21 May 2012

Chess Quizzes for Beginners

Instead of spending my chess time today converting my About.com material, I spent it watching the archived video from game seven of the Anand - Gelfand match, which I missed yesterday, followed by the live broadcast from game eight. Both games were decisive: game seven won by Gelfand, game eight by Anand. Knowing the result of game seven while watching it detracted very little from the overall experience; I still enjoyed it immensely. I learned a lot from GM Leko's detailed analysis and was reminded that the outcome of a game between world class players is seldom certain while in progress.

That last point was brought home even more remarkably in the eighth game. I had Chessdom.com's live analysis, which is text based, open in another tab at the same time the live broadcast was playing. While Leko and GM Nepomniachtchi were still forecasting a slightly better game for Gelfand playing Black, Chessdom had already recorded his resignation. It seemed that everyone except Anand overlooked the Queen trap. With four games to go the match is tied again and I expect we'll hear no more about overcautious play and short draws.

While watching the games, I took some time to drag two of my About.com pages out of archive and prepare them for conversion. Both were part of a series titled 'Chess Quizzes for Beginners':-

Each page links to another 18 pages, which I haven't had time to convert and which don't all work properly on Archive.org. For now, I'll leave those pages hidden on the main site -- also named 'Chess for All Ages' -- and will come back to them next time. I'll sign this post Been There, But Haven't Done That [Redux].

No comments: