After the Belgian youth-championship I asked my students to analyze a couple of their games so we could discuss them together. Only 1 of them did an effort and that was just a print of an automatically generated engine-analysis. Pretty sad if you know that I work with some of the most talented youngsters in Belgium. 2 of them are reigning Flemish champions and got both 4th place in their respective age-categories of the latest Belgium youth-championship. This mentality explains of course why there is such big gap with the level of top-players in neighboring countries.
Deep analyzing of your own games is crucial to develop yourself maximally as a player. 1 of the first to propagate this was world-champion Mikhail Botvinnik and any trainer will still repeat it even today. However Mikhail Botvinnik continued by stating that we should also publish our analysis. This allows to control the quality of the analysis by the eyes of dozens of players.
This last piece of advice is nowadays doubtful. I agree with John Hartman in his article at us-chess that our current best engines are sufficient to easily detect our mistakes in the homemade analysis. On the other hand engines still don't give answers always. Feedback from other players can still be very useful. A computer only spits moves with an evaluation and can't talk to us.
However any player with some experience in publishing analysis will surely have noticed, how rarely you still get reactions of readers nowadays. The frustration in the article "getting attention on my analysed games" is very clear. I don't expect any reactions for a long time anymore on the many analysis which I publish on this blog. I write because I like to share something otherwise I would've stopped already.
Maybe the best place around to get analysis commented, is the forum of chesspub. The site was in the first place created to promote their paying services at chesspublishing but it also has its own identity. Many members visit the forum daily already for many years (I do in the meanwhile for more than a decade) and post regularly without being obliged to take a subscription. An important element in the success are the French GM Tony Kosten and a bunch of moderators, managing to keep away any trolls. Many forums die quickly due to a lack of monitoring.
I often post analysis myself. On the other hand with 750 posts I am looking quite inactive compared to the undisputed number 1. The counter of Mark Nieuweboer having posted some articles here too before has crossed the milestone of 10.000 ! Of course all of this is not always very serious. I prefer to write only when I feel a connection with the topic. Last an opening was popping up in a discussion which I covered here on this blog see king's gambit with Nf3. Buddo encountered a problem for white which he could not solve see chesspub: John Shaw King's Gambit. I spent a couple of hours analyzing the position at home and found an answer.
Buddho used also his engine to analyze the position but could not discover this. In my article computers achieve autonomy I tell that in the ongoing world-champion final of correspondence-chess we see a drawing rate of almost 100%. However it is serious mistake to deduct that anybody can analyze like in that top-tournament. I even dare to state that making never (detectable) mistakes in analysis is something very few are capable of. Please remember my comments upon the fantastic game Navara-Wojtaszek in the article g4 in the najdorf or more recently in the game Wojtaszek - Mamedyarov after which black contributed his loss to an error made by his helper in the preparation of the game see chess24, a site quickly gaining popularity.
So I help others but sometimes I learn something too. In January there was a brief thread about a very specific line in the Dutch Defense. I didn't want to spend much time at analyzing the line as I only got it once in a standard game on the board. That game was played more than 20 year ago, see below.
The rating-difference allowed me to escape with this premature draw. I was a warned man so I did follow with the necessary interest the rest of the discussion on chesspub. MNb (Mark Nieuweboer) proposed an interesting anti-dote (5...Bxc3) which I checked at home with my engine.
Only one and a half month later I was happily surprised to meet the line on the board. Almost 20 years it didn't happen and now suddenly it does. When you talk about the devil then you see his tail. The surprise prepared by my opponent, the Belgian FM Frederic Verduyn returned as a boomerang. I wasn't able to win the game which is at least partly due to Frederic's strong defensive skills.
I would like to tell you more successful stories about chesspub but the truth is that the best days are passed. We had 183312 posts in the last 15 years. That is averagely almost 34 posts each day. However lately we see regularly days without any post. The silent periods are becoming longer and longer.
Most posts are today about chess-books, DVDs and repertoires. What do you recommend and what not? Analyzing of positions has become seldom while originally it made the backbone of the forum. I suspect that we can point again to the engines as culprit. Their answers are for most amateurs sufficient. Besides that people are less open and are more fond of privacy. People prefer small closed groups eg. at Facebook. Initially the chesspub-founder Tony did not have the intention to keep the site running for 15 years but now it seems the chesspub-forum is slowly dying. Everything ends but after 10 years it hurts.
Brabo
Maybe the best place around to get analysis commented, is the forum of chesspub. The site was in the first place created to promote their paying services at chesspublishing but it also has its own identity. Many members visit the forum daily already for many years (I do in the meanwhile for more than a decade) and post regularly without being obliged to take a subscription. An important element in the success are the French GM Tony Kosten and a bunch of moderators, managing to keep away any trolls. Many forums die quickly due to a lack of monitoring.
I often post analysis myself. On the other hand with 750 posts I am looking quite inactive compared to the undisputed number 1. The counter of Mark Nieuweboer having posted some articles here too before has crossed the milestone of 10.000 ! Of course all of this is not always very serious. I prefer to write only when I feel a connection with the topic. Last an opening was popping up in a discussion which I covered here on this blog see king's gambit with Nf3. Buddo encountered a problem for white which he could not solve see chesspub: John Shaw King's Gambit. I spent a couple of hours analyzing the position at home and found an answer.
So I help others but sometimes I learn something too. In January there was a brief thread about a very specific line in the Dutch Defense. I didn't want to spend much time at analyzing the line as I only got it once in a standard game on the board. That game was played more than 20 year ago, see below.
Only one and a half month later I was happily surprised to meet the line on the board. Almost 20 years it didn't happen and now suddenly it does. When you talk about the devil then you see his tail. The surprise prepared by my opponent, the Belgian FM Frederic Verduyn returned as a boomerang. I wasn't able to win the game which is at least partly due to Frederic's strong defensive skills.
Most posts are today about chess-books, DVDs and repertoires. What do you recommend and what not? Analyzing of positions has become seldom while originally it made the backbone of the forum. I suspect that we can point again to the engines as culprit. Their answers are for most amateurs sufficient. Besides that people are less open and are more fond of privacy. People prefer small closed groups eg. at Facebook. Initially the chesspub-founder Tony did not have the intention to keep the site running for 15 years but now it seems the chesspub-forum is slowly dying. Everything ends but after 10 years it hurts.
Brabo
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