MarkG wrote on 02/12/12 at 04:56:48:


Perhaps rather meaningless if taken literally, but I think it has been pretty much established as an expression meaning that both sides can play for a win (i.e. about equal, but not drawish). Still, I agree it's a bit vague.

Fabulous thread. Many of these examples had me biting on granite.

Any time an author puts "with practical chances" and doesn't qualify the statement with an actual evaluation.

"White is better, but black retains practical chances" is something that has meaning to it, and tells you something about the position. 

"White has practical chances" by itself means nothing - white could be worse, equal, or better, but not with enough of an edge to win against good play - the author might as well not write anything at all in that scenario. A simple "+=" or similar would actually tell you more.

chk wrote on 02/10/12 at 09:23:10:

We can only hope this GM is not Vadim Zvjaginsev!
And I state here that I won't open my games with 1.e4 c5 2.Na3  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vadim_Zvjaginsev

winawer77 wrote on 09/19/09 at 10:45:17:


I don't think that is the question that is put to the Bishop.
From h4 a bishop will keep the pin on the knight but won't be able to easily access the diagonals that look towards black's Qside, nor the a1-h8 diagonal and the others that look towards black's Kside for that matters.
So the question would be more something like, Do you wanna retain the possibility to play on the whole board or do you wanna keep the pin but confine yourself to that role?

The " a matter of taste " makes me think of culinary delights, not chess. This is overused in the Forum. Too many cooks have spoiled the broth. Let's use some originality instead of this bland remark.

The " light squared bishop " could easily be " light square bishop ". Let's get modern on this one.

Some positions are genuinely hard to assess, e.g. the 8.Qd2 Qxb2 9.Rb1 Qa3 lines of the Najdorf Poisoned Pawn have sometimes been assessed as "unclear" at around moves 10-12, and reams of analysis has generally yielded positions at moves 15-20 which are also hard to assess (as Graham Burgess mentioned in his Mammoth Book of Chess, this is inevitable in a genuinely unclear position).   The trick there, though, is to explain to the reader why the positions are hard to assess, rather than just giving a line and concluding with "unclear".

However I'm well aware that some books assess positions as "unclear" when a little further analysis reveals that one side (often the side against the opening that the author is proposing) is actually clearly better.

I identify with the "having all the fun" comments as I am one of those chessplayers who sees a complex, knife-edge game as an end in itself, rather than just playing to achieve a result with the greatest efficiency.  Nonetheless I agree that in isolation the comments are very unhelpful and should be qualified with something like "full compensation for the material because of open lines, the stranded white king and the shattered white pawn structure" or "this sacrifice is probably unsound because of White's Na3-c2 idea, but with White's stranded king and the threats of ...Bh3 the defence will be difficult to play, making it a good bet for blitz".  There was a piece sacrifice by David Norwood (Saeed-Norwood, London 1984) in the Modern Benoni which was notorious for provoking comments along the lines, "Black has all the fun" and little or no objective analysis, when objectively the sacrifice is a bit dubious.