Chess Player V Player

[Ma Layssard]

JosephHenry Blackburne (1841-1924) played chess until he died at the age of 82. He tied for 1st place in the British championship at the age of 72. It is estimated he played over 100,000 chess games in his career.

Paolo Boi (1528-1598) played world class chess until he died at the age of 70. He defeated Ruy Lopez in front of the king of Spain. He played chess with church members, including Pope Paul III. He was offered to be made a cardinal, but he refused. At the age of 70, he was playing an important chess match with Salvio in Naples, Italy, but lost. Some say he was poisoned by jealous rivals and died. Others say he caught a cold when hunting a died as a result of it.

Arthur Dake (1910-2000) was once the oldest active chess grandmaster. He played chess for over 75 years. In 1987, at the age of 77, he scored 8-4 in the US Open. He was still playing in rated chess tournaments at the age of 89. He died 20 days after his 90th birthday.

Hermann Helms (1870-1963) wrote a chess column for 62 years. He published the American Chess Bulletin for 59 years. At the age of 84, he was awarded the International Arbier title. He died one day after he reached his 93rd birthday.

Kirk Holland (1910-?) was once the President of the American Chess Federation. He was still playing in rated USCF chess events at the age of 94 in Chicago and was once considered the oldest active chess player in the United States.

Viktor Korchnoi (1931- ) is still playing grandmaster level chess at the age of 82. He is currently the oldest grandmaster on the world chess tournament circuit. In 2005, he was still ranked in the top 100 in the world at the age of 74. In 2007, he tied for 2nd in the National Open.

Jared Moore (1893-1995) was still playing correspondence chess at the age of 100. He died at the age of 101. He first started playing correspondence chess at the age of 67 and was perhaps the oldest player to play correspondence chess.

Enrico Paoli (1908-2005) became a grandmaster at the age of 88. He was the strongest active nonagenarian in the world, still playing chess at the age of 97. He died less than a month away from his 98th birthday.

Vassily Smyslov (1921-2010) became a Candidate and oldest qualifier for the World Chess Championship at the age of 61. At age 61, he took 2nd place in the 1982 Las Palmas Interzonal. In 1988, at the age of 67, he was the oldest person to play in a Soviet chess championship. He won the first World Seniors Championship in 1991 at the age of 70. He won the Staunton Memorial at Groningen at the age of 75. He ended his chess career at the age of 80 because of failing eyesight, rated 2500.

They have blind tournaments... for blind people I mean. The ones that have been blind from a young age I think are around 1500. Players that used to be masters but lost most their sight due to old age or sickness would of course be stronger.

And Ray Charles was what, estimated at class A? I just know the people who usually show up to these tournaments generally top out around 1500. It wouldn't surprise me if you'd find stronger blind players playing in sighted tournaments.

In the 2009 US Blind Championship the winner, Dennis Cummings had a rating of an expert. There was another player rated higher, also an expert, who withdrew after a couple of rounds. He felt he had an unfair advantage because he was legally blind, not totally blind.

As for the strongest blind player, overall, my guess would be GM Peter Biyiases, who won the Canadian Championship, in the 70's, but eventually went blind, due to a condition. As for the best female blind player, I'm guessing it's a Russian master, somewhere, though I'll gladly be a runner-up.

What confuses some folks about the term, "blind", is the fact that blindness has varying degrees. Though some players in our division are partially-sighted - like myself - others are NLP, meaning they have no light perception, at all. The qualifying standard, of course, is whether a player can see well enough to drive. (If not, they are generally considered legally-blind, and are classified as simply blind, for competition.)

While my slow and quick ratings seem stuck in B Class, I play a decent game of Blitz, as an Expert, officially. I suspect I'm among a very few blind players who even bother with Blitz, however, but I feel pretty good to have achieved at least that.

As I mentioned in my old article, this is the question that has no answer. Indeed, it is very difficult to guess who would have won the world championship match Fischer-Karpov in 1975, let alone a completely hypothetical encounter like Capablanca-Carlsen.

Granted, it is as subjective as naming the most influential composer. Is it Bach, Mozart, Beethoven or somebody else? In my opinion, Garry Kasparov is the player who made the biggest impact on modern chess.

I am ready to admit that I am very biased here since I was a student of the famous Botvinnik-Kasparov school. Had I had an opportunity to discuss chess with Bobby Fischer, my choice of the most influential chess player might have been different. But I can tell you that whenever I do any chess activity, one way or another I always remember Kasparov!

The memories of my youth came back to me. I was 17, just received the master title and qualified to play in the First League of the Soviet Championship. My opponents are very strong grandmasters whose pictures I saw in chess magazines.

I was very happy to survive the crazy complications that I started myself early in the opening. While I was enjoying the memories from the tournament I had played over 30 years ago, the game Aronian-Grischuk continued.

Hmm, Grischuk allowed White to put his knight on a very dangerous f5 square. Kasparov frequently told us in the school that the Nf5 is a harbinger of a future attack. Here is his own game:

More memories from my youth! This time it is July 1988, and I am serving in the Soviet Army. Surprisingly, the summer is hot even in Siberia! The biggest tournament of my life, the World Junior Championship, starts in about two months and I am looking for any chess game or just a position to analyze. (I wrote about my army experience in this article.)

Somehow I managed to get the latest issue of the "Soviet Sport" newspaper where they gave daily reports from the super-strong Soviet chess championship. Here is the position that I saw there. Do you see that it really resembles the game Aronian-Grischuk?

As you could see, while Levon Aronian was creating his masterpiece, I couldn't help but think about Kasparov's chess heritage. Now you can understand why I consider Garry Kasparov the most influential chess player of all time!

This list of top-ranked chess grandmasters is ordered by their peak Elo rating. The cut-off value is 2700 for men (players with a rating at or above this value are colloquially known as super grandmasters) and 2500 for women.

Do you consider yourself to be a classy, reserved traditional chess player, or a rough, tough street chess player. Whats the difference. A tournament chess player plays main line openings. They play reserved in a sense waiting on their opponent to make a mistake, then capitalizing. A street chess player on the other hand plays lots of off beat, irregular lines that may not be that good, but they have a psycological advantage when they play them against their opponent. . These openings include the Frankenstein-dracular variation of the vienna game, the danish gambit (THE BLACKMAR DIEMAR GAMBIT) The latvian gambit etc. Sometimes These types of players like playing in parks playing blitz, or bullet chess for a few dollars. These types of players don't care about rating points. Victory is what these players crave. (A little bit of trash talking amongst the weaker street players tends to happen alot. These types of players typically don't care about pawn formations (doubled pawns, isolated pawns etc.) They typically have a good opening, a superb middle game, but an outright crappy endgame. These players generally like to attack They could also use some work on their defensive game

A Tournament chess player on the other hand is a player who plays Normal openings. ie the english, the caro kann, the sicilian, kings indian defence etc. these types of players care a great deal about ratings. These players have an ok opening and middlegame, but they compensate by having an exceptionally strong endgame. The can defend really good. These players however have a bit of issue going for the inititive They would prefer to make their opponent pay for a mistake, missed opportunities

Street players are (generally) good at blitz, bad at long games, and tournament players are (generally) the other way around. And I'd think it would be the other way around, because tourney players do a lot of studying whereas street players, although they might study, usually go by instinct.

I think of a tournament player not as reserved but more practical. They try to get a true evaluation and try to find a logical and best move regardless of if it's a sacrifice and attack or a quiet maneuvering game. They try to get every ounce of advantage out of every move and move order.

This page is not meant to be a replay of that discussion. What i would like this page to be is a place for those who actually enjoy both chess and Go (I almost always see Go capitalized, whether or not it begins a sentence, is this the correct way?) to be able to discuss the two games and how they tend to relate.

I know for myself, I learned to play chess at a young age, and for the most part never really took much of an interest in it. This, I think, was mostly due to the fact that I felt I was horrible at the game and never really got enough of an insight into it to either improve or see the beauty of it. I would play from time to time, but never went out of my way for a game.

After some time playing and learning Go, I had the opportunity to play a game of chess. To my surprise, chess had become a much more interesting game to me. Not only was I better at it since taking up Go, but I actually was able to appreciate more of the beauty of the game. Since that time I have become a much more enthusiastic player of chess, and I definitely feel that my Go playing helps my chess game. I don't think I can say the reverse at this point, but that is probably because Go is the game that I play and study more.

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