"My Brilliant Brain"

National Geographic Chess Documentary "My Brilliant Brain"

A tribute to GM Vishwanathan Anand

Intuition in Chess

An interesting conversation between a journalist and chess Grandmaster(GM) Mikhail Tal..

*Journalist:* It might be inconvenient to interrupt our profound discussion and change the subject slightly, but I would like to know whether extraneous, abstract thoughts ever enter your head while playing a game?
*Tal:* Yes. For example, I will never forget my game with GM Vasiukov on a USSR Championship. We reached a very complicated position where I was intending to sacrifice a knight. The sacrifice was not obvious; there was a large number of possible variations; but when I began to study hard and work through them, I found to my horror that nothing would come of it. Ideas piled up one after another. I would transport a subtle reply by my opponent, which worked in one case, to another situation where it would naturally prove to be quite useless. As a result my head became filled with a completely chaotic pile of all sorts of moves, and the infamous "tre

e of variations", from which the chess trainers recommend that you cut off the small branches, in this case spread with unbelievable rapidity.
And then suddenly, for some reason, I remembered the classic couplet by Korney Ivanović Chukovsky: "Oh, what a difficult job it was. To drag out of the marsh the hippopotamus".[20] I do not know from what associations the hippopotamus got into the chess board, but although the spectators were convinced that I was continuing to study the position, I, despite my humanitarian education, was trying at this time to work out: just how WOULD you drag a hippopotamus out of the marsh? I remember how jacks figured in my thoughts, as well as levers, helicopters, and even a rope ladder.
After a lengthy consideration I admitted defeat as an engineer, and thought spitefully to myself: "Well, just let it drown!" And suddenly the hippopotamus disappeared. Went right off the chessboard just as he had come on ... of his own accord! And straightaway the position did not appear to be so complicated. Now I somehow realized that it was not possible to calculate all the variations, and that the knight sacrifice was, by its very nature, purely intuitive. And since it promised an interesting game, I could not refrain from making it.
*Journalist:* And the following day, it was with pleasure that I read in the paper how Mikhail Tal, after carefully thinking over the position for 40 minutes, made an accurately calculated piece sacrifice.

White to play and win....

a great example of Zugzwang....

try it........

Clay chess....awesome ...must watch

Play like Grand Masters

Good tactics and good techniq

Know Vishy Anand better

Game of the century....must see....Excellence from Bobby Fischer

An Upside Down Christmas Tree

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Submitted by LYCAN148 on Mon, 02/23/2009 at 9:53pm.

T.R,Dawson Flakirk Hearld 1914

Mate in 2 white to move

(solution below)

We are going to work this out from retrograde analysis.Where could have blacks last move been???He can't have moved his king,as that would result as a impossible dould check if gone to d8 or f8 and for d7 and f7,the e-pawn is blocked and could not have moved.And also not the b7 or h7 pawns as they have never moved!The only moves are d7-d5 and f7-f5.Both would be mate in 2,but there is only one solution.Both moves can mate,with cxd6 then d7 or gxf6 then f7 mate.

The white pawns must have taken 10 captures to reach their positions,and that is every piece that are gone,so the c8 bishop could not have been taken on its starting square,therefore the last move must have been f7-f5!

Solution

1.gxf6   any pawn move

2.f7#

Chess by numbers

Chess... by the numbers! Our favorite game is amazing.

The Euler's 8x8 magic square - Chess.com

The Euler's 8x8 magic square

The Euler's 8x8 magic square.

A magic square of order n is an arrangement of n^2 numbers (usually 1, 2, 3...) such that the sum of the numbers in all the rows, columns and big diagonals is a constant.

For example:

Here the sum of all rows, columns and main diagonals is equal to 15.

This is a very interesting mathematical topic that shows how chess has a big mathematical mistery. Leonard Euler, a very important mathematician, constructed a magic square of order 8, in this square if you put a knight in the 1 you can touch all 64 boxes in consecutive numerical order.

This square solves 2 big problems:

• To construct a 8x8 magic square.
• Move a knight in a chessboard visiting all squares 1 and only 1 time.

Conclusion: Math & Chess have many things in common.

-Source- Chess.com