There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.

Here's a nice poem I'm teaching today, special for you.

Litany

You are the bread and the knife,
The crystal goblet and the wine...-Jacques Crickillon

You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker,
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.

It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.

And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.

It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.

I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.

I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman's tea cup.
But don't worry, I'm not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and--somehow--the wine.

Billy Collins

Greg Shahade is a Greedy Young Man Who's Sister Is in the Employ of the USCF

I'm not going to make a real post on the Krush - Zatonskih thing, because, well, it's pretty obvious, right?

But I am moved to uncontrollable laughter by the comments on uschess.org to the most recent "Ask GM Joel." Blah blah blah, people discuss the decline of the US Championship. Surpise, chess is totally boring to non chessplayers and thus uninteresting to potential sponsors. Let's all comment.

But then someone posts a long, basically run-of-the-mill post which contains the sentence:
"I don't think the sponsors are there for all these tournaments unless the USCF wants to hire someone like G Shahade who is an expert at attracting sponsors. And pay him according to his expertise which would be a lot."

Notice that this is just a hypothetical suggestion from some random guy. Nothing to do with Greg or reality.

Immediately Harry Payne, who has been defending (rather too passionately) the US Championship's honor throughout the thread, jumps on this:
"Is it not a shame, that Mr. Shahade, (Who's sister is in the employ of the USCF) who is a member of the USCF and a Chess Player, would command such a high fee to help secure sponsors. But that is my point in essence I guess."

Greg's response:
"Yes Mr. Payne it's so shameful that I would command so much money for an imaginary position that has never existed for the USCF, that I've never heard of that I will never be offered, that some poster above just threw out there as a hypothetical concept! I don't know when I became so greedy! So shameful.

Really what is wrong with you?"

Greg's so funny. I laugh every time I reread it, and that's pretty often.

But keep reading, because another beautiful moment occurs later in the thread. Steve Immit, who apparently actually reads the previous comments before posting, is the only person to realize and mention that Payne's accusation that Greg Shahade called the US Championship "meaningless" is not true at all.

Vote

here.

Thanks, Tom.

Adding to my list of strangers-who-conspire-to-cheer-me-up-and-make-me-happy-on-an-everyday-basis, I order a used book on Amazon.com and get a message from the seller. Of course, I expect they are writing to say they don't have the book, but instead I get this:

Enjoy your writings on uschessonline and the video with Dr. Frank Brady was inspiring. Well done!! Your fan, xxxxxx xxxxxxx

My life is awesome.

I Am a Big Champion

Elizabeth - Woodenhead ICC 5 minute pool

22...Nxb5
What to do?

23.h5! Ne7 24.h6! g6 25.Qg5! f6 26.exf6 Nc6

27.Qxg6+!! I love myself. Notice that I had maybe 45 seconds on my clock. Of course, I didn't actually calculate it. 27...hxg6 28.h7+ Kf7 [oops!! ==> 28...Kh8! = 29.Nh4 (29.f7+? d4) 29...Kxh7 30.Nf5+

(don't be worried, this is just an analysis diagram!)

Kg8 31.Nh6+ Kh7 32.Nf5+ Kg8 what a cute draw. Like a swing.]

29.Ng5+ Ke8 30.h8Q Rxh8 31.Rxh8+ Kd7

32.Rh7+ Kd8 [32...Ke8 33.Nxe6] 33.Nxe6+ Ke8 34.f7+ Kd7

35.f8Q+ Ne7 36.Qxe7+ Kc6 37. Nd4+? [ok, whatever 37.Qd7#] 37...Nxd4 38.Bxd4 b5 [38...Kb5 39.Qe2+ Kc6 40.Qe6+ Kb5 41.Qb6#] 39.Qe6+ Qd6 40.Qxd6# 1-0

yay for me.

Learn the French in 15 Minutes, ok 30

Thanks to the overwhelming large number of comments (7, 3 of them mine) I decided to treat you all to some more opening summarization by me. I wrote these for the children, but honestly, I think they're good enough for most people. The Bb5 one is certainly all I know, actually a fair amount more than I really know, about the opening.

But this series of two French handouts is kinda magical in that you really can play it in half an hour. It's boring, no denying that, but it'll get you out of the opening with some vague plan and very little chance of accident. Short and Vaganian have played 3...Qd7, and all kinds of people (Karpov, Korchnoi, Shabalov, Dreev, Oll, Wojt., Hodgson, Lputian, Khalifman, Epishin, Beliavsky, Rustemov, I could go on) have played the Fort Knox, so it's not garbage. I can't post the annotated games because I stole them almost verbatim from chesspublishing.com. You should subscibe to this website, it's great, but if you're really a hardcore cheapass, email me and I'll send them to you.

fort knox

advanced

Chessbase diagrams disgust me, graphically, but I replaced the linares ones with them just for you.

whole thing plus one extra recent Short game with chessbase diagrams

New Creation and Fun with Color

photos: Betsy Dynako

New Creation: a teaching unit for the Bb5 Sicilian.

First, a handout I go over and the kids are supposed to start memorizing, then scripted lesson plans to illustrate ideas and plans. Finally, a "memory markers" assessment/ review page (idea taken from the Perelshteyn/ Dzindi book) with key positions from the opening that kids have to remember.

Probably you need the Linares font to see diagrams. Sorry about that. If you know me or if you ask nicely, I'll email it to you. There's also some annoying minor formatting issues that I'm too lazy to fix.

Handout on Bb5 Sicilian

Lesson Plan for Moscow with 3...Bd7 and 4...Qxd7

Lesson Plan for Rossilimo with 3...g6

Lesson plan for Rossilimo with 3...e6

"Memory Markers" review / assessment sheet

Let me know if you find mistakes or have suggestions.

Help?!

I want to write a post but to do this need to reference 5-6 word documents that are pretty long. Does anyone know how to post them so they don't appear in the main body of the blog post?

You know who is my big hero?

You know who we should all forget about Kamsky and Nakamura and Bhat and Krush and focus our sponsorship dollars on? (No offense to the above people, who are all excellent and otherwise deserving chessplayers.)

Ray Robson.

That kid is like a sweet-tempered winning machine. I'm watching him crush Varuzhan Akobian like a little child at the moment (http://monroi.com/watch/?tnm_id=1052#).
Ray Robson -- GM Var Akobian
Chicago rd 2
1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 Nbd7 4.f4 e5 5.Nf3 exd4 6.Qxd4 c6 7.Be3 d5 8.0–0–0 Bc5 9.Qd3 Qb6 10.Bd2 dxe4 11.Nxe4 0–0 12.Nxc5 Nxc5 13.Qa3 a5? [13...Na6 14.Be3] 14.Be3! Nfe4 15.Rd4! Qc7.
Find white's winning move?


16.b4! axb4 17.Qxa8

He plays so incredibly well. Eugene Perelstheyn did a beautiful video of Robson beating him on chesslecture.com, in case you want to see a Robson game.

He's also a very nice kid. I was fortunate to draw him a year ago in the New England Masters-- I can play a few good moves in a row sometimes, but I am nowhere near this kid's level. Shabalov joined us for the post-mortem and it was pretty much just Ray and him analysing, with me occasionally interrupting to ask a question or to see a line again. At no point did Ray act annoyed to draw me or incredulous at how slow I am at analysis.

Someone should step up and sponsor that kid, even just as a patriotic, here's-an-American-who-can-win-the-world-championship gesture.

Update: OK, he just lost, whatever, time pressure, but check out Friedel schooling Nakamura.

Kasparov Attacked By Flying Penis

I could not make this up.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/article3720115.ece

Elementary Cheating Accusations

At Elementary Nationals this year there was a big team cheating accusation story. I heard about it from various coaches, but nothing more than vague stuff -- "I watched them talking," "I heard the floor chief refused to do anything," "They all go to the bathroom together," things like that. Polly Wright reprints the accused coaches story here. Let me say before I start that I don't know which team was accused, who was doing the accusing, or even what section they were playing in (although I heard it was an under section). I never went on to the tournament floor, nor did I spend any time watching the fishbowl from above. I'm an entirely disinterested party.

Here's my 2 cents: it's impossible to cheat as described. There is no way that two elementary school kids rated under 1200 can systematically help each other by talking. This is not because they are bad at chess, it's because they are terrible at describing things. You know how many times a day one of my students answers a question with "e5" when he means "Queen e5" or "take and then play Rd1" when there are 3 things you could take and either rook could move to d1?
A lot.

OK, there might be certain very specific situations where one kid notices mate in one and the other doesn't, but anything short of that and the chances of helping are close to nil. Let's run through a couple scenarios:

1. The position is tactical and the teammate sees a winning line. They go to the bathroom and teammate tells player his variation.

Problem: The stronger kid will say something like "trade bishops and then play queen check." First of all, kids can't visualize, so there's a chance that the stronger player says it wrong, plus there's an excellent chance that whatever is said is ambigious, and add to that a reasonable chance that the player remembers it wrong. Even if the kid remembers it perfectly, if his opponent plays a response the teammates didn't discuss, good chances the player panics and blunders.

2. A kid sees a plan and tries to describe it.

Problem: Seriously now, a kid walking by who is in an under section is not capable of conceiving of or articulating a reasonable plan in the minute he/ she looks at the friend's board. And even if he could, the kid playing will not be able to understand what he's being told when he's in the bathroom and can't see the position.

Try this experiment. Set up a position where you understand the plan for one side, let's say this one:

Find an elementary school age kid rated 1200 or less and ask him to tell you what to do. I think you will find the results amusing.
(This is a very standard pawn structure-- it can come out of many openings in this form or reversed. White's plan is to play on the kingside, using the open e file and e5 square, i.e. Bg5, Ne5, R3e-h3 Q=> kingside. Black's plan is a minority attack, i.e. Rb8, b5-b4, Rfc8, Na5-c4, Q=> queenside. )

Just to be clear-- I'm not saying cheating is impossible. If I were hiding in the bathroom stall telling my players where to go and what their plan should be, I think I could be helpful. But this is because I know extremely well what my kids understand and what they will understand by what I say. Plus I'm good at chess. I also suspect my older and stronger students could help each otehr, but I'm talking about 13 years old and 1500.

Quite seriously, if I thought another team was cheating in this way against my students, it would not even cross my mind to complain. I would just laugh and add it to my list of Stupid Things Other People Do. There's a quote from Kramnik, "If you think your opponent is going to play the Dutch, don't do anything to discourage him." That's how I feel about this.