1. All Woman Tournaments - It's well known that smaller groups of players create artificially small ratings. When all the women play each other and nobody else their ratings suffer. As a case in point look at the highest rated women. All of them with few exceptions play more frequently in mixed tournaments than in all-female ones. It's just a really good thing for rating system accuracy.

2. Interviews - Nearly every interview with a female player contains a 'women-in-chess' question. Not only that but the answer is somewhat obvious and only occasionally is there an answer that's somewhat interesting. How many ways can you say the same thing? My personal opinion ... there are more useful and interesting questions.

3. Death of Chivalry - As a man I find it difficult to play women. Thankfully I have not had to play too many in my career but if I played in an almost-all-girl tournament it would be psychologically taxing. I've always been chivalrous to a fault and that could cost me in this case. However, that's really my problem ... not the ladies'.

So, there you have it ... ColonelCrockett's pet peeves for women in chess. As you can probably guess I think women in chess is a great idea. I applaud the efforts of GM Susan Polgar and IM Jennifer Shahade in supporting other women any way they can. Chessvine will do the same!

Someone on Susan's official forum asked what essentially what makes a good coach ... the following is my reply posted there and reproduced here ...

well, your question is addressed to players whose skills have matured and as a lowly Class A player I'd say it's not directly addressed to me but I think as a chess teacher I can answer it.

Structure and discipline are major factors in coaching. Playing skill is good but a secondary consideration. It is not always the best players who are the best teachers. A couple of examples ...

A) Look at Paul Truong's Olympiad Coaching record ... amazing (and he was 'inferior' to the entire team of players ... if you can judge by ratings and titles).

B) Mikhail Botvinnik used Viacheslav Ragozin as a coach/sparring partner for many years ... and Botvinnik was unbelievably superior. In this case it was a stylistic difference ... see wikipedia.

C) Alexander Kotov, while being an inferior to players during his own time as well as players today, had a theory about chess thought. Since he was a prolific writer anyway he put that idea into print ... thereby making him in some sense a 'coach' to every reader. That same book ("Think Like a Grandmaster" as it is known) is read like a Bible by some Grandmasters today. I personally witnessed the tattered Russian copy possessed by GM Gregory Kaidanov.

From personal experience I can say that coaching has very little to do with the teacher and more to do with the student. For example, Botvinnik wisely chose Ragozin for a number of reasons ... had Botvinnik chosen someone else it would have changed the complexion of soviet and world championship matches. Botvinnik won by his own powers but Ragozin did everything in his personal power to bring that out in Botvinnik. Bringing things back to the original question concerning Humpy Koneru ... her father will no doubt be personally sacrificing, dedicated, and trustworthy ... there's nothing more you need to ask of a coach.

Four days ago Vijay Tagore published an interview with Vishy Anand. In that interview (which also appeared on Chessbase)Tagore asks a question and Anand answers as follows:

Tagore: Kramnik claims to have saved the world chess [organization] from another split by taking part in Mexico.

Anand: I don’t know if that is the popular opinion. I think analyzing his games keeps me fairly occupied these days, I don’t want to start analyzing his words.

I think anyone who reads that (minus Kramnik of course) gets a chuckle. Anand is very much a sportsman but he certainly has a slippery tongue too. In just a few sentences he cuts Kramnik, portrays Kramnik as a strong player, and comes out looking like he is just preparing for the match.

I think Anand is a very magnetic person and it's interview responses like this that show him to be a very open and honest person. Anand is obviously offended by the remarks of Kramnik but he keeps things professional and doesn't undercut his opposition. He's an example to us all on being a true Sportsman.

As a chess teachers when I found this I just had to share it!

I didn't learn to play chess as a child. It wasn't until I had children of my own that I became interested in the game. Once I figured out the basics I was hooked. I wanted to teach our sons as soon as they were able to comprehend the moves.

When Kazz was about 6 or 7 I started teaching him the moves. The words that came out of my mouth were not exactly chess teacher words but they worked perfectly for teaching a young child to learn the basics. I've since taught a number of young kids the basic moves of chess pieces, and decided today to add this little tid-bid of information to my blogging vault. If you're reading this, my future grandchildren, this is how grandma taught your dad to play chess. :o)

The Mom With Brownies teaches chess.

The pieces of a chess game are The King, The Queen, The One Eyed Bishop, The straight and narrow Rook, The Crazy Knight and the scaredy-cat, cowardly Pawn.

The King is big and fat. He sits on his throne all day and doesn't get much exercise so when he does move he only moves one space. He gets to move any which way he wants, because he's the king, but he gets tired easily because he's so big and fat so once he gets to the next square he stops to take a rest.

The Queen is in great shape because she shops all day. She knows right where she needs to go so she moves in a straight line right to her destination. She can move in any straight line she wants because she is the queen but if she runs into another person she stops to kick them out of the way. She would never jump over anything because they may see up her dress! If she decides to stop before she gets to another person she can because she's the queen.

The One Eyed Bishop only has a slit for an eye. He can only see the color he stands on so he only moves in one direction on that color. He goes as far as he wants or until he runs into another person in his path. If he does run into another person, he throws them off the board and stays there to laugh about it.

The Crazy Knight rides a Crazy horse. That horse can JUMP over people! The Knight is Crazy because every time he moves two squares he thinks someone is coming to get him so he always jumps one square to the side to get out of the way!

The straight and narrow Rook wants to be the king so he always tries to travel in a straight line whether he travels north, south, east or west. He goes as far as he wants but never diagonally because that would be north/west or north/east! How crude! If he runs into a person he will kick them off the board just for fun but if he wants he can stop before he gets to another person.

The Cowardly Pawn thinks he is brave when he first begins. He can choose to move one square or two on his first move, but as soon as he makes his first move he freaks out! He never moves two squares again and if he comes up to a person in front of him he stands there and shakes because he is such a scaredy-cat, BUT if he can see someone diagonally from him in the very next square, he will wait till his next turn and jump on that person in a sneak attack! What a yellow, belly that Pawn!

I don't know the fancy moves yet, though I hope to get more into those as time goes by, but when it comes to teaching our guys the basic moves, this has worked every time. :o)

Source: icantbelievemylife.com

Keene On Chess
GM Raymond Keene

Chess vs Alzheimer's

Avid fans of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, that fantastic confection from the fertile brain of the late lamented Douglas Adams, will recall that Zaphod Beeblebrox's spaceship is powered by a so-called "Improbability Drive." This unique mode of transport was based, I believe, loosely, on Heisenberg’s Uncertainly Principle, Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem and a lack of awareness concerning the wellbeing of Schrödinger’s cat.

Some critics too, notably Frank Rich, the so-called "Butcher of Broadway", have assailed the plot of the musical CHESS for being highly implausible. This creation of Sir Tim Rice and the Ulvaeus/Andersson half of ABBA, has been revived in a concert version and was performed in front of a packed house at the Royal Albert Hall on the evenings of May 12 and 13. The atmosphere was electric and the standing ovation epic, which encouragement leads me to predict that CHESS is destined to return to London’s West End in the not too distant future.

As far as implausibility goes, during the course of the evening, a Soviet world chess champion defects to the west, and back again, a manager switches sides, and a dissident falls for a Russian patriot, none of this being to the "Butcher’s" tediously conventional taste. Yet I have witnessed first hand at the Baguio World Championship of 1978 the orange-robed gurus of the Ananda Marga sect (out on bail after a charge of attempted murder, by the way) chanting for victory outside the playing venue.

Years later former world champion, Bobby Fischer (himself part of the inspiration for the musical), was imprisoned in Japan, and before the latest Russian elections Garry Kasparov, perhaps the greatest chess champion of all time, found himself incarcerated in a Moscow jail, being visited by his erstwhile arch rival Anatoly Karpov. To cap it all, the eccentric President of the World Chess Federation, Kirsan Ilhumzhinov, has openly claimed to have been abducted by aliens. Implausible indeed.

We're a strange bunch aren't we?