Running ALL The Horses, Literally!

Far be it for me to say I have not been blogging due to any lack of interest, quite the contrary, I have actually NOT been blogging due to intensely ardous work on chess daily and for hours and hours for many weeks now.

I did finish compiling the big, or what I now like to call the gigantic database, comprised of about 3,000 classic GM games, or 3,274 games with necessary duplicates.

I did finish reading Euwe-Kramer's Middlegame in Chess volume II, topped 88.0% at CTS, and even have been entering by hand the Informant endings selected in chessCafe, or The Pearl in Endings by Zdenko Krnic parts one and two, into cbv files, including all the annotations. This is not all of it. There is more.

I have resumed live internet play again, as distinct from study only, and have moved up from 0 4 lightning at FICS to 3 8 blitz there, not to mention analysing most of the game in Fritz 8 for variations. This is an interum step towards soon playing 2 12, but need a little rapid brush up first between this faster chess and somewhat slower time control (relative to my recent history, at least).





















Actress Lake Bell: perfect mouth, perfect eyes, perfect everything!

I watched all the start of the games at the Dutch classic Corus or Wijk aan Zee. Also, I have deeply organized or structured all my chessBase 9 files in the new year, classifying things according to games to add to my classic GM game database or what I call GM candidates 2008 (adding more to my Gigantic game file just makes things too unstable, so instead segregate new content, thus); I have a file below that, that I call interesting recent games that don't quite warrent classic, since so many great games exist which, if I made them all classics would greatly diminish the significance of the latter game file; and finally, I have a classic file for historic (not recent) games mentioned in chess journalism but somehow--in rare cases--not in my Big GM Game File already.

I also have an endgame file now, that for example the Pearl of Endings would go in, but any other endgames mentioned in the press are included. So that is four new files now.

And if this were not enough, I have been very, very carefully reading and implimenting the Mig article on GarryBase or on how to build a repertoire in chessBase, and further in the three related articles by Steve Lopez at chessBase.com, and finally the two fantastic articles by Grandpatzer regarding similar. Just try this, little alone comprehending it and what it all means and on how it all goes together! Not a simple, mindless matter, but this is clearly among my next steps in chess along with ending study.
















For Polly (Castling Queenside) et al. Old model from ten years ago, then improved version, with more design and expense! $$$.

Very, very lastly, I have resumed my work at Reinfeld's 1001 Sacrifices and Combinations, and am also reading Alekine's 107 Great Chess Battles 1935-1942 is, the title, in bed, jumping from diagram to diagram and reading his acerbic text. Alekhine is not what you exactly call a 'nice guy', believe you me!

On a personal note, work is very, very challenging now, what, with all the downsizing going on in the housing industry, and the precarious position of being a high performer at my big retailer but, at the same time, also being the highest paid person in the store who is not a manager, and more than many of the department managers, so they don't take much of an interest in any of my complaints of which there are many since I am neither a docile person nor quiet in the face of injustice, stupidity, and systemic or copious disregard for humanity. :). Honest.

GM Seirawan is comming back to Seattle in early spring, and promises to meet me again. Last years lunch with his wife while quiet pleasant had to be uncharacteristically rushed. What do I say? Do I not see the man or just take such a special opportunity as it comes? Of course, the latter very kindly was able to squeeze me in, treating me to a capacious lunch as part of a thank you for a valuable investment strategy which paid them handily--eaten at my favorite Korean monk friends Teriyaki resturant which is now sorrowfully closed.

















Epic heros Sir Edmond Hillary (right) and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa (left). Hillary is aptly remembered in Nepal for his kindness to the locals more than his record first summet of Mount Everest.

I turn fifty in October. I have been very, very, very, very sad. Where did it all go? My life???

I am on the short list for a Police Department 9-1-1 Dispatcher position in a large nearby city, and out of several hundred candidates, managed to be among the thirty or so who qualified for the first round. Nevertheless, the requirements and steps are daunting, but reassure mysef--with unabashed candor--that I am one of the best persons that I have ever met on the phone...

...and rather like the idea of gettting paid with secure employment for tending inevitable progressive societal instability to come in the years ahead, what with global warming, certain flight of capital exiting the U.S. ensuing from Dollar disintermediation and stock market devolution if not collapse, fiscal and monetary crazed policies only posponing the day of reaconing, further purchases of U.S. assets by China, power interuptions, global disturbance, food shortages following distribution, transport, and delivery system problems, etc, etc, etc. And so on....

I do not wish for these tensions, but see them all coming--for sure--to our as yet unruffled shores amid vast worker workcamps in the guise of corporate participation, milking the poor and overworked so a few rich persons can ride in Hummers or get priviledged spa vacations and other luxurious perks of vast entitlement.

As Voltaire's Candid said: "Let us tend our gardens". Or, let us tend our chessBase as I would say.

Prelude to the Big One

Damn. It's done.

Twelve days is a long time NOT to blog when you are busy at chess every day--and busy, intensely busy on matters of real interest to fellow chess improvement bloggers... twelve, crazed, long days...

...come home from work at 10:30 pm, nap, or work on chessBase for an hour to unwind, barely taking a second to run to the bathroom or make tea, but literally jump on the computor and start grinding, grinding, pedaling as hard and as fast as one possibly can...



Sleep for 15, at most 30 minutes, wake up without an alarm, and work from 12:15 am or 12:45 am till the 'wee smalls' (English for very late hours) and grind till 4:30 am, or 4:15 am including CTS every single day, then watch Wijk aan Zee live at 4:30 am PST then go to bed at 5:30 or 5:45 am and get up at 11:45 or noon... then do it all over again.

What did I do? How to explain such a huge thing? I added fifteen hundred games to my 1,735 GM chess game database. Now it is 3,273 games [those intensely curious, before the next big post, can glance at the list of game sets here, with emphasis on the last 678 games]. Lots to say--more latter. This is my news. In ten or eleven days I did this, viewing many of them, at times entering them by hand one game at a time or correcting errors, comparing versions between books, chessBase, and chessGames.com--at times even adding exegesis in the form of notes if you follow...






















...the image of the crazed unshaved scientist with piles of paper pushed to the side, but intense laser focus on one single thing... latter. I have earned a rest.

Gigantic II

"All we need is the frame now!"

(see temposchlucker's absolutely wonderful read, 'No Frame, No Gain")

The last version of this,


was published here, with emphasis on classic games within books, as distinct from multiple seperate games.

HappyHippo's (a.k.a. Lousy@chess) recent comment enjoined me to present this in detail now, rather than at a future time. The sheet above is a compressed--partial view of that same sheet, but kind readers can go here instead for a full view, to see in easier detail how this is composed.

My original post on my classic game collection is here, under Contacting David for copies of 1,735 GM Classic Game Database, [Revision: Friday 11Jan2008: much more work completed, and now is a 2,762 game file] (also shown at top right here with links to my non-chess blogs, above my blogroll) but I have yet to write the definitive Classic GM Game post, as I already have dozens upon dozens of elaborated comments here and at your blogs explaining this, so not material to readers. Nevertheless, new readers come, hence my reaching to happyHippo as I do so here. Thank you.














'Polly, Ms. Polly...', Instalment Two [1]

[1] Despite frequen ovatures in public for hook ups with men, I regret to say that I am not available for 'this sort of thing' but do have several very dear Gay friends. But if you know of any thin, younger women, who want to meet a very neurotic, ultra inteligent, picky, eccentric bald man with glasses for procreation, and practice before hand, I am otherwise available. West Coast locations prefered, if not northwest. Women from Jalisco Mexico, Russia, Ukrane, Finland, the Netherlands, Hungary, Iceland, Costa Rica, Spain, Italy, or Iran or Iraq are nevertheless preapproved candidates.

Gigantic

Busy! In the New Year, I am continuing the work that I started after Christmas, processing enormous quantities of GM Classic games. This is in addition to the 3 games that I view every day, and of course 5 on a weekend or day off from work. Hundreds of games. Let me explain:

I decided to add in the games from 2002 to 2007 shown at Informant@chessCafe.com, adding those to already abundantly saved games from various high level chess stored in my chessbase in the last year to six months, then went back through Damsky's [1] lovely book 'Chess Briliancy' which selects many of the best games from the very first issues of Informants to as late as 1996...

You get the idea. It just goes on and on and on. But I don't just copy the games. Sometimes they are not in my megabase, and have to find them in chessGames.com, or on rare occcassion, even enter them by hand. Games don't just grow on trees...
















Polly, Ms. Polly...

Then discrepancies. Sometimes game collections add in a few moves or miss a move, and, of course, I check those. It is my nature to do so. My collections have good data. It is my badge of honor.

So why quit there? I am now going through and adding games voted on by 7 out of 10 Informant judges, or 30 out of 100 points and above. This, too, involves a lot of checking. I do so by going through the book by Informant: Chess Informant, 640 Golden Games (the ten best games from the first 64 issues, 1966 to 1995). I kiss this book. I treasure this book. I love this book. I worship this book. What, pray tell, of modern chess is not inside this book? [2]

Needless to say, I still do CTS (I am one day from 87.9% at 37,100 tries) and read Euwe-Kramer's Middlegame, Volume II, which is almost done. I now can go quite a ways in my head without a board, and the muscles get stronger....

First it was 941 games, then adding GM-Ram, Krabbe's Classic Games [3], Soltis Greatest Games, Reti Masters of the Chessboard, and that came to 1,735 games. I haven't missed much.
















Sweltering Seas of humans, sweltering seas of GM Classic Games....

But as such, what I add, falls clearly inbetween, and now I have 2,600 games, and after adding Fine's The World's Greatest Chess Games, Alekhine's 107 Great Chess Battles 1939-1945, Tartakowers lesser known 100 Master Games of Modern Chess [4], this aught to be 3,200 or so.

This is not just mere collecting. It goes in my brain. It seaps in. And, of course, I actaully look at them.

As I add them, I tile the 1,735 games adjacent to the next 865 games, so as I go deeper and deeper, I say to myself: "I don't need that one, that one, or that one. This one is new. Add that'. So each major new classic becomes harder and harder to find, and it aggregates to where each gap becomes all the more crystal clear. You have so many Spassky-Fischer, Tal-Botvinnik, Petrosian-Spassky, Karpov-Kasparov, Anand-Shirov, etc, that when you find a game you think is there but is not there, such as Spassky-Petrosian, or some Kasparov-Karpov game, that you have to blink to make sure! They all start to sound alike, and, as such, other persons who have compiled games missed games... if you follow. There are major games not widely discussed or published.

But by overlapping collection after collection and book after books, I have filled many holes in the ordinary view or erudition and what it is to know history in chess [5].

It becomes a matter of finding what is missing rather than adding what is missing; rather than find exception after exception of missing parts, the exceptions now are finding the exceptions!

On a personal front, I am meditating twice a day 'religously' now, and this is my new years commitment. Since I don't drink coffee or consume any alcohol, nor eat lactose or gluten, I am filling myself with good stuff. As this occurs, we become more senative but also less tolerant of crap in the emotional sphere or moral sphere or physicals sphere. I am also holding back on a very senative physical energy area, and saving that special energy too, and the meditation supports that, so that major shifts are happening. The top of my head is liable to burst instead of my... some other hydraulics. :) Wait till I come back to blitz 2/12! Unleash a torrent on some unsuspecting soul.

Love dk















A more balanced visual approach in 2008!

[1] This is the same author who wrote, Attack With Mikhail Tal.

[2] Attentive readers notice the review is for the soon to be reissued volume, but with 1,000 games. Not to be missed!

[3[ See Tim Krabbe's 'Chess Curiosities' or Open Chess Diary here. Anyone thereby bored needs to quit the game of chess!

[4] Of course, this follows his classic 500 Master Games, which is probably prefatory to any deep repatorte work, or antecident to system selection, in knowing the old traps, and seeing how we get to modern chess by negative inference.

[5] Seriously please: no one write me and say 'hey DK, do you have xyz book or game collection?' I have seen them all, and don' t need more data! Fair enough I hope to the kind reader.