Link to Chess Notes

"Edward Winter's Chess Notes is the most amazing website on Chess history."

This sentence can be found on the SCID sourceforge homepage, and I think it is true.
I spent a great deal of time on it already, and found it to be amazingly fascinating with a wealth of pictures, articles, questions and the likes.

Kramnik on Kings Indian

Via chess24.com:

Vladimir Kramnik speaks frankly at the end of this video about the Kings Indian, its benefits and problems.

Queen or mate in 5, and winning a rook.

From today's standard FICS game:

An easy one - my opponent played

28: Re1??

And I replied politely 28. ...., Nd5??

But actually, black can win the queen or give mate in 5.

A little later there was another opportunity I missed, this time a little more difficult:

White played 36 Qb4??

and black should have won a rook - and not play 36. ..., Qxd5??


(Nice to be able to just "capture current board" in SCID, save it and upload it to this blog - couldn't be much easier.)

The Damiano Variation

It is a bit surprising to see that a unsound opening idea can have such a nice name: The Damiano Variation (1. e4, e5 2. Nf3, Nf6  3. Nxe5, Nxe4?).

I played my first "standard" game on FICS, expecting a higher level of play than in "blitz", but my opponent played the above mentioned "Damiano Variation" and even got to the infamous Queen loss:

4. Qe2, d5  5. d3, Nc5?? 6. Nc6

My opponent decided to ignore this and play on, so I could just relax and have a nice game.

But it makes one wonder about who Damiano was.
The English wikipedia has a good answer to that, and the German article is even more extensive.

TL:DR He was a Portuguese, who was the second person to write a book on modern chess, published in 1512.  He thought that 2. ..., Nc6 was a better move than 2. .., Nf6.

The front picture of Damiano's book of 1512.
Source wikipedia