Book Review: Winning Chess Endings

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Chess Gear: Wooden Chess Game

When I first became serious about playing chess, I only played on or against a computer. Eventually, I was hankerin’ for some over-the-board play, so I decided to buy some chess gear. After a bit of investigation, I determined that I would buy two chess games. One of them would be portable so I could drag it to the local coffee shop (or wherever), and one would be wood which I would use at home. Both games would have kings of 3 3/4 inch height and board squares with sides of 2 inches. I also wanted an analog clock. I’ll deal with just the wooden game in this article.

Let’s be clear on one point. If I’m going to lay out a bunch of cash for something, the build quality must be high and it has to look good. Call me shallow, but my aesthetic values must be satisfied or it will be a purchase I regret for a long time into the future.

With my criteria set, I began my research. There isn’t a dizzying array of respectable online chess retailers, but there are enough to make me spend a considerable amount of time weighing the possible choices. Since I live in Canada, I first started looking at Canadian shops, thinking that cheaper shipping would result. As it turned out, it didn’t make a lick of difference. If a Canadian shop had lower (or even free) shipping, importing a game from the States would yield a lower cost game, but at increased shipping price. The chess kit that I finally bought was a somewhat bizarre example of this, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

So, I figured I was going to spend about 300 bux for the whole package, and with the issue of pricing pretty much out of the way, I set about to find the highest quality and best looking game I could find. It’s interesting to note that for a fixed money at the lower end of cost, the look of the Knight is generally what suffers most. This probably isn’t surprising as a decent looking Knight is probably more time-consuming to make than the other pieces. I was also looking at finding a chess game who’s colours, of both board and chess men, weren’t too constrasty. I figure I’ll be staring at this board for lengthy periods so I don’t want it giving me headaches. I settled on men made of boxwood and rosewood with a board made of maple and mahogany. I also picked up a clock with a mahogany finish, and a mahogany box for storing the pieces.

I could buy all this stuff from several of the online venders. I chose The Chess Store mostly because of the look of the Knights they were hocking in the French Lardy Staunton set. Imagine my surprise when I found out that they would charge me about half what other sellers were asking for similar kit!

Well, not so fast there, bucko. As it turns out, these little buggers were going to charge me upwards of $150 to ship my order to me! So, the price of the chess game was going to be about the same as anywhere else, just that much of the cost was loaded onto the (ridiculous) shipping price.

Ah well, it was what I wanted. I just wasn’t getting the great deal that I thought I was getting. Anyway, the point of me retelling this part of the tail is to warn you to watch for those shipping costs lest ye be caught on the back-end. Other than that, shipping was prompt and without any hassle.

I can state, however, that the quality of the board, men, clock and box are of excellent build and I expect them to keep me happy for a long time to come. Except for the men, everything else appears to be veneer with probably a pine center but they look great nevertheless and seem to be stuck together with fairly high precision.

While The Chess Store no longer appears to sell exactly what I bought from them, I’ll give you a list that closely approximates what I bought:

• French Lardy Staunton Chess Set Value Package in Rosewood & Boxwood with Mahogany Chess Board - 3 3/4" King
• Exklusiv Wooden Chess Clock - Mahogany
• Mahogany Chess Box - 3 3/4"

In conclusion, if you are interested in buying a wooden chess game, you could do considerably worse than ordering from The Chess Store.

Book Review: Modern Ideas

The full title of this book by I. A. Horowitz is “Modern Ideas In The Chess Openings, ” but that is way too long for this review’s title, so we’ll just call it “Modern Ideas,” shall we? In this case, you can pretty much judge a book by its cover. It is, in fact, a text describing modern chess openings. In a stroke of serendipity, an acquaintance lent me Modern Ideas, and I recently reviewed Yasser Seirawan’s Winning Chess Openings, so this is the perfect time for me to compare the two books.

Modern Ideas was published in 1953 so the term “modern” is somewhat relative in this case. I’m not sure from when the term originated, but these days it really just describes a particular era in chess history rather than a proclamation of anything new to the chess world.

I haven’t yet had the time to play though all the examples, but all these openings were covered in Winning Chess Openings. So, I am at least familiar with them, and thusly will I stick to a treatment of Horowitz’ narrative rather than a blow-by-blow of each opening.

I will say right off that I have an issue with this book: It uses descriptive notation rather than algebraic. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this mind you, but I, like many readers, are more adept at reading algebraic notation. The information is all there, it just slows things down for those of us not schooled in the descriptive. Of course, this is merely a consequence of the era in which Modern Ideas was published, but it does make the reading of it a bit of a slog for us descriptively challenged folks.

An interesting part of this book is what Horowitz refers to as “chess movies.” These are chess games that are narrated both in text and images with the snapshots of the board displaying positions after every few moves of the players. This is quite useful and very effective. The reader needs to visualize only a few moves between each snapshot, so it’s a fairly simple act to follow along without having to resort to a board or computer program. As a side benefit, even if you are playing along with a board and chess set, life is made a bit easier by way of the “movie frames” as you can quickly be sure that you haven’t made any errors at the board and easily correct any mistakes that you do make. These sorts of errors are the bane of my existence so I appreciate the help from Horowitz.

Like I said earlier, this text doesn’t cover any openings that I haven’t previously (albeit not yet in depth) studied, but it is certainly instructive to get a second opinion. While Seirawan will give several variations and let the reader know which variation he prefers, Horowitz will not say which variations he prefers, but rather explain the feelings of other chess leaders. Horowitz also somewhat emphasizes which openings would most benefit players of which temperament rather than merely proclaiming which variations are best in the absolute sense.

Horowitz certainly covers each opening in more detail than Seirawan, but this isn’t surprising considering that this book covers far fewer openings than does the Seirawan text. In fairness, Seirawan often suggests finding longer treatments of specific openings, and Modern Ideas fills that void to some extent.

At the end of each chapter Horowitz gives “conclusions and recommendations” for the described opening. If you are already familiar with these openings, a quick flip through the book reading only these sections will probably reward you with something to ponder at the very least.

If nothing else, this book is interesting for its historical perspective. Horowitz wrote this book before the full onslaught of the computer age and it’s interesting to compare it to texts written with the benefit of computer analysis.

Props go out to Jim for lending me Modern Ideas In The Chess Openings.

As always, I’m Stick, and I’ll see you on the gridiron.

Book Review: Winning Chess Openings

With Winning Chess Openings, Yasser Seirawan’s writing style has much improved. In a previous article I mentioned that his pros are often a bit on the goofy side. This time around the syrup has taken a backseat to irreverence. Nay, even sarcasm at times. This is a Good Thing considering how dry this subject could be. Instead, Seirawan leads us through the maze of opening theory with a bit of humour to to egg us on.

Seirawan has decided that he will take us, his students, on the same journey that he took when he learned about chess openings, and I mean that quite literally. He begins by describing his earliest memories of chess, including his very first game in which he really had no idea how to start a game of chess. He then recounts his infatuation with Rook openings and on to his use of Queen raids against his opponents. He proceeds thusly in part to make us more comfortable while ramping us up towards beginning opening theory.

Of course, I have no idea if his early history matches what Seirawan has written down, but it’s amusing, compelling and effective, so I’m not complaining. I don’t think you will either.

I’ll interject here and say that Seirawan has updated the graphics for this book. Images depicting board positions use the Modern piece style as opposed the the old Book piece style used in his earlier books. A minor difference to be sure, but one that I appreciate.

After the comic recounting of his earliest chess debacles, Seirawan gets down to business with basic opening principals. This section is fairly brief, mostly covering things you should already know if you have read the first book in this series, Play Winning Chess. However, the information in this text is more compact so it’s not really a good substitute for the treatment of openings found in books geared towards absolute beginners. Seirawan also here first mentions the players and books that inspired him during his formative chess years.

Having the formalities out of the way, Seirawan dives into the meat and potatoes of openings, beginning with the classical openings, both Queen Pawn Openings and King Pawn Openings. Both attacks and defenses are covered and all the classic openings you’ve probably seen mentioned elsewhere in your studies are offered up for your consumption.

The text next attacks the so-called modern openings, and again covers both attacks and defenses. Also again, many of the names you will most likely recognize.

By this point in the book you will have learned just how complicated this whole opening mess can be. There is much to be memorized, but there is also logic behind the openings about which Seirawan does a good job imparting. Despite the myriad variations explained, the author will often say something like, “There are entire tomes dedicated to this opening, and I suggest you research them!” Yeah, right, Yasser, I’ll get right on that. Maybe in a few years after I’ve dealt satisfactorily with Winning Chess Openings.

Anyhoo, the last major section of this book is dedicated to what Seirawan calls “Solutions” to the openings. I know what you are thinking. You are pondering the notion of skipping straight to this “Solutions” section and ignoring the rest of the book. I, however, advise against that strategy. While it’s true that the solutions section is very interesting in and of itself, and by working through it you will indeed gain much knowledge of useful openings, you would be missing much of the groundwork that would make these solutions intelligible. As I mentioned a little ways back, openings are not just about memorization, they are also about logic and motivation.

In case you are wondering about these opening “solutions,” I let you in on a little secret: They are largely based on the Barcza Opening, and they fall more under the monicker of “systems” than they are about specific orders of moves. What I mean by this is that, in general, you play towards a certain position which defines the opening, but the order of moves to achieve that position are in part determined by the moves made your opponent. The big advantage to this is that there is less to memorize. On the other hand, you better have your wits about you when you play these systems because inaccurate play will likely be your downfall. Trust me on this. It’s bit me on the ass a few times already.

When all is said and done, I heartily recommend Winning Chess Openings to anyone even slightly interested in the topic. It is will written, well presented, and even entertaining, which is fairly amazing considering how dry this subject could be otherwise. It certainly opened my eyes to a facet of chess about which I was quite naive.

I’m Stick, comin’ atcha wiff ‘ttude. Let’s go kick some kingside ass on the gridiron!

McChess: Shredder Chess

First, the preamble, in case you missed it from my last McChess article. At the moment, I run OS X and only OS X, so although Shredder Chess comes in Linux and Windows flavours, I won’t say much, if anything, about the alternative platforms. You also may have noticed from my last article that I don’t say anything about the strength of the chess engines. I’m not anywhere near being a good enough chess player to evaluate such things. In fact, since all the major chess programs rate in the mid to upper 2000s on the Elo scale, chess engine strength will probably never be a concern to me. Or for most other chess players, for that matter. Unless, of course, you are the type that likes to use software to cheat during your online matches, but let’s not delve into that mess, shall we?

So, on to the review!

Shredder Chess comes in three versions for the Mac: Shredder Classic 3, Shredder 11, and Deep Shredder 11. The user interfaces are pretty much the same for all three, with the real distinctions among them being under the hood. Classic is sort of the starter version of Shredder with a lower and less powerful engine. The midrange version is Shredder 11 which has the latest and strongest engine, while Deep Shredder has the same guts behind it, but will load balance calculations in parallel if you have multiple cores or multiple CPUs, giving you a benefit of faster calculations.

More important for the chess bottom feeders such as myself is the user Interface. This is far and away the best chess UI I have used on the Mac. It has a minimalist look to it, which I appreciate. The menu system is (mostly) right at home on OS X. Options and actions are (mostly) where you would expect them, and (mostly) work the way you would expect. The graphical elements a simple but beautiful.

There’s a reason for all the parenthetical “mostlies” in the preceding paragraph, because there are a few bits of weirdness lurking in the UI that will perplex at least a few virgin Shredder players.

The first of the oddities is the Mode -> Levels dialog box. This is strangely modal [sic]. At the top of the box are the buttons for “Time Per Move,” “Blitz,” and “Time Controls.” That is all well and good, except that those three options are mutually exclusive, so whichever of the three is being displayed in the dialog box is the time control being used. You’ll note that the “Limit Strength” slider is at the bottom of the box for each time control option. This probably isn’t the greatest of explanations, but as soon has you give Shredder Chess a try, you’ll see what I mean. If you compare this dialog box to similar boxes in other OS X applications you’ll understand just how counterintuitive this all is.

The next somewhat dubious bit of the interface involves saving and loading PGN files. Shredder keeps games in what it calls “databases.” Basically this just means that the PGN data for each game are stored in a multi-game PGN file, which is what Shredder calls a “database” (Not to be confused opening book databases). So, you can load a game from a single game PGN file, but to save a game, it must be added to one of these database files, or you can create a new database file into which you save the current game. Again, this is a bit of an awkward description, but that just goes to show how bizarre this saving/loading thing works. At any rate, it’s highly unintuitive to the uninitiated.

One more complaint: If you want to pause a game, you choose Edit -> Stop Clock. That’s all well and good (although I don’t consider stopping the clock to be a form of editing, but let’s ignore that point for the moment). However, there is no “Start Clock” to be found. Instead, to get the clock moving again, you simply make your next move.

Considering how well Shredder Chess is put together, I don’t think any of the previous problems are accidents of inattention. In fact, once you realize what is going on, they are actually much more efficient methods of controlling the software. It’s a bit like how some folks feel about the command line. Many find it cryptic to learn, but once you get the hang of it, the command line method is actually the most logical and elegant solution.

Unlike most chess software, at least as far as I can tell, there is no window that displays the captured pieces. This oversight is a bit surprising. I mean, let’s face it, even in OTB play you don’t have to count pieces; you just look at the side of the board to see what’s been captured.

Having got all that out of the way, I’ll give a rundown of the major features of Shredder.

Shredder has most of the options you would expect in a top-notch chess program. Customizing your opponent’s style and strength of play is straight-forward, if a bit hard to find. Preferences -> Engine Options -> Extended will land you in the spot you’re looking for. Here you’ll find lots of goodies, like your opponents preference for certain pieces, preferences for making combinations, preferences for aggressiveness, and so on.

There are options for installing your own chess engine and for adding your own opening book. Apparently there is a large online database of games that you can subscribe to, although I haven’t done that just yet.

You may recall from my review of Chessmaster that my main interest in that bit of software comes from all the learning tools it contains. For better or worse, Shredder Chess has little of that stuff. None of the chess lessons or drills or exercises. It will show you hints and threats, and if you turn on the “Chess Coach,” Shredder will happily tell you when you are about to make a boneheaded move. On the other hand, I find the analysis in Shredder to be more useful than that in Chessmaster. Admittedly, the analysis in Shredder is rather cryptic to a chess n00b like myself, but once you get used to it, I much prefer the Shredder style. Related to analysis is the histogram window, which is great when you are looking for where you went wrong in the game you are analyzing. Just run the game through the analyzer and look for the big spike in the histogram to find where your big mistake occurred.


Shredder Chess has no auto-annotation. At first, this seemed like a big plus for Chessmaster, but, as it turns out, this feature in Chessmaster is almost useless, so I don’t mind it’s omission in Shredder.

And, as they say, that’s that. I’m Stick, reporting from down on the gridiron. Back to you, Bob.

Stick's Picks

Audio: Silent Waters, by Amorphis

Back when the world was new ... OK, well not quite that long ago. More like 1994. I had my first encounter with Amorphis by way of their album Tales From The Ten Thousand Lakes. It’s a good thing that CDs were in wide use by then, because I would have worn a vinyl copy straight through to the turntable platter. As much as I loved that album, for reasons that completely elude me at the moment, I sort of lost track of Amorphis.

For probably similar nebulous reasons, Amorphis popped into my wee noggin recently and I decided to see what they were up to these days. Silent Waters is their most recent album, although it’s well over a year old by this point.

I’m not sure how best to describe Amorphis, but I’ll give it a shot. I’ve never been too hip to the various subcultures of metal; I pretty much just give a thumbs up or thumbs down and ignore the categories. Although I like grindcore bands like Panterra well enough, I prefer my metal served up with a bit of the progressive rock flavour and Amorphis suits me just fine in that regard. Originally, I think they were classed a death metal band, but now maybe more like a goth metal or progressive metal band. Take from that mess of a description what you will.

More importantly, Amorphis tends toward the melodic end of metal without producing the treacle that other melody-oriented bands manage. Another notable point about Amorphis is that they are one of the very few metal bands who’s arrangements include keyboard parts that actually both stand out and enhance the music without sounding like they were written by a bunch of retards. I would hazard a guess that if you like some current metal and also enjoy older bands like Rainbow and Deep Purple, Amorphis is probably right up your alley.

At any rate, Amorphis has been pumping out all sorts of great jams since Tales From The Ten Thousand Lakes, and if all my mumbo-jumbo sounds like your cup of tea, Silent Waters is a good first sampling of Amorphis-y goodness.

And, yes, they do seem to have some strange obsession with water.

Video: Darren Aronofsky

I recently had the opportunity to watch the movie Pi, directed and co-written by Darren Aronofsky. It’s the story of a mathematical genius who doggedly pursues his faith that there is order in the universe and this order can be described by math. The film is shot entirely in black and white, and while I would normally expect this to be the signal of a pompously artsy-fartsy movie, it actually works spectacularly well in Pi. The lack of colour allows the story to shine through exceptionally well.

Being as impressed with Pi as I was, I decided to check out some other work by this Aronofsky fellow. I subsequently watched Requiem For A Dream, and The Fountain, both of which, I am happy to report, are great.

I won’t bother describing the latter two movies, except to say that they, along with Pi, are good and offbeat. They all fall in the range of weirdness that I generally like in movies. All are cleverly strange, but not so fucked-up-weird and art-housey that I can’t derive some sort of point from them.

Textuo: ?

I was sure I had something for this section, but I was wrong. I got nuthin’.