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| Posted by jstevens1 play-online-chess.com 6/28/2008 07:16:11 Play online chess |  Subject: Chess and the Wizard of OzMessage: The Land of Oz or the Wizard's Kingdom = The Land of Expertdom for those players with ratings of 2000+, which at the moment for me is ......... Somewhere over the Rainbow! The Yellow Brick Road = The Road to Expertdom. The Wicked Witch of the West = Enemy Queen, the chessplayer's chief nemesis who will do everything in her power to halt that chessplayer's path along The Yellow Brick Road. Glenda, Good Witch of the North = Friendly Queen - this is what I call my queen, who is doing everything in her power (by protecting her beloved husband Dear Ole 'Enry with all her might and main) to prevent the Wicked Witch of the West from pushing me backwards on the Yellow Brick Road. "The North" is also significant, because this is where the Yellow Brick Road is heading. We chessplayers all want our ratings to head DUE NORTH!! Ok, well I have annotated a few games based on this story. One is called "Glenda Saves the Day" against a chessplayer called ronlum with a rating in the low 1500s. I was two pawns down in a queen and piece ending but Glenda got in some very useful checks, winning back one of the pawns and enabling me to exchange queens into a drawn opposite bishop ending. The second one, against the same opponent is called "Stealth and Wealth" where I quietly amassed a queenside attack on a castled position and won oodles of material. I then annotated another two games against two different opponents, one who had a rating of 1480 in Old Matey Strikes, Part 1 (in which Glenda played a useful back up role) and another who again had a rating in the low 1500s called Old Matey Strikes, Part 2. In both games I delivered checkmate. I hope you all enjoy your weekend and have a good read! Cheers and bye for now. Joanne |
Chess news: For Many People, Holidays Are a Time for Playing -- The period around the new year has become one of the busiest times for chess players. Holiday chess tournaments have a long tradition. One of the oldest, the Hastings International Chess Congress in England, has been held every year since 1920-21, with a break during World War II. This year’s tournament began on Dec. 28 and ends Jan. 5. After six rounds, Andrei Istratescu of Romania, Yuri Drozdovskij of Ukraine and Zbynek Hracek of Czech Republic were leading the top section with 5 points, and being chased by a group of eight chess players, including three grandmasters, three international masters and two masters who each had 4.5 points. Hastings is no longer ... All that chess -- Magnus Carlsen, 19, walks into the new decade as the world's top-rated chess player. His January FIDE rating is 2810, five points ahead of Veselin Topalov and 20 points ahead of the world chess champion, Vishy Anand. An incredible accomplishment! In 2004, Carlsen played a brilliant game in Holland. His victory made a great impression and I called him the Mozart of chess. He was 13 at that time and, according to my good friend, the late Washington Post music critic Joseph McLellan, he was too old to be compared to the great music composer. But it was too late. The name stuck. From club players to grandmasters, from recreational enthusiasts to world champions -- a great spectrum of chess players ... A Year With No New Champs but Plenty of Big Winners -- Viswanathan Anand of India, the world chess champion, and Alexandra Kosteniuk of Russia, the women’s titleholder, were able to rest on their laurels in 2009. That was because for the first time in six years there was no world championship match or tournament. That did not mean there were fewer big matches. In some ways there were more than ever. In addition to the traditional elite chess tournaments in Linares, Spain; Wijk aan Zee, the Netherlands; and Moscow, upstart events in Sofia, Bulgaria, and Nanjing, China, thrived, and a chess tournament had its debut in London. And Russia played host to the World Chess Cup. Buoyed by victories in Nanjing and London, Magnus Carlsen, ... | |