Tucson is blisteringly hot, but over a hundred people are crammed into the outdoor yard of Club Congress downtown for “Through the Looking Glass,” a chess festival hosted by nine-queens. The “Chess Bitch” in question is Jennifer Shahade, author of the book (yes really) Chess Bitch. Jennifer is a two-time women’s American chess champion and current editor of Chess life, the official publication of the United States Chess Federation. What is she doing in Tucson?

Nine queens, an organization co-founded by Jennifer Shahade and Jean Morgan, is a nonprofit organization using chess for the empowerment of disadvantaged children. The festival in Tucson is an example of an event.

I tried my hand at ten minute blitz chess only to be trounced by my old archnemesis, a nine-year old named Max (who knocked me out of the last tournament), and get trounced again by an even younger boy named Luke.

Patzer: N. A weak chess player. Esp. A weak chess player with delusions of skill. Also see Russell Emmons.

After licking my wounds and snapping pictures of the festival I got a chance to meet Jennifer and ask her about her work. A versatile soul (with actual chess talent). Jennifer has a degree from New York University in comparative literature and now, after retiring from professional chess, lives in Brooklyn.

Now jumping into new horizons Jennifer can survey her work on nine queens which continues to develop a new generation of “chess queens.”

Today I’m going to take a look at one of the best chess players of all time (in my opinion or Po Moy Amu). Mikhail Tal is considered the greatest attacking grandmaster of all time. He had fiery red hair, a fiery red temper, and a brutally aggressive playing style. In addition he had a lifetime rating of 2705. For those of you who don’t know what that means Bobby Fischer had a peak rating of 2785.

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!

Sorry that it has taken me so long to finish this last post. The truth is, the clock has been done for about two weeks but hasn’t ticked once because I’m too stingy to pay money for weights to fill the pinecones. I’ll let you see the completed clock in a second, but first let’s go into how it works. The weights pull down on the gears and spin the crank. This crank can only turn so far before being blocked by another wheel known as the “escape wheel.” So there’s two competing forces and it keeps the clock from turning.

The escape wheel is designed to give way one notch each time the pendulum swings and, wouldn’t you know it, this is forced by the weights pulling down on the rope. The clock is geared on 60:1 with several options for how to adjust it if things don’t work. Still, the clock is on my wall and will make an imposing sight until I find either pennies or grit to fill both pinecones with. Actually the grit is easy to come by, I just don’t want it spilling out over my linoleum floors. Anyway here’s what the clock looks like now.

So that’s what I have hanging on my wall, pretty impressive eh? Still, there’s more to do. So I have a photography question for any gurus. I hate getting the glare on the clock as you can see here and in the next picture. But the comparison under my horible household lights is even worse. Is there a way I can get the fresh looking picture without getting glare off the surface of the clock? I’ll take any comments and post them under a new entry I’ve always wanted to…take pictures like my brother-in-law .

If you look at these the problem becomes clear as does my frustration. Anyway, the clock will run eventually and I’ll be posting a video of it ticking to prove that I can do this. I probably will be using grit to fill the two pinecones and post it in the finale I’ve always wanted…to know how a clock works pt. 5.

Now on to other matters. My work at espresso art continued and boy do we have some gems for you. It’s unfortunately true that most of my foam art comes out looking like nothingness and not hte Haeckel nothingness but genuine nothingness as seen below.

I’m sure if you look at these long enough you’ll find something they look like. This, unfortunately is what a majority of my foam art looks like. Still, all is not lost practice makes perfect (Or as Joe Watkins used to say, “practicing a mistake makes a perfect mistake”) take a look at these babies.

So here we have a dolphin (or prawn depending on how you look at it), an “L”, a candle, and a flame. If I diagnosed these correctly you should be able to tell which is which without any further help from me. Of course, I saved the best for last and these next two require some explanation. My brain works on a big connected web of concepts and ideas. So if you snag one you’ll get all the pop culture and trivia that might possibly be connected to it, often the results are useless. It’s like having your brain categorized into one big “westlaw” database (let the law students read and understand). So when I saw these two, I knew exactly where they came from.

The first is obviously a subjective attempt at school spirit as it looks like the famed “cougar swipe” of APU. Go cougars! At any rate this next one impressed me even more.

Here I have created a rendition of the head of Jazz Jackrabbit from the “Jazz Jackrabbit” line of arcade games. Uncanny resemblance, yes? In case any of you got nostalgic for old Jazz Jackrabbit after seeing this I have a link to download it here http://old-cans.com/en/jazz_jackrabbit/. This website is great and goes along with all the other old games that we missed and love. Sadly “Humans” is not on there…*sigh*. So until next time keep on espresso arting (NOT farting) and I’ll be back to finish the clock off. Or there may be a post about playing chess like Tal in the interim. I’ve been at the chess club two weeks and my record is currently 4:1. So thank God for victories. Until next time…

So I’m writing this post in Internet Explorer and cursing the fact that it doesn’t have Safari’s handy-dandy way of resizing all text boxes. Unfortunately, when I did switch to Safari it froze and crashed every chance it got. This has reinforced my already unshakable theory that Steve Jobbs’s master plan is to make us hate PCs by creating faulty software for them. Instead we should be hating Apple, but I digress.

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).

So the process of building the clock is continuing. Now that the outside frame is done the work has turned into the slow process of creating the gears and properly isntalling them. As you can see in the picture below:

Each of the guears has to be stacked and glued. Once they’re finished, if you want the clock to last awhile, the directions say to sand and lacquer the edges of the gears. In my case sanding, because I was trying to sand cardboard. only made everything worse so I may hold off on having a long lasting clock and just build the darn thing.

This is the main winder of the clock. You can’t see all the detail in this photo, but it consists of a ratcheting wheel that can only turn clockwise. The weights are attatched to hooks that pull the weight counterclockwise. The idea is you wind the clock by turning the smaller wheel to the right and when the weight pulls down on the strings it enages the main gear turning the wheel left. Cool stuff huh? As for the main body of the clock. The pendulum and main housing have been built, making the only project installation of the gears as seen below.

So as you can see the main pendulum is now finished. Of course, I haven’t just spent all my time doing this, the road to espresso fineness continues. Take a look at some of the espresso art below.

The images are arranged chronologically. I’ll probably youtube some espresso art videos this afternoon. When I do I’ll post the link so you can learn what I’m learning. In the meantime. Keep hopes up and enjoy your projects .

So I can still remember the first time I watched the movie “The Prestige” and how I was fascinated that Christian Bale had a secret code that could only be unlocked by a secret phrase. As it turns out making a cryptogram was easier than I thought. Committing it to memory is something I still have yet to master. I’m going to teach you the easiest of the complicated cryptograms (since you want it to be complicated enough that people won’t be able to break it). Using this you can take a keyword and make a cypher that will be pretty difficult to crack.

Most cyphers are substitution based, but these fall to codebreakers because the amount a letter is used can be a factor in what it is substituted for. This cypher goes a bit further and shifts the substitution alphabet every letter and repeats after every three or four switches. Here’s the trick, you pick a code phrase (we’ll use four letters for our practice code) and each letter you begin the substitution alphabet with a letter of the code phrase. For example the code phrase test would use something like this.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

and your substitution alphabet would look like this

T U V W X Y Z A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S

i’ll let you fill in the rest but your substitution alphabet for the next letter would begin with “E” and then “S” and so forth. Spaces are ignored for sake of simplicity. Also, instead of using the T substitution twice at the beginning and end, just use it once (as if the code phrase were TES). Try writing your own passages in code. Or try translating the phrase below.

BJ QHY LKEFLPSMIV MLAL CGN AENX XGG FYUA XAFI

Or for those of you who think you can crack my personal code. Try the three word phrase below.

MNN MAU LFGTEF

For those of you who think that this code isn’t secret enough you can always code a phrase and then run a completely new cypher with an entirely new code phrase. This will make the code almost unbreakable, but it takes a lot more time and is a lot more prone to mistake. So…to each his own, enjoy!

So we’re approaching the end of the first week and I’ve cracked open the clock model. Immediately I realized I’d gotten more than I’d bargained for. I spent time building models as I grew up, but I usually broke the darn things before I ever got anywhere. The curse of poor dexterity and no patience. For thos of you who haven’t seen anything like this before. What you’re looking at is a box filled with cardboard sheets that require precise handing to cut each out without breaking it. Of course if you botch one gear the whole thing doesn’t work.

This clock required me to remove each and every individual piece of cardboard and then assemble, sand, and lacquer each of the gears. Finally, you get to actually put the clock together.  By the end of the first day I had barely gotten through a third of detaching the pieces. Then, I had to use scraps of post-it to ensure that no pieces were lost.

This is about half the pieces and as you can see it already has become a huge nightmare. I am now eating my meals on the far edge of my table because the pieces swarmed everything. Additionally, my coffee table  been cleared and even more pieces have filled that area. All told the are 456 pieces to this model clock and I am proud report that I don’t believe I have lost any one of the.

On the offhand chance that I’m wrong in that prediction I will post another blog entry entirel in wingdings and you can substitute whatever expletives you feel appropriate.

Still, just because I’m working on one project doesn’t mean I have to neglect others. The epresso has been flowing like clockwork each morning as I plan on learning how to do espresso art. First, things first,I need to master foaming milk in the first place. The coffee currently in use is Dillons coffee. Anyone who is familiar with my family know that we prefer Darte’ coffee, but  last thing any aspiring artist wants to do is spent 2,000 dollars on oil paints used by michelangelo while they’re ability would allow them to get the same potential from $2 finger paints. Notice the nice creme onop of the coffee though, that makes the foam art much easier I’m told.

And of course the foam art itself. Note that I use the term “art” rather loosely in this case. This is my best effort at a blob. Actually it was supposed to be a “rosette” but fate intervened. Note also the particularly poor foam quality. That is what happens when you don’t clack and swirl (yes clack and swirl is an artistic term. It is currently in use by at least one barista).

On the irony of the art I’ve chosen I think everyone should find it intersting that one who makes coffee is a barista, one who practices law is a barrister. Sexism anyone? Still I aim to become the world’s first barista barrister. So everyone wish me luck until then.

Until next time I have more sanding and lacquering to do. Upcoming events include salsa lessons which I have learned start in february so stay tuned.

Well I’m going to have my first post up by the weekend and I thought I’d lead into it by giving an overview of how this section of the site will work.

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.