ChessCafe Articles

I couldn't find time to post this yesterday, but wanted to point to some interesting articles at ChessCafe:

1) Stefan Bücker's "Over the Horizons" article titled "A Knight on the Edge, Part One" takes up the controversial Sicilian with 2.Na3!? and is the best treatment of it I have seen yet. As is typical of Bücker's Kaissiber pieces, it also includes an excellent bibliography pointing to the most important analysis (though I might add that Dennis Monokroussos has made several posts on 2.Na3 at his Chess Mind blog). I imagine more players interested in the theory as Black than as White, but I must confess that I am myself intrigued now that I see it as a method of getting "The Clamp" set-up or even transposing to lines from the Advanced French where Na3-c2 supports d4. I am also pleased to see that this is only "Part One," which gives me something to look forward to next month...

2) Hans Ree's "Dutch Treat" discusses Jan Timman in Malmö, a topic I wrote about as "Jan Timman's Fighting Spirit." As a member of Timman's generation of players, however, Ree is better situated than I to reflect on the questions of chess strength and aging suggested by Timman's recent success. I expected Robert Byrne to have considered such things in discussing one of Timman's games recently in his New York Times column.

3) Steve Lopez's "ChessBase Cafe" on Fritz 9 Engine Displays demonstrates another advantage of Fritz 9 over Fritz 8 (which is always the point): more options when you right-click on a line that Fritz is considering in "Infinite Analysis" mode.... Though he's discussing Fritz 9, I think anyone who didn't know about the options available when you right click on a variation (a feature of earlier Fritzes) will learn something useful. I recommend the Archive of previous articles by Lopez (and occasionally Mig Greengard) as well.

4) Though it has been up for over a week, I just noticed that The Skittles Room offers a wonderful excerpt from Nikolay Minev's A Practical Guide to Rook Endings, which should do a lot to increase its sales. I don't find a permanent link in their Archives or Skittles Room archives, which suggests this is one to print out and save (unless you just want to buy the whole book, of course).