tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24933660193054117422024-03-28T08:45:16.961+01:00Chess-BraboCopyright © 2013-2022 BraboBrabohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06327954944602462820noreply@blogger.comBlogger260125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493366019305411742.post-62225203417472555942022-03-13T08:40:00.002+01:002022-03-13T08:40:00.202+01:00The endIt is exactly 1 year ago when I published my last article on this blog which is of course no coincidence. After 1 year of silence from the readers I can safely state that nobody bothers anymore about the future of this blog. Sounds absolutely normal right ? Unless you look at the statistics of this blog which indicate this blog received during its existence almost 300.000 visits and every day Brabohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06327954944602462820noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493366019305411742.post-90268229004322716322021-03-13T07:47:00.003+01:002021-03-13T07:52:55.758+01:00Modelgames part 2
I am a big believer in using modelgames, and it is no coincidence that many opening- and repertoire-books / courses use modelgames. These are games that give me an aha-experience about an opening or middle-game (and an endgame by exception). More objectively defined, they meet a number of criteria. The first is that the games show a clear plan, and (secondly) the annotator explains this well. Brabohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06327954944602462820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493366019305411742.post-2160775097086220432021-03-06T12:14:00.010+01:002021-03-06T12:25:14.104+01:00Data-mining in chess
Data-mining is a technique used to find patterns (correlations) in large amounts of data. This is not only useful for commercial companies, for example, who want to know whether they can still use their chessboards for their current target group of old grey men, or if they may need to tap generation Z. It is not immediately about finding first-order relationships, but second- and even Brabohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06327954944602462820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493366019305411742.post-70725412812559713732021-02-28T10:56:00.002+01:002021-02-28T11:03:56.361+01:00The expert part 4
The vast majority of club-players have not played any official games in the past year. In recent months, Daniel Dardha was even the only Belgian to have played any competition at all. By the way, I don't understand how he got abroad because I thought that only essential travels are allowed. In any case, my last official game dates back to the last summer and then playing over-the-board-chess Brabohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06327954944602462820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493366019305411742.post-1683944523810055952021-02-19T17:14:00.010+01:002021-02-25T16:19:59.212+01:00Fashion part 3
The American grandmaster Grigory Serper does not avoid the polemic in his blog articles and that attracts a lot of readers. He is and remains the most popular blogger on chess.com today. Moreover, you can never catch him of writing nonsense. He always adds evidence to his challenging claims. His most recent article "Fabiano Caruana chess-revolution" was another exemplary example of this. Brabohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06327954944602462820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493366019305411742.post-34259257833178629072021-02-05T11:33:00.000+01:002021-02-05T11:33:58.544+01:00Chess in movies
It is certain that the corona crisis has caused and will still bring a lot of misery. However, as with any crisis, you also have people who benefit rather than suffer. I certainly have nothing to complain about myself. The past year was a good year at work because more than ever there was a demand for extensions and improvements to the existing telecom networks. There was a big increase in Brabohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06327954944602462820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493366019305411742.post-88145413907819480592021-01-29T15:11:00.002+01:002021-01-29T15:21:03.082+01:00Geometry
Earlier on this blog I already wrote that the Netlfix-series The Queen's Gambit is a visual masterpiece but also the dialogues are often intriguing. Particularly a fragment from episode 4 "Middle game" with the very young Russian grandmaster Giorgi Giev, caused a stir. At reddit there were a number of discussions about it like : I still don't fully understand Beth's Brabohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06327954944602462820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493366019305411742.post-37718314790547937702021-01-19T10:28:00.001+01:002021-01-19T10:52:15.864+01:00Revolution in the millennium part 3
Last month I put a lot of effort in setting up the Belgian online chessclub. I created a bi-lingual website for it and steered several meetings to work out a calendar of activities to entertain and attract new members. Nonetheless I still managed in parallel to continue working on a number of mini-analysis projects. Those projects are analysis of openings which I have Brabohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06327954944602462820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493366019305411742.post-61240274057311295202020-12-25T21:18:00.012+01:002020-12-25T21:40:10.567+01:00LichessUsually I take 2 weeks off from the job at the end of the year but this year I decided otherwise. Normally we travel around Christmas to Russia to visit my parents-in-law but corona made this impossible. Also visiting people is currently not allowed in Belgium and all the enjoyable activities outside are cancelled. I hope next year will be better as I transferred the maximum allowed holidays. OneBrabohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06327954944602462820noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493366019305411742.post-20224279142642465402020-12-11T06:38:00.001+01:002020-12-11T06:38:22.524+01:00The (non-) sense of blitz part 5In part 3 I talked about my quest for the best filters which I can apply to extract my most interesting games out of a large database to be used for studying openings. In part 4 I explained how I worked with those games and how easily I could implement the new acquired knowledge in practice. In part 5 I want to discuss the best methods of getting new interesting played online games. Which tempo, Brabohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06327954944602462820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493366019305411742.post-66724305081460253742020-12-04T09:13:00.009+01:002020-12-04T09:39:56.401+01:00The (non-) sense of blitz part 4
September 1995 at the age of 19 years old I played my very first rated game for national rating. This is meanwhile 25 years ago but I remember that even in those early days I was already preparing my games. Obviously it was still very basic as I didn't have much information about my opponents and the engines were very weak. Today a lot has changed. Not only the tools are totally different but Brabohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06327954944602462820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493366019305411742.post-52417859191718588562020-11-26T12:38:00.003+01:002020-11-26T12:50:02.147+01:00The (non-) sense of blitz part 3
Never waste a crisis as it is an excellent opportunity to question the default. We can wait till everything normalizes again but maybe we never fully return to the old situation. Nonetheless I don't see many new initiatives. Therefore I don't think it is a coincidence that in the most recent online magazine of Vlaanderen Schaakt Digitaal readers were asked to share their ideas/ experiences to Brabohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06327954944602462820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493366019305411742.post-77767430843026353922020-11-19T15:59:00.006+01:002020-11-19T16:12:09.365+01:00Corona endangers the existence of many chess-clubs
Some time ago my club-president Robert tried to cheer us up by telling us that a year without chess isn't the end of the world. He is right of course. Many players have proven that it is perfectly possible to make a comeback even after a long period of inactivity (the strongest example is doubtless strong Jan managing to become an international master after retirement and decades of not Brabohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06327954944602462820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493366019305411742.post-88861687567443683832020-11-12T17:28:00.002+01:002020-11-13T06:49:38.652+01:00Testing chess-engines part 2Corona has a serious impact on our social and for many also their professional lives. The damage is getting bigger by the day and no doubt for many it won't be easy to recover financially nor emotionally. However even in the darkest periods there are also positive elements. Some time ago Belgian newspapers reported that high-school-students achieved slightly higher grades compared with last yearsBrabohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06327954944602462820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493366019305411742.post-85258052821473336912020-11-01T11:47:00.015+01:002020-11-05T08:52:28.742+01:00Practical chess part 2
It becomes more and more clear that we won't be able to play regular on the board chess for a long while. For me chess isn't worth taking huge health-risks nor can I afford it to take sufficient precautions to play chess safely. However there aren't many alternatives for playing chess. We can't consider online chess seriously as you never know who or what is exactly playing against you. Last Brabohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06327954944602462820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493366019305411742.post-83025684824288496942020-10-19T16:38:00.001+02:002020-10-20T07:31:28.175+02:00New viewers part 2Maybe some readers already noticed it but I updated last week all the 244 old articles of this blog to the Chessbase-viewer. I took me slightly more than 10 hours editing html-code so not something you want to do often. Of course the idea is that for the new articles I will be using the same viewer.I was already for some time toying with the idea of switching the viewer but only recently Brabohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06327954944602462820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493366019305411742.post-69259728241768289382020-10-14T14:24:00.004+02:002020-10-19T08:38:37.322+02:00Chess position trainer part 4
The Russian top-grandmaster Alexander Grischuk is a phenomenon in the world of chess. More exactly he always makes you laugh when he is being interviewed. Some months ago I found some beautiful compilations of those interviews which cheered me up in these dark times of not playing any on the board chess see Thug Life Compilation part 1, part 2 and part 3.It is therefore not a Brabohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06327954944602462820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493366019305411742.post-88577029282976591412020-09-28T09:51:00.003+02:002020-10-22T06:55:32.200+02:00Regression-tests
It took me about 20 years when I finally started to build a proper opening-repertoire. I often wondered afterwards why I waited so long with it. Not only I played far too long bad openings (which I probably still partly do because I am still playing the Dutch Defense) but in most games I really had no clue what I was doing during the opening. I still hope to play a lot of chess in the future Brabohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06327954944602462820noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493366019305411742.post-78597201349040132912020-09-14T11:34:00.004+02:002020-10-18T11:56:38.359+02:00The chess-microbe part 3
While the French Open of Cappelle La Grande (end of February) was still running, it already became clear to me that the corona-virus wouldn't be a joke despite at that time the news was still minimizing the dangers of it. However I was also at that time still hopeful that we could quickly beat the virus. China was able to do it so I assumed that Europe and definitely Belgium with a much Brabohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06327954944602462820noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493366019305411742.post-66388435062606738002020-08-22T19:49:00.005+02:002020-10-18T11:55:30.324+02:00Practical chess
School is for me already longtime ago but I suspect teaching hasn't changed much since. When a new theme is studied then first the teacher will explain the theory and next this theory is practiced via solving exercises. The same is valid for chess. If we use the method of steps then first the rules of the game or tactical patterns like double attack/ skewers/ pins... are explained before the Brabohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06327954944602462820noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493366019305411742.post-21869318985872118902020-08-05T10:51:00.001+02:002020-08-05T12:07:04.341+02:00Online chesstournaments
Beginning of this year I wrote in my article Papua New Guinea that I am playing online for about 20 years already. However only since a couple of months I also play online chesstournaments. This means earlier I only played online single games although also rated in most cases. I wasn't interested in online tournaments. There are almost no prizes to win. A standing doesn't mean Brabohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06327954944602462820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493366019305411742.post-7217475996981150692020-07-25T20:15:00.006+02:002020-10-18T12:05:26.906+02:00Clubchess and/or internetchess part 2
In one of my very first articles on this blog, about 8,5 years ago, I summoned the clubs to explore the possibilities of internetchess. Unfortunately almost none of them made any efforts although in a recent chessmagazine of the Dutch federation it was once more proven that internetchess can boost also clubchess. Therefore when clubchess stopped due to the corona-crisis, I Brabohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06327954944602462820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493366019305411742.post-1712077305385559942020-06-30T11:22:00.003+02:002020-10-18T11:47:25.383+02:00Revolution in the millennium part 2
The possibilities are nowadays almost unlimited to improve at chess. With a few clicks of the mouse we can access countless games played at a high standard. A student can learn a lot by studying the good examples but does it also make sense to look at wrong examples? There is no agreement about that between trainers.
Even analyzing our own games already generated some discussions recently Brabohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06327954944602462820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493366019305411742.post-28314299759150798232020-06-21T19:42:00.001+02:002020-06-21T20:04:52.457+02:00Old wine in new skins part 3
In 2013 I wrote on this blog a positive review about the book Move First Think Later see the article I knew it. 8 years after his first book the Dutch IM Willy Hendriks released his 2nd: On the Origin of Good Moves.
Some writers try to publish each year one or even more new books/ dvds. However if you want to achieve a high standard then you need a lot of time to do the Brabohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06327954944602462820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493366019305411742.post-36966844552100732302020-06-02T11:36:00.002+02:002020-06-02T12:00:12.236+02:00Chesspub part 2
2020 had to be the year of my comeback to a full-active player but the corona-crisis decided differently about it. Last decade I limited my chess-activities to about 10 fide rated games per year so that I would have always sufficient time to spend with my children. However small kids don't stay forever small and at some moment start to do things independently. Therefore in 2018 I decided that itBrabohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06327954944602462820noreply@blogger.com0