The Chess Mind

A bit of self-congratulation to be found here, though with appropriate disclaimers and expressions of humility included therein. It's not especially instructive, but hopefully you'll enjoy it anyway!

My last two ChessVideos presentations (here and here) took a look back at some of my old endgames, each of which featured various painful but typical endgame gaffes. This time, in my latest presentation, the play is of a considerably higher - but alas, not quite perfect - level. The ending on display this time around is of a more dramatic nature, as the key defensive idea has a study-like quality to it. I think, or at least hope, that you'll find it both entertaining, inspirational (defensive ideas exist in almost any position, if one looks hard enough), and a good exercise too. Have a look.

A few days ago I presented my first show on endgame misadventures on ChessVideos.tv; and those who didn't think I suffered enough in those games will be pleased with the results of this program. Available for free, on-demand, and requiring no special software, it affords viewers the chance to see some very bad endgame technique on my part. While some readers might revel in Schadenfreude, the primary value comes in learning from my mistakes - they're not unique to me, after all.

Watch, enjoy, and (hopefully) learn!

When I've examined endgames on this blog or presented them on my ChessBase or ChessVideos shows, they have usually been models of good play. Maybe not everything was done to perfection, but most of the time, there was something positive to be learned by watching the players in action.

Not this time. In my latest ChessVideos show, I present a couple of games from my youth in which at least one player did something really wrong. These aren't games that will make anyone's "greatest games collection", but I suspect that some of my viewers will find them useful in spite of the egregious errors - or perhaps because of them. It may take a pretty advanced player to fully appreciate the finesses of a high-class rook endgame, but I can assure everyone reading this that there was absolutely nothing hifalutin about the mistakes made in these games. Yet (with one exception) the errors weren't outright blunders, either; rather, they're the sorts of mistakes anyone can make until acquiring a certain amount of experience. We've all got to get that experience somewhere, and it's best if we can learn from other people's mistakes.

I hope you'll learn from mine: the link is here, and the show is available for free and on-demand, and requires no special software.

As everyone involved was a little busier than usual, I didn't have a ChessVideos show go up last week. No matter: this week you'll get two for the price of one (i.e. free). The first one went up a little while ago, and in it I present five very attractive endgame studies. Two are big favorites of mine (and of many others, I'm sure), while the other three aren't quite as majestic but are still worthy of your time. The great thing about studies is that they offer at least three benefits: tactics practice, aesthetic pleasure from the composition itself, and the joy of the "Eureka!" experience.

Have a look here, and see for yourself.