An editorial note

I'm running behind on my posts. Partly it is a problem of finding the time to write them up without distractions.

But there's also the problem of being able to write the posts with the level of quality I would like to achieve. I am just a Class B player, which means that I am a Class B analyst - unassisted. But like everyone else, I have access to an ELO 3200 beast to help me out. Thus I cyborg the analytical work.

But this means that my natural proclivities to look for positions that are complex, even weird, gets me into one briar patch after another. For example, while quickly cyborging my way through a recent club game between Connor & Theo, I went far afield of their actual game and ended up with the position featured in "A tactical mess". The initial position in that one features seven reasonable candidate moves (though I'm only going to look at six of them, I think), and the best line features four responses by Black that need to be considered, and White's has to look at four tries, minimum, to find the correct response to Black's best response. In fact, it might be a good candidate for the Stoyko Training Method.

Alexander Kotov, in Think Like a Grandmaster, calls such a "tree of analysis" a "Thicket of Variations":

Naturally, the greatest difficulties arise when a player has to contend with a position that is complicated and in which there are a lot of variations which every single move diverge into quite different lines of play. If one were to depict the tree in this case then in fact you would get a whole forest of variations, a real set of impenetrable thickets or jungle undergrowth. It is in just such positions that there is the greatest need for accuracy and discipline in one's thought, and that the analytical mastery of a player really shows itself.

For the cyborg analyst, the variations get calculated very accurately. What we've got here ISN'T failure to calculate! But we need to make sure what we've got here isn't failure to communicate, either.

So the questions the cyborg analyst has to ask himself are: "When do I stop?"; and "How do I present all this mess in a reasonable manner?"

And that's where I'm stuck. With the Connor-Theo inspired position I posted the other day, I've got pure madness, and lots of it. I've pretty much taken up residence in Bedlam. Putting all that together in a reasonable, digestible form may not be possible for a player/writer of my caliber, but I'm stuck having to try. So it's taking a while.

Similarly with my games from the USATS. In the first game I was going to post I found what to me seems a strange continuation. Unfortunately, I believe that it is also critical that I understand it. Sigh. I can't post it until I figure out that one position, and I can't do that until I can find quiet time when I have sufficient energy.

So that's why I'm stuck, and that's why the low output. The incredible complexity of the game even at my level is a killer.

...

Which gets me to one last point: Remember that any of you from the club are invited to post here! Either articles/items can be emailed to me to post here, or permission can be granted to post here directly without any interference from me. Just a thought....