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Tuesday, September 15, 2015

A Few Readers Voted


    79 people read the request to answer the survey about what they would like to see posted, but most did not respond. As for what would like to be seen, things were evenly divided between games, players, history and instruction. About two-thirds of the readers are from the U.S. with the rest being mostly from Europe, but not one from Sweden; I guess Magnus was too busy...a little disappointing.
     All but two respondents said they were in the beginner or intermediate range and there were a few votes for more instructional articles. After thinking about it for a minute, I realized I am not really qualified to write much in the way of instructional articles. There are plenty of excellent sites available that do that anyway. Many sites also offer annotated games, but they are mostly by modern players. Personally, I think the games of the old masters are more more valuable for most of us to study. The reasons are explained in this article and this one. For me at least, the classics are easier to understand than the eclectic style of today's players and so I learn more from them. Like the times, games were simpler then. 
     I enjoy chess history a lot. Today there are a gazillion Masters and Grandmasters and tournaments are all over the place but for me, somehow, Carlsen, Anand, Topalov, Nakamura, Caruana, Giri, Ding, Kramnik, So and Grischuk just don't have the same appeal as Alekhine, Lasker, Rubinstein, Capablanca, Botvinnik, Tahl, Reshevsky or Fischer. It's called nostalgia. What is nostalgia good for? I am glad you asked because here is a New York Times article that explains it...Read article 

Short version...there won't be any major changes.

2 comments:

  1. Why fix it if it aint broke! Most of your writings are instructional in a broad sense.
    Alastair

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