Thursday, May 25, 2006

ChessCafe Articles

I couldn't find time to post this yesterday, but wanted to point to some interesting articles at ChessCafe:

1) Stefan Bücker's "Over the Horizons" article titled "A Knight on the Edge, Part One" takes up the controversial Sicilian with 2.Na3!? and is the best treatment of it I have seen yet. As is typical of Bücker's Kaissiber pieces, it also includes an excellent bibliography pointing to the most important analysis (though I might add that Dennis Monokroussos has made several posts on 2.Na3 at his Chess Mind blog). I imagine more players interested in the theory as Black than as White, but I must confess that I am myself intrigued now that I see it as a method of getting "The Clamp" set-up or even transposing to lines from the Advanced French where Na3-c2 supports d4. I am also pleased to see that this is only "Part One," which gives me something to look forward to next month...

2) Hans Ree's "Dutch Treat" discusses Jan Timman in Malmö, a topic I wrote about as "Jan Timman's Fighting Spirit." As a member of Timman's generation of players, however, Ree is better situated than I to reflect on the questions of chess strength and aging suggested by Timman's recent success. I expected Robert Byrne to have considered such things in discussing one of Timman's games recently in his New York Times column.

3) Steve Lopez's "ChessBase Cafe" on Fritz 9 Engine Displays demonstrates another advantage of Fritz 9 over Fritz 8 (which is always the point): more options when you right-click on a line that Fritz is considering in "Infinite Analysis" mode.... Though he's discussing Fritz 9, I think anyone who didn't know about the options available when you right click on a variation (a feature of earlier Fritzes) will learn something useful. I recommend the Archive of previous articles by Lopez (and occasionally Mig Greengard) as well.

4) Though it has been up for over a week, I just noticed that The Skittles Room offers a wonderful excerpt from Nikolay Minev's A Practical Guide to Rook Endings, which should do a lot to increase its sales. I don't find a permanent link in their Archives or Skittles Room archives, which suggests this is one to print out and save (unless you just want to buy the whole book, of course).

No comments: