Ready Steady Go!

I was tagged by Wipneus to write about my “slogan” in life…well, firstly I want to apologise, as this entry will be in Afrikaans…basically, I’m saying that I’m a “ready-steady-go”-person…as you can see from this picture…and that I believe to do what is expected from you, when it’s expected and also, try to do more than what’s expected and….to use my logical mind!/use your brain!! …and…be positive and see an opportunity in every problem! I don’t have patience with myself and in general, I want to get things done! So,  if you’re a bit too slow for me, I’ll do your work too just to get the job done. I can’t hang around doing nothing and would use my logical mind to do what needs to be done.

Personally, I  think Chess is the game to develop the logical mind!! Slide down to the bottom of this post to read about the logical mind…and read about Susan Polgar and her brilliant brain. Everybody has a brilliant brain, it depends on how you use it! I’ve said to so many children that there is no such thing as a dumb child…each child learns in a different way and the same with adults. You use your brain in a different way and some people don’t use it at all… it’s not that they are dumb..they have to learn how to use it..  And now…tagging time…(you can find them all on my blogroll) Ray (bookstoysgames)…Norrbu….Tony…and Luigi!

Vir iemand om saam met my te werk, moet dit seker een groot vet fees wees…Ek weet presies wat ek wil doen, hoe ek dit gedoen wil hê en wanneer ek dit wil doen. Ek raak gou besig met ander mense se “opdragte” as hulle nie gou genoeg ‘n ding doen nie… en gelukkig waardeer hulle dit wanneer ek dit doen. Ek geniet dit ook om meer as net te doen wat van my verwag word…nie omdat ek wil iewers wil “inkruip”  nie, maar net bloot omdat dit in my natuur is om raak te sien wat gedoen moet word en om my logiese verstand te gebruik wanneer dit kom by dinge wat gedoen moet word. Sommige mense sien sekere take as benede hulle posisie en ander sal wil hê hulle moet eers gevra word om ‘n ding te doen – dalk dink hulle hulle word meer belangrik geag as hulle eers gevra word, maar in my oë sien ek dit eerder as ‘n geval van nie jou logiese denke inspan nie!  Ek vra myself die vraag…waarom nie doen wat gedoen moet word, jy spaar energie/tyd, want sekere opdragte hou verband met ander en daarom gaan alles soveel vinniger as opdrag 1 uit die pad is en opdrag 2 kan voortgaan…ek vra myself ook soms, “dink mense nie vir hulself nie”? ek verkies om kinders in die laerskool te leer hoe om vir hulself te dink, hoe om verstandig te dink en net deur logika te gebruik, spaar dit almal baie pyne en deur in ‘n span te werk, maak jy dit vir almal ligter en almal is soveel gelukkiger! Jy ontwikkel jouself as mens en skep geleenthede vir jouself in in die proses  dalk vir ander ook! Dit is nou waar “sien ‘n geleentheid in elke probleem” inkom! — en om eerlik te wees…(jammer vir die nie-skaakspelers…dis geen aanklag teen jul intelligensie nie!!)…skaak is ‘n spel wat jou beslis logika leer!

Met myself is ek baie ongeduldig… ek moet aan die gang bly en kan nie sit en niks doen nie, my familie – gesin – weet gewoonlik dat hulle met my altyd “gereed” moet wees… wanneer daar iewers heen gegaan moet word, is dit gewoonlik algemeen aanvaar dat almal gereed is wanneer hulle gereed moet wees…sjoe! Dit klink verskriklik…maar dis nie so erg nie! 😉 Wanneer ek skoolhou is dit deel van my algemene omgang met die kinders…”are you ready?” in Suid-Afrika was dit gewoonlik ‘n koor wat antwoord…”Ja…steady….” julle ken seker almal die “are you ready” van die Gladiators..wel, dis nou ekke…hoor dit in jou gedagtes en jy hoor vir my! lol….hier in London…sal daardie selfde koor kom met…”no!! wait!!”…hierdie Engelse is te stadig na my sin…… 😉

 Read and enjoy this article about the logical mind…Don’t be held back..it says…

 

 We are blessed to have such powerful minds to put to work for us. Unfortunately, our minds tend to end up getting a much bigger role than they should. This can cause us to be held to the same old comfortable reality, which I imagine, you would probably like to see improvements in!

Our logical mind has a definite purpose, it can figure things out, it can plan, it can analyze, figure out how to make things work, figure out how to implement a plan. These are all wonderful things that help us in our day to day life.

But the logical mind is just that, logical. It does what “makes sense”.

And just what makes sense to the logical mind? What has worked in the past. What it has seen work for others.

Hmm, let’s see, so if you are making decisions and living your life with your logical mind in charge, what could the future possibly look like?

Same as the past!!!

And is that what you want? I’m guessing no. We are always growing and expanding and with that comes the desire for more. That is a natural part of this life and it is a good thing.

So how can you prevent your logical mind from holding you back like this?

It helps to see it from a bigger perspective. You see, if the mind had the perspective of the soul it would have a much bigger picture of your life and of what is possible. It would not look to the past to see what to do. It would see the potential and move forward.

But the logical mind does not see this big picture. It only sees what is and what has been.

So if you are wanting to take your life to a new level, to break into wonderful new territory do you really want to be putting your logical mind in charge?

I don’t think so.

So how do you deal with this? Who is in charge then?

You.

You are not your mind. Your mind is a tool you have available to you.

And you have the ability to access higher information through your intuition. You can receive guidance from a higher part of yourself that sees the big picture.

It is up to you to choose how you make decisions in your life. From the logical mind, or maybe based on a higher knowing. You choose.

That is why your intuition is an important part of this journey to your even better life. It is your access to the big picture. And you may never get to see that bigger picture and that doesn’t matter. You just need the insight from the part of you that does see it.
Please click HERE to read the entire article.

Read about Susan Polgar, Woman Grandmaster in Chess…American…what she says…you can read her blog..it’s on my blog roll in the “Chess” section.

My Brilliant Brain –  

Exploring the incredible inner workings of the human brain, this compelling three-part documentary series looks at a group of remarkable people and poses questions about the origins of genius: are these extraordinary abilities genetic, developed or acquired by accident? This episode focuses on Susan Polgar, the first female chess grandmaster, whose incredible story suggests that genius does not always have to be innate, but can be taught.

At 38 years old, Susan Polgar has reached heights that few women have ever equalled in the chess world. Despite the common assumption that men’s brains are better at understanding spatial relationships, giving them an advantage in games such as chess, Susan went on to become the world’s first grandmaster. Susan’s remarkable abilities have earned her the label of ‘genius’, but her psychologist father, László Polgar, believed that genius was “not born, but made”. Noting that even Mozart received tutelage from his father at a very early age, Polgar set about teaching chess to the five-year-old Susan after she happened upon a chess set in their home. “My father believed that the potential of children was not used optimally,” says Susan.

Throughout the rest of her childhood, Susan practised for hours, memorising thousands of moves and scenarios, and devouring books and stratagems. She took on the men in her local chess club at the age of five and began beating them. By the age of 15, she was the best female player in the world. A year later in 1985, she sensationally vanquished a male grandmaster for the first time. But Susan is not the only family member to achieve such incredible success – her younger sisters Judit and Zsófia are grandmaster and international master respectively, thanks to similar schooling from their father.

So how has Susan trained her brain to such a formidable degree? Chess is so complex a game that there are four billion choices for the first three moves alone. Susan has committed to memory tens of thousands of possible patterns and scenarios. Every time Susan sees a grouping of chess pieces on a board, she can browse through her back catalogue of memorised groupings, using instinct to tell her the right move. “We seem to heap a lot of praise on people’s calculating ability,” says former British champion William Hartston, “but we take for granted all sorts of mental abilities that are absolutely intuitive.”

Susan displays her skills as she takes on a friend at ‘Blitz’ – a form of chess in which players must complete their moves in just one minute. Susan uses her razor-sharp instinct to not only move her own pieces, but guess her opponent’s moves in milliseconds. “I have to trust my instincts, my recognition,” she explains. “It’s almost like guessing, but basing it on prior games and experience.”

In order to isolate the areas of her brain she uses when playing chess, Susan is given an MRI scan. There is an area at the front of the brain which deals with face recognition, allowing most people to remember a face in 100 milliseconds. Astonishingly, this is the very place where the experts find that Susan has moulded her recognition of 100,000 chess scenarios. Over years of childhood practice, Susan has hardwired these countless scenarios into her long-term memory and can recognise one in an instant – as quickly as someone might recognise the face of a friend or relative.

It is this lightning-quick instinct, coupled with a phenomenal memory and years of relentless practice, that have earned Susan the status of ‘genius’. Her story presents strong evidence to suggest that her father was right – genius may indeed be nurture over nature. “I really believe that if you put your mind to it,” reflects Susan, “you can achieve it, whatever it is”.
Article to be found HERE about Susan Polgar…”My brilliant brain”…

Image:www.sv-goerlitz.de/Foren/Gallery/images
On THIS LINK you can watch a long-ish video about Susan and her brilliant brain. It is a video longer than 40 minutes and worth to watch. She wasn’t born with this brilliant brain, it was created….

Watch this movie about Susan Polgar and her “brilliant brain”.

As a space-lover..I couldn’t resist this picture! of the day…as it immediately reminded me about our brains…almost the shape too!

Image: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/
 

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Male and Female Chess players

On  ChessWorld, in the chess forum, we had a discussion about male/female players.  The question was… are men
better at chess….? and some wondered why men are/were better…  Some people think chess is a male game. I didn’t play chess when I was at school, although I could play, as there were always only boys playing…as I said before on my blog… I felt intimidated by those boys giving me the look of…”hey… you’re a girl…and you play chess!”… as if it’s actually a boy’s game…I think nowadays boys/men have accepted  that chess is also a girls/female game and that we can actually also play the game, and sometimes even a bit better…also, I think it’s just a matter of statistics. For some men on the site, it’s even hard to lose a game to a woman! I experience it every now and then and quite recently had again such an experience of a male player that couldn’t handle the fact that a female was beating him.

We have also two tournaments going…where there are equally male/female players in both… I’m in the one tournament…and in this tournament the outcome looks positive for both sexes…in the other tourney it seems to be the females that will walk away as the winners…How do you feel? Are men better…is it a male game…what’s your opinion? 

On THIS LINK you can follow the discussion about male/female chess on CW. This forum link will open in a new window.

 In the following chess game, I played white. My opponent – this game was played more than six months ago, before this entry – was about 400+ ahead of me although he’s actually a 2000+ player, which means he would then be 800 ahead of me.  He resigned at the end. You can click on the link and it will open in a new window to play through the game. I think it was also a bit of luck on my side. He wasn’t really impressed with the fact that I was beating him. Then, best of all, the game got more attention in the chess forum as an annotated game with a title: “Underdog wins”…Here is the game link ….Nikita1 vs. No6

This chess art is a brilliant piece of art by Roger Morin

I came across a site with very useful information… a very extensive site where you can read more about the research/study that was done about the female/male chess player! Read here an extract and you can follow the link to read the entire article! There is more to read than just this extract… you will not regret reading more!

After examining the data the researchers made four statements summarized below:

They found that men and women differed in chess ability in all age groups even after differences like frequency of play (read: level of training) or age were taken into account. The disparity between men and women in ability exists at the beginning and persists across all age groups. At least ostensibly this would lend credence to the ability distribution hypothesis in the sense that it suggests the mean ability between men and women are innately different. The last piece of data looks at whether that is true.

They found no greater variance in men than women. It had been suggested that since science selects for individuals at the upper tail of the distribution, a higher variance in men than women might explain their greater representation. However, the researchers found that — with respect to chess — if anything in most age groups women had a higher variance then men. Upper tail effects do not explain the differences in the numbers of grandmasters.

They found that women and men do not drop out more or less frequently when ability and age are factored out. For example, if you are not very good at chess you are more likely to stop playing tournaments, but girls and boys that are equally good are equally likely to stop playing. This strikes a blow at the differential dropout hypothesis.

Finally, here is the interesting part. If you look at the participation rate of women and relate that to performance, you find that in cases where the participation rate of women and men is equal the disparity in ability vanishes. Basically, this means that in zip codes where there are equal numbers of men and women players there is no great disparity between male and female ability — and certainly not a disparity in ability large enough to explain the difference in the numbers of grandmasters…read moreHEREabout the research/study.

Update: 26Dec 2008: You can read on THIS LINK new info on a new “gentle“ research that was done by a chess player from the Oxford University to prove that it’s only statistics when it comes to male/female GM’s…the link will open in a new window.

On this pdf-link you can read more about male/female chess players and the personality of chess players.

http://people.brunel.ac.uk/~hsstffg/preprints/Bilalic%20et%20al%20-%20Personality.pdf

Click on here to find out if you have a male/female brain. The link will open in a new window.

I had this chess game in this post annotated, here is the annotation if you’re interested.

1.e4 e5 2.d4 d5!? Playable, but not the best. Black can’t afford to mimic White’s moves, especially when it comes to centre Pawns. The obvious (2…exd4) is best.

3.f3 Weakening the King’s position. Best is simply (3.dxe5 dxe4 4.Qxd8+) and Black loses the castling priviledge, although with the Queens off the board this isn’t too critical.

3. … Bb4+ Wastes time, as White will simply interpose the c-pawn and the Bishop will have to retreat. Best is (3…exd4).

4.c3 Bd6 5.exd5 exd4 6.Qxd4 Nf6 7.Bg5 O-O Since the shaky first three moves, both sides have played quite well, but here (7…Nbd7) is better, as White will now be able to shatter Black’s King’s position.

8.Bxf6 gxf6 [8…Qxf6 may be safer, if not better, for if 9.Qxf6 gxf6], Black has the same Pawn formation as in the game, but White’s main attacking piece (the Queen) is gone.

9.Bd3 Qe7+ Since White can cover the check with a developing move, it may have been better to start chipping away at the White centre with (9…c6). Also worth considering is (9…Be5).

10.Ne2 b6 11.Be4 An unnecessary moving of the same piece twice in the opening. White should complete her development with (11.Nd2), followed by castling (Queenside being safer in this case, because of the semi-open g-file).

11. … Bb7 Logical, given his previous move, but (11…f5) would’ve forced White to retract her last move.

12.c4 Another unnecessary move, as the d-pawn was amply protected. White should once again have played (12.Nd2).

12. … Nd7 It’s hard to knock a move that develops a new piece, but (12…Be5) was stronger here.

13.Nd2 White finally makes this move, but as long as the c-pawn is no longer preempting c3, this Knight would be better placed there.

c5?? Once again, (13…Be5) would have been an uncomfortable move for White to face. The text is a blunder which should lose a piece.

14.dxc6 Be5? Wrong time for this move now, as it just compounds his previous error. Better is (14…f5 15.cxb7 Rab8 16.Bd3) etc.

15.Qd3?! Good enough to maintain the advantage, but (15.Qxd7 Qxd7 16.cxd7 Bxe4 17.Nxe4 Bxb2 18.Rb1 Be5 19.f4) is much stronger.

15. … Bxb2? Here Black had a chance to avoid the worst with (15…Nc5 16.Qc2 Bc8 17.Bxh7+ Kg7).

16.Rb1 Good, but better is (16.cxb7 Rae8 17.Rb1 Nc5 18.Qe3) etc.

16. … Ne5 (16…Bxc6) is probably better, although Black would still be losing.

17.Qc2 Ba3 Again, (17…Bxc6) is better, but perhaps Black was trying to confuse the issue.

18.cxb7 White now has an overwhelming advantage, and should win with reasonably careful play.

Rab8 19.O-O Prudent, but White should have played (19.Bxh7+) while the opportunity presented itself.

19. … Bc5+ 20.Kh1 Qd7 Here Black might have tried getting rid of the thorn in his side with (20…f5 21.Bxf5 Rxb7).

21.a4 There’s still no reason why White can’t play (21.Bxh7+).

21. … Nc6 Seals off White’s b-pawn, but (21…Ng6) would have saved Black’s h-pawn …

22.Bxc6 … except that White doesn’t seem to want Black’s h-pawn for some reason.

Qxc6 23.a5 Worth considering is (23.Qe4).

23. … Rxb7 Black finally eliminates White’s advanced Pawn, but is not yet out of the woods. For one thing, he’s still a piece down.

24.a6 More of an annoyance move than anything else. (24.Ne4), with the idea of exchanging off Black’s Bishop, is better.

24. … Re7 25.Nf4 (25.Ne4) is still probably the better move, but the text isn’t bad, either.

25. … Be3 Flashy, but inconsequential.

26.g3!? A bit dangerous. With (26.Nd5) White would be assured of eliminating Black’s Bishop.

26. … Bxd2?! Obliging White by exchanging the Bishop himself, thinking only of winning the c-pawn. Something like –26…Rd8– is probably better.

27.Qxd2 Qxc4 Black regains a Pawn, but the real threat was White moving her Knight to h5, followed by Qh6 threatening mate in two. Therefore, (27…Re5) is safer.

28.Ra1 Fortunately for Black, the above-mentioned threat doesn’t occur to White.

Qc6 29.Kg2 Once again, [29.Nh5 would force 29…Re5, then 30.Qh6 threatens mate in two, so Black would have to play 30…Rxh5], losing the exchange.

29. … Rd7 30.Qc1 Offering the exchange of Queens, which isn’t a bad idea, as White is a piece ahead.

Qxc1 Black should have avoided the exchange of Queens by, say, (30…Qb5).

31.Raxc1 Rd2+ Black gets more mileage out of this move than he should.

32.Kh3 Better would be (32.Rf2), when Black would either have to exchange Rooks or retreat.

32. … Ra2 33.Nh5 White trades her a-pawn for Black’s doubled f6-pawn, not a good deal as Black will now have two connected passed Pawns. Better is (33.Ra1).

33. … f5 Of course, Black doesn’t have to let the forward f-pawn go easy, but it would have been better to take the a-pawn.

34.Nf6+ Once again, better is (34.Ra1).

34. … Kg7 35.Nd7 Rd8 36.Ne5 Here White might have tried [36.Rc7, and if 36…Rxa6, THEN 37.Ne5].

36. … Rdd2 Black doubles Rooks on the second rank, normally a very strong manoeuvre. However, it’s stronger when White’s King is still on the first rank.

37.g4!? Much safer would be protecting the h-pawn with (37.Rh1).

37. … Rxh2+ 38.Kg3 Rag2+ It was at this point that Nikita asked me to look at this game. My comment at the time (not giving her any actual advice as to which move to make, of course) was, “If you can avoid checkmate in the next few moves, you may have a chance at winning.” Prophetic, as it turned out.

39.Kf4 Ra2?! Back to attacking the a-pawn, but he should have first played (39…fxg4).

40.gxf5 The natural move to make, but (40.Rc7) is much stronger.

40. … f6? Gives White the game. (40…Ra4+) would have made a fight of it.

41.Rc7+ Kg8 42.Rg1+ Rag2 Forced, as —42…Kf8 43.Rf7+ Ke8 44.Rg8– is mate.

43.Rxg2+ Rxg2 44.Nd7 Rg7 It makes little difference what Black plays now.

45.Rxa7 b5 46.Ra8+ A bit of a slip. (46.Nxf6+) would have won quicker.

46. … Kf7 47.Nc5 And now (47.Rf8+) is stronger, but White is wrapping up the point.

47. … Rg8 48.Ra7+ And here exchanging Rooks was quicker, but it would be hard for White to lose this game almost regardless of what she plays.

Kf8 49.Rxh7 Even better would be [49.Ne6+), but the text is still good enough to win, as Black can’t stop White from queening the a-pawn. Black rightly resigned at this point.
49. …

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