Sat. Nite Chess Thread 04-07-2012 [OregonMuse]

Good evening, fellow wood-pushers, patzers, fish, 'C' players, and other assorted USCF ratings list bottom dwellers. It's time once again for the Saturday Nite AoSHQ Chess Thread.

First, a shame-faced, belated thank-you to rdbrewer, who posted the original chess thread a couple of weeks ago and who graciously didn't get too mad at me when I stole the idea from him and ran with it.

rdbrewer is the actual father of the chess thread.

So, why play chess? What does it do for you?

Lurking moron R.C. Speck writes:

Humility.

The most important thing chess has given me is humility.

When I tell people that I used to play chess, they often ask, “How good were you?” My answer is always, “Good enough to know how bad I really am.”

I suppose all sports do this to a certain extent, but I think chess gets you there quicker. Nothing like going 0-5 or 0.5-4.5 in a weekend tournament to hammer home the point that you just suck, you suck so bad you're a towering monument of suckitude on display in the International Museum of Suck in Sucktown, U.S.A.

The rest of Mr. Speck's article is worth reading. For example, I did not know that General Winfield Scott went a couple of rounds with a 9-year-old Paul Morphy in 1846. Predictably, Old Fuss and Feathers got his clocked cleaned by the young lad. And, he was a poor loser, which I guess is also no surprise. Unfortunately, I don't think the games were recorded.

And now, another modern classsic. This one is Kasparov-Topalov, 1999. Kasparov has called it the greatest game he has ever played.

Thanks to all of you who sent me tips. It's amazing to me how many lurkers are out there reading this blog that you never see in the comments. I wonder what the ratio is. For every commenting moron, there are X number of lurking morons, so what is X? 10? 100? 1000?

Chess tips for this thread may be sent to me at

OregonMuse
and then the at sign
followed by yahoo
and then dot
com

Question: what is your favorite chess site? When I started getting back into chess, I discovered there is just no end of chess sites, and I keep discovering good ones. So please post your favorite ones worth checking out in the comments, and we will all benefit.

posted by Open Blogger at 06:00 PM

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