How many times do you hear that sort of contrast being drawn? “I’m a positional player.” “I’m a tactical player.” We put ourselves in boxes that we then have trouble climbing out of. “I didn’t want to play that line because it was too tactical.” “That line is too quiet.”
While these words can be truthfully [...]

the source
“…Many players think they could play a good game ‘if they only knew the openings.’ This idea is really crazy. You can improve your opening play at any stage of your career. Make the most of your early years by using them to improve your intrinsic chess skill, rather than memorizing moves, which has [...]

The tactics portion of my coaching notebook is coming along.
I’ve been working with a lot of younger kids this year, and they’ve been highlighting the need for some sort of methodical instruction in those areas, and all of my usual teaching aids are too advanced for them. The first thing I need to work with [...]

In case you’re interested, I hacked the Chessbase output. As a result, after automatic processing, is almost valid. Only three errors. I’d have to rewrite their javascript to get the count any lower. I may yet do that, but I’m not that desperate.

Started working with HTML files generated by Chessbase. I have *never* in my professional career seen such absolute shoddy workmanship. Period. The HTML and javascript it generates should be taken out and shot, just to put it out of our misery. Just because I’m sick and twisted, I popped it into the W3C’s HTML validator. [...]