And this whole 'blitz players' can't beat 'classical players' thing is utter nonsense - the best classical players ARE the best blitz players.

Actually, I had a feeling that only personal attacks against other posters were not allowed. If someone said "Danailov is scum", I thought it was ok. Of course, quite a few people read this forum, and - who knows - that may include some people that are being discussed in the International Events subforum, for example We had some authors post earlier, by the way, but none of the people that were mentioned in this thread, I think.

Fired - I've just grabbed my copy of Chess for Zebras. I'll try to find the comment that you mentioned.

Here we go, page 24-25.

'accumulating knowledge about openings and endings etc. is only useful in so far as it helps you know how to play the opening and endgame, and this transition does not come automatically'

Just over the page, Rowson then quotes Jerome Bruner, a psychologist:

'Skill is a way of dealing with things, not a derivation from theory.... Knowledge helps only when it descends into habits.'

As you say - a lot of people read but don't post, so they could be there to be offended. I don't see how personal attacks can contribute to anything constructive myself - unless, possibly, it's along the lines of 'Danailov is stupid - and here are the reasons which prove his stupidity'.

Thanks Kevin!

Well, I guess my point is that I didn't think DeepNf3 went overboard in his criticism of de la Maza. As for what the forum rules are - since I am not a moderator anymore, I'll leave it to SachBinger and The Cube to worry about those moral dilemmas

Anyway, I've read good things about Rowson's Chess for Zebras book. From the reviews it sounded much more like good old traditional chess instruction than something like what de la Maza offers. But I'll admit I haven't read that book either. What is the target audience for it, by the way?

The target audience is probably adult players who are struggling to improve. In terms of strength I'd say it applies to pretty much everyone - unless you're already a GM and even then, I would suspect they'd find some interesting things.

It's a lot about the psychological aspects of chess and how we think about it. The name itself is interesting. His reasons are that it comes from an old saying (African I think, but he did say exactly where) something like - When you hear hoovebeats, think of a zebra. The point being that when we hear hooves we automatically think... horsey! This leads to the subtitle of the book - thinking differently about black and white. He talks about the Black is OK! books, and agrees. And (finally!) it's a reference to Chess for Tigers, but I think his idea was something like zebras are more flexible.

There's a lot of interesting things in it and everyone I know, without exception, has found many of the ideas apply to them. There is a lot of discussion about certain positional themes too - the main one I remember is the 'reverse exchange sacrifice'.

Overall - de la Maza's book is very debatable but Chess for Zebras isn't. It may not rapidly improve your chess but it will teach you to think like a zebra.

"Personal attacking" refers to insults or slurs directed at other ChessNinja members. "Danailov is scum" is not a personal attack but nonetheless contributes little to most debates and is likely to lower the quality of discussion. I don't speak for SachBinger, but I won't moderate the latter kind of slur. Use your own discretion when criticizing/insulting non-CN members.

last time i checked these were not (by far margin) the best chess players in America or anywhere else, and still the manage to beat Yudazin in a 25 5increment tournament,but they can't make it nowhere close to a candidate match just like Yudazin did

Oleg Shalumov
Jayson Gonzales
Yaacov Zilberman
Mark Paragua
Mikhail Kekelidze

then again Zsuzsa polgar beats all of them at whatever time controls anyways

againg when i talked about these guys i wasn't talking anything about blitz, I was talking about tactical skills vs overall chess knowledge, there is no doubt in my mind that Yudazin has both tactical and overall chess knowledge and that is the reason he was candidate and no the guys whom names i give above, same reason nobody who follows de la maza's method will ever make it 100.000 miles close to where Jonathan Rowson made it in his chess career

there has never been or will be a better blitz player than Henrikh Chepukaitis, then again he cold not "get close" to the best in long time control tournaments




.

Anyway, I think it is time to reveal who was whom in that 4 game blitz match between Fired and myself that was posted earlier. Don't read further if you still want to examine and take a guess.


****SPOILERS AHEAD****

I'll start with the easy one - game four. It was indeed me seeing tactical ghosts and giving up the queen with white in that game. I have seen difficulties in some of the lines after g3, but in others I think I just misjudged the danger of black's attack. Usually I have a good sense of danger, but here it has certainly failed me. So SachBinger was right on that one.

Next - game one. SachBinger got this one wrong: it was me on the black side of that game using cheapo tactics and trying to make up for positional disadvantage For some reason I couldn't bring myself to play quickly in that game and ended up losing on time quite badly. By the way, during the game, like SB, I felt white was considerably better just before he blundered the exchange, but after I looked at it with an engine, I was much happier about this game than I was right after it.

Onto game three, which was probably the most interesting game and the one that generated the most interest in the discussion above. It was Fired playing the black side of that Benoni and "positionally outplaying" me in the opening after which I was able to milk the two bishop advantage into a victory. So DeepNf3 was right if he implied Fired was black in this game. And SB was right to change his opinion, though later he changed it back.

That leaves game two. And again, that is me with the two bishops - this time on the black side. I had advantage for most of the game, but gave it away in the end and was quite lucky to flag Fired in the resulting mouserace. Fired was up two games to none when this game was played, so it was very important for me to win this game. This is also the game SB got right.

I can provide examples of personal attacks if needed. For the common good of course - not for some personal gratification (I don't like making personal attacks on people other than if it is against Octal who is from Montana - but that's just a fact even if it is a harsh thing to say about a person).


Personally, I think trying to seperate tactics and strategy and discuss which one is more important is like trying to debate what makes a good pizza - the crust or the toppings.

That said, I want to point out that in a lot of sports that require ball control - soccer, basketball, volleyball coaches emphasize the ball control (tactics) in the early years. If you have a team of players with good ball control, it is much easier to install a sound strategy compared to a team of good strategists with poor ball-skills. Now that I am old I get to play on many of those - we are all so wise now but our legs and feet can;t move anymore - we usually lose but our game analysis after is awesome. So I don;t disagree that younger\amateurs should study tactics quite a bit. In fact I think even Silman was writing something like that somewhere about encouraging young players to play gambits. I think it is well accepted theory.