The Sensational Second Edition!

This column is going to be packed with all kinds of little goodies.  I wanted to have a personal game of mine to include here to begin my official “record keeping” within this column, but the two games (and soon to be third) that I am involved in are nowhere near complete, so I’ll go ahead and include that for the next one… hopefully.

I will be releasing a column per week and with any luck, I should be getting on some sort of schedule with it.  Right now, as long as the week (beginning on Sundays) is different than the previously released column week, I’m going to go ahead and write and release.  That just makes things simpler.  So, let’s get this thing started.

The Tata Steel 2012 event, which happened at Wijk aan Zee, was one by Levon Aronian.  Magnus Carlsen, the number one rated chess player in the world, was second place (and was joined with eight points by Teimour Radjabov and Fabiano Caruna).  Why this event was called Tata Steel instead of just carrying the Wijk aan Zee name it’s used for however long it’s been running, I don’t know, but the event was won by someone whom I’ve not heard of.

Before you get all indignant on me, I haven’t followed chess competitions really closely since Anand won the World Championship match against Veselin Topalov back in 2010.  Sue me.

Anyway, Carlsen was the one that I believe should have won the event and the fact that Aronian fared so well made me realize that Carlsen’s impending reign as World Champion (shoosh, it’s going to happen) isn’t as likely to last the length I previously would have believed.  Aronian is the second ranked player on the FIDE ratings list right now, 30 points behind Carlsen, and that means he’s liable to become the World Champion as well.  Where’s the World Champion on this list?  Viswanathan Anand is currently rated at 2799, fourth on the list.  Carlsen bowed out of the championship qualification cycle this time in protest for FIDE weighting the qualification of other event winners higher than they should have been.

Magnus, my boy, the way to protest that isn’t to bow out of the cycle… it’s to win the candidacy for the World Chess Championship, walk into the WCC later this year, and wipe the floor with Anand… then lording over FIDE as the World Chess Champion, the strongest player in the world, and getting FIDE to pull their head out of their ass.

Kasparov tried, sure, but I’m sure that it wouldn’t take FIDE 23 years to realize that they have made ANOTHER mistake in how they run things.

But, I digress.  Congratulations to Levon Aronian and I look forward to seeing Aronian and Carlsen lock horns in the near future!

I’ve written about this in the past but it isn’t anywhere online, so I’m going to write about it again.  I’m going to write about how I came to learn chess and why I think chess has a future in a different direction than what FIDE is currently presenting.

Let’s hop in the way back machine and go to 1987 (when I would have been in the sixth grade).  There were plenty of chances to do all kinds of things when not actively studying because of the large number of breaks that we took back then.  (Side Note: if you told me I could have finished my schooling 2 years earlier by not taking so many breaks I probably would have gone for it.)  Living in North Dakota, the weather sometimes prevented us from going out to recess, which meant we needed to figure out something to do INSIDE from time to time.

A couple of my classmates would head over to the chessboard, set it up, and knock out a few games while they had time.  That couple turned into a few and that few turned into a group.  By the time I joined, interested in learning the game (because I was honestly fascinated by it), I became one of about 12 people involved in the creation of what I’ve been calling the Beulah Chess Club.  That was about half the class, in case you were wondering.

Considering who was involved (12 children who were almost all avid professional wrestling fans), I am not surprised that we modeled ourselves after the World Wrestling Federation a little by creating two championships and setting up mini-competitions to become a champion.  We had a World Championship and an Intercontinental Championship, the two top championships in the World Wrestling Federation at the time.  The Intercontinental Championship was, as it was for the WWF, the “intermediate” championship… for those of us who weren’t the strongest players.

Throughout the entire 87-88 school year, we’d established that there were really only two “strong” players and the rest of us were not as good.  We’d gained and lost up to eight other players over the course of the year, and a couple of us rose in playing strength to be able to compete with the “big two.”  Thankfully, I was one of them and a former three time Intercontinental Champion (the final reign vacated as I wanted to “move up” against some stronger players).

We were all very interested in playing games against one another, making the competition more interesting than anything else we could think of, and really got better over the course of playing the school year.  If I had to guess, I’d say that the best four or five of us at the end of the year were probably rated (Elo) around 700 to 750.  You think that may be low but we were a small pool of players not studying the game and only learning through play.

Towards the end of the school year, I’d say the entire month of March in 1988 (I say that because it was close to the end but far enough from the end to allow for regular competition to resume after what I’m about to explain) became a giant class-wide tournament.  The teacher (her name was Mrs. White and only our class was involved in the tournament) felt that some of the girls were being excluded from being able to learn and play chess with the rest of us.  We honestly weren’t preventing anyone from playing but I can understand that testosterone filled boys pretending chess was akin to professional wrestling might have been a bit intimidating.  Mrs. White declared that the class would be seeded into a giant knockout tournament and the winner would be given the prize of a passing grade on a specific assignment (I don’t remember what it was but it was worth the playing for it).

I don’t remember the particulars of the tournament as a whole or how many of the 24 or 25 of my classmates were involved, but I know that it took us nearly a full month to get a final winner.  To add to the prize, the World Champion at the time (a kid named Justin, who was damn tough to beat) declared that the winner would get a shot at his championship.  Even the girls who were playing for the first time were excited that we were including them in the regular cycle of things.

For the players who had absolutely no exposure to chess before the tournament began, they were weeded out in the early rounds.  In fact, only two or three “new” players made it into the middle of the month, about the halfway point of the tourney.  Almost all of the originals were involved and the World Champion Justin wasn’t one of them… he’d been taken out by his chief rival (a kid named Travis).  My toughest game was against Travis.  I beat him, soundly, and brought some well deserved attention to my own skills.  I was eliminated in the very next round by one of the new players after making a monumental error… I can’t tell you what it was, I just know that when it happened that I realized it immediately.

Travis was stunned at being eliminated by me so soundly and we agreed to a three game series (winner to choose their color for each game, starting with me choosing black first).  Travis won the first game and I won the next two… Justin was so impressed (and had easily dispatched the tournament winner, the guy who knocked me out) that he gave me a shot at the World Championship.  Guess who won?  ME!

I was a fighting champion and defended the championship twice before the school year ended.  The championship remained with me and I figured that we’d pick back up next year, so we all let summer come and go… the Beulah Chess Club never played another game.

That isn’t the end of the story… but it’s the end of this part of the story.  You’ll see this one continue in the future… I don’t want to put it all out there right now.

As I stated before, I wanted to include one of my recent (and well documented) games to include in this section but none of the ones I’m monitoring are complete, yet.  So, let me explain what this section is going to be doing and why I’ll be doing it.

I do not belong to the USCF or to FIDE.  That means that I do not have an officially established rating but I do have a general idea about my playing strength through the numerous outlets online that offer me such a thing for free.  I am currently playing at about 1009, according to GameKnot.com (which is my primary source for games at the moment). Since these games are pseudo-real time and I’m actively reestablishing my presence on the site, I believe that the rating is fairly accurate of my current playing strength.

I’ve been a member of both the IECG (International Email Chess Group) and the IECC (International Email Chess Club).  The IECG has closed its doors, conceding to the fact that people are playing chess less through email and more through online services like Game Knot.  The IECC is still kicking but since they were born out of the IECG, I’m actively wondering how long they’ll be around before they come to the same conclusion (or adapt).

My rating when I stopped playing in the IECG was at 1512.  Yes, I was playing at a 1500 strength at one point… in 2000 and 2001.  The rating I had in the IECC when I stopped playing was just a hair over 1400 (I played longer there, had to cut back on my playing).  After an almost full decade of not playing chess, I came back to Game Knot to see my rating was at 996 (due to several abandoned games that added up).  I’ve fought back up to 1009 but I notice that I’m nowhere near as good as I was… so this is a perfect chance to rebuild myself in a public forum.

This section will contain my declared “official” games and will be thoroughly reviewed and kibitzed to improve my play.  Almost all of the games will be via Game Knot (though I am actively trying to find local players to play against) and I will put down what I was thinking, what I was aiming to accomplish, and what I think should have been my course of action.  Being rated at 1009, I think I have a lot of improving to do.

If anyone out there has an official rating that is higher than mine (I’m speaking of 2000 or better) that wants to jump in with suggestions, I’d love to have them.

Thanks for reading.

By DJ Allen

The Fantastic First Edition

Welcome, one and all, to the first edition of the New Chess Experience, exclusively produced for Lime Flavored.com.  As you can imagine, I’ll be talking about chess in this column.  Surprise!

Well, writing a column and actually having to research a specific subject can be quite enlightening.  I was originally going to come out swinging at the fact that there is no effort by anyone to put chess on TV, or more so the case in this Internet based world, in video as a regular feature.  Imagine my surprise when the research began and I discovered Xtreme Chess Championships.

The XCC (I don’t know if that’s what they call themselves or whether they ONLY use the full name, I am going to refer to them using the acronym) is, at this moment, an eight-player chess tournament between some of the younger American chess players in the country.  A quick search of the names shows that the ratings of these players are all over 2000, which means that there is some legitimacy involved in this effort.  If you want to see more (including their sole released episode to date), do a search on Facebook for X Chess Championships (also on Twitter and YouTube).

Originally, my article was going to comment on BBC’s Master Game TV show back in the late 70s and early 80s.  The technology they used was top of the line for the time and the concept was brilliant as far as bringing chess to the masses.  While the XCC is a nice concept, utilizing a portion of the Master Game’s technique, it fails to capture the game the same way or with the same impact.  Too much emphasis is placed on the players in really boring interviews and very little emphasis is placed on the actual PLAY of the games.  They are promoting the IDEA of chess without actually promoting chess.

Another attempt at bringing chess to a wider audience sees some of the same people involved in an effort called America’s Next Chess Star (or for the purposes of the show are just Chess Star).  Some of the personalities are over the top and except having a chess themed atmosphere; almost nothing about actual CHESS is being done in a public way (or at least in an easy way I can discern).

I cannot fault BBC’s Master Game for not having the most up to date technologies in the twenty first century because the show no longer exists.  We can only look back and fondly wonder what the show would have become if it were still on the air today.  I would even wonder if chess would be as obscure as it is if the Master Game were actively running.

Roughly five years ago, I began formulating an idea about how to bring chess out into the public consciousness instead of languishing in the distance.  My initial concepts related more closely to the WWE, where the games would be real but the action would be overblown drama.  The idea of “World Chess Entertainment” to most people, I’ve since discovered, turns them completely away.  My idea wasn’t to fictionalize chess; my idea was to make chess more of a spectacle.

Time passed and I realized that relating chess to something that wasn’t wholly an entertainment was a better bet.  So, I began comparing the idea to televised poker, which is all about the actual game being played but focus on the player’s personalities is as much a focus as the game.  Anyone who is a chess enthusiast, though, has been somewhat averse to poker.  So, I’ve once again failed to reach the masses with my message.

Before I continue, I want to stress that the idea I have is to bring chess to a larger audience and expand the conscious to chess among the general populace.  I don’t know how much on the minds chess is in countries that are not the United States but in the United States, no one who does not actively play that game (at a somewhat high level of competitiveness) gives a rat’s ass about chess.  Period.

Now, let’s get back to my quest.

When I was introduced to BBC’s Master Game, I realized that what I was trying to relate chess to was leaving out the important factor of teaching the game to the casual viewer, who might be missing the point of what was going on.  The education of the viewer was my missing component.

Since I’ve discovered the Master’s Game, and subsequently the XCC, I’ve reformulated my ideas for bringing the chess to the masses in an entertaining form.  But wait, there’s more!

I’m one of the millions who has (relatively) recently left the cable industry and the satellite television industry in favor of getting all of my television entertainment online.  I watch NetFlix, Hulu Plus, and I utilize the network websites for shows that aren’t a part of those two major distribution points.  For anything else, I either wait or figure out another way to watch what I want to watch.

There is a major trend of consumers moving away from “normal” outlets of television and that means that the Internet is quickly becoming the “mainstream” as far as entertainment goes.  Moving away from the stationary computer or even the laptop, entertainment is becoming cell phone (or tablet computing) based.  That means my chess idea should be consumable in much smaller portions than I’d previously needed to consider.

I could go on and on about bringing chess to the masses in one single column but I think that would be overdoing it.  That, and I genuinely believe there is so much more to talk about while I drop small tidbits more about this particular subject in the future.  After all, if I’m going to be a chess columnist, I should do some actual talking about chess.

With Wilk an zee coming to a close soon, there will be more to talk about: like the upcoming World Chess Championship between Boris Gelfand (the challenger) and Viswanathan Anand (the champion), Dortmund, and the odd event that I can’t come up with off the top of my head.

After that, there is the numerous chess websites that are all about the Internet.  But, I should save that for future columns.

Thanks for reading.

I’m going to stop responding to a lot of comments on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter.  Some people are going to be disappearing from my friends lists, too… because I really don’t think we’re friends.  In fact, I know we aren’t and we’re just going through the motions.  I don’t have time for the pretense anymore.

The wife of someone I had considered a friend, yesterday, made a comment that I was a worthless piece of shit.  Well, I responded by referring to her as a cunt and blocked the both of them because I’m not putting up with that.  And I didn’t.

If you piss me off, I’m done.  If I don’t like something you’re doing on one of those social media sites, I’m done.  If you say something that conflicts with a deeply held belief of mine and you want to argue about it, I’m done.  If I end up with only relatives on my list, so be it.

I am enlightening.  I am entertaining.  I am quite often right.  I am probably better than you.  I am done playing social games because I’m too old to care and I don’t have the time to play them anymore.

Yay! It’s my birthday!

Oh, hey, there’s a cake in this picture!

Do you like Dark Green: The Blackwood Chronicles? Well, that actual play Vampire: The Requiem podcast was just the beginning. Or is it the beginning we are going to?

Smaragdi Noctes: A Dark Green Chronicle is our actual play podcast set in ancient Rome! Set around the time of Julius Caesar, well, ol’ Julius is alive, anyway… and the players will be discovering the new and exciting, which will eventually connect to the world of Dark Green: The Blackwood Chronicles. Centuries apart, yet connected in ways you never knew.

Stay tuned!

I talk a good game but rarely follow through with much of it.  What am I talking about?  Writing.

This year, I will write everyday.  Every.  Single.  Day.  It doesn’t matter if its 15 words or 5,000.  I’m writing… and I’m going to keep track of what I write and how many words.  That will entice me to keep it up because I likes me some progress.

I’ve got a lot of stories mulling about in my head and its time to get them out there.  I have a website to release them on… I can podcast release them, too, if I so choose.  If I happen to make money on them, that would be wonderful, but I’m wanting to get them out there first and foremost.

There is a lot of stories I have to tell and most of them are completely original.  I’m hoping to write 2 different Mars based things, a police idea, a pentalogy (five part story, like a trilogy but with five parts), something akin to Jedi stories, a space opera, a fantasy set in the same place as the space opera (only hundreds of years earlier), a vampire story (based on the White Wolf games), and more… hell, I’m even contemplating drawing my own comic universe (because I can’t find me an artist).

WIth any luck, I’ll be pumping these things out one word at a time… hopefully I’ll be doing more than one word at a time because I really want to write and I need to get back into the habit of things.

TTFN!

P.S. – I’m probably also going to get back into column writing, which won’t count towards my word count goals but will keep the “news” flowing on this website.

For 2012, I’m cleaning stuff up. Want to know what? I’m glad you asked.

For most of the year, I’ll be clearing up my Facebook friends list… eliminating those people whom I don’t actually know and I don’t interact with. My game playing on Facebook will be returning to “not” until a game is created that doesn’t require me to load up with “neighbors,” doesn’t try to pile on too many tasks, and isn’t a chore to play.

I’m on a quest to lose weight and get healthy. I will be eating more non-starch vegetables with my meals, which will be significantly increase the amount of vegetables that I currently eat. I’m also going to learn how to shuffle (the dance), which will increase my physical activity. Weird, if you think about it, considering my job is pretty physically active.

I am going to be jumping back on the podcasting wagon. I will attempt to put out a weekly podcast again, though the format of the Lime Flavored Podcast will change once again because of other things going on in the background. I will be posting a NEW feed in iTunes, too. If you aren’t using iTunes, then you’ll still be able to listen to them from this website (which won’t require you to have QuickTime, though you guys need to get on the bandwagon and stop bitching about the awesomeness that is Apple).

So, let’s rock 2012 (twenty twelve), starting with the ceasing of pronouncing the years like we’re from the Middle Ages.