Thursday, September 15, 2011

Chess and the internet

As a kid I used to play some chess but was not very good at it. In fact, big sister was far better than me, playing in the inter-school, college and perhaps even the state level. Recently my interest was (re)kindled at the time of the Anand-Topalov match and I discovered a very nice web-site which is one of several, where there is plenty of news, tactics, games, puzzles, and one can even play against the computer. I have been faring quite well with both black and white pieces when the computer is at the 1600 level. What is interesting is that the computer really punishes you for a mistake and you are done for. However, if you play cautiously and play many moves without mistakes, you can start beating it at this level. Even more amazing is that there are thousands of games that you can see and study. It is great fun to see how Anand has beaten top players and some of his games. On the other hand, I remember from long years ago that there was someone called Mir Sultan Khan who was supposed to have beaten Jose Raul Capablanca. So I asked google if there was indeed such a game. Here it is!

1 comment:

chess downloads said...

Yes, even the best chess players lose sometimes.