and 50,001 to 60,000 at 93.620% to attain a true 90.00% .

A rank there, of #112 among 2244 users, means that this is better than 95.009% of all active users. Only ten of the top 112 have ratings above mine, for 10,000 tries and up, that is to say, among regular users 87%, 1400+ elo AND more often than not, among those usually exceeding 20,000 or 30,000 tries. So few have done this.

Time for my nightly training run now... dk

PS: I've done my last 800 at 97.38% and right now, 94.00% feels like abysmal failure. Not kidding.

A Balanced Editorial Approach

Friends of the Knights, marching off to a Polgar brick session.

In regards to temposchluckers recent post, I simply cannot fall behind the picture race. As Doctor Strangelove says, (as Peter Sellers, with a German accent):





















"Vee Cannot Halv a Clownhole Gap!"

friends of Blue Devil Knight after a chess tactics session

warm regards, dk

PS: Viewing twenty five classic GM games for slow absorption in five days is too much, but I had 'fallen behind', and had to catch up, and fortunately many of them were miniatures, so I got off easy, excepting one big game between Alkehine vs. Reti that resulted in the rarest draw in the collection, with R & R vs. R & R, the classical music of chess if ever there were such a thing...

Running ALL The Horse, Literally!

Concurrant to my daily rounds of GM games (three per day, five per day on weekends is twenty-five per week),

daily I am working on my RHP game--the effort of MANY, MANY hours in depth--

and after an eight day break, started back at CTS tonight (only 2 problems wrong in the last 298 or so), and

effective tonight, like I say literally RUNNING all the horses, mustered myself to begin training in earnest for my annual mountaineering climb in September by going for a run just now (Afro-American woman first smiles, then with a beer can, waltzing down the street, disapprovingly... "Why are YOU running at two am?" Then continues some loud diatribe against me or some rant against somebody, as I run down 29th Avenue South...),





















and very lastly, upon the momentum of my daily Reinfeld (five per day, ten per day on weekends is forty-five per week), I will be

starting back on CT-Art a week from Thursday, when my vacation begins, upon the footsteps of Loomis galant effort, which inspires me further, but soon! Soon!

Like I said, running all the horses. All that is missing is: a few bullet games per day, and a bit of Fritz analysis upon my library of rapids played by me for quick analysis.





















I did meet the very, very enormously humaine George aka Blunderprone briefly Sunday, as he was here with his lovely wife, for their anniversary, and making preparations to take their daughter back east, from her internship at Microsoft to go back to MIT. She [could be my daughter, so there is no confusion :) ] was both beautiful and like the Mr. and Mrs. Blunderprone, obviously also very smart. More on this one latter! Blunderprone has shoulders two feet wide, and asked him, "did you used to lift weights... or were you a powerlifter?" This man is a bear!

Warmest, dk

PS no one is offended if I inform the kind reader, my roth IRA is up 53% or so for the last seven days or so? I sold the NASDAQ within minutes of the bottom, went long silver, then sold the latter near it's top, and now am short again, in the face of the credit crisis. You should read GM Seirawan's explications on this topic, that go on for pages, and pages, and pages, daily... often to Silman and copied to me, sometimes to me directly, and vica versa.

PSS Today I had IME ii: The first independent medical exam was last week, ortho, and neuro-psyche, making exams i. I saw the psychiatrist.















He was not exactly charming. Two hours. but by the end, he did manage to crack a slight smile--I did tell him a lot of my stuff from all angles, and if you all had a camera! The one things I did NOT tell him about was about you guys. Following my serial concussions then rib contusion last year, some symptoms continue, and my large corporate employer's insurer requires these evaluations. iii: neurologist Thursday and all day Saturday. I brought 1001 Sacrifices and Combinations with me, all it's pages falling out... like a rumptured structure of complex richness.

PSSS [sorry, no girls tonight, I'm under instruction from Blunderprone for this post]

Where Does Chess Lead, Where does it go?

Urges, at times sacred.

If you are not a professional chess player, where does it lead? Where does it all go?

I am burried in my RHP postal game, so this is a quiet time, but I am preparing a major post after recently finishing a major CTS unit and embarking on extensive analysis of quantities of GM games.

Stay tuned, soon! 'Work on chess' comes before 'writing about work on chess'.

Will I see Blunderpone in Seattle tomorrow? I doubt it, but might happen!

warmly, dk












One of my hikes with my oldest friend Tom with his very special girlfriend Evan

Duino Elegies, Rlike:

The First Elegy

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them suddenly pressed me against his heart, I would perish in the embrace of his stronger existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror which we are barely able to endure and are awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Each single angel is terrifying.
And so I force myself, swallow and hold back the surging call of my dark sobbing.
Oh, to whom can we turn for help?
Not angels, not humans;
and even the knowing animals are aware that we feel little secure and at home in our interpreted world.
There remains perhaps some tree on a hillside daily for us to see; yesterday's street remains for us stayed, moved in with us and showed no signs of leaving.
Oh, and the night, the night, when the wind full of cosmic space invades our frightened faces.
















Seriousness of the situation

Whom would it not remain for -that longed-after, gently disenchanting night, painfully there for the solitary heart to achieve? Is it easier for lovers?
Don't you know yet ? Fling out of your arms the emptiness into the spaces we breath -perhaps the birds will feel the expanded air in their more ferven flight.
Yes, the springtime were in need of you. Often a star waited for you to espy it and sense its light.
A wave rolled toward you out of the distant past, or as you walked below an open window, a violin gave itself to your hearing.
All this was trust. But could you manage it?
Were you not always distraught by expectation, as if all this were announcing the arrival of a beloved? (Where would you find a place to hide her, with all your great strange thoughts coming and going and often staying for the night.) When longing overcomes you, sing of women in love; for their famous passion is far from immortal enough.
Those whom you almost envy, the abandoned and desolate ones, whom you found so much more loving than those gratified. Begin ever new again the praise you cannot attain; remember:
the hero lives on and survives; even his downfall was for him only a pretext for achieving his final birth. But nature, exhausted, takes lovers back into itself, as if such creative forces could never be achieved a second time.















Seeded by gods from overhead from we know not where?

Have you thought of Gaspara Stama sufficiently:

that any girl abandoned by her lover may feel from that far intenser example
of loving:
"Ah, might I become like her!" Should not their oldest sufferings finally become more fruitful for us?
Is it not time that lovingly we freed ourselves from the beloved and, quivering, endured:
as the arrow endures the bow-string's tension, and in this tense release becomes more than itself.
For staying is nowhere.
Voices, voices. Listen my heart, as only saints have listened: until the gigantic call lifted them clear off the ground. Yet they went on, impossibly, kneeling, completely unawares: so intense was their listening. Not that you could endure the voice of God -far from it! But listen to the voice of the wind and the ceaseless message that forms itself out of silence. They sweep toward you now from those who died young.
Whenever they entered a church in Rome or Naples, did not their fate quietly speak to you as recently as the tablet did in Santa Maria Formosa?
What do they want of me? to quietly remove the appearance of suffered injustice that, at times, hinders a little their spirits from freely proceeding onward.















"You dont think that I make a total effort, each and every time??"

as mighty chess great, Garry Kasparov, embodies masculine ferocity both inside and outside chess (married three times; can you imagine the situation of being on the rocks with him, then trying to discuss your feelings?)

Of course, it is strange to inhabit the earth no longer, to no longer use skills on had barely time to acquire; not to observe roses and other things that promised so much in terms of a human future, no longer
to be what one was in infinitely anxious hands; to even discard one's own name as easily as a child abandons a broken toy.
Strange, not to desire to continue wishing one's wishes.
Strange to notice all that was related, fluttering so loosely in space. And being dead is hard work and full of retrieving before one can gradually feel a trace of eternity. -Yes, but the liviing make the mistake of drawing too sharp a distinction.
Angels (they say) are often unable to distinguish between moving among the living or the dead.
The eternal torrent whirls all ages along with it, through both realms forever, and their voices are lost in its thunderous roar.
In the end the early departed have no longer need of us. One is gently weaned from things of this world as a child outgrows the need of its mother's breast. But we who have need of those great mysteries, we for whom grief is so often the source of spiritual growth, could we exist without them?
Is the legend vain that tells of music's beginning in the midst of the mourning for Linos?
the daring first sounds of song piercing the barren numbness, and how in that stunned space an almost godlike youth suddenly left forever, and the emptiness felt for the first time those harmonious vibrations which now enrapture and comfort and help us.

Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

One of the great sensative souls in the early Twentieth Century... as our era of modernization was taking form... at which time, not all persons had been cast to sleep by the false comforts and false promises of industrialization... and expressed from this dislocation.

Somalia and Temposchlucker, or The Way of War

Another note on Temposchlucker. And, as usual, a bit of prefatory chat and sideways exegesis along the way...

First I need to start with Somalia to make a word about Temposchlucker!

I work with and also serve people from literally all over the world. At my gigantic, intercity store, our customers include a large Asian population, a large Eastern European Population, and in fact a substantial population from north Africa, in particular Somalia, Eritrea, and Ethiopia, but mainly the prior. To those who don' already know it, Africa has huge diversity.














Of course, at the same time we also have our fair share in contrast with demographics from the Microsoft, Starbucks, Amazon, and Boeing Crowd, and this mix between the hard working poor, not so hard working poor, hard working well healed superrich (read stock options grants exercised then diversified into cash), and not so hard working leisure class makes life never dull at my store. Michael Kingsley, founder of Slate Magazine and previous terror of the world across from arch conservative Pat Buchanan, came in one day to flooring, and weeks ago, a towering and sveltely fit Shawn Kemp (he was on World Dream Team 2, in Toronto, then faced Michale Jordan in Seattle's first trip to the NBA finals since 1979) came into tools, and we chatted. I gave him titanium snips to try. Then we of course also have the homeless drug addicts who always come in late, all cracked out, for tubing. You can spot them from 100' away, and not such by dress as a vibe or aura.

Many Somalis come would come into flooring, as they love carpet runners, as this is part of their idea of high civilization. They come in, literally screaming at each other, and I learned in time to cringe from head to toe when I would see them coming, and after 40 minutes of arguing with each other, MIGHT ask you to cut 40' of 26" hallway carpet runner, or just leave after long and protracted screaming in Somali. Sorry, but true.














I also learned that there were other Somalis who were educated, hard working, and who did not yell. I learned that from only 90 miles away, similarly the Eritreans might as well have been from another planet, in embodying civil conduct and discourse, and like them very much, and of course the same can be said of the Ethiopians. For similarly with Iran and Iraq, how can you grow or evolve a civilization for 2 or 3,000 years and not learn some really deep things.

I work with a man from Somalia named Mohamed-Ali, and he is the hardest working, most moral man, with such a beautiful spirit. He never cuts corners, always does the right thing, and even while managing to stop to pray dutifully several times a day, like me, never seems to miss the appropriate recognition of the female being.



















Desperate Housewife Actress Nicollette Sheridan before the big wedding

These educated, civilized Somalis are absolutely incredible people, and I have known several. They speak English and Swahili alike, oftentimes, and sometimes Arabic, of course, if not Italian. They are tough people, too.














At work, I have learned that there are MEN that, no matter what their size or brain, they have a certain something, and it is most rare, but I always feel, that if I ever had to go to war and fight for my life, that I would wish to stake my life with them at my side, knowing day after day what they can do, what they stand for, and their indomitable will to win or do a task--quick, correct, and zealously. And this man is such a one, that I would fight next to a gigantic battle. I have known two or three men like this in five years there.

Now Temposchlucker. He is such a man. If I had to fight a battle, he is such a one that I would stand next to. The other day, I needed five games missing from the VERY shoddy chessGames.com database, both incomplete and inaccurate in many instances both by their data, and the assessments of it's users, and was in the process in DK crazed way,

or what he calls (I asked him what nick name he had for me, in a private conversation about a phantom of a blogger's nickname):

"The Mad Napper" comes close, however it original was "The big napper", but that
doesn't rhyme. :)

was in the process of such a big download, and just HAD to have those games, wrote tempo, and also wrote GM Seirawan, who very promptly wrote IM John Donaldson, on my behalf, saying that "John was the database guy" (cf his much comprehensive and acclaimed comprehensive book on Rubinstein written with Yasser's friend Minev), with its seemed, two sets of emails crisscrossing the Atlantic Ocean at once, all emanating from the very smart back waters of Amsterdam, and, you know what?:















chatting with aids to cognition (NOT Joel Benjamin in background!) with David Navara at Bessel Kok's wedding in Prague.

tempo had the answers in minutes. The final part, I had stopped in waiting on, at Soltis Greatest Chess Games of the 20th Century, game 14, and elected to go grocery shopping, leaving my chessbase9 running, thinking: "you know what, I will stop here, I bet when I get back, game 15 will be waiting for me". And, upon my return, there it was. From temposchlucker.

There was an email back from Yasser, but it was a forward of his reply to Donaldson of his forward to Silman and Yasser of the video of the ten year old lion and his pride taking down a buffalo, when the latter's family comes spectacularly comes romping in. War indeed.

He dug his heals down and found the three games I couldn’t find, and had the first two as I found them in ChessBase. This man truly loves chess. He has huge inner resources. I hope that you all listen to him, not that he needs me to promote him, or needs more readers (he doesn't), but this man loves chess as fish loves water, and I value him greatly.

I have more, but this will do for today.

I am forging ahead in chess study gallantly, and what was my 941 game database now has added the GM-Ram games, and the Soltis games, and not omitting duplicates, it is now 1,663 games. I will be at the end of them, first pass, by 21 February, in time for Seattle spring.

Agenda:

25 GM games per week: is 3 per day most days and 5 per day on weekend days off from work, including tagging game features by category * in a big xls spreadsheet; 4o CTS per day, miminum; 5 Reinfeld per day most days and ten per day on weekends; RHP: analysis of variations on my single correspondence game. Bullet, as time, but more notably energy, allows thereafter. Blogger as I can.

There are two main bloggers who inexplicably refuse to let me have their personal emails, and all I can say, is that they are missing out, and everybody in my circle now has a fresh copy of this database, but how can I send it to you if you don’t trust me enough to let me talk to you offline, but trust me enough to read my stuff on a regular basis?? You reap what you sow.

Let there be rest now.

Thank you to the mighty temposchlucker.

*includes ply, name, result, center, sacrifice, endgame type, promotion, piece play, pawn structure, ECO, opening name, identifying first moves, middlegame character, castles, strategy, etc.

New Way

I am shifting into a new way. After truly huge amounts of time and energy at CTS, I cut way back, only to return to enormous amounts of effort at CTS again, then cut way back again, in view of 960 games of bullet and a few blitz in 36 of the last 40 days.

Daily I am studying--more like quickly viewing--tons of GM games, from the next study unit, that is to say games 942 to 1504 after brushing up my GM game database. I tagged the duplicates, but instead of removing them via the tool 'compact database' (in chessBase 9), for now am electing to leave it as is, since even games tagged for deletion that ARE NOT deleted, indicates something. For example, some games in the database occur three times, in Stohl, or Burgess, or Nunn, or Chernev... Please don't forget, this is first and formost a database of GM games from books, so removing books confuses the ordination of the games, in signifying complete books such as Logical Chess Move By Move, My System or even deep classics such as The Art of Chess Analysis by Jan Timman or Stohl's Instructive Modern Chess Masterpieces.

In this next set, I am starting back with La Bourdines, Anderssen, and Bird, and all I can say is, is that those boys knew how to throw the sh_t.



















* * *
I tend to always blog from strength for myself (and this, in contrast to temposchlucker, blue devil, and wormwood all alike I cannot see as all good for me to do, in appreciation of there saluatary candor), and rarely write of my failings. This is probably because my life is filled with many mistakes between otherwise significant and wide ranging accomplishments, and coming from a family of origin of hypercritical bent, don't need to beat up on myself.

But I must say that this time around--hard as I have tried like the Dickens to get back to 1400 elo bullet, with a mostly private identity where I could throw the sh_t freely in private, got within two, then ten elo, and the more I played, the harder I fell like a stone. As GM Seirawan says (usually about financial bubbles, not chess): "groan".

* * *
The old diminishing returns. But this reNewed wild phase (hardly new, just refreshed excess!), gave me what I needed, which was to burnish this rust such as what would rub off from a medium coarseness brass wire wheel by Mipro (sorry, I work in tools now) ensuing from my protracted hiatus from live chess since the 1400 bullet at ICC in April.

So now, what have we?

In the course of viewing the GM games, I tried very, very hard NOT to do any CTS and found that it was very harmfull not to do it... So my ideal and now firmly established routine from before and in recent days reinstituted, is:

After waking, GM games over breakfast, then more when back home for lunchbreak
















{what is the value, in America, of being able to drive home for lunch, take a nap, check the financials (Asia, the Shanghai 'A', the Nikkei of Japan? Then CME or Chicago Merchantile Exchange Futures), read email, eat, and do chessBase, all in 66 minutes or less, not to mention brushing your teeth and, sorry for the squeemish, sitting at your own bathroom seat, not some weird public place of indeterminate hygene and unknown origins (read degraded public health fit for dogs), then brush your teeth, and of course read an email or two or three from GM Seirawan, some BCC copied to me sent to Silman?},

Then more GM games before bed. I started a spreadsheet, and am tagging each game (see link to BDK mega post directly below) by ply, pawn structure, date, mating attacks, endgames, middlegame pieceplay, key squares, etc, cum BDK and Tempo and Scurius, was it, or Takchess etc.

Then I do 40 CTS problems (remember, I am inches from 40,000 (dkTransform and dogWaste consolidated) to warm up,

Then I play one hour exactly (timed so as to be irRevocable) in bullet (or a few short games, say half an hour if I have studied a lot and no longer fresh).

Along with that, I am still plowing ahead with 1001 Sacrifices and Combinations. Once a month, I work first 10 of 11 days, then 14 of 16 (Home Despot and Joes Home are both humaitarian organizations, believe me), so after too damn much bullet, that suffered too, but I will be back to that.

What is missing, is I need to read with a board Seirawan's Winning Chess Endings, which will free me to finally start on Secrets of Pawn Endings by Mueller, and Endgame Strategy by Shereshevsky, as close to a chess orgasism as a man can have... or is it Lars Bo Hansen's "Secrets of chess endgame strategy", temposchlucker instead or in additions to?

Lastly, I was Fritzing my rapid or blitz games, and played TONS better when doing a lot of fritz and some bullet. Tons of bullet and no CTS or fritz is, as Zen Master Soen Sa Nim said: 'Number One Bad'.






















Bottom line: as much as I am (as it was said that Gurjieff protogen J.g. Bennett was always said to "be a man ALWAYS IN A HURRY") always in a hurry (it is my nature, quasi Hong Kongian or Shanghaian in that way as I am mixed in with a more than half dose of German, and some red bearded wild whisky Scott, my deliverance is in spreading my efforts around, a bit at a time, and my own 80/20 is to do lots of 20's right now, and avoid all big 80's, my normal tendancy to say the least.

* * *
Lasty, if anyone sees a comment by a 'transformation' (exact same name as me) without a photo, it is not me, and it would seem proximate to some funky situations, of phantom like characteristics. I would greatly appreciate it if anyone sees any more of these, to please notify me immediately, so that these can be further reported straight to Google, as I will not be fu_ked with by anyone or they will have hell to pay. To act in fraud as me and not be me, is unethical if not illegal. It is called impersonation.



















Instead of chessPawnography (another galantly candid chess blogger who inspires me greatly in those ways) only, maybe we can also have chessDionesiography?