What can happen when one attacks just because they feel aggressive

 For some reason the name Nicholas Ernest de Firmian flashed through my conscious after reviewing the following chess position illustrated in the diagram. I think Nick and GM Chistiansen were close back in the late 90s. Larry works for USCF and I think Nick distanced himself from the Royal Game. I was at a tournament in Florida when Larry, in a Jacksonville Hotel Bar, lamented the truth that the US is owned/run by insurance companies. He is a good guy one time giving a 60 board simul in Lubbock Texas pre Susan Polgar.  

After a few moments of ennui, I realized it was because Nick espoused/endorsed Jeremy Silman's famous work titled "How to Reassess Your Chess" where he made the term imbalance a wildly popular chess teacher word. Don't know if de Firmian made any money  off calling Jeremy's book the most seminal positional piece of chess literature since My System. 

ICC player extrauniversal2, from Denmark, commenced an unjustified attack which resulted in his King side pawns being maimed. White rejected winning material in favor of long term positional squeeze. The Danish player committed the chessic sin of attacking because he "just felt like it" and had to resign 12 moves later. 

Be very careful how you say Forking Knight

 The terse chess informant notation definitely applies to the following position. The Houston,Texas Master did not notice his King and Queen were forkable on the f2 and d2 squares or maybe he did but did not notice the f3 pawn was ABSOLUTELY pinned by the f5 Queen.

Hobart was more concerned about the weak c2 square which led to the blunder. He moved one of his rooks to c1 guarding c2, BUT allowing Ne4 forking King and Queen followed by resignation. His position was already loose with his King quite vulnerable. He fell victim to the burden of being the higher rated player by 600 USCF rating points. In this case, the first player was not going to accept a draw under any circumstances to a much weaker 1600 player.

The lesson to be learned is try to keep tabs on all weak squares even those induced by absolute pins. The informant notation(using a times/multiplication symbol) is (Xc2,e4)

Set Busy 2 To Quash Rude online Chess players

 Dear  Roman Martinez de Aragon, Madrid Spain, 

A simple response to your concerns regarding the rude, loutish, immature manners of many ICC blitz players is DON'T WORRY BE HAPPY. It is a relatively small percentage of an otherwise very civilized group of Cassia devotees. 

I know Marty Grund and he has done everything possible to deescalate the level of extreme incivility that exists at the internet chess club. A benefactor of the game we love is Joseph Ocol who advocates ignoring the malcontents who are in many cases 50 year old men who were picked on in high school or never really made their mark in life with multiple failed marriages.  USCF can deal with these pricks in face to fact tournaments, but online chess much more difficult to manage the startling abruptness of bitter old men who never matured passed adolescence. Patent lawyer Charles Slade has written incisively about the the rising prevalence of obnoxious and offensive acts concluding that ignoring them HURTS THEM THE MOST. The baby boys want attention. Just do not give it to them!!

I do hope my abogado amigo does not choose to terminate his ICC membership. Report the jerks and they will lose their chatting privileges with possible suspension of their accounts. I don't think Grund wants to do that since he would probably have to refund the ill-mannered punk's membership cost pro-rated.  I generally wish my opponents a good game to try to induce a friendly atmosphere in long games, but blitz and bullet bring out the worst behavior. 

Much love to you Karlo Mi compadre!!!

1958, lawyer

Kuwait Player goes for too much out of Opening

Being patient enough to wait for the latent potential of King's Indian Bishop to be liberated was one of the favorite ideas of New Mexico chess talent Silas Perry. I had the pleasure of meeting Silas in Albuquerque during a National Guard deployment around a decade ago. 

Like many eccentric chess players, he has resisted attempts at communication, but that is OK since he helped me gain over 200 USCF rating points without knowing it! I did not want to admit it due to my extremely competitive spirit, but the four or five games I lost to the dude forced me to  retool my game!!

He and GM Kraai highly advocate taking paper notes in a real notebook and analyzing why one sometimes makes stupid moves at critical times in the game. 

One of Perry's favorite sayings was this guy should not be able to get away with "this attack". He won a game against Amarillo Master Simms when he felt the Texan had overreached. The game you see above where Kuwait player unexpected launched a suspicious attack reminded me of the sage advice of Silas. 

White's b2 Bishop is just oozing some latent potential  as the second player's "attack" has created an uncountable number of weak squares around his Monarch. This is sometimes OK in the Dutch Defense but not in this case as White mopped the mess up quite handily with an Ne1-Nd3 repositioning of his f3 horse which was being attacked by overextended g4 pawn

Influence of Book Reviews on Book Sales

I was overjoyed to learn that John Watson has secured stable employment with the United States Chess Federation. The French Defense advocate in a great writer and commentator regarding chess history and theory, recently espousing the profound work of GM Davorin Kuljasevic which seeks to eradicate the materialism malady which afflicts weaker club players. 

Also his full time position with the USCF should provide much needed health care benefits. I recall long ago John being ill and seeking contributions from other chess players to defray exorbitantly high health care costs. This was around a decade ago and medical care is even more through the roof nowadays!!

Watson got "beyond material" in his Advances since Nimzovitch magnum opus, so his review/assessment of Kuljasevic's new work should help sell many copies for the Croatian writing talent.  I wonder if it is possible to track John's influence on the gross proceeds for the much awaited book? 

Passivity

The germs of defeat are spawned in passive play. Part of that is plagiarized and part is mine. A character at ICC named KingZinski(Polish I think) loves bending over buttocks full exposed and playing pusillanimous double fianchetto systems. 

In the position you see below black placed his horses at d7,e7. Did not place a pawn on the fourth rank even though White did not storm center with his pawns. The Modern and Pirc defenses are designed to punch back or counter strike against massive center and flank pawn surges by the first player. 

At least Indian player AjitChandra knows his play is overly passive and wants to correct it. The book by Grandmaster Rafael Leitão is a meritorious resource on patiently punishing players who play afraid and unwilling to take chances. Rafael Leitão is a weaker GM since any honest strong player knows games cannot be won out of the opening. Rafael is just trying to sell his book to the ignorant USCF players rated below 1500. 

Bogdan's textbook CRUSH OF Petrak Robert  is an example of passive play being a poor choice. 

The letter W related to most difficult of Checkmates

I thought about TunaGobbler from the country of Finland, who was caught cheating at Chess.com, when I finally learned how to mate with a Knight and Bishop against a naked King. Not sure if the cat lover was ultimately banned. I hope not, cuz he is a nice guy and I think the anti cheating software may have fucked up somehow.

Mating with a Knight and Bishop only is simpler than its Byzantine reputation as there are only three key positions you have to know. This may be why Houston TD George John was very good at doing it, and not that good at real chess never having a rating that exceeded 1450 even though the cat was a computer programming genius.

Also much gratitude to the German schachspieler Niclas Huschenbeth for elucidating the importance of the 3 key positions with no unnecessary mention of all the triangles that clueless American commentators annoyingly use. I looked for a paypal spot at YouTube to pay the Grand Master who did a marvelous job of explaining the tedious mating exercise without overwhelming detail about similar triangles in geometry!!! In the name of fairness, Majnu2006 did an above average demonstration dealing with big, medium, and small triangles, however NIclas still wins the teaching trophy!!

The steps are

1. Drive the weaker side's King to edge of board on the Bishop file with Knight adjacent to King.
2. Move the King to the corner, color of Bishop, with a W maneuver.
3. Mate the King in the corner with a variety of mating patterns often requiring multiple waiting moves with either Horse or Bishop. Be cautious about STALEMATES!

1.

2.

                                     I KNOW THAT IS ONE GODAWFUL REPRESENTATION OF A W with                                            vertices at the squares f2 e4 d2 c4 and b2. Geometry Teacher Ms.                                                      Kostecki would love this!! Also note that the 5 W moves will not be made                                            consecutively to allow for the necessary waiting moves averting desperation draws by weaker side!

3.

Finally a subtlety is that this process can happen on all four sides of the board where references to the Bishop file become somewhat meaningless.