Still pluggin' away, but work is picking up...

For a few weeks, things were kind of slow at work, so in addition to the Precircles in the Tragedy, I got started on an opening repertoire in Bookup, wrote the Chessplanner document, and was working through the great book Simple Checkmates in the morning. Now, I'm getting pretty swamped at work, so I don't have the time to do more than working on Precircle 2: work through Wolff's Complete Idiot's Guide to Chess.

I am in the section on strategy at this point. It is wonderful: he breaks the material up in a coherent, nicely organized fashion. It doesn't feel at all like he just threw this book together, an impression many chess books leave me with. What is it with chess publications' lack of good bibliographies and idices at the end?

At any rate, I just read the chapter that emphasized piece activity and especially evaluating bishops versus knights, and when each is stronger. Some of the exercises at the end of the chapter were quite tricky, and Wolff gives nice explanations.

Too bad for the name of the book: the type of brainy nerd that is attracted to chess will tend to steer clear of the "Idiots" series. Again, it is the best introductory book on chess I own. I am recommending it to anyone starting in chess who asks me, and I think I should have began my Precircles with this instead of TCT.

And maybe it will help me OTB. Unfortunatley, the way things are at work I probably won't be playing much. Though I did find a guy to play at work on Friday afternoons. He is better than most people who aren't into chess, but I beat him pretty easily. Partly, I think he was just rusty.