1800 and counting...

Recently, I reached that 1800 level and this time I thought I'd clue the readers into what happens there. I had a young man with a 2034 rating camp on my table and watch me beat up a 'Kindergartner' (PRO or 1200+) with an off shoot of a Queen's Gambit Accepted. It appeared he (my young opponent) had NOT pursued 'this' line before and White (Moi), had some great opportunities in the middle game. This 2034, had amassed his tally with 238 victories in 247 games and explained how 'disappointed' he was with me playing youngsters, 500 and 600 points difference in rating.

"Winning is no trick at all if you can intimidate the opponent with dire menaces before the game. An even simpler way would be to shoot him and win by default. It is clear then that there is not much scope left for psychology, if our only weapons are to be moves." Ariel Mengarini

As most of you know, I am not into receiving critical analysis calmly. My recollection is quite clear in that I had my language filter on STRONG and saw NO punctuation characters. The rest of reply fades from my memory. I do recall the time back when I was a 1200 and getting beat on a regular basis by the Germen, Mexican, and Arab's with their computer aided games. Or the times my browser locked up and I wasted and watched a perfectly good position 'while away' as my clock decremented with precise accuracy.

I have made some very good friends here on Yahoo Chess. But when I am accused of being a 'Bigoted Conservative' by some one of questionable citizenship..... I digress.

What is it that Barrack Obama and Osama Bin Laden have in common?

They BOTH have friends that bombed the PENTAGON!

I dedicate my next 100 victories to Rush Limbaugh and an army of conservatives. My blood pressure will remain constant and I will maintain my health with smile on my face, a song in my heart and a Queen Pawn opening.

Yours in Service,
Joe Novell

Fred Reinfeld

Arnold Denker and Others on Fred Reinfeld

Fred Reinfeld is perhaps the most prolific chess author of all time. Grandmaster Arnold Denker calls him "the man of a hundred books because that is about the number he wrote." (Arnold Denker and Larry Parr, The Bobby Fischer I Knew and Other Stories, San Francisco: Hypermodern Press, 1995, p. 296)

Denker's assertion is misleading, however, since that is only the approximate number of chess books that Reinfeld wrote and to which he attached his own name. According to the indefatigable Bill Wall, "Reinfeld wrote over 100 chess books in his lifetime, and perhaps over 260 books total." Wall provides two lists, one of chess titles and another of nonchess titles.

Among strong players, it is not uncommon to hear disparaging remarks made about Reinfeld's chess publications. Here is an excerpt from Denker's balanced appraisal in Chapter XXVII of The Bobby Fischer I Knew and Other Stories, p. 297:

Coventional wisdom holds that there were two Mr. Reinfeld's -- an early Good Reinfeld who wrote works such as Colle's Chess Masterpieces and Keres' Best Games of Chess, not to mention fine tournament books of Cambridge Springs 1904 and Warsaw 1935, or the lovely interpretive efforts, The Unknown Alekhine and Nimzovich the Hypermodern; and a later Bad Reinfeld who gave us Chess in a Nutshell and other acorns.The conventional wisdom gets it partly right. But in defense of the Bad Reinfeld, many of his later works for beginners, while certainly annoying to "serious" chess players, served well their targeted audience. His 1001 Brilliant Ways to Checkmate and 1001 Brilliant Chess Sacrifices and Combinations are still two of the best books around for sharpening tactics.The whole chapter on Reinfeld is a delightful read as is the whole book.

Further comments on Fred Reinfeld by various authors:

That Fred produced accurate and deep analysis should surprise no one who played him over-the-board. His chess was precise, positional and poisonous. – Arnold Denker and Larry Parr (on Reinfeld)

Reinfeld's greatest contribution was as a communicator and teacher. In an age when television was in its infancy and computers were only of academic interest, he reached more people than anyone else. – Brian Gosling

Quick: name a chess writer. I am willing to bet a dollar to a dime that you named Fred Reinfeld. Reinfeld was inspired principally by chess players. Reinfeld was responsible for introducing Keres, Tarrasch, Nimzowitsch, and, to some extent, Emanuel Lasker, Capablanca, and Alekhine to the modern American chess fan. He popularized chess by popularizing chess masters. Reinfeld gave us heroes and taught us to love them, so we appreciate chess all the more. – Burt Hochberg

In his early works Reinfeld attempted to add to chess knowledge, but soon realized that he could make a better career by writing for the larger market created by weaker players. His readers liked his clear style, and his publishers liked his reliability. – David Hooper and Ken Whyld

Reinfeld had a real gift for bringing the Game - the clash of intellect and personality - to life in a way that few others ever have. – Frank Berry, 1995

It seems to me that little effort is exerted as a rule (by most writers) to make the study of a chess book an interesting and pleasant occupation. – Fred Reinfeld

Fred had that rare facility to see humor in almost everything, and when he laughed, he roared so hard that you lost control with him. – Arnold Denker & Larry Parr (on Reinfeld)

Chess QUOTES

"winning is no trick at all if you can intimidate the opponent with dire menaces before the game. An even simpler way would be to shoot him and win by default. It is clear then that there is not much scope left for psychology, if our only weapons are to be moves." Ariel Mengarini



"A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing." Emo Philips


"By some ardent enthusiasts, chess has been elevated into a science or an art. It is neither; but its principal characteristic seems to be what human nature most delights in - a fight." Emanuel Lasker


"If drink is the curse of the working classes and work is the curse of the drinking classes then chess is the curse of the thinking classes." J. Ross



"Chess is 99 percent tactics." Richard Teichmann



"Chess is 99 percent calculation." Andrew Soltis


"Chess is the greatest game ever invented, because it only looks like a game." Scott Kerns


"Chess is a beautiful mistress to whom we keep coming back, no matter how many times she rejects us." Bent Larsen


"Chess is not a game but a disease." Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman


"Generally speaking, most chess players are boring, self-centered, money-oriented, poorly educated overgrown adolescents I couldn't care less about. With some exceptions, that includes the Linares crowd and all of the world's top twenty." Alex Yermolinsky


"Place the contents of the chess box in a hat, shake them up vigorously, pour them on the board from a height of two feet - and you get the style of Steinitz." Henry Bird


"Fame, I have already. Now I need the money." Wilhelm Steinitz


"I keep on fighting as long as my opponent can make a mistake." Emanuel Lasker


"Some of Marshall's most sparkling moves look at first like typographical errors." William Napier



"Chess was Capablanca's mother tongue." Richard Reti


"I make errors, therefore I am!" Saviely Tartakower


"Why must I lose to this idiot?!" Aaron Nimzowitsch


"I never make a mistake.......on the first move!" Ernst Grunfeld


"Capablanca never took his eyes off the chorus; Alekhine never looked up from his pocket chess set." A patron who took both players to a show in 1922


"Nobody can give God pawn odds and win. But if I played white, I bet I could play God to a draw." Robert J. Fischer


"In a gambit, you give up a pawn for the sake of getting a lost game." Samuel Boden


"Always check; it may be mate." Al Horowitz



"Refrain from useless checks." Larry Evans


"Chess is a sea in which a gnat may drink and an elephant may bathe." Indian proverb



"I might add that if a gnat studies in the right way, he may eventually become an elephant." Nigel Davies


"I'd rather have a pawn than a finger." Reuben Fine



"It all depends: which pawn and which finger?" Roman Dzindzichashvili


"Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency." Raymond Chandler


"A man that will take back a move at chess will pick a pocket." Richard Fenton


Over-the-board chess is the favorite of mortals; correspondence chess is the favorite of the gods." Eduard Dyckhoff


"There are two types of sacrifices: correct ones and mine" Mikhail Tal


"The eighth square at last! Oh how glad I am to get here. And what is this on my head?" Alice (in Through The Looking Glass � Lewis Carroll)


"After 1.e4 White's game is in its last throes!" Julius Breyer


"And Charlot took the chess-board and said thus: 'Ha, lecherous *astard, must you talk so much about it?' And raises the chess-board and gave him such a great blow with it that he dashed out all his brains and forced his two eyes out of his head, and he fell dead in the middle of the place." Report of how the son of Charlemagne murdered an opponent who celebrated too much, his victory over him in chess.


"My name is Rustam Kamsky. You annoyed my son. Prepare to die." Rustam Kamsky [who has obviously seen "The Princess Bride"]


"Ours is no bloody battle With woe and horror fraught Our joust is of a gentler kind A measuring of Mind with Mind A tournament of thought. " Willard Fiske


"Have I ever mentioned you play an irritating game of chess, Mr. Spock?" Captain Kirk (after Spock had announced a forced mate)


" I suggest a new strategy, R2: let the Wookiee win. " C3PO


"Never change a winning game; always change a losing one." Bill Tilden


"The wise learn many things from their foes." Aristophanes


"You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war." Napoleon Bonaparte


"After playing out all possible outcomes for Global Thermonuclear War" - Joshua (a supercomputer in the movie Wargames):



"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?" - from the movie 'Wargames'


"My problem with chess was that all my pieces wanted to end the game as soon as possible." - Dave Barry


"All women are inferior to men." - Garry Kasparov


"I had lunch with a chess champion the other day. I knew he was a chess champion because it took him 20 minutes to pass the salt."- Eric Sykes


Who said:A successful chess player:needs to know the openings by rote be a magician in the middle game and a calculating machine in the end game?


"Play the opening like a book, the middle game like a magician, and the end game like a machine."- Spielmann



"A chess game is divided into three stages: the first, when you hope you have the advantage, the second when you believe you have an advantage, and the third... when you know you're going to lose!"- Tartakower


"That's what Chess is all about. One day you give your opponent a lesson, the next day he gives you one."- Bobby Fischer


"Chess is as much a mystery as women."- Purdy



"There are easier things to do than understand women, like nailing water to a tree."- Kombucha


"Chess is thirty to forty percent psychology. You don't have this when you play a computer. I can't confuse it."- Judith Polgar


"It is no time to be playing Chess when the house is on fire."- Italian Proverb


"The boy (then a 12-year-old named Anatoly Karpov) doesn't have a clue about Chess, and there's no future at all for him in this profession."- Mikhail Botvinnik


"Only sissies Castle."- Rob Sillars


"We don't really know how the game was invented, though there are suspicions. As soon as we discover the culprits, we'll let you know..."- Bruce Pandolfini


"You must take your opponent into a deep dark forest where 2+2=5, and the path leading out is only wide enough for one."- Mikhail Tal


"Those who say they understand Chess, understand nothing."- Robert Hubner


"Is Bobby Fischer quite sane?"- Salo Flohr


"To me, chess is like a ballet, except there's no music, no choreography, and the dancers kill each other."- W


"I failed to make the chess team because of my height."- Woody Allen


"As one by one I mowed them down, my superiority soon became apparent."- Capablanca



"You could look at that statement as astounding egotism or the simple truth, and either way I guess you'd probably be right."- Timothy Hanke


"Have you ever seen a chess article without a brilliant example of the author's own play? 'Silly question,' you will say. Quite."- Razuvayev


"Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!"- from The Princess Bride


"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."- Albert Einstein


"We are not retreating - we are advancing in another Direction..."- General Douglas MacArthur


"Never laugh at a live dragon."- Bilbo Baggins


"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have. "- Thomas Jefferson
"I had lunch with a chess champion the other day. I knew he was a chess champion because it took him 20 minutes to pass the salt."- Eric



"Adequate compensation for a sacrifice is having a sound combination leading to a winning position: adequate compensation for a blunder is having your opponent snatch defeat from the jaws of victory" Bruce A. Moon


"This is worse than a crime, it's a blunder!" - Charles M. de Talleyrand


"Don't eat beans and bananas before a chess match." - Bill Wall


"Is it against the law to kill a reporter?" - Bobby Fischer


"The process of rating players can be compared to the measurement of the position of a cork bobbing up and down on the surface of agitated water with a yard stick tied to a rope and which is swaying in the wind."- Arpad Elo


"You know, comrade Pachman, I don't enjoy being a Minister, I would rather play chess like you, or make a revolution in Venezuela." - Che Guevara


"The passion for playing chess is one of the most unaccountable in the world. It slaps the theory of natural selection in the face. It is the most absorbing of occupations. The least satisfying of desires. A nameless excrescence upon life. It annihilates a man. You have, let us say, a promising politician, a rising artist that you wish to destroy. Dagger or bomb are archaic and unreliable - but teach him, inoculate him with chess."- H.G. Wells


"Never having played Chess before, it was most interesting to be playing the game with no pieces in front of me. But I still knew how to stroke my hair when I won." - Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca in Star Wars)


"I think I can safely conclude that there is not a lot to be said for playing chess while on Valium." - Tony Miles



Austin Powers, The Spy Who Shagged Me:Ivona "Do you know how we keep warm in Russia?" Austin "I can guess, baby." Ivona "We play chess." Austin "I guessed wrong."


In chess, there are 169,518,829,100,544,000,000,000,000,000 ways to play the first ten moves!-


"Careful. We don't want to learn from this." - Calvin


In 1925, Reti played against 30 players simultaneously without watching the chess board (blindfold). He won almost all the games. It was a world record. When he was going home after that, he forgot a suitcase. When somebody reminded him about it, Reti said: "Thank you very much. My memory is so bad......"


"Short of actual blunders, lack of faith in one's position is the chief cause of defeat. To be sure, it is easy to recommend faith and not so easy to practice it." - Fred Reinfeld


"There is not the mystery in ten murders that there is in one game of chess." - Detective Linley (in Two Bottles of Relish)


"Half this game is ninety percent mental." - Danny Ozark, Philadelphia Phillies manager


The "bishop" came to my church today.. that guy was an imposter, he never once moved diagonally.-


"Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!" - Annon.


There is a story about a Turkish reformer who wanted to discourage women from wearing the veil. Instead of attempting to forbid it directly (the mathematician’s approach), he issued a decree that all prostitutes must wear veils. This indirect ‘trick’ proved the workable, effective way to his objective and shows the sort of thinking which chessplayers are often rather good at.



"Talent? What is talent? It is 99 percent labor and 1 percent natural."- GM Gata Kamsky


A pointless check only to postpone defeat is known as a spite check. It raises eyebrows. - Annon.


"Chess is not something that drives people mad," chess-playing psychologist William Hartston once remarked. "Chess is something that keeps mad people sane."


"There are only two kinds of moves in the opening," Tartakower once remarked. "Moves which are wrong and moves which could be wrong."


"When I was a heavy smoker I would get upset when I lost a game," Anatoly Lein once recalled. "Now that I no longer smoke, I get very upset when I lose a game!"


Like every great chess player, Franklin K. Young was well aware of the superiority of certain opening moves. "Always deploy," Young once advised, "so that the right oblique can be readily established in case the objective plane remains open or becomes permanently located on the centre or on the King's wing, or that the crochet aligned may readily be established if the objective plane becomes permanently located otherwise than at the extremity of the strategic front." Young later clarified the passage as follows: "The best initial move for white is 1. P-K4 [the pawn in front of the king should be moved two spaces]."


"I have always been a sworn enemy of draws and ruined many games by playing sharply for a win in drawn positions," The International Grandmaster Ossip Bernstein once remarked. "In one tournament the veteran master Burn, who was a good friend of mine, offered me a draw on the twelfth move. I refused, played for a win and ended up in a completely lost position. For the fun of it, I then offered Burn a draw myself. With his eyes flashing slyly at me through his glasses, he replied frowningly: 'Had you accepted my offer then, I would accept yours now,' upon which I resigned."[It was for such incidents that Bernstein once had a quasi-legal document drawn up and endorsed by Emanuel Lasker. Its central question (answered in the affirmative) was... "Am I not a chess idiot?"]


Cardinal Borromeo was once censured for the inordinate time he spent playing and practicing the game of chess. "What would you do if you were busy playing and the world came to an end?" he was asked one day. "Continue playing," he simply replied.


"I hate anyone who beats me."- Lisa Lane


"You can't play chess if you're groggy from pills."- Karpov


"Creating an undesired stalemate is the height of stupidity."- Anonymous


"An opening novelty is to the chess Grandmaster what a slick draw is to the gunfighter. You gotta have one or you're gonna die!" Yasser Seirawan


"Any opening is good enough, if its reputation is bad enough."- Tartakower


"I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never any use to oneself."- Oscar Wilde


"The sight of a pasty-facedjavascript:void(0) creature in bottle-end spectacles pushing little wooden men around a board hardly qualifies as throbbing pageant."- Stephen Fry


"The fact is that chess is completely pointless...... So I would urge you all to make a daily check on the English position in this current Olympiad and celebrate with me the fact that as a nation we have found true world class in an activity that is joyously, arrogantly, unrepentantly useless, unproductive, unhealthy and wonderful."- Stephen Fry