Archive for October 30th, 2022

The curse of commonality

Posted in Chess on October 30, 2022| Leave a Comment »

With a return to OTB chess imminent, I have to start liking chess players again and making an effort. But what’s up with that? Why should we make an effort with others just because they like chess too. There’s much more to a person than that. What is it with liking people who like the same things we do. They might be a degenerate fucker and best avoided. Why does having shared interests have to change things? And it must be remembered that many chess players love to shag blow up dolls in their bedroom. If a chess player is shagging blow up dolls also, it would be better not to speak to him at all and get him banned from the club. As you probably know, the most common reason for a drop in rating points is down to chess players spending hours every night shagging blow up dolls instead of studying chess. There should always be suspicion in play because you don’t know what people get up to.

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Grandmaster Q&A Session

Posted in Life beyond the chess board on October 30, 2022| Leave a Comment »

Greetings my beloved audience. I’ve just left a Q&A session with a top Grandmaster and can relay the answers to my three questions. Here they are:

Question 1 If you come down with the clap, could it affect your opening repertoire?

Question 2 If you wake up with crabs, could they affect your clock management?

Question 3 if you get herpes, could it affect your end game play?

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What to do with literature and what not to do with it

Posted in Chess on October 30, 2022| Leave a Comment »

Given how many chess players there are on the planet, it goes without saying that reading habits vary greatly. So greatly that generalisations are best avoided. A notable factor is that we are going digital and the necessity for chess theory passed many years ago already. There’s so much content on youtube alone it’s ridiculous not to mention all the apps springing up. A pleasure of reading supersedes the direction chess theory is moving in but if you do enjoy reading, what do you read?

It’s always been the case that as a literary genre, chess is decadent for a number of reasons. This doesn’t mean there’s nothing worth reading but it does mean you need to be circumspect when buying new material. It’s always been like that and unlikely to improve much. But what do you do with the classics on your bookshelf? How often do we re-read? I can’t answer that because its down to you. How much effort you put into reading is dependant on what you get out of it, generalisations aren’t worth it.

You should return to those publications you cherish most and you shouldn’t just allow your books to gather dust. How much more than that I can say I don’t know. I just assumed it goes without saying that you should have a take on the genre as a whole before making decisions.

For me, I still love Chess for Tigers by Simon Webb and Rowson is still my favourite author. Not much more to add really.

I think we can safely say there are far better things to read than chess, so to end I suggest you read other stuff.

Lastly, I don’t think it remains an open question as to why most chess literature is centred around improvement and not contentment. If you haven’t worked out the sales pitch by now, you’ve got some catching up to do…no time like the present.

Mark, 0859, October 30th

A lit room where I belong most. Laksi, Bangkok

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