Volume 40, Number 1 Colorado Chess Informant January 2013 before the first round which caused a massive delay in the tournament. Although the rush happens at every tournament, it could have been lessened by at least 10 registrants the night before.
A recent event, in Manitou Springs, caused Anthea Carson to play her son Isaac Martinez. I am of the mindset that family members should not have to play against each other in tournaments unless they are both vying for prizes. SwissSys and other tournament directing programs have a simple way to enter players as a team, which means they won’ t have to play against each other unless certain conditions are met. My typical set-up is they don’ t have to play each other unless they are both leading the pack by one point. With so many chess playing families in Colorado( Herman, Carson, Doykos, Alter, Langseth, etc …) it makes sense to make this a policy at your tournaments.
If tournaments in Colorado can step up their game to be more conducive to producing competition, attracting outside talent, and being more customer service oriented, everyone will benefit. I hope this article will at the very least spark a discussion.
I think it is important to say here that I do not intend to offend anyone with this article. I tend to say things in a short, abrasive way. These are merely observations and suggestions on how to improve tournaments. Please send me an email( garrensilverwing @ yahoo. com) or give me a call( 720-383-0477) if you want to discuss anything I talked about here but please know I do not intend to use any of this as a personal attack against anyone. k
A
few weeks ago, I received the book
“ Tactics Time” by Tim Brennan and Anthea Carson and started reading it.
I am a bond market investor, and that job takes up a lot of my time. My two sons recently started playing chess and are trying to get better at it. I also happen to be a chess grandmaster. It is this last fact that complicates things the most when it comes to teaching chess to my kids.
My sons are not too eager to pick up and read chess books, since they think they already have an all-knowing resource at home who can answer all questions at any moment( and teach them all they need to know about the Sicilian Defense). But it is one thing to be a grandmaster and quite another to be an effective teacher.
I don ' t remember a time when I was a beginner. The first chess book I remember reading was“ My System” by Nimzovich. But teaching“ overprotection” and“ mysterious Rook moves” might not be ideal for someone who still stumbles over pins and discovered checks.
“ Tactics Time” to the rescue!
“ Tactics Time” is a collection of positions that occurred in real-life games between amateur players. For each position, the book asks you to find a simple tactical solution. It can be a back-rank mate, a knight fork, a double check, or simply a capture of a piece. The point is to learn to
www. colorado-chess. com see the solution quickly( although sometimes it requires seeing two or three moves ahead). There are 1001 problems, and you should be able to do 25-50 of them in one sitting. After you ' ve finished all the problems, you can still benefit from revisiting the positions you may have forgotten.
These problems are not contrived- they are the types of tactics likely to occur in a real game. Tactics such as these are really at the heart of chess. If you can solve these problems quickly, you are on your way to becoming an expert- or better.
So I went over some of these problems with my kids, helping them solve the ones that were a little harder than others. They wanted to do more! I think the problems gave them a sense of accomplishment that kept them coming back, but they were also relevant; these problems reminded them of situations they would face in real chess games.
I recommend this book to anyone below 1500, although players above that level will find some positions challenging- even I found a few interesting. Tim Brennan and Anthea Carson made sure to include diverse positions; you will find opening checkmates and pawn endings. They put a lot of good effort into this book, and the reader will be most rewarded.
I first met Tim and Anthea while giving a simultaneous exhibition in Colorado in 2011. They are active and well known in the thriving Colorado chess community- a community where I grew up in the 1980s- and they are serious students of the game.
I may have a few quibbles with some of the examples: some positions have more than one solution, and at times some variations are left out- but, as a grandmaster, I will find fault with any book. I recommend this book as a useful supplement for chess study, not as an exclusive educational text.
If you ' d like to learn to see one- and twomove tactics more clearly, such that they become second nature to you,“ Tactics Time” by Tim Brennan and Anthea Carson is for you.
GM Alex Fishbein December 23, 2012
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