I haven't played for many years since, but I recently found some old files and post the following just in case it might prove useful to someone.

Good chess is mostly dependent on pattern recognition, a skill that's best developed through years of practice. For what my advice is worth (I didn't stick with it long enough to get very good), I'd recommend those just starting out spend the vast bulk of their time studying tactical motifs. These days that's best done on an adaptive chess server, such as Chess Tempo. You can read books about strategy and tactics, go through master games and all the rest later on.

But one thing to get right straight away is ingraining the correct thought process until it is second nature; you need a systematic and thorough approach to the way you think about the game. My approach is below, firstly in summary form and then in full, which is itself a summary of the ideas of NM Dan Heisman and his concept of Real Chess.

See the links referenced below for much more detail.

Real Chess Thought Process: Checklist

1) Static evaluation (material, safety, activity, pawn structure)

2) ALL changes in the position caused by opponent's last move (incl. guard changes, discoveries, etc.)

3) ALL threats caused by opponent's last move (incl. discovered threats)

4a) ALL checks, captures and threats I could make on my move (each counts as a candidate move)

4b) ALL checks, captures and threats opponent could make in response, I could make in counter-response, etc.

4c) Continue for each half-move until position reaches quiescence

5) Dynamic evaluation of final position resulting from each candidate move to determine which move to play

6) Final sanity check

Real Chess: Complete Thought Process

1) Static Evaluation: evaluate the position before beginning move analysis. The four main criteria for positional evaluation are: material; King safety; piece activity/mobility; and (to a lesser extent unless the other factors are equal) pawn structure. Who is better, by how much, and why? The imbalances in the static evaluation help to form your plan and act as a guide to help you decide which moves are reasonable candidates and which moves can be safely ruled out, and they also help you to determine your opponent's plan. A comprehensive static evaluation, along with the analysis of strategic considerations, can often be accomplished on your opponent's time; therefore on your present move you can just focus on how your opponent's last move changed the static evaluation, by how much and why.

2) Consider tactical changes in the position caused by your opponent's last move. Why was that move played? How did your opponent's move meet any threats you made last move? What is each piece doing (guarding, pinning, attacking, blocking, etc.)? What can either player do now that you could not do before (there could be multiple things!), and equally importantly what can either of you not do now that you could do before (including whether the piece that moved is safe on that square, i.e. is there a sequence of captures on that square or the possibility of trapping the piece and thus winning material)? The changes to look for include in particular the counting of 'guard' changes, discovered threats, blocked lines and newly-weakened squares. Follow this process for each potential half-move in each line that you consider.

3) Consider ALL threats resulting from your opponent's last move, even if the move made was the one you were expecting and you have already analyzed it. Was there a check or capture? Is she threatening anything nasty? Any forcing sequences? Assume that one exists until you can prove that it doesn't. Determine your opponent's threats by imagining skipping your own move, giving your opponent a second move in a row (but not necessarily with the same piece, of course!). Threats do not necessarily only come from the piece that just moved; there could be indirect discovered threats as well. The biggest threats are mating threats. You can either stop your opponent's threat (the simplest choice), make a bigger counterthreat of your own, possibly a zwischenzug (though this generally complicates the position and is thus more prone to calculation errors and misjudgements), or ignore the threat if you have an overwhelming attack going. If your opponent did make a move such that your reply is forced, you no longer need to consider candidate moves that do not address this threat. If instead there was no check, capture or threat (i.e. your opponent made either a quiet positional move or possibly a tactical error) move on to step 4 below.

4) Consider ALL the checks, captures and threats you could make on your move, ALL the checks, captures and threats that your opponent could make in reply to each of your candidate moves and ALL the checks, captures and threats you could make in return (i.e. calculate all lines at least 3 ply deep or until quiescence – whichever is deepest), always starting with the most plausible responses at each level of the tree; breadth is much more important than depth, due to the relative likelihood of moves in a sequence decreasing greatly with increased depth in the tree. The process for determining your own threats on your candidate moves works similarly to the process for determining threats made by your opponent, as outlined above. Always assume your opponent will make the best possible reply to your move, and always work out what that best reply is. Note that even if your opponent is forced to make a particular move in response to a threat of yours, you still need to analyze this forced move to see if it contains any new threats of its own!

If there are no good checks, captures or threats look to improve the position: if there is no material to be won, the two criteria to concentrate on improving are the safety and activity of all your pieces relative to your opponent's pieces (pawn structure gets more important in the endgame, primarily because a bad pawn structure ties pieces down to defending the pawns that can't defend themselves, thus reducing these pieces' activity). This includes getting or keeping the initiative, increasing your own piece activity (which of your pieces is currently doing the least?) or reducing enemy piece activity (e.g. by blockading with a pawn or Knight), eliminating key enemy pieces by making favourable exchanges (e.g. exchanging your own bad pieces for your opponent's good ones or swapping off pieces when you have a lead in material), increasing pressure on pieces or key squares by attacking them, and improving your own King safety or opening up the position around the enemy King. Have a plan based on each side's threats, strengths & weaknesses and make moves that accomplish the goals of the plan.

5) If you see a good move, look for a better one. Keep looking until you have found the best move on the board and worked out what the principle variation (strongest move made each ply) is likely to be. It is essential to examine all candidate moves and play the strongest one, rather than playing the first move you find that seems good. Some candidate moves are not safe and can be immediately eliminated. The strongest move out of the remaining candidates is found by evaluating the final position of each possible sequence of moves after the continuation reaches quiescence (i.e. all strong threats have been resolved), as far as this is possible (this is called dynamic evaluation); if the position is unclear, you must rely on judgement to decide whether the continuation has a greater than even chance of being better than the best available alternative move. If it appears that it does then the unclear move should be played; this is a calculated risk that is necessary in order to improve your positional judgement skills over time.

If your prior static evaluation was correct, the best move you could make will leave you as good relative to your opponent as you were prior to your move (i.e. the best move preserves the evaluation). This is because the static evaluation includes the fact that it is your move; your goal is to find the move whose dynamic evaluation equals the static evaluation.

6) Before making your move, do a final sanity check. Close your eyes, take a deep breath, then take a fresh look at the board, imaging your move having been played. Have you overlooked something silly? Any pieces left en prise? Any 'killer moves' for your opponent? If so, re-evaluate. If not, make your move with confidence and press the clock!

Note: book moves and forced moves (e.g. being in check or the middle of a (genuinely!) forced sequence of captures) can be excluded from this Real Chess thought process. But otherwise, you must play Real Chess on every single move! It only takes one mistake to lose the game, thus wasting all the work you put in previously. This thought process must therefore become second nature if you are to become a strong chess player.

Furthermore, in timed games it is necessary to play the strongest move you see given the time constraints imposed by the clock. Good time management consists of making maximum use of all the available time, saving extra time to spend on difficult, complex and/or critical positions and therefore playing simpler positions more quickly. This necessarily places constraints on the thinking process. Thus, it is imperative to learn to play Real Chess under actual playing conditions.

Remember: you are only as good as your worst move!

References

Everyone's Second Chess Book, Dan Heisman

The Thinking Cap

The Secrets to Real Chess

The Theory of Steinitz

Novice Nook nos. 10, 12, 14, 27, 29, 33, 36, 45, 51, 55, 57, 59, 61, 67, 83 & 89

#chess

I've now moved over to write.as, and just about the only feature I was using on Silvrback that they don't have here is commenting (at least, not yet). As I was considering the switch, this initially gave me pause, but as I thought about it more I realized that, firstly, considering the very infrequent posting and thus tiny readership that I had commenting was in any case pretty much moot; and, secondly, in order to reduce spam, comment systems need to present some kind of barriers to commenting, all of which are an annoyance either to the commenter, the blog owner, or both.

Furthermore, as anyone who's read just about any comment forum anywhere on the web can attest, another big problem with commenting is the very small signal/noise ratio. Low-quality comments are easy and therefore ubiquitous, a problem that increases in direct proportion to a website's popularity. Genuinely high-quality, original and insightful comments, that actually add value to a discussion, are much more difficult, and thus far less common.

Done properly, comments could and should be a great addition to any weblog; the promise of the web has always been not only to give everyone a voice, but also to foster discussion and the exchange of ideas. Having everyone's writing contained within silos clearly doesn't realize the second part of this promise, but previous attempts at solutions have all tended to fail due to the problems outlined above.

Other than a traditional blog comment system, one solution would be for write.as to have a dedicated comment forum, where each of the blogs they host would have their own categorized space for readers and authors to interact, but separate from the blog itself. Maybe remark.as will turn out to be something like this? And maybe it will fix the problems I've discussed here, but to do so it would require heavy moderation, either from dedicated moderators or (more likely) from blog owners.

In the meantime, I've decided that the simplest solution for me right now is to put up my email address to give the ability for readers to submit any comments or feedback. This will work like a letters page in a newspaper or magazine, and I'll act as editor and filter out anything that needs to be filtered, and publish (and respond to) anything that merits being seen.

It doesn't seem like composing and sending an email should be too onerous for anyone who actually has something worthwhile to say, but maybe even this small amount of friction (along with Gmail's algorithms) will eliminate most of the spam.

We'll see how this works. If I end up being as prolific as I plan to, comments may even start becoming a regular thing! So, please, if you'd like to respond to anything I write — especially if you disagree with me — please do so and if what you say provides insight I'll add it directly below the relevant post.

As an addendum, my impressions of write.as so far are fantastic. It's fast, clean and easy to use, with a great selection of features available for what I think is a very good price. Consider that an endorsement!

#blogging

Note: This article was first published on 15th August 2017. I've republished it here, followed by a brief update.

On 21st August, 2017, across a narrow band of land from Oregon to South Carolina, the summer will briefly be interrupted. The sky will dramatically darken, revealing bright stars and planets, the temperature will drop and any summer breeze will die away. Even birds and insects will fall silent. This will be the first total solar eclipse in the contiguous United States since 1979; the next two after this will be in 2024 and 2045.

Most of us have seen a lunar eclipse, when the Moon is obscured by Earth's shadow. A solar eclipse is very different; much rarer and far more spectacular. In this case, it is the Sun that is obscured by the Moon.

A comparison between a lunar and a solar eclipse. A lunar eclipse occurs when the Full Moon passes into the shadow cast by Earth. A solar eclipse occurs at New Moon, when the Moon passes directly between the Sun and Earth, and the Moon's shadow is cast on Earth's surface. Note: image not to scale.

As you probably know, the Moon orbits the Earth roughly once per month. It is this orbit that gives the moon its phases, which depend upon the proportion of the sunlit Moon we on Earth can see. When the Moon is at that point in its orbit where it is between the Sun and Earth, its daylit side is facing completely away from Earth, and thus the Moon looks completely dark. However, the Moon's orbit isn't completely aligned on the plane between the Sun and Earth, so at most New Moons, the Moon is a few degrees above or below the Sun in the sky, and we cannot see it.

Very occasionally, however, the Moon is more closely aligned with the Sun and Earth, and we see this as an eclipse. If the alignment is not perfect we see a partial solar eclipse, during which the Moon gives the impression of taking a 'bite' out of the Sun's disk, from right to left. The bite increases until the point of maximum eclipse, after which it diminishes until the Moon has cleared the Sun's disk (the Moon won't be seen again until a couple of days later, when it will appear in the early evening sky as a thin crescent).

During a partial solar eclipse, such as this one seen in Norway, the Moon, in its orbit around Earth, crosses above or below the centerline of the Sun, covering only a fraction of the Sun's disk.

If the alignment is perfect, though, then we see a total solar eclipse, and the Moon's bite of the Sun will extend until the Sun is completely covered by the lunar disk. As you might expect, this is much rarer than a partial eclipse. Lunar eclipses are common, because the Earth is much larger than the Moon and so casts a much bigger shadow, which extends almost four times further away than the Moon, and has a diameter over 2.5 times that of the Moon at the distance of the Moon. This means that a lunar eclipse can be seen from anywhere on Earth where the Full Moon is above the horizon (i.e., anywhere where it's night). A solar eclipse, in contrast, relies on the Moon's far smaller shadow, which only just reaches the surface of Earth and can be no more than about 250 km (150 miles) across.

In a fortuitous cosmic coincidence, the Moon is about 400 times smaller than the Sun, but is 400 times closer to us. That is why the Moon's disk is just able to cover the Sun's, and only when the three bodies' alignments are perfect. If the Moon was much larger and/or closer than it is, total solar eclipses would be far more common, while if it was smaller and/or further away, they would be impossible.¹

In fact, the Moon does not orbit Earth in a circle, but rather an ellipse, meaning that its distance from Earth varies by about 14% from its closest monthly approach to its furthest. If its furthest distance coincides with a solar eclipse, then even during mid-totality the Moon's disk will not be large enough to cover the Sun's disk (the cone of the Moon's shadow will not reach the surface of the Earth). This is called an annular (latin: annulus, ring) eclipse.²

An annular eclipse occurs when the Moon is near its furthest point from Earth during the eclipse.

During a total lunar eclipse, the only effect is the gradual darkening of the Moon as it moves into Earth's shadow. During a total solar eclipse, the effects are spectacular.

Of course, any total solar eclipse is preceded (and followed) by an ever-increasing partial eclipse, as the Moon appears to creep across the Sun's disk. During the first hour or so, not much happens, other than this slow encroachment. However, once totality nears, the effects become increasingly noticeable, extending even to surrounding wildlife. A few minutes before totality, the perceived temperature drops, and shadow bands may be seen moving across the landscape. With seconds to go, the shadow of the moon itself can be seen racing towards the observer. Daylight is swiftly replaced by twilight, revealing bright planets and stars (maybe even a comet if you're very lucky). Some flowers actually close their petals, and bats have been observed to begin their evening hunt for insects.

When true totality begins, the Sun's vast, incredibly hot outer atmosphere, otherwise invisible to human eyes, abruptly appears. This is a plasma, superheated to millions of degrees Celsius, but a trillion times less dense than the main body of the Sun. It appears still, but is actually in constant violent motion, due to the enormous amount of heat and the Sun's magnetic field.

Total solar eclipse, with the solar corona showing plenty of detail.

All around, the horizon shows the colours of sunset (surrounding locations that aren't in total eclipse).

As observers take in all these sights, the Moon is continuing in its path across the Sun. Soon enough, totality ends as abruptly as it began, as the Moon slides across the other side. The corona disappears, but one final spectacular effect can be observed: the diamond ring, as the first sliver of Sun emerges from behind the Moon.

The diamond ring effect

None of this can be seen during a partial eclipse, even at 99%.

During this month's total eclipse, a wide swath of the United States will experience at least the partial phases of the solar eclipse. It should be clear from what I've written that, if you possibly can, you should get somewhere where the eclipse is total.

Map of the August 2017 total solar eclipse. Go here for an interactive map.

For example, on the Atlantic coast, if you are in Greenville, Columbia or Charleston, SC, you'll see a total eclipse. If you're in Charlotte NC, Augusta GA or Beaufort SC, you'll have to make do with a (vastly inferior) partial eclipse, albeit at around 98-99.5%.

The path of totality near the Atlantic coast. The shaded area is where you'll need to be to see a total eclipse. The blue line is the center of the path of totality, and will have the longest eclipse.

I hope you enjoy the eclipse, and here's hoping for clear skies!

___

1. Due to tidal forces, the Moon is continuously increasing its distance from Earth, so that in the far future total solar eclipses will no longer be possible.

2. This variation of lunar distance is also responsible for the so-called Supermoon; when the Moon is near it's closest at Full Moon, and it therefore appears particularly large in the night sky.

Update, 13th February 2019

I was lucky enough to see the eclipse in its' entirety, from a beautifully cloudless summer sky in Orangeburg, SC.

I spent almost the entire time actually watching it with my own eyes, but I did set up my camera on a tripod and got this series of images, taken during the last few seconds of totality:

If you ever get the chance to see a solar eclipse, don't miss it!

#astronomy

This is a modified version of classic Dig, which itself is a descendant of the game Crazy Eights and is played in obscure parts of Lancashire, England.

The object of the game is to play all your cards onto the discard pile, primarily by matching the suit or rank of the top discard. A standard 52-card pack is used, ranking from 2 up to Ace. Several cards have special powers, which are described below.

5 cards are dealt to each player and the next card is dealt face up to start the discard pile. The remainder of the stock is placed face down next to the discard. If the discard is a card with special powers, the effects are the same as if the dealer had played it. The exception to this is that if the king of hearts is turned up, the dealer takes it into his own hand and reveals the next discard.

The player to the dealer’s left begins, and must play a card of the same rank or suit as the top discard, or an ace if available. If a player has no legal plays, he must draw a card from the stock, and may play this if it is legal to do so. Play proceeds clockwise.

The round ends when either a player has no more cards left, or the king of hearts is played (see below). When a player is down to a single card, they must announce this to the other players. If they fail to do so and it is pointed out to them, they must draw a penalty card from the stock and lose their next turn. If they play their last card without announcing 'last card' but nobody spots their transgression, the penalty is forfeit and the round is over. If the stock of cards is exhausted, the top discard is placed face up to start a new discard pile, and all the other discards are shuffled to start a new stock.

If a player goes out (has no cards left), they get to make any player of their choice pick up one extra card from the stock prior to the counting (see below).

Special cards

Aces: can be played without regard to the rank or suit of the top discard. The player gets to pick any suit to be the new active suit. King of Spades: the player announces ‘dig’, and all other players must draw one card each from the stock. The player then plays another card (drawing from the stock if he has no legal play). King of Hearts: the player announces 'count', and the round is immediately ended. The king of hearts can only be played if the player has no other legal plays (hearts, kings or aces). King of Clubs: allows the player to immediately play any other second card, after which play proceeds as normal. King of Diamonds: reverses the direction of play. Threes: these are the ‘melee’ cards. The player who played the 3 is the aggressor, the player to his left is the aggressee. If the aggressee or any other player has a 4 of the same suit, they must play it; that person then becomes the new aggressor, and the previous aggressor becomes the new aggressee. The melee may continue if someone (other than the current aggressor) has a 5 of the same suit, and so on. Once this sequence is broken, the final aggressee must pick up the number of cards indicated by the face value of the card played by the final aggressor. The exception to this is if the final aggressee has a jack or queen of the same suit, as this nullifies the aggression. In this case, the aggressee plays either the jack or queen and play continues with the next person. If the aggressee does not have the jack or queen of the appropriate suit, they have to pick up cards as indicated, but they may (optionally) play a legal card (not a 2 or 3) immediately, after which play continues as normal. A three cannot be played immediately after drawing. Jacks and Queens: break up melees of the same suit (see above). Eights: the next player is skipped. Twos: the next player must pick up two cards and lose their turn. However, if this player also has a two they must play it and the third player must pick up four cards and lose their turn, unless they have a two, etc. A two cannot be played immediately after drawing.

Counting

Unlike classic Dig, there is no lives system. Once the round is over, everyone counts up the total value of their remaining cards and the player with the highest total is eliminated from the game and the next round begins. In the event of a tie for highest score, neither player is eliminated. The winner of the game is the last player standing after several rounds.

The cards are counted as follows: Threes: 30 points each Twos: 20 points each Aces: 15 points each Face cards: 10 points each 4– 10: pip value

#cards #game