So one of my goals for 2020 is to improve my chess game. Some of this was spurred by my desire to make a chess mockumentary – I am not sure I posted this absolutely brilliant idea – but there you have it. Also I sort of would like to be like Duchamp and wear a suit and play chess all day. It like the aesthetic.

My friend Max was teaching me some tricks like the ladder (I think), with the two rooks and the king, but I took it upon myself to try and do some additional reading so I picked up the book and the Chess Master vs Chess Amateur.

First thing I noticed about this book was that I had no idea what notation they were using. Apparently there is an older chess notation call descriptive notation and that is what is being used. The way it works is that you mention the piece being moved P, for example (pawn), and the location where it is going to QB2 (queens bishop 2). There are other words for capture, x, and castle etc.  Once I figured this out, things were much easier.

It was almost like a memory palace where I was trying to keep the board in my head. I feel like this exercise itself will help with my chess intuition.

There were some simple analyses of the game and concepts, things like – experts control the center of the board, amateurs just make pretty patterns and don’t know what they are doing. There are pointers to other readings about when to move from strategy to tactics and how to analyze a position. I feel good that I was able to make it through this very short game that was about 3 or 4 pages long. It look me an hour though to digest it all.  Just wait for the film