Wait a minute, in the analysis of Bf1 (instead of Nf1??), instead after 30...Qh5, why take the queen with the knight? Take with the rook, then after the exchanges on h5 with the white knight there, white plays Ng7! I bet Kasparov sees this line.
We have a new world chess champion, one that is highly deserving of the title. Congratulations Magnus!
Anand goin down: <iframe width="640" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/R-6M5FukAoE?feature=player_detailpage" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Carlsen says he has a GF. Great for him - chess is not life. I am going to guess it is one of these girls, and since I like the one on the end, I am going to guess EN.
History: Steinitz Lasker Capablanca Alekhine Euwe Botvinnik Tal Smyslov Petrosian Spassky Fischer Karpov Kasparov Kramnik Anand Carlsen
I have always thought that the most fascinating part of chess players is the connection it has with prodigies and what we can learn about brain function from those that excel at the game. For example, it is well known that many chess players have exceptional memory, terrific capacity to manipulate object in their minds at the same time keeping track of it all, amazing feats of concentration and almost divine ability to focus, strong competitive tendencies, etc. I recently had a converstation with a gifted music teacher. I stated that I thought of the three categories in which psychologists categorize prodigies, music, chess and mathematics, that I thought the one that enlisted the least of the brain functions was music, and that the one that engages the brain the hardest is mathematics with chess square in between. I think the reason is that it is far easier to remember music than chess themes, while the thing that makes mathematics so difficult is that young people simply don't have the mental hardware to be able to understand abstractions. Pierre Deligne is a glaring exception, having read the Bourbaki books like they were novels at age 15, probably the most amazing thing I have ever heard of a 15 year old do. But what interests me the most is probably most spectacularly displayed in chess, that is, memory. The problem of memory can be broken down into: Encoding or registration: receiving, processing and combining of received information Storage: creation of a permanent record of the encoded information Retrieval, recall or recollection: calling back the stored information in response to some cue for use in a process or activity Old theories say that the hypocampus plays an important part in this, but I think that is simplistic. It is said that all of us have a genius for remembering almost everything we experience. Therefore, the problem cannot be storage, it must be either retrieval, or encoding. I am going to assume that all brains encode memory equally well. Therefore it must be retrieval that is the key. As I posted in an earlier post in this thread, the psychologist father of the Polgar sisters sabotaged the part of the human brain that has nearly photographic memory for recall, the visual system for recognizing faces. But what exactly do people like Magnus Carlsen and Garry Kasparov, both of whom are known to have exceptional memory, what is it about the way their brains are structured that allow them to have this extraordinary capacity for recall? Is it some anomaly that allows them through some simple trick of their brains to efficiently recall nearly all they memorized? I find it really interesting.
A fascinating interview with Anand: http://en.chessbase.com/post/anand-i-was-outplayed-by-carlsen Well worth reading. Rarely are chess players so forthcoming as Anand is in this interview. He shows that clearly he was trying to fight from the get go, but points out that Carlsen has an amazing ability to suck the complications from just about any position, leading the game into strategical themes where he has almost no chance of losing and dragging a game out for hours where the opponents eventually tire and make a mistake. So he says. However, as I pointed out in the study in this post, Carlsen not only is very error free, the positions he gets into are not as "simple" (maybe simple and dry are not synonyms) as they are made out to be: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showt...highlight=computer+analysis+gauge#post3776023