This is my first blog and I'm going to use it for publishing my thoughts on Chess and Fischer Random. I've been studying and playing chess for about half my life and only now have I come to the conclusion that Fischer Random is the only true test of one's ability to playing this pastime.
I've recently been forced to throw away many of my old books because of fire hazard concerns...and many of the books I've been forced to give up were from my chess collection. Opening theory books, game collections were a large part of the backlog of books I had to throw out. It was with a heavy heart...believe me. With many of those books consigned to the garbage bins...I've been plagued by thoughts of not being able to defend against sharp variations in the Sicilian Defense, King's Indian, Nimzo-Indian, the French, and a whole host of other well known chess openings I've learned over the years.
However, I've adopted a new way of thinking on chess thanks to the study and appreciation of Bobby Fischer's advancement of a new form of chess. Now regardless of what one thinks of Bobby Fischer and his political rantings...one still has to appreciate the genius of his chess thinking and what it has done for the game in general. Now Bobby Fischer has given the world a new form of chess that clears the cobwebs of theory and allows players to concentrate on the game.
The brilliance to Bobby Fischer's invention on the game of chess is the concept of randomizing the initial chess piece setup. With this fresh new approach...the game suddenly gains a new vista upon to start fresh. Suddenly opening theory is thrown out the window and one has to play the game from the first move without prior knowledge to help one through the thicket of dangers.
The benefits to me became immediately apparent. Now I no longer needed to possess those huge thick tomes of opening knowledge. I've been freed from the necessity of keeping up with "theory" as per articles in Chessbase Magazine and such. I haven't given up completely on "classical" chess though. I've instead...gotten two chess books that condenses all opening theory in cogent form using a special series of openings one can use regardless of how the opponent responds. These books have recently been published...one called "Openings for White, Explained" and "Openings for Black, Explained".
These two books are great because they are the only two books in the entire chess market that literally shows diagrams without being run off with thickets of chess notation that would test one's memory skills. Each variation is immediately followed by a diagram allowing you to see just where one stands. You can then visualize where you are in the game. This allows you to plan ahead more forcefully than you would if you had to struggle and "imagine" what the board looks like after squished chess notation in the margins. Every new variation included in the book carefully shows a diagram after the notation is given. This is an approach I've never seen in any of the countless other books out there in the market. Not even Gary Kasparov's Great Predecessors books are like this.
Anyway...these two books are more than enough to keep me on the level with classical chess because they allow me to follow an approach that forces my opponent to respond in a way I'm able to anticipate. Now that's better than trying to memorize reams of opening theory and getting confused by the maze of variations just to get to the middlegame...let alone the endgame. Just my two cents on the state of chess today and the benefits of Fischer Random.
