Hartbeespoortdam

I came across this song about the Hartbeespoortdam on youtube… I don’t know the artist… but it’s a funny song… if you listen to the artist, you will hear a very distinct “accent” which is very typical of some Capetonians… he sings a mix of Afrikaans and English and it’s an accent which you get in Cape Town from the Cape Coloureds ( a mixed race)….. it’s beautiful. The Hartbeespoortdam is near Pretoria and if you travel from Johannesburg…(also Jo’burg/Johies/Jozi)… it’s about 30 min travel… When I was a student, we used to go for a day to this dam to try catch some fish… not that we were lucky though…it was more for the fun of it… Once a friend  also scared me with all kinds of tricks in his helicopter! We flew over the dam and he perhaps tried to impress me with all his tricks, but I felt sick most of the time and sat with a paper back on my lap! LOL! There is a little zoo at the dam which you can visit. If you want to do some hang gliding….then this place is just the place to do it, you have to go up the mountain with the cable car! If you watch the video, you will see some great pictures of the tunnel and the road across the dam…. be prepared for weekends…this place is PACKED!! with visitors and travelling through the tunnel can be a nightmare…don’t say I didn’t warn you…there are all kinds of curious shops to visit too….places to have some scones and tea!! Yummy!

Play golf!

Click HERE to book your holiday at Hartbeespoortdam or surrounding areas…The link will open in a new window.

 

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Chess Tactics

 I do like this picture!
“Whenever anyone rated between 1000 and 1800 asks me how to improve in chess, I always say, study more tactics!” Read more on Jennifer Shahade’s blog here. She’s  a Grandmaster  from the USA.

I’ve come across a very good site which has fantastic explanations…you can read on this site about the pin and the skewer and there are some good mating positions too!

 In this first diagram you can see the Knight-fork… I value Knights more than Bishops, I know other players value Bishops more, I think it’s more my opinion as I have used my Knights so many times to launch attacks that wouldn’t be possible with Bishops. I always try to save them, I will even offer my Bishops in order to save my Knights! With your Knight you can sometimes launch a surprise attack on your opponent like in one of my games earlier yesterday… my opponent won’t feel happy when he returns to his board today, just to find that he’s in check and  the same time loses his Queen! In this image, you can clearly see the “fork”, black needs to move and he’s about to lose his Rook!

On the next image you can see the Rook-fork. The Rook attacks the King and the same time threatens the Bishop!

Ouch! A position I hate to be in with! King in check whilst Rook in danger!

Please click HERE to see more forks and complete explanations!
On this next image, you can see my game I was referring to…I’m playing white in this game and my Knight has made a move…King in check and Queen in danger!

Hey! Where are those people saying Bishops are more valuable than Knights…LOL! This is another game of mine..and I love my Knights…look at this position…same as the previous one….

On this next image, I played black and you can see how close I was to checkmate my opponent.. I was getting tired of moving up and down, so I move in such a way for him to checkmate me in his next move. By the time I copied the pic, his final move wasn’t made yet, ( I moved his Queen by using the “play through” option)… but I do expect it to be made by tomorrow… so, that’s another tactic! This game wasn’t a rated game so I wasn’t that much bothered… lol!

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