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Originally posted by galathaea
My highest rating was 1796 at that time
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Anyway, anyone remember (or still get) those monthly chess magazines from the rating board/company/whatever-it-is... It's been so long I can't even remember their name...

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That's a really high rating!
I think you mean USCF. Yeah, you must, because you said you were in California. I am a member, and my rating is below 1000, but I haven't played many games... I should be around 1200-1300-ish but that's nothing compared to yours!

I am a hobbyist programmer so I do programming in my free time.:D

But I do intend to get into the programming line as it is my interest.

It is not as great an achievement as it may sound, my rating. The thing I remember about the ratings calculations was that your first 20 or so games counted much higher towards your rating than any subsequent games. My first games really gave me a high rating, but it started to get more difficult to maintain when I was in more difficult tournaments paired up against equal rated opponents. Since my tournament time was so short (a year and a half or so), I don't think my score was ever really representative of my skill. And I haven't read any books on openings, midgame strategy, or endgames since that time, long, long ago...

PS: My all time chess hero was Mikhail Tal. Who's yours (anyone who cares to answer)? I mean playing style, ingenuity, etc.

I've never done any chess reading... I've asked people I know to tell me about openings, but that's not really helpful. No favorite player either, I'm afraid.

USCF 1859

Tal was always one of my favorites but I got more out of going through Alekhines and Smyslovs games and annotation than I got by going through Tal's games and his annotation.

I could never understand Tal's games all tactics not much positional play.

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Of course, in the weekends I tend to make some time for other important stuff, which usualy goes down in a pub.

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WHAT!!!! Your PUB doesn't have high speed internet????:D

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Originally posted by Tom Frohman
USCF 1859

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I seem to be in the presence of another chess genius! Any advice for me, the budding superstar? ;) If you don't have any advice, you can at least applaud me for my great modesty! :D

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I could never understand Tal's games all tactics not much positional play.

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Yeah, that pretty much explains how I used to play. I never could get the discipline to develop a positional advantage when I had some super-sneaky muliti-pronged attack sequence planned. In the area of Smyslov, I remember reading some works by Botvinnik (sp?) and being pretty interested and wanting to develop in those directions, but now I find that information seems to have sieved out somewhere in the past 15 years. If anyone finds this memory, please return it to me, the owner.

Nostalgia seems to be pushing me to check out the web sites you mentioned, Tom. I'm not usually the one for that type of nostalgia, so thats freakin' me out. Am I getting old???

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My highest rating was 1796 at that time

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Mine was much lesser than yours (aorund 1600) when I was 20...(I told you I was old to be a "young" player!)

I read a lot of book on chess in those time (someone once revisiting a game with me complained he was playing "against chess opening encyclopedia"), but nowaday it is all gone. I do remember Richard Reti as one of my favorite old Masters: I liked his way on chessboard.Never been able to follow Tal (my preview span of memory was around 3-4 movies....even lesser sometimes ;)). Never been able to play a complete blind-chess play - loosed all positions after 10 movies...


In italy we have a magazine that is out every two months and is called (translated)"Tower and Horse".
Each time I went to buy it, the seller firs looked in "animals" review, then in "building" ones...

Btw, I am getting younger each time I am playing Vb....
;)
Have a nice day, you all