A suspension of values

Looking back on the days when I first learned chess the thing that stands out the most is how I had no idea what I was getting into. After learning how the pieces moved, then learning how to check the king while not allowing him a way out it was time to do something more interesting. Then the joy of eventually finding people weaker than you and grinding them down until their naked king could not resist checkmate made this a good thing to do in between biking and picking berrys. But this was not the norm.
More usual was the sophisticated opponent that always came up with ways to forcefully destroy your pieces before they could get involved in their own aggression. And so chess was at that time a game of brutal force and quantification of "The one with the most toys wins". So my next successful plan was to take out Big Bertha (queen) and maybe one or two other pieces on a big hunting spree to locate targets that my opponent could not guard very well and after winning enough free stuff then to grind them down to paste. Laughing all the while! But what to do about those people who seemed to protect everything while always having more pieces in play? So now the game was entering into the pinnacle of physical reality. It came down to who had the most toys yet again but now we had to get better at eating their toys. Unless of course the attack on the king came to direct fruition but that was the same as the toy analogy since the kings value was infinite.

In the backdrop of the physical reality the introduction to intangibles could now appear. Time for example was not a physical entity, we are referring to the time measured as tempi. With each move you could bring a knight into play or send him on a useful duty which would be using a tempo. Send him to do something worthless and you wasted a tempo. The textbooks stated almost unanimously that three tempos equal a pawn so that we could relate the whole thing to the physical reality. Yet this unsatisfactory. In some positions the three tempos could be worth more than a pawn and would yield more rewards often enough. Also the degree to which the position enhanced the value of tempos mattered, close things up enough unless you could A. Get something done right away or B. Obtain a lasting bind it was better to keep the material. The part that nobody mentioned is that intangibles as well as things such as the bishop pair are of greater value depending on the skill of the participant. Extra tempos in the hands of a poor player might not be worth the pawn while in the hands of a consummate master it would be worth quite a lot. So now when we look at intangibles we have to factor in the skill of both opponents. Some players are easier than others to take advantage of with a tempo or more. Styles as well as strength play into this. Emmanuel Lasker was an early great at understanding the interplay of the opponents and intangibles.
Another well known intangible is mobility. A knight that is blocked and cannot go to any squares is said to be immobile. A knight in the center that has a full range of squares and secondary squares is said to be quite mobile. Yet attempts to measure this are prone to inexactitude. Do we count the number of squares a piece or pieces can go to for a precise measurement? Can you have numerical amounts of mobility? 68.35 units of mobility? No, it does not work like that. Two pieces in just the right location with small amounts of the right kind of mobility are most effective. (clock time is also important. What kind of problems are best to present our opponent with the amount of time that they have. When Tal first met Botvinnik he presented the world champion with enormous complications going into the final hour of the game. Tal being younger and more at home in such positions enjoyed success. ((Bronstein was a master of Chaotic positions and used to aim games in that direction)) In the rematch Botvinnik took care to control the types of positions that he got into and regained his title)

Once again it takes an intuitive judgment of what form of an intangible is more valuable. Judgment of which intangible is more important than another as well as the known physical characteristics. And there are many intangibles. (Being able to make the position conform to the intangibles that we posess helps as well.) Knowing how they all work together in regards to our opponents strengths and weaknesses as well as our own strengths and weaknesses matters a great deal. It is the interplay between these fluid yet vaporous concepts that give the greatest pleasure for me in chess. (Yes I like when people fall into my cheap traps, or I swindle out of a horrible mess as well) The modern chess game of today has the superb titans of our time using these esoteric means to secure wins against players that are very difficult to topple.
In John Watsons' masterpiece "Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy" he attempts to reveal the nuts and bolts of the new game that has emerged since Aron Nimzonvitch wrote his positional great work, "Chess Praxis".
While expressing doubt for Nimzovitches idea of over protection he pays homage to the great master as forming one of the bedrock upon which todays Grandmasters build many of their concepts. Some of the chapter titles show Watson covering how modern masters deal with intangibles. 2/2 rule independence, 2/3... Are your pawns really backwards? From Modern Pawn Play. 2/4 The modern Bishop 2/5 The contemporary Knight 2/7 Bishops Versus Knights : Minor-piece Pairs , and here you get get a lot of insight into situations where rather than keep the position closed for the knight since bishops prefer open positions the possessor of the knights prefers to open up the position in a hurry in order to accelerate the knights before the bishops can awaken. (After that I had a brief love affair with the Chigorin defense.)

Watson also mentions the evolution through the sixties where working against static weaknesses was the rage. (They learned to love this style in the 20s through the 50s but it hit its apex in the 60s) John goes on to present how modern players give the opponent the opportunity to play against their static weaknesses (doubled, isolated or backward pawns for example) but always in exchange for this they get ample amounts of mobility and dynamic potential or some other intangible. And all of this occurs under very heavy layers of deep tactical issues. No wonder Chess is not a spectator sport to the degree of other sports, the viewers practically need a doctorate to understand what is going on.

Another of my favorites was his chapter on the exchange. The exchange sacrifice is more present in the modern game than at any time prior. Often there is little visible compensation. But oh is there ever compensation because it frequently succeeds. After reading the chapter on exchanges I read an unannotated game by V. Anand. It was simply amazing. (I am easy to impress, I love all the games of the professionals) Many moves laters Anands' initiative on the queenside comes to fruition and he moves in for the kill winning a brilliancy.

I suspect that there are many intangibles that world class players use that have not even been identified yet. Having the judgment to sort them all out while being under pressure from a genius while being given limited time to think.... This is the ultimate sport, chess.

Do not invest with the herd

Buying indexes is a poor plan. There is risk but little reward. A person never can make 10 times their money. The common idea is that if you make 6% you have had a great year. Real inflation (not the silly core rate that does not include things that rise, that people actually need) rises faster than that. Best to pay for quality research and attempt to invest in things that have the potential for exponential growth. Avoid indexes and mutual funds.
If you hear of your investment on Television all the time the likelihood of you making a fortune is low. If no one has heard of your investment area it has real potential. If you went into the Uranium sector in 1999 to invest because you had the vision to understand that energy was in serious decline for the long term and that radioactive investments were obviously good bets as electrical generation is not negotiable.
Do you think that IBM is going to 20,000 dollars a share? It has a better chance of making it to 20 dollars a share. Microsoft to the moon?
What are they going to do, sell Windows to the Martians and moon people? Some day Microsoft will not exist. On the way to that painful point many people will lose a lot of money being exposed to not a lot of gain. Let the institutions buy IBM and Microsoft. They want to earn 30% over 100 years. You had better try to make the money in your lifetime instead.

What's on your tombstone

I have often wondered what I would want on my tombstone.
Of course I will not have a tombstone because in my will I requested that my ashes be flushed down the toilet of the highest floor at a Hilton Hotel.

The ten most requested names to be put on a tombstone by me:

10. Now I finally get the plot.


9. Stop humming Dust in the Wind.


8. Neither rain nor snow shall keep me from staying here.


7. Could you crazy-glue my finger back on?


6. Now would be an O.K. time to tackle War and Peace.


5. Anchovies and Cheese.


4. Why is there a picture of Elvis on this casket?


3. Who is the wise guy that's playing the Abba music?


2. Not now, I'm drawing to a Royal Flush against the worms.


1. GET ME OUTA HERE!!!

New Ideas in music or money is the rub

The state of popular music is that most people get what they are looking for and this works quite well. There are many category's and listeners, many with not much time, get to quickly get samples of what they want. The structure of the songs in most of the listings have the familiar formula of using a "hook". The quicker that you get to it and the stronger it is the better. This makes sense in that a person that gets a limited amounts of hearings of the piece needs to get it "brain-mapped" quickly. Repetition becomes essential. If the hook does not work this can be torture since the hook becomes a worm. One mans worm is another mans hook. (You could reverse this but I didn't need to tell you that)

Wagner was a good man with a hook. Could his material work in the modern setting? Commercials which have an even shorter playing time have on occasion played Classical music in the background. What an cruel concept. The great works have the main "hook" stripped out and played ad nauseum hundreds of times while a car, cigar or pizza gets displayed. Now when you hear the great work its core hook is burned out.
They did that to the Brandenburg concertos. The one in G and the one in D were mercilessly flogged. One good thing is that they couldn't do it to Mahlers 9th. If you started playing the front of that piece the commercial would run out before they could do any damage. Wagners Goetterdammerung was a masterpiece in hook technology. Through a long set of previous parts of the Ring he develops his hooks that have meaning programatically. Thus there is the hook that refers to fate. And a cruel hook as well. So when the story demands it he can combine the two and get "cruel fate".
There is something very great about the long time frame that comprises the Ring. Over the great expanse of Wagner soup a person gets lost in the sea of swirling emotion that rages through the hours. It results in a form of musical inebriation that is quite wonderful. And best of all the hooks have time to perform their magic. Freed from any need to get the job done in 3 minutes they are allowed to slowly develop a ferocity. Could Fafners theme be pulled off in a pop piece?
I have often wondered if the great moment when Hagen with his great minor second super condensed evil music works the cow horns with his murderous intent revealed by the music could ever be pulled off in a pop setting. Of course it could! Not that it would be easy. A large ensemble would be needed. You would like to have 4 great Keyboardists, 3 guitarist, Brass ensemble:saxophones,horns,etc. (Brass is what Wagner was the King at) 8 vocalists, two drummers, two bass players, electric string quartet and a partridge in a pear tree. Of course you would have to write all new music, we wouldn't want to spam Wagners perfect musical creation. And of course this music would be conducted over a very long time frame. And it would get no radio play but perhaps that wouldn't be a bad thing since you can't fit commercials into an eight or fourteen hour piece. Imagine John McLaughlin, Eric Johnson and Steve Vai playing along side the great Ashkenazy, Chick Corea and with resurrection abilities, Oscar Peterson? You could put allstars at every position and write music that has not been attempted yet. That would be a neat thing.
All that is needed is the budget!