Quality Chess Blog

John has finished Chapter 1 of the King’s Gambit. This does not mean that he has now started on Chapter 2 – this was done a long long time ago. Of the 22 chapters, only 3 remain; and none of them are too challenging.

Chapter 1 is mainly original analysis and spreads over 82 pages in the book. No wonder it was wearing him down.

I predict that this book is written in two weeks from now. Last I did prediction (read gambling on chess results) I lost 16 out of 16 bets. Luckily the betting agency sponsored the blitz event and I won my money back. Here is the prediction regarding some of our publications this year.

Quick comment by Jacob:

Before engaging with this debate about critical moments, I contacted Willy Hendriks and asked if he would take offence, promising to disagree, but not be disagreeable. He would not, he said. I offered if he wanted to close off the debate with his personal view. As I did not want to invite him into a quagmire of never-ending arguments, I will not comment on his piece (which I have purposefully not read yet), although I am sure that I will disagree to some extent.

In the autumn I will publish Thinking Inside the Box, which will lay out my full view of chess and chess improvement. I will probably not refer directly to other books there, but state everything in the positive. But those wanting to find it, can find my view there and then (or earlier in this debate, most likely).

Next week I will return to focusing on chess improvement in the positive. Now to our guest writer:

Under the sign of uncertainty

– Willy Hendriks

In last week’s post Jacob Aagaard discusses chapter 14 of my book Move First, Think Later about the usefulness of the notion of the critical moment. I gladly accept his invitation to delve a bit deeper into this subject.

Aagaard considers this notion to be “well established” but I’m not sure it has the same meaning for everyone. Anyway, those who have read my book know that ‘well established chess theory’ is not sacred for me.

There are two aspects of this notion I’m a bit skeptical about, though they are not always explicitly brought forward. The first is the idea that games (very often) consist of a few (one or two) moments of extraordinary importance or difficulty and a lot of moments of much lesser importance.

The second is the idea that these moments not only can be identified with hindsight but also can be detected when you’re actually playing a game. Which would make the notion a constructive part of our thinking process. Read more…

We have a guest blogger this week. We will put it up tomorrow.