Some of you may ask why I think Tal is superior to Fischer (who was an America after all and apparently higher rated) The answer is simple, Tal had longstanding health problems and never fully came into his own as a grandmaster. Fischer did. Tal has the longest and second longest winning streaks. Oh by the way, when Tal faced Fischer he beat him four times in a row. In chess you never win forever, even the chess godfather himself Garry Kasparov has finally lost his title, probably for the final time.

What makes Tal unique is the fact that he one Chess games where mathematically he should have lost. Chess is in a lot of ways a science, picture the biggest tic-tac-toe game ever. The only way to really win tic-tac-toe is for one player to make a mistake. For most people, they make so many mistakes when they play chess that it all seems to run together. Tal had a way of playing lines that should have lost mathematically, but would end in victory because of the psychological effects on his opponents. This makes him much more artful than someone like Paul Morphy who played perfect chess rather boringly (although Morphy is an excellent study in his own right). Tal would make sacrifices and seek to gain the advantage and positional leads and consequently create so many problems on the board for his opponent that finding the perfect line was like finding a needle in a stack of needles.

Playing Chess on a computer is more science, playing chess against people is an art and Tal believed this deeply. I’m starting here because I want to describe some context for why Tal is so impressive in my opinion. Oh and here’s a picture of the man himself.

That’s Tal when he’s pretty young. Since I’ve given you some tips on the man himself I can now turn to the basics of chess mastery. Hopefully I’ll create some new fans in the process.

The biggest complaint I hear about Chess is the whining “I can’t think enough moves ahead.” This basically means that people think they are unable to learn to play chess. For some reason people seem to think that you need to see fifty moves ahead in order to master chess. Do you know how far ahead Garry Kasparov (greatest chess player of all time) said he would look in the middlegame? Three to Five moves. Even this he confessed was not exact because of the problem brought up by so many people who hate chess, there’s no way to do it exactly.

I attribute the problem in this chessic perception to Bobby Fischer who said before the game he would figure out exactly how he was going to beat his opponent. This is impossible, even for a chess master like Fischer. He had overarching strategies but the exact lines can never be exactly calculated and counted on. What makes the difference is adaptation, something Tal and Fischer excelled at. So don’t worry if you can’t see moves ahead, most computation comes from playing lots of chess and then finding yourself in familiar lines (serieses of moves).

Basic Chess study starts with beginnings. Here the key differene is whether or not you play white or black. Technically, with perfect play white should always win because they have the first move advantage, but obviously there are a lot of times when black wins. I’m going to give you a few basic openings. When you play chess, give these a try and experiment a little bit. LIke I said about learning any art, you need to practice basic skills before you can really create something. Think of this as drawing hands for practice. The two openings for white I’m going to show you are the most common openings. They are: the king’s pawn opening and the queen’s pawn opening.

The king’s pawn opening is the most popular. It allows the bishop and queen to gain free reign of the board. The queen’s pawn opening is also popular because it releases the bishop, puts a piece in the center, and is slightly more defensive. The queen’s pawn opening is commonly transposed into what is called a queen’s gambit by advancing the c pawn two squares once black moves.

Two common responses for the king’s pawn opening are the italian game and the sicilian defense as seen below.

Note the differences between the two potentially (despite the number of pieces moved). The Sicilian defense strikes at what white hopes to gain (control of the center) without risking any of black’s central pawns. It allows Black an equal share of the fight even though he initially starts behind by one move (a consequence of moving second). The sicilian defense is also noted for it’s usual tendency to lead into sharp bloodbaths in the center. This opening has books upon books written about it’s main lines and like many chess players I consider it my favorite response because it places black right in the middle of the fight.

The second is the Italian game, which is my favorite line when I play white. Note the difference in that there are doubled pawns on the king’s file. Here black has opted for mirror image play. White counters this by using a knight to threaten black’s pawn. When black chooses to defend the pawn white then develops a bishop (my favorite piece) to threaten the key central squares for black’s development. The Italian game is one of the oldest recorded openings and is a respectable and trustworthy response. Some people ask what happens when Black develops his queen pawn, threatening the bishop. Then you advance the bishop to B5, pinning the knight to the king. Black most likely loses his knight in the exchange and that opens lines for the queen to advance. The variations can go just about anywhere, but once again you’re in the thick of things.

The queen’s gambit (which follow’s the queen’s pawn has a few interesting variations as well. The first is the slav defense. As seen below.

Here black refuses the gambit  by defending his position. This leads to a rather plodding along slow defensive position (I usually play this because I have a pocket fascination with Russian play, but this opening bores me and I usually lose playing it because of boredom and subsequent recklessness). However, the slav is a respectable defense albeit conservative. Finally there’s the defense that Kasparov made famous the Gruenfeld defense. The line is seen as follows.

Here black gives up control of the center (you usually want the center so you can develop your pieces effectively) in order to undermine white’s control of it. As you can see the pawn is developed to the center and then the knight is deployed threatening squares and the bishop will line up behind it to support the advance of the knight. The idea is to put so much pressure on the center that it collapses.

Try these lines in your own play and experiment a little bit. The other week I played my cousin and found myself in familiar lines in the Sicilian Defense and proceeded to win. This was the first time I can really remember playing through something I new a lot about and playing confidently because of it.

Above all don’t get discouraged if you can’t see moves ahead. Try to look one move ahead first and see what your opponent’s probably responses are. Once you can do that (it might take a little practice), then you can start deciding your next move and computing the possibilities of that with a long term strategy. Not all chess players are like me and able to do calculus in their head (at least I could when I took it in high school) but they play much stronger games than I do because they have practiced calculating chess moves. It’s a skill like anything else and some people will be more talented than you, but keep at it and soon chess will become a lot more fun.

No latte art this week. Unfortunately I had a long run of foam art that looked like objectionable body parts when I was trying to make rossettes. Now i’m using foam to craft chess pieces, so I’ll update this post in a couple days with those pictures, I have a bishop and a pawn created so far.

Till next time!

The clock continues and as you can see from the pictures below we’re in the penultimate part of this time-consuming trip through the creation of cardboard clocks. First, we placed the face on the clock. Then ran together the gears allowing for some photography that looks like the first trailer for “watchmen.” The idea is that the weights turn the gears and the pendulum slows them down so it can only move a click at a time. (See Below)

Sorry if you haven’t been building the clock all along those photos are probably meaningless. But suffice it to say the whole thing is one big attempt of weight vs. lever. Then you add in some friction as you can see the gears ouside the clock and you have something that is geared perfectly on a 60:1 ratio. (Because in an hour is 60 minutes duh). Now for part four what you have to look forward to is more sanding and lacquering followed by my realization that I need to find 2.5 pound weights that don’t cost 40$ for my clock to work. Oh…for you photography nuts, I turned down the exposure to make the cardboard look more menacing. Feast your eyes.

Of course the espresso nuts out htere want to see exactly what kind of foam art I’ve been up to lately. You’ll all be pleased to hear that my foam art has improved greatly. Just look at these beauties.

Feast your eyes…while it may look to the untutored layman that I have just made a blob or better yet a Rorschach test, it just means you don’t know your science. The one on the left is carefully crafted to resemble a fraudulent embryo sketch by Ernest Haeckel. Haeckel, a scientific fraud who manufactured images as evidence of evolution, has been discredited but he still provides inspiration for my latte art.

The other one quite obviously is an angel folding one of its wings…ok if you bought that then I’m getting better at my own brand of fraudulent claims, but the resemblance is uncanny isn’t it? Well that about wraps it up for today, but wait! It is now time to for previews.

Coming Soon to a Blog Near You:

• The clock gets finished. Perhaps some more foam art that looks like freaks of Nature.
• I’ve always wanted…to play chess like Mikhail Tal: If you don’t know who Tal is, he’s a Latvian Chess grandmaster who’s considered the best attacking grandmaster of all time. (No Latvia is not just a psuedo-slavic country in a Louis Sachar book where Madame Zeroni lives. I thought that too until I looked it up).
• Russell’s interpretation of your baby names.
• And…the beginning of the fun game of why I am healthy (Taught through the innovative game…Pick Russ’s Shopping Cart).

There are many things that people go through life wishing they could do (dance like Michael Jackson, paint like Titian, run parkour like that guy in James Bond, play chess like Mikhail Tal etc.) but most people either don’t have the drive to do what is necessary to get there or they don’t know how.

There is a general assumption in the world that we are gifted to do certain things while others we might as well not even try. Under this illusion people have put their dreams on hold until they just fill their life with regret. I believe that anything is possible to learn through hard work, perseverance, and because I’m a Christian I attribute all end success (and middle success and success in general) to the blessing of God. However, if you’re not a Christian don’t worry non-Christians do amazing things all the time so clearly if I’m right and God grants success than he doesn’t do it along religious lines .

The first thing about teaching yourself anything is that you need to be patient and develop necessary skills before you do anything big. I asked my sister how she learned to draw so well and she told me that she had spent hours drawing hands or eyes. When you endeavour to learn something you must start with the basics. Learn the openings in chess before you mimic a style, learn the motions and basic movements for crossfit and parkour before you actually try leaping to buildings.  Most people end up quitting at this stage, because they want the end result of what they’re learning immediately. So don’t be afraid to spend months or even years learning the basics or fundamental skills. Learn to love practice, you’ll be doing a lot of it unless you don’t want anything.

Next, don’t be afraid to learn by reading or watching videos. Everyone learn differently and at almost all phases of a new project someone knows how to do something better. Look online for resources or use my two favorite places of learning: the oracle (wikipedia), and the library. The important thing is to make sure you’re learning somehow.

Finally, a note on talent. Everyone has different gifts and it is possible that there are people a lot more talented than you are in your new project. Ask them for help, they are one of the best ways of learning. Whatever you do, don’t let their talent discourage you. When Bruce Pandolfini met Josh Waitzkin I’m sure Pandolfini could have trounced him at chess. So respect talent and be thankful you have it, but don’t get discouraged as you don’t.

I come from a long line of teachers and if you can teach other people you can teach yourself. As you read along with my adventures I’ll try to put down different teaching methods I use. That is one of my talents: I have a good head for creating systems of learning and I’ll be exercising that talent to the utmost in the coming months. So now, sit back enjoy the ride and let’s start doing some obscure crap.

For those of you who want to read anything about theology, that will be moving to a new site separate from this one. Also, since one thing I’ve always wanted to do is learn Russian, a new Russian site will be making an appearance and I’ll update all my english posts and transfer them into Russian in my free time. Stay tuned in coming weeks and enjoy the ride.