I’m looking for input from subscribers who watch our lectures on their smartphone, iPad or other tablet, on our mobile site at iphone.chesslecture.com. If you have suggestions on improvements and additions to that site, please share your thoughts on how we can deliver a better mobile experience .
This week we have lectures on strategy, openings and tactics. All of these lectures are intermediate. We thank FM Dennis Monokroussos, IM Bill Paschall and LM Dana Mackenzie for summaries of their lectures this week.
Monday Dec 16 IM Valeri Lilov Opposite Castled Kings (Intermediate Strategy)
Tuesday Dec 17 FM Dennis Monokroussos Weirdness Works? No! (Intermediate Strategy)
Rules of thumb in chess aren’t laws, but they have their status for a reason. Developing towards the flank, keeping one’s king in the middle of the board and ignoring the center are rules that one violates at one’s peril, as Swedish GM Nils Grandelius discovered to his sorrow in this impressive game. His young, then untitled opponent (now he’s closing in on the GM title) played very energetically and crushed the higher-rated Grandelius, mating him in just 21 moves.
Wednesday Dec 18 IM David Vigorito Centralization (Intermediate Strategy)
Thursday Dec 19 IM Bill Paschall Classic Sicilian Exchange Sacrifice (Intermediate Openings)
Kasparov shows his understanding of the English Attack variation for Black in the Najdorf. Black completes development, castles just in time to connect his forces and shatters his opponents king position and pawn structure with the absolutely classic shot 13….Rxc3. White never is able to gain any attack before black’s threats take control of the board. An elegant and ironic game for Kasparov in his finest opening.
Friday Dec 20 LM Dana Mackenzie Help! A Knight Ate My Position! (Intermediate Tactics)
Follow the bouncing knight as Dana’s knight either plays or threatens one fork after another. Useful for beginners as training for visualizing forks. For intermediate players, a good example of how to beat an opponent who is rushing his moves.
As a service aimed at helping our subscribers improve your understanding of chess, as well as your enjoyment, I would like to make a few remarks about the way we label each lecture as being “beginner,” “intermediate,” or “advanced.”
In reality, there are things to be learned from every lecture, for every level of player, regardless of the main level for which the lecture is primarily aimed.
GM Yasser Seirawan first put an explanation of this into words for me, in the mid-1980s, as he spent several years creating his “Pro Chess Video Chess Mentor” video series for an experienced publisher of training videos. In every lecture, there are points of information which viewers are “ready to learn”, while some points can be taken for granted (such as when an advanced player pays no attention to the fact that in the Scotch Game, of course the number of attacks and defenses are equal when White plays 3.d4), and other points may be so “advanced” that we are not ready to really focus on them yet – but if we come back and watch the same video after improving further, we can feel like we are hearing this advanced comment for the very first time, because now we are “ready” to hear it.
This week we have lectures on strategy, openings and tactics. All of these lectures are intermediate – but in keeping with the above, please note that Friday’s description mentions information aimed at beginners, too. Whether such things are mentioned or not, though, they are almost always there.
The next time you visit ChessLecture.com, you’ll see our new home page with several new features, including a feed from our new blog, AllThingsChess, and a site tour for visitors and new users. We will be posting regularly, along with guests, so I invite you to engage with us in the comments section on those posts.
Our blog is part of an expanded mobile site we will be launching later this month in order to better support our mobile users and new visitors seeing us for the first time. We are busy expanding our outreach to inform more chess enthusiasts and players about what ChessLecture.com has to offer. If you have thoughts or suggestions to share, visit our Facebook Page, our blog or email me any time at dawn.novarina@chesslecture.com.
Several of our lecturers also share their thoughts about chess via blogs, and this week, LM Dana Mackenzie offers up a very interesting thought about how the recent world championship match has caught the attention of many people who don’t play chess:
“I just had a conversation fifteen minutes ago with my next-door neighbor Dave, who has never shown any interest in chess previously but had heard something somewhere about a new world champion. This conversation reminded me of an obvious fact: more than anything else, a world championship catches the attention of non-chess players. It’s the one chance we get to teach the rest of the world a little bit about our game and its history.”
Dana recounts his exchange as an FAQ for all of us to share, and also invites reader input – I think you will enjoy reading it all the way through, at this link: www.danamackenzie.com/blog/?p=2630
Today began with the official ceremony recognizing Magnus Carlsen as the 16th World Chess Champion, in the line of undisputed world champions that began with Wilhelm Steinitz in 1886.
Magnus – who will celebrate his 23rd birthday in less than a week from now (November 30) – becomes the second youngest champion in history; Garry Kasparov was five months younger in 1985, when, at 22, he broke the record set by then-23-year-old Mikhail Tal in 1960. Kasparov reigned continuously from 1985 until 2000. Viswanathan Anand, who became the 15th World Champion in 2007, had successfully defended his title three times in matches prior to this month. We join the entire chess world in congratulating both the old and the new world champions.
In honor of his victory, we’re offering a bundle of ten lectures on previous games by Magnus – nine by IM David Vigorito and plus one by GM Jesse Kraai – which we’ve collected on DVD as “Magnus Madness” and “Carlsen’s Black Magic & Carlsen in Baku”. Each is normally $19.95, we’re offering the two as a bundle for $29.95 in our store. Member discounts apply to this price – 40% for platinum and gold, 30% for silver and 20% for bronze – and this offer will remain available for holiday gifts through December 25th.
GM Jesse Kraai’s terrific book Lisa, a chess novel now has a video trailer. You can find the book on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle at the following link: http://amzn.to/1chwP0U. You can read LM Dana Mackenzie’s review on Lisa here, he gives it a rousing two thumbs up.
Like me, I’m sure that many of you are following the world championship match with great interest. The amount of live coverage, and ongoing discussion, is huge – with analysis and opinions evolving almost minute by minute.
As I write this, seven of the scheduled twelve games have been played, and nobody knows if many twists and turns lie ahead. But one thing is certain: what we see appearing on the chessboard is only the visible part of preparation, and of the analysis and judgments made at the board during the games.
In the coming weeks, our team of lecturers will find many of the great “teachable moments” for you, and will plumb the depths of the strategies – both those shown at the board, and those hidden below the surface – for you.
With all of the great players who have been commenting daily – both during the game, and then in hurriedly written articles in the ensuing hours – it seems like sometimes the most basic underlying truths can be easily overlooked. Then, suddenly, one comment makes it all clear, such as GM Hikaru Nakamura’s tweet after game six, “…can someone tell me why Anand eschewed 53.b3 which led to a theoretical draw?” And indeed, none of the commentators seemed to have noticed that the theoretically drawn endgame of rook plus f- and h-pawns vs. rook could be reached, and that Anand should hold the draw. We will bring you these kinds of insights, which only the most talented players in the world seem to be able to produce right on the spot.
I would like to share with you something which a great chess trainer – the Chilean IM Victor Frias – told me about a key aspect of studying chess. Victor, who trained a world junior champion, a US champion, and a Chilean GM, advised that one study the games of the great players, in the order in which they appeared and played. The reason for this is simple: each stood on the shoulders of those who came before him.
FM Dennis Monokroussos has done great work in developing an extensive series of lectures that tells this story through two selections from the games of each of the world champions, from Steinitz through Anand. And as the holiday season approaches, we’ve gathered those lectures into one holiday bundle that includes all three collections – Volume 1, the Classical Era 1886-1946, Volume 2, the Soviet Era 1948-1972 and Volume 3, the Modern Era 1972-2013. Members can find all of these lectures here, but this makes a great holiday gift for your favorite chess enthusiast and it’s now available in our store for just $129.95 (less your member discount, of course – 20% for bronze members, 30% for silver, and 40% for gold and platinum subscribers. To take advantage of your discount, enter your subscription type – e.g., silver if you’re a silver subscriber – in the coupon code box in your shopping cart).
For the same reason, I would also highly recommend World Champion Garry Kasparov’s tremendous five-volume series of books, My Great Predecessors, which takes readers through chess history in the same way, and very deeply as well as broadly – delving deeply into each champion, and also discussing the contributions of the other leading players in each era, too. These books may well provide the most rewarding reading of anything in chess literature nowadays.
Over the years, we’ve been able to bring you a wide variety of lectures, and I would like to mention one of the most colorful subjects we’ve ever covered: LM Dana Mackenzie’s “Nuke the Sicilian” presentations.
Fellow subscriber Michael Goeller, an excellent blogger, wrote the following about Dana’s first lecture in this series, back in 2006, “One of the better recent lectures at ChessLecture.com (see review below) is Dana Mackenzie’s amazing ‘Nuke the Sicilian! How to Sac Your Queen on Move Six and Win‘ (October 20, 2006).” You can read his whole review here:
http://www.kenilworthchessclub.org/kenilworthian/2006/10/nuclear-option-in-sicilian-grand-prix.html