Most chess enthusiasts at least know the name, Réti, but until about a month ago, I had no idea this book even existed. As part of a training regimen I was recently given a choice for required reading between two titles, this being one of them. I could not find any used copies of the out of print book online and thus resigned myself to studying the other title. Then last week, on a shelf at Second Story Books in Rockville, Maryland, sat a perfect, unread copy of a 1960 printing from Dover Publications. The first I’d ever seen.

The listed price was $6, and all books there are 50% off the listed price. I have been reading this at the dog park over the last week, with some stints here at the house. It is a quick read, but one whose benefits, I believe, will linger.

In this book, Reti sets forth on the task of concisely illustrating the preceding hundred years of chess. He begins with Adolph Anderssen (b.1818) who leads into Morphy (b. 1837) and illustrates the ideas and developments of each successive era. That the book itself is written from a vantage already almost a century in the past, reading it was exceptionally insightful and made me–makes me–wonder: What have we forgotten?

I was born in 1974. I grew up post-Bobby Fischer, but in terms of chess culture, the world I knew growing up was one in which the Russians still dominated the game. As far as I knew, it had always been thus. Yet here in 1923, this Austro-Hungarian (later Czech) Master published an entire chapter titled AMERICANISM IN CHESS where he extolled the virtue of American Chess, deeming it superior to that of his native Europe and predicting that the future of chess (and more) belonged to the Americans.

For such is the strength and weakness of the European thinker and plodder, that he always strives after the impossible. The American is steady and turns what is possible to account…

To the European mind has undoubtedly belonged the past; possibly to Americans belong the present and the future.

-Richard Reti, Modern Ideas in Chess

About twenty years ago Garry Kasparov, arguably the strongest player the game of chess had ever seen, was releasing his series of books: My Great Predecessors. In these volumes, he systemically covered chess history in the modern era through the games and lives of past World Champions. The knock on that series–and one that I tend to agree with–is that the content is too intense. Countless side lines and variations and histories of which moves had been played from exact positions all added up to muddled and confusing incomprehensibility that few can cut through. Réti avoids all of that with simplicity and brevity. He provides no more than a single game per each Master mentioned, and the games themselves are only analyzed to the point of illustrating what each successive master brought to the game. He sets out to explain in prose and then support through concise presentation.

Anderssen – and his brilliance in calculating sacrifices and combinations. Morphy–playing the exact same position faced by Anderssen–and declining the immediate combination or attack and opting instead to develop his pieces to positions less favorable in the moment, but exceedingly advantageous within a short series of moves. Steinitz, later facing similar positions to Morphy, but having an approach to placing his pieces in accordance with more static and permanent features of the developing position. On and on for another 160 pages! Tarrasch. Lasker. Pillsbury. Akiba Rubenstein. Capablanca. Alekhine. With mentions and commentary on other notable figures throughout the years: Maroczy, Jaenish, Chigorin, Breyer, Schlechter, and more – namesake discovers of opening variations and positions students of the game study to present day. Réti provides an easily comprehensible context and chronology of them all in this short 180 page work. It is a beautiful thing.

For anyone who is interested in the history of chess or maybe even the history of ideas, this book is a must read. If one considers themselves a student of the game, and particularly if they utilize the study of so-called “Master Games” to improve their play, then this book becomes almost a Rosetta Stone. I have recently been studying Alekhine for example, and had a hard time understanding all but his tactics and endgames; the context Richard Réti provides on the ‘hyper-moderns’ illuminated much for me, by way of example. The book is not for understanding why Akiba Rubenstein –or any other Master — was brilliant in all the ways he was brilliant, but rather to show how each of them fit in the legacy that is the birthright of most anyone alive today.

In short, the book is amazing, and I would argue even more relevant today than when it was published a hundred years ago. If you are remotely interested in the book, obtain a copy and give it a shot. You will be glad you did.

I just took the dogs outside for their morning rounds. I bundled up, sans gloves, and was struck immediately at how cold it was. Infantry cold. I thought to myself (incredulously): “It has got to be twenty degrees out here!”

It was 7.

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Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke to Congress this week. It troubled me for the first ten minutes or so, watching him be so beggarly in his remarks — until I fully committed to his role as a politician (not a soldier), doing politics with the politics people in the politics place. And then it was troubling for different reasons. I have a strong aversion to seeing the people who are Doing The Work explain themselves to those helping out when they can.

Especially in front of so many timid souls inside that chamber.

To reiterate my position, if the US intends to be any sort of force in the world–and I think it should– we should fully support Ukraine, short of putting US troops on the ground, and encourage our allies to do the same. Training support, Logistical Support, Intelligence, Material, the works. Every dime in treasure we spend today is an investment against the blood and treasure the world would pay later.

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I won the lottery last week. Not one that gives you money, but one that allows you to run ten miles. I am not sure I have enough time to successfully train up for the event, but am working toward it anyway. If I come up short by race day, the progress can be thrown at something a few weeks later in the year. I hope to get back into running in 2023.

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currently reading: Silman’s Complete Endgame Course (Part 4)

last viewed: Nope

Climate Change — From A to Z, was a rather good piece of writing from Elizabeth Kolbert in this week’s New Yorker. Part optimism, part lament, it shines some light on emergent areas of hope while also assessing the reality of a status quo bias, and if nothing else, informed me a bit on a topic I rarely sit with.

She does a phenomenal job with the piece. It goes in many directions and covers more than a few things (It is not a short piece). I am not sure if The New Yorker is entirely behind a paywall or if there are a certain number of stories one can freely access per month, but I recommend it. Of note to me, a short section on per capita energy usage (and the comparative analysis by nation to follow) was worth the time alone. Mind boggling stuff. Those two paragraphs of hers are below:

Once a month, as I write the check to the electric company, I check the Kilowatt-hours (KWh) billed and look to see how we are doing compared to previous periods and reflect on ways to use less energy/write smaller check amounts in the future. Based on the KWh billing alone, I knew we were on the hook for something like 7,500 to 8,500 KWh annually, but did not (do not) grok the sheer amount of energy flowing through and across the US.

Trying to contemplate the additional 192,000-ish Kilowatt hours (96%) being used out-there-in-the-wild that balances the two of us back to American per capita energy usage kind of does my head in. And meanwhile, I’m still at my desk trying to find a marginal gain to reduce that 4%.*

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IF ANYONE IS LOOKING for something great to adorn their walls, Zoe Keller is an artist working in the scientific illustrative tradition that might merit consideration. Her subjects focus on wilderness and biodiversity and her talent is out of sight.

You should check our her site here.

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I LEARNED TODAY that the Chesapeake apparently has a proper swamp nearby. There are no alligators, presumably no pitcher plants, but just the same, I am interested in visiting Zekiah Swamp, Maryland’s largest, next spring.

“Largest” is just kind of thrown in there for kicks; it seems considerably smaller than places like Pinhook or the Okefenokee I’d frequent many moons ago, but just the same, I would like to get a feel for the place and maybe drag a canoe through the place.

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ALSO OF INTEREST NEXT SPRING is The Cherry Blossom 10-miler (a more urban affair). The route seems pretty great, there is plenty of time to train up for it, and from what I gather, it is a great time of year to be in the District. Should be a great day, if it happens. There is a lottery involved, but registration starts in December and entrants should know if they’re invited to run by late December as I understand it.

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FINALLY, I found the chart below interesting. Trend lines suggest the population using Twitter could be rapidly changing. It is kind of funny to think that if this trend were to continue, ELNO would have bought Twitter (for far too much money) only to turn it into Parler.

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currently reading: Simple Chess by Michael Stean.

currently watching: The Peripheral (Prime) and Shantaram (Apple+).

last full listen: Lotta Sea Lice by Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile (2017).

(Two weeks later) Welp?

It was a bad night for the GOP, but they did gain control of the House.

Warnock is +4 in the polling I’ve looked at, however, as it turns out, Warnock is kind of a decent man, which makes me think the Universe will conspire to ensure he loses.

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It seems certain that Biden will run again; I think that is a bad idea. Thus concludeth my thoughts, post-election. (2022)

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I have been working on endgames over the last month or so, and have particularly found the pawn endgames the most interesting. The Knight and the Rook endgames are interesting, but it seems like the pawn endgames hold the most variety. In the course of studying, I learned the name Nikolai Grigoriev–a name I’d not learned in twenty (+) years of mucking about on the chessboard–and found his studies to be wildly informative, almost a hundred years after his final breath.

Obviously, there is no way to relay all the positions or ideas I’ve looked at, so perhaps the most practically powerful idea is below. White to move and win (decisively).

Keep in mind that if Kd4, Black has …Kxb4 and will take the white pawn at f2 right after you capture the black pawn on h7 (assuming you don’t try to take on d5).

–30–

Gas prices and inflation, coupled with the mid-term curse, should make it a banner year for the GOP. Despite that, I guess the Republican Party will be limited to about a +20 change in the House and +3 change in the Senate. I suspect that the Dobbs v. Jackson decision and the selection of some really horrible candidates in the primaries will likely drag on what could have been an actual wave election. I’m probably around 10% less bullish on GOP prospects than FiveThirtyEight. In recent elections going back to 2018 (IIRC) they have overestimated Democratic Party performance, however. If that trend held, it would be an absolute Tsunami by the GOP this cycle, and I am way off the mark (it wouldn’t be the first time).

Moving forward on my assumptions, Kevin McCarthy will be the Speaker, McConnell the Majority Leader. I expect Pelosi to retire – I’m not sure what keeps Steny Hoyer around, either. I would expect McConnell to be realistic involving things like the debt ceiling, budgets, government shutdowns, etc., and advance his judicial project to the best of his ability, but the House is a different kettle of fish altogether. I am still trying to imagine how McCarthy (of all people?) will manage must-pass legislation. Particularly while adhering to the Hastert Rule – which is a dumb rule, fwiw – and avoiding a leadership challenge or abject failure. Facetiously, the happiest day of John Boehner’s life was the day he dropped the gavel. Paul Ryan picked it up and quit politics shortly after that. My guess is that earmarks and pork-barrel spending are McCarthy’s only shot, but if he doesn’t enjoy his first few days as Speaker, I suspect the entire tenure will be joyless.

PBS Newshour recently reported that 51% of GOP candidates this cycle are election “deniers or doubters.” The overwhelming majority of these candidates are in safe seat districts and on a glide path toward public office. The 118th Congress will have far more representatives beholden to convenient fictions than even the 117th Congress did. Accordingly, I am unclear on how the leader of such a party can effectively govern in a world of uncomfortable realities. The Circus part is coming; the bread, probably not so much.

My prediction would be that at a minimum, the country is in for debt ceiling drama (and a possible default) in Feb-Mar of next year, and later in 2023 there will be government shutdowns. No bipartisan legislation will be possible, and over the coming two years, the GOP will remain “the opposition” party — forever against x, y and z, but never really coherent or unified on being for actual a, b or c legislative policies.

Time, obviously, will tell.

We are continuing to settle in here in the D.C. area, and have eliminated the moving boxes from our living space. We are using the kitchen and cooking, even as the exploration of grocery stores in the area continues. Superlatives are being sought — the best bookstores, restaurants, cafes, parks and farmer’s markets — and I continue to learn the lay of the land, what roads connect, and where they lead.

I am extra-keen to explore the many off-street pedestrian and cycling trails in the area — but have not made time to do so since arriving a week ago. We did, however, manage to explore a trail or two along the Potomac River at Great Falls National Park yesterday.

We were impressed to learn of the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal & Footpath that parallels the Potomac River for 185 miles! Even though there are many miles of other trails to explore in this area, a continuous trail 185 miles in length just reeks of long-term potential.

I should also note that I found the Potomac to be very nice. It seems like a midpoint compromise between the stately St. John’s River flowing North from central Florida to the Atlantic and the granite-carving San Joaquin as it comes together from its forks and tribs in the King’s Canyon and Sequoia National Parks racing towards the San Francisco Bay. I am looking forward to seeing the Potomac’s full might one day; the river was well below its banks and a few channels were either dry or not flowing this late in the year. During the next spring melts, revisiting this area of the river is a must.

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A week in, I have the new sourdough starter close to established and while it is too soon to bake with it, it is apparently NOT too soon to wonder what sort of character it will yield. Time will tell.

A new Winogradsky Column is probably in order too (speaking of bacteria); I wouldn’t mind bringing the endemic microbiome of the Mid-Atlantic into view as well. This is probably going to be on my to-do list very soon.

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currently reading: Freedom by Sebastian Junger, The Federal Resume Guidebook (7th ed.) by Kathryn Troutman.

currently playing: Horizon: Forbidden West

last full listen: Music for Airports: Live by Bang on a Can All-Stars

We have moved; the move is complete. We are in Maryland, in a lovely 3B/2BA apartment with a decreasing amount of cardboard boxes to unpack, and an increasingly livable/maneuverable set of rooms to negotiate. The acoustics are great here; there are many short hallways and changes of direction that restrict the travel of sound throughout the flat. The windows face south and west. We found a nice dog park w/ hiking trails just shy of two miles down the road (a much quicker jaunt than our usual trek to the Berkeley or Oakland Hills to exercise the dogs in the mornings). The climate is worth mentioning, however. Today’s lowest temperature in the D.C. Metro area yesterday was a full degree warmer than the highest temperature achieved in Oakland. This will take some adjustment.

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While driving the (apparently) 3,102 miles from there to here, I was able to listen to a fair few podcasts; I believe these are the conversations from last week that will continue to stick with me:

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Finally, courtesy of Tyler Cowen‘s assorted links at Marginal Revolution, I found this ESPN story on Nihal Sarin.

I had never heard the name before, but the case is made that he is one to watch. Apart from his individual narrative, it is also interesting to consider the chess powerhouse that India has become in the decade + since Anand was World Champion and to wonder if they might soon become the dominant force in global chess in the way that the Russians were for much of the twentieth century.

This is our final week in Oakland. We are moving to the Washington D.C. area in an effort to be closer to things like humidity and hurricanes.*

Life is basically something involving a lot of cardboard boxes at this point — and the various efforts at coordinating their transport. The work is going well; we are 4 days away from the morning we head East, and we probably have > 60% of our ‘stuff’ stacked in boxes, ready for the Moving Truck. On Saturday afternoon (right as all the Auto shops in the Bay Area were closing and not re-opening until Monday) our catalytic converter was stolen (again). That was a particularly stressful episode as it has taken up to three weeks to have that repaired before, and our apartment lease ends this Saturday. C&G Auto Body up in Berkeley pulled off a same-day repair though, on Monday, and we are back in business today, running here and there.

Today is also my second day without a job in a fairly long time (my resignation was effective last Friday). I feel like I have had almost an impermeable level of job security for the last several years, and perhaps walking away from that is just something that will take a minute to get used to. It could just be the radical departure from the routine as well. Maybe some of both. It does feel odd.

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ADULTS MAKING DECISIONS (Season One, episode one):

Last week there was an Adult who made decisions to attack the regional FBI Office in Cincinnati. With an AR-style weapon and a nail gun. My first thoughts were that it must take a hell of a lot of talk-radio and online outrage harvesting to convince someone to be a Yahoo-with-a-gun attacking a building filled with Quantico graduates(?!) who excel at dealing with Yahoos with guns. But that’s not really what I’m following.

The ongoing radicalization of a small contingent of partisans is of particular concern to me; this fellow won’t be the last person to attack U.S. institutions in response to {all} the various matters of {ongoing?} criminality surrounding the former President. I also doubt all attacks from these discontents will be at such a small scale.

Further, the extent to which so many GOP candidates, elected officials and affiliated commentators continue efforts to capitalize on the anti-institutional sentiment, promoting and providing the incindiary rhetoric that drives these attacks is also worth a thought. Come November, will a Republican Legislator who simply speaks basic, easily verifiable truth–things like, “well, there is a process to obtaining warrants and this process appears to have been conducted in good legal order” be considered a RINO by the 56% of Republicans who want Trump to be nominated in 2024? How many Death Threats would a statement like that produce? Can they weather that, personally or politically? If not, who replaces them and what does that look like? It’s concerning.

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In lighter topics, I listened to the Wu-Tang Clan for the first time this weekend. There are so many bands and films and authors that I simply haven’t made time for despite their cultural cachet constantly reminding me that I should, but I had some time to just sit with Iron Flag from 2001 over the weekend. I honestly expected it to be over-rated (because 10 million Rush fans *can* be wrong) but no, I liked it very much. Production has obviously progressed in the two decades since this came out, but the album holds its own 21 years later. Top notch stuff.

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Also, I picked up a dog in the time between the last post and this one. My wife and I adopted Jack (formerly “Hummus”?) from Oakland Animal Services on April 14th. I was looking for a dog that would be great in the woods, primarily for fishing and backpacking and also 100% reliable in dog parks with zero dog aggression. He came to us almost completely shut down, an incredibly fearful 12 month old puppy that would ‘pancake’ or ‘turn to butter’ anytime people approached. We spent many hours at Lake Merritt and walking here in downtown Oakland getting him socialized to understand the world isn’t quite as dangerous for him as perhaps it used to be.

Within a weekend, I’d established that he had become reliably velcroed to me, so he and I went backpacking/fly fishing in the Trinity Alps Wilderness for 10 days in late April and (coached by Zoe?) and he learned those ropes — and how to approach incredibly high stream crossings (spring runoff was fairly intense!!!). His evolution in the woods was honestly unbelievable and too much to try to explain in full — I’d just say he simply came out of his shell and showed me who he was and there was a lot of talent I’d not guessed was there. He ended up displaying some incredible traits — like following me up the banks as I would wade upstream in depths and current too strong for a dog. This is more complicated than it sounds, as the mountains often create a maze of tributary ditches feeding the main creeks and all the banks are usually flush with dense willow thickets that confuse and complicate any idea of straight lines and direct access. Regardless, if I dropped into a creek at a small clearing, and started working the river too far upstream, around a bend or out of sight, Jack would turn around, run off, and then be sitting on the bank, waiting for me, 50 yards upstream at the next clearing that approached the water when I got there. Zoe, old hand that she is, would often just go back to the tent and nap in the sun.

We spent a few days on the back end of that trip at a cabin on the Trinity River, closer to Humboldt County, and worked the Trinity River (proper) for Steelhead. Jack would bark at others he encountered though, so we worked on eliminating that behavior, almost as much as we fished, during the next few outings. By June, he got it and rarely made a sound on the banks of the Stanislaus apart from the intense splash when he’d find a deep enough pool and a big rock to leap from.

He’s a good dog. And I can trust him not to get in trouble.