Nov
21

Welcome!

Categories:

by

Welcome to GeniusProphecy Chess.

This website is dedicated to writing free chess articles on a range of topics to help the average player improve. Topics discussed include chess openings, strategy, endgames, books and improvement. My writing primarily targets beginners up to club players, although sometimes I could not resist throwing in some advanced material. The bulk of this website lies within the articles under the sections ‘beginner’, ‘intermediate’ and ‘general’.

I devote my spare time to practicing and studying chess because I love the strategical deepness of the game. I have a FIDE rating of 2146 (11/2010), an ACF rating of 2256 (03/2010) and am a former Australian Under 16 Champion. I actively play on the Internet Chess Club.

You will find my blog below this post and links to my website articles (separate from the blog) on the top navigation bar.

Kind regards,
William Li

This post has no tag

Leave comment

Sep
17

Jan Markos First Simul

Categories:

by

Grandmaster Jan Markos’ first simultaneous display on Chess Friends finished with a 4.5-1.5 win for the grandmaster. Markos is the number one ranked player in Slovakia and has a FIDE Elo rating of 2596. Click here for the official ChessFriends.com simul report.

The next simul takes place on Wednesday,  21/9/2011 at 17:00 GMT. The qualification will held on Tuesday and is open to everybody registered on ChessFriends.com (registration is free). More information can be found in the site’s tournament section.

This post has no tag

Leave comment

Sep
12

New Live Chess

Categories:

by

I have embedded a new Chess Friends Live Board on the website. I had tested it out twice and was very impressed with the interface.

Chess Friends has also organised simultaneous exhibitions by Grandmaster Jan Markos.

This post has no tag

Leave comment

Aug
05

New Chess Website

Categories:

by

I have published a new chess website called Chess Game Improvement. The site is mainly geared towards beginners. I find teaching this ‘simple material’ quite rewarding, especially given how far a player can go if he starts off with a strong foundation. The main GeniusProphecy Chess website will still be continually updated, although often with more advanced material or reviews.

This post has no tag

Leave comment

Jun
14

Coaches, Chessmaster and The Art of Learning

Categories:

by

I have written two new related articles. A review of the excellent book The Art of Learning, by American International Master Joshua Waitzkin. Waitzkin is also the main spokesperson for Chessmaster, one of my all-time favourite chess programs. I have reviewed the Grandmaster Edition of Chessmaster.

I have added acknowledgements to my past coaches on my ‘about’ page. Many great coaches have worked with me over the years, but particularly want to acknowledge my long-time coach FIDE Master Geoffrey Saw.

This post has no tag

Leave comment

May
28

ChessBase’s 25th Birthday

Categories:

by

ChessBase is an extraordinary piece of database software that is sold on a website of the same name. The software dominates the chess market, particularly at the stronger end. ChessBase recently celebrated its 25th birthday and published a story regarding its origins, which involves a science journalist, an exceptional programmer and a world champion.

The world champion himself writes several paragraphs about how he came to be involved in the ChessBase project. The article also includes images of some vintage machines such as a BBC Acorn home computer, an Epson Z80 system with modem and dot matrix printer, and an Atari ST (based on Motorola’s 68000 processor) available back in 1987.

See the full article “ChessBase is 25“.

This post has no tag

Leave comment

May
14

Chess Lessons with Grandmaster Efstratios Grivas

Categories:

by

Apologies, I haven’t published articles in a while. I have been busy with some other projects.

Efstratios Grivas is an author, highly experienced trainer and a chess grandmaster. He recently presented a highly informative series of articles on the world’s most popular chess website, ChessBase. I am going to summarise his tips as well as give my own take on the issues he discusses…

See the rest of the article “Chess Lessons with Grandmaster Efstratios Grivas“.

This post has no tag

Leave comment

Mar
24

Korchnoi’s Birthday and Super-Strong Amber Tournament

Categories:

by

Viktor Korchnoi is a marvel of human ingenuity. He is one of those exception-to-the-rule people who is able to maintain an extraordinary level of chess ability despite the apparent limitations of old age. Korchnoi has just turned 80 years old and has a FIDE rating of 2557. Click here to see ChessBase’s tribute article for Korchnoi’s 80th.

One of my favourite tournaments of the year to watch is the Amber tournament, which is currently taking place. The blindfold section of the tournament is particularly interesting and while many of the games are ‘spotless’, a handful show that even the world’s greatest players have occasional blind spots! (Note: blindfold play is where players are given an empty chessboard and must communicate their moves via coordinates while visualising where the pieces are.) There is a star field in this year’s Amber with names like Anand, Carlsen, Aronian and Topalov. Aronian is currently going into the final round with a full point lead. See this ChessBase report on the Amber as well as a link down the bottom to download all the games played so far.

This post has no tag

Leave comment

Feb
21

New Format for Official Homepage

Categories:

by

If you’re a regular visitor, you may have noticed that the official homepage for the GeniusProphecy Chess website has changed in format. I believe the new format is more visitor-friendly and makes the articles easier to navigate. It also prevents that annoying occurence where text stretches all the way out to the very edges of your screen. You may notice that these days, many websites have text running down the middle, e.g. Blogger blogs.

I have also added the new format to some of my most popular articles, for example, Free Chess Programs.

This post has no tag

Leave comment

Feb
10

Journey into Correspondence Chess

Categories:

by

Given I have been inactive in over-the-board (OTB) chess for a while now, I thought I would take up some extra chess apart from my usual online blitz. This extra training comes in the form of correspondence chess, a topic which I have previously written on and given a positive review about. I thought I would walk my talk and actually give CC a go.

There are several correspondence chess organisations to consider. My original intention was to join the most ‘official’ organisation which is the International Correspondence Chess Federation (ICCF). The ICCF is directly affiliated with FIDE, the official organisation for OTB chess. However, I came to realise that I am rather strapped for cash – ICCF tournaments cost money, both in the yearly national organisation fee and a separate entry fee for every tournament commenced. I will need to earn some money first before I can join.

For the moment, I decided to go with a free alternative called Lechenicher SchachServer (LSS). The International Email Chess Group (IECG) is a long-running correspondence chess server which virtually transferred all of its business to LSS after it shut down in December 2010. LSS is programmed by one of the original founders of IECG and IECG also transferred its rating system over to LSS. IECG previously offered titles such as grandmaster, senior master and international master, although I am not sure how LSS is going to organise its titles. Unlike some other popular correspondence chess websites, LSS (and ICCF, as a side note) allows the use of chess engines to aid in analysis. This is fair enough because a non-computer rule is practically impossible to police anyway.

I have commenced my first tournament on LSS, playing in a double round robin server tournament in a field of 7 players with average rating 2061. The time limit is 40 days/10 moves and I am currently playing 6 games simultaneously.

Ideally, playing this tournament will help my OTB chess (that is, when I choose to return to it). I am planning to use a combination of human intuition along with engine assistance to hopefully play some high quality games.

This post has no tag

Leave comment

Jan
31

Houdini tops the list

Categories:

by

A couple of months ago, I reported on a new freeware chess engine called Houdini, which overtook Deep Rybka 4 in a major computer chess rating list, the IPON Rating List. It took a couple of weeks for Deep Rybka to edge ahead of Houdini and reclaim the number 1 position. However, with the release of the new Houdini 1.5a, this elusive engine again tops the list with a massive 3012 rating, above Deep Rybka by a nifty 54 points. Houdini also tops the popular CEGT rating list. Houdini is a free download and will work on your UCI-enabled chess database programs (ChessBase, Fritz, SCID, Chess Assistant, Aquarium, etc.).

In other news, well known American Grandmaster (often considered to be one of the world’s top blitz players) Hikaru Nakamura took out the 2011 Tata Steel Chess Tournament held in Wijk aan Zee. Nakamura scored 9/13, placing in front of giants like Anand, Carlsen, Aronian and Kramnik. His performance rating was a whopping 2879.  Click here to download the games from the 2011 Tata Steel Chess Tournament.

This post has no tag

1 comment

Older posts «