Saturday, December 13, 2014

I love the game of chess.

There was a time when I aspired to garner the rating of "EXPERT" by the United Chess Federation.

Well I spent a couple of years in the Army.  Come home, played chess, worked and went to school.

No problems except I lost interest in the finer points of chess.  I just want to play and have fun. 

And  the computers took over, that was for me the last straw.

Computers finished what the Russians started.

Chess with no style.

Chess Yields to the Young

The latest exemplar of this trend is 24-year-old Magnus Carlsen of Norway, who defended his title as world chess champion in a match in Sochi, Russia last month. He defeated 45-year-old Viswanathan Anand of India, the former champion whom he had dispatched a year ago to win the crown.

Just thinking

modern tournament and match schedules are more rigorous. In 1985, the world championship match had three games a week for a leisurely eight weeks. These days, the entire match is finished in little more than two weeks—a comparative sprint. A second factor is the explosive growth in the amount of chess information available online and in the capacity of computers to spot errors and suggest better opening moves. This enables younger players who train conscientiously to reach elite status even faster than state-supported Soviet prodigies could 30 years ago.


Does all that result in better game play?