In my internet browsing, I routinely bookmark articles related to chess. Not sure why, I don’t play often and when I do, I’m terrible at it. Regardless, it’s interesting stuff to me. Now, you get to be the beneficiary of my chess web-browsing history…

A profile of Richárd Rapport who became a grandmaster at thirteen and has now launched a professional career. He is part of the ‘post-Carlsen generation’: young players not so dependent on computers, not obsessed with the opening theory, looking for much more practical and aggressive play.

Tyler Cowen points to the previous article, but notes that there is a mini-revolution brewing around chess competitors not using computers for training.

Chess world number 1 Magnus Carlsen gives an interesting interview answering questions regarding general intelligence, chess talent, work ethics and his chess trainer Garry Kasparov.

An article penned by Garry Kasparov where he looks into the relation between man and computer to create a higher level of chess match, wondering if it’s best to play as partners.

Great (older) article on some New York City kids who skip class to play chess. I read the book, Game of Kings, it ended up becoming and loved it.

Maybe you’d rather build your own chess board?

And, finally, some chess slang to keep your game and tongue sharp.

From a 2007 Washington Post article, I found this expose on chess hustler Tom Murphy. Throughout the whole article you get a great sense of how much of a hustler he really is, but with, what appears to be, a brilliant chess mind.

The chess instruction aside, the $20 I spent taught me an even more memorable lesson about Murphy: When you are in his company, there is often a second, invisible chess game taking place, one that can easily conclude with Murphy’s rooks advancing on your wallet.

Jonah Lehrer pointed out a profile of Magnus Carlsen, the youngest chess player to achieve a number one world ranking. Lehrer delves right into deliberate practice with this thought.

One of the fascinating elements of Carlsen’s talent is that he’s learned the game by playing computer chess, matching his wits against advanced algorithms. The end result is a prodigy who’s amassed an unprecedented amount of deliberate practice at an early age, as he’s able to play multiple games on the same machine at the same time. Computers, in other words, have accelerated the pace of his chess education.

Which makes me wonder if that has any other areas where the 10,000 hours of deliberate practice can be achieved or “quickened” by computers. Poker? Computer Programming?

The part that really got my attention was when Lehrer – who you should bookmark, real talk – points out the correlation between deliberate practice and intuition.

experts naturally depend on the emotions generated by their experience. Their prediction errors – all those mistakes they made in the past – have been translated into useful knowledge, which allows them to tap into a set of accurate feelings they can’t begin to explain.

…

The software allows him to play more chess, which allows him to make more mistakes, which allows him to accumulate experience at a prodigious pace.

Thirty rules of Chess - will have to put these to use in my chess matches on the iPhone.