It's been a while since I published a #justonething blog post. One excuse is that I was away over the weekend playing chess in my guise as the #pubchessbluffer.
The good news is that I won all my games except for a couple where I had a time handicap against one of my college students who joined the our gathering in an Irish pub in the middle of Hiroshima on the second day of the event.
Even though I told myself before the weekend that I ought to take some photos and videos of the chess sessions, I completely neglected to do so.
"Cat" Is One Of My Chess Repertoire Keywords...
With chess still on my mind, I noticed that one of the #justonething prompt words is "cat" and although I have lots of good memories of pet cats, nowadays the word "CaT" instantly reminds me of a chess opening variation when playing 1.d4 as white.
Let me explain...
About three years ago I started building a memory system for the opening variations of a couple of chess repertoires, one for White, and one for Black.
For White, I extracted 185 opening variations from John Watson's book, "A Strategic Chess Opening Repertoire For White." Then I gave each variation a keyword according to the "major system" - a memory system for remembering numbered lists of things.
Here's my notebook and memory cards along with John Watson's book:
I explained the memory system and how it relates to my chess repertoire in this post on one of my other blogs:
What does all this have to do with finding a cat or two on a chess board?
Well, the word CaT is the keyword that helps me remember the 71st variation in my 1d4 repertoire of chess variations.
The hard "c" or "k" sound = 7 and the "t" sound = 1.
Put them together and think of a word beginning with a "k" sound and ending with a "t" sound and you get choices such as "cat," "kite," "cot," and "cut" or "cute."
I chose "Cat" as my keyword for 71.
The 71st variation in my chess repertoire for white is one of several variations in the Benko Gambit, beginning with variation 66 ("Judge").
The Benko Gambit is itself part of the Benoni system used by Black to defend against the Queen's pawn opening (1.d4), and in my repertoire, the first Benoni variation is number 61 ("Jet").
In the video I attempt to show how I use those keywords to remember the opening sequences of the Benoni and the Benko Gambit variations...
Watch out for TWO cats in the 71st variation!
Cheers!
David Hurley