THOUGHTS OF A CHESS ADDICT

It is indeed hard for a non-chess player to write about chess if he does not speak the lingo of chess-players. Little wonder then that all of us chess-players will tend to misconstrue his intentions. Analysing why an outcome has occurred after the event, piecing the pieces of evidence that led to the outcome is called post-mortem analysis, not technical evaluation. All good chess players do that at the end of each game for it is rare that both players would arrive at the same conclusions at every juncture after each move, maybe except for the 1st few moves of the opening where it is accepted conventional wisdom. Aided by a reasonable thought process, it is mainly the evaluation of the position after analysis to determine if the move or idea is playable. Through analysis, one learns a great deal about his/her strengths and weaknesses, particularly in the area of chess study and character shortcomings which need to be addressed. Any amount of analysis will reveal, for the loser, errors i...

I've just come across an interesting remark made by a supposedly non-competitive chess player in that you will need "need the tools of developed judgement, understanding and advanced thinking skills " to come up with possibilities to save yourself when you are in trouble in a game.  This is under the scope of Technical Evaluation. Highly interesting because I am still trying to fathom the author's intent in the previous statement, as he has often renounced the importance of having the technical knowledge but rather the need of maintaining the right emotional balance to solve problems on the chessboard. What I find issue here is that much of the emotional stress that is generated is often in the player not having found the solution to his problem at hand in the first place. This can be address through good preparation in the realm of analysis of the players own games by discovering his faults and actively correcting them. After following the TV series "House"...