funny story on AFL about the popularity of Chess at Geelong Cattery (think of how the place must stink!) talking to their most able player,
> « Zach Tuohy's the one to beat, I think he actually watches YouTube videos at home and chess tournaments, he's very passionate." »
https://www.afl.com.au/news/1169054
i was thinking about posting a few weeks about a theme that the world #1 GM Magnus Carlson wrote a book about … The Grind. Grinding out wins. (Carlson voluntarily gave up the World title a year or so ago but still is in a league of his own for now, winning weekly blitzes tournaments etc)
it’s about a style of play Carlson is well known: for converting minor advantages along with a lack of weak areas in his game into powerful endgames. he’s not know for his opening library knowledge or says he doesn’t calculate (many moves in advance) a lot. but he has a powerful endgame, especially under the clock so he tries to get the game to a point of endgame sooner rather than later and to arrive there with minor advantages that he can smash opponents with.
anyhow if youre a fan of chess you can find the PDF online for free just searching his name and « The Grind PDF ». or buy it if you want the aura of buying the knowledge.
to me it seemed we were noticeably not grinding teams in the last couple of years. we always saw big momentum swings in games even when we had long winning steaks.
we lacked that solid grind trait that champion teams of yesteryear at Blues. not just the lack of very large momentum swings but also the lack of big final quarters. all that started to change three weeks ago. so i thought about posting The Grind concept again. then last week, the return of that inexplicable but previously ever present for part of each game « not getting our hands on it ».
anyhow interesting to Zach Tuohy is the gun chess player (intellect?) at Geelong!
who would be most likely listed Blue to start a Chess Club?! Weiters? Pitto would be a good administrator of the club himself i reckon but maybe not reach the heights he aspired to. Walshy for the dark horse? would be fascinating to watch a year of them all being told to play in chess tournaments against each other. you bet some of them would start paying for outside coaching!
i think The Grind has a parallel, in a superficial way at least with the essence of the Voss style of play, pressure, contest, defence, bring the game to balance where our biggest “weapons” (plays/players) can provide the edge, all players holding their line, waiting for their moments. no player allowed to be a weak link (apologies to Kemp last week, wasn’t the match up he wanted, notice Hogan was pretty quiet in the forth quarter, it’s a team game )
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