Into thin air

This is a chess game with the most beautiful move I ever almost got to play.

Slater – MacHolmes, Metrowest Chess Club 1997

1.d4 d5 2.e4 dxe4 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.f3 exf3 5.Nxf3 Bg4 6.Qd3 Bxf3 7.Qxf3 c6 8.Be3 Nd5 9.Bc4 e6 10.0-0 Qd7 11.Bg5 Nxc3 12.bxc3 Ba3 13.d5 cxd5 14.Bxd5

White has sacrificed a pawn in the Blackmar Diemer gambit. Being a pawn down gives a sense of urgency – if White doesn’t cause some mayhem Black will simply secure his king, trade pieces and win the endgame with his extra pawn -  and 13.d5 makes sense as an attempt to blow up the position before Black can get safely tucked away by castling.

However, as I contemplated the d5 pawn push, the contination that concerned me was 13.d5 cxd5 14.Bxd5 Nc6. Instead of capturing the bishop (which as you will see in the game continuation costs Black his queen), it seemed logical that Black would try this move, developing the knight and blocking White’s attack on the b7 square. Then Black would be ready to castle kingside.

I furrowed my brow – this was back when I could calculate – and found the answer: 15.Bxc6+ bxc6 16.Rad1 Qc7 17.Be7!! The bishop is cast into thin air, sacrificed on an empty square where Black has three possible ways to capture it – all of which lose. Obviously …Kx7 or …Bxe7 allow Qxf7 checkmate. That leaves 17…Qxe7 18.Qxc6+ Kf8 19.Qxa8+ Qe8 20.Rd8 and White mops up. 17.Be7 also prevents castling (which is the reason I found it) and leaves Black pretty much stuck with something like 17…Rf8 18.Bxa3 and a relatively trivial win for White.

In real life Black ruined my combination by capturing the bishop on d5:  14…exd5 15.Rae1+ Kf8 16.Be7+ Qxe7 17.Rxe7 Kxe7 18.Qxd5 1-0

Wish I’d gotten to play Be7 – the kind of move that brings you to play silly gambits in the first place.

Good cheap wines

This is as much a question as a statement.

Recently by sheer luck we stumbled on Red Truck. They make a red California Table Wine that costs about $9 a bottle and is really pleasant. I will refrain from attempted to describe it with snobby wine words as I will only make a fool of myself. Let’s just say it’s extremely nice. It’s a blend of Syrah, Petite Syrah, Cabernet Franc and Mourvedre. I believe those are all varieties of grape. Which shows you my level of sophistication.

We also like Chateau St Michelle Riesling, which is now up to about $11 although I’m sure we first bought it at $9. And Villa Maria Riesling which is $11 or $12. These are not sweet as Riesling goes – sometimes you try a new Riesling and it’s like shoving your face in a sugar bowl. These two have nice flavor and consistency.

The question is … got any tasty, cheap wines to suggest?

Skip the Cabernet Sauvignons – heartburn, alas. Pinot Noir is the preferred family red. I am excited to try the Red Truck pinot noir. Did I really just write that?

Ballads: played out

Why do radio stations incessantly play U2’s One and never Two Hearts Beat as One, or In God’s Country, or any of a billion other interesting U2 songs? Why if you’re going to play The Police would you play King of Pain a hundred times and never Driven to Tears? Why a thousand Glycerines and nary a Chemicals Between Us? Why Everybody Hurts and not Leave?

My anti-ballad bias might be showing.

Speaking of which, The Knack has the distinction of writing the worst ballad of all time. It’s called How Can Love Hurt So Much and you can pretty much tell that their producers came in and said, you can’t do a whole album of My Sharonas so whip up a good slow number, will ya? (They failed.)

Words of the day: winds

Simoom: A hot, dry, violent, dust-laden wind from African and Asian deserts

Khasim: A hot southerly Egyptian wind

Libeccio: A southwesterly wind in Italy

Favorite losses: Kudrin

Okay. This isn’t in the Rob Deer mode. It’s a favorite chess loss for a different reason, with a good story behind it.

Sergey Kudrin – Slater

Metrowest Chess Club, 1999

1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nd2 Nf6 4.e5 Nfd7 5.Bd3 c5 6.c3 Nc6 7.Ne2 cxd4 8.cxd4 Qb6

Though I’ve been playing tournament chess since 1982, this was my first encounter with a grandmaster. Since the Metrowest club tourneys are held with one game each Tuesday night, I knew my pairing with Kudrin a week in advance. Turns out that’s a lot of time to psych yourself out. My friend spent the week faxing me Kudrin’s games from Megabase, helping me identify his typical openings. I selected this 3…Nf6 line to play against his Tarrasch variation (which is initated by 3.Nd2) and this is probably the first time in my life that I tried to learn a ton of book lines.

Unfortunately, by move 8 I was already starting to get the ideas mixed up. There was a cool game where Korchnoi smashed Kudrin in this line, I believe by eventually playing a maneuver that involved …Qc7, …f6, …g6 and …Qg7. But I couldn’t remember or figure out how to make the development work for black. This is the danger of trying to play book lines when you don’t really understand the underlying concepts.

I started burning ridiculous amounts of time trying to work it all out. Yes, on move 8. Now the kicker: As he waited (interminably) for my moves, Kudrin sat calmly reading The Economist!

9.Nf3 f6 10.exf6 Nxf6 11.0-0 Bd6 12.Nc3 0-0 13.Re1 Kh8 14.Bc2 Bd7 15.a3 Rae8 16.Bg5 a6 17.Bh4 Bc8 18.Qd3 g6 19.Bxf6+ 1-0 

The GM glanced up from his article and took about three seconds to see that he wins buckets of material after 19…Rxf6 20.Nxd5. Not an auspicious start against GMs – a tradition I’ve kept up pretty well - though Ivanov and Christiansen have at least declined to use our games to keep up on their reading…

Lighting up your brain

MRIs show that when you think, various parts of your brain light up, depending on what kind of thinking you are doing. “Lighting up” simply means that an area of the brain is active, using energy. (Some very readable basics on intelligence and brain fuction in here.)

Can’t find the reference at this moment but some while ago I read an article about how a kid’s brain behaves when he plays a video game. When he’s given a new game, initially his whole brain (or much of it) lights up, as he tries to “figure the game out”. As he keeps playing, though, the area alight diminishes until there’s just one tiny spark flickering. The gameplay  has become a repetitive activity and lost its ability to stimulate much of the mind.

This is pretty much common sense. But it’s a nice reminder that presenting your brain with not only new information but also with new problems and puzzles to solve is likely a healthy exercise. So if you’ve never tried a Sudoku puzzle, give it a shot. Pick a subject that’s never interested you and commit to a bit of reading and study. Even if you’re 50, try to figure out that last row on Rubik’s Cube. Or if you aren’t a chessplayer, take a month to learn the rules and some basic strategy and tactics.

(But after the month is up, for heaven’s sake, stop!)

Hippopotami

Are you allowed to have a favorite animal when you’re 40?

Mine would be the hippo. Did you know that hippos are closely related to whales? And that they turn pink when they’re too hot? And that the same secretion that turns them pink also functions as an antibiotic? Which explains why their cuts don’t get infected even though they essentially swim in poop.

Ogden Nash, of course, wrote a nice little ode to the river horse (with a theme that incidentally is echoed in John Lithgow’s book I’m a Manatee).

Behold the hippopotamus!

We laugh at how he looks to us,

And yet in moments dank and grim,

I wonder how we look to him.

Peace, peace, thou hippopotamus!

We really look all right to us,

As you no doubt delight the eye

Of other hippopotami.

Kids’ fusion food, or Tomato-basil is the new vanilla part 2 (AKA the post with the ridiculously long title)

Green beans with ketchup.

Honeydew melon with ketchup.

You get the picture. But there’s something fun about the way kids approach food – they’re not bound by the orthodoxy of what-goes-with-what. This morning’s breakfast food: Honey Nut Chex. Tonight’s dinner: Something with tomato-basil, I’m sure. Because those are accepted flavor pairings in American restaurants. Tomato-basil sounds fragrant and tasty and I suppose it is, but after you see a thousand tomato-basil dishes and even canned tomato-basil Chef Boyardee items, the thrill is gone. It’s become another kind of vanilla, an invisible taste.

I guess that’s what makes fusion cooking interesting. You wind up hitting on new mixtures of taste and texture. Just like kids, who, when they’re forced to put down their chicken nuggets, will come up with all kinds of odd combinations.

Even if most of them involve ketchup.