April 2005

Prophy's Introduction

Hi there! Welcome to April's issue of the GoldToken Monthly Newsletter! April is going to be quite an eventful month for me, I turn 30 on the 8th, and am off for a holiday to Holland for a couple of weeks. I hope that you all will have a really good April, and I assure you, I will toast your health (and to GoldToken's prosperity) while visiting the Netherlands! But enough about that, huh? Let's move on

In this month's newsletter, we have:

• Site News
• Badger's Monthly Message
• Newsletter Picture Hunt
• Prophy's Chess Corner
• Krans Tournament News
• Information on Discussion Board Hosting
• Testamonial Of The Month

Ok, all that remains for me to do now, as always, is to wish you much pleasure in your reading, and to invite you all to contact me with items to be considered for next month's issue (out May 2nd) read on, and enjoy! Items can be submitted either by messaging me, prophy tactics, or by emailing: prophytactics@goldtoken.com

prophy tactics

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Site News

-- Happy belated birthday to Goodtime politics who is so old, his first car ran on steam.
-- Happy belated birthday to GOD ROCKS, aka sweetheart, turned a youthful 40 March 12th!
-- Happy belated birthday to Orange Blossom, for March 29th!
-- Happy birthday to Geri39, for April 4th!
-- maryu8888 wishes Lone Outlaw a special Happy Birthday, for April 5!
-- Happy Birthday to Lowell, for April 10th!
-- Happy Birthday to Freight Train, for April 16th!
-- Happy Birthday to TaUrUsRoSe, for April 21st!
-- Happy Birthday to Millie, for April 23!


-- congrats to DragonHeart MIA upon reaching the 3600 goldtoken count!
-- congrats to Jane (aka What The ) upon the birth of her Granddaughter, Chelsea Jayne, in late March!

any birthdays, anniversaries, etc. coming up for next month, feel free to send me a message and let me know so that we can give them a shout in next month's newsletter!

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Monthly Message from Badger

March has seen the opening of a fun new game board, , where you take the last word that you see on the board (this would be the last post) and write the next word to make a sentence and our new chat board { Board: The Game Board Lounge }. It's a great place to chat about the Discussion Board games and is proving to be one of the most popular discussion boards yet!! What I appreciate most about all our new game boards is the camaraderie everyone is finding together playing them!! There just isn’t a place like GoldToken anywhere else!!! :-D

Don't forget, this is open house week for all the game boards. So guests, be sure and play a few rounds on each one!! The guest that wins the most points by the end of this week, in the { Board: 6x5 Trivia Addicts } board wins a 3 month silver membership! The member that wins the most points throughout the whole round wins a black GoldToken T-Shirt!! If you wish to see what these shirts look like, you can see one on { Player: porkpie1}’s profile (if he doesn’t get suddenly shy and hide it lol).

GoldTokens Marko and dolly's daughter was born March 9th 2005. If you haven't seen her picture yet, you can see both her and the proud Daddy at http://groups.msn.com/Goldtoken-com/!!! Be sure and send both parents a congratulations note!!

This months treasure hunt contest is April Showers!! A GoldToken Coffee Mug will grace the table of the first GoldToken player to find all twelve, and a GoldToken pen will be sent to the first nine runners up. Guests, you are more than welcome to play, so don’t be bashful!! You will be able to find the 12 different April Showers Logos on the profiles of players starting today. Happy hunting!!!!

But do not think we are finished with fun and games just yet...no player has closely guessed all five new games about to be released. So I am upping the stakes by offering a GoldToken Coffee Mug to the player that comes the closest to correctly guessing the five new games created by McStack and JK on the General Chat board.

Pente and Golden Pente are almost finished with testing and will also be released shortly. Mark007 and firefly have both put in many hours perfecting these two long awaited games. Watch for their release and be the first to send Mark007 or firefly invites to these games to win a GoldToken Engraved Regal Pen!!

This month, watch for GoldToken's monthly newletter to show up in your email box. All players will have an option in their preferences to direct the sending of this newletter when the code is finalized. Be sure and share it with your friends.


Badger

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Tournament News by Kran

• We'd like to take this time to remind you that new tourneys are starting every Monday! You may have noticed that the Tournament format has changed a bit starting in April. We now offer half of our game types each month. Our tourneys will now have a two month signup period to encourage bigger tournament groups. We will continue to have a few special tourneys thrown in. For instance, each month we will offer a Fast Backgammon or a Fast Nackgammon tournament, with one day timeouts. We also have a Thematic Chess tournament, with a new opening each month. We will also offer two of the salvo variations in a fast variety per month, and two varieties of backgammon cube games. These will vary from month to month. For April, the varieties are, Fast Devious, 3 pt. Back, Fast Nack, and 5 pt. Nack. And don't miss our Pirate Devious Salvo! The winner receives a copy of the VHS movie "Pirates of Penzance"
• We have also have many sponsorship tournaments, with funds donated by many of our generous members. In these tourneys the highest placing guest wins a membership, or other great prize! If you are interested in sponsoring a guest tourney send a message to Kran to work out the details. This month's featured sponsorship tournaments are: Honeybear's HoneyPot Go Moku, McStack's Fast Back, PorkPie Ala Mode Backgammon, Senor Gusanos Muggers Chess, mammacat's Guest Outbreak, and mammacat's Guest Salvo, the highest placing guest in each receives a six month silver membership. Also check out 8x8 Trax 4 Beginners: Winner receives a copy of the book "Trax Strategy for Beginners", donated by Donald Bailey.
• Goldtoken would also like to take the time to send a big congratulations out to all March Tournament winners!!! If your name is on this list, please contact Badger for your prize!

Chess July 2004- Robyn Hode
Chess Madness Chess- Robyn Hode
Club vs Club 8x8 Trax- dgb
December 8x8 Trax- dgb
December Chessgi- rabbitoid
December Fast Nackgammon- DocMartin
December Giveaway 4iar- Mike UK
December Small Reversi- eli
February Trax- dgb
Goldtoken Olmpic Giveaway 4iar- Mike UK
Goldtoken OlympicGiveawayChess- keops
January Loop Trax- dgb
Late August 4iar- Carlo OTDP
March Giveaway Reversi- SarahMills
Mid August Blackhole 4iar- Punisher Pele
Mid August Double Trouble 4iar- Punisher Pele
Mid August Fast Nackgammon- Punisher Pele
Mid August Giveaway Chess- Sir Gilmour of the GoldTable
Mid August Hotspot 4iar- keops
Mid August Small Outbreak- Birds of Prey
November Blackhole Reversi- pioenroosje
November Chessgi- rabbitoid
November Fast Nack (for real)- DIRKSTRA
November Guest Reversi- SarahMills
November Small Reversi- eli
November ZeroG 4iar- tjancira
October 4iar- Jadawin
October Fast Backgammon- Rapunzel
October Giveaway Reversi- klaashaas
October Salvo- Scorpius
Outrageous Outbreak- adrien
PJ UK's 4iar Xmas Special- Kreator
Pen's Guest 4iar- Silent Player
Septembers 8x8 Trax- jbdobie
Septembers Backgammon- mongoose1199

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Chess Corner by prophy tactics

I’d like to start this chess corner, by saying that I hope that you have recovered fully from my article of last month! From the many messages that I have received regarding the checkmates I demonstrated, there has been much fun and frolics. The downside is, that I am now being held responsible for many copies of fritz (and various other chess engines) going on strike with hurt pride, several sibling squabbles, and numerous marriage and relationship tensions! Oh sometimes we do take this whole chess lark a bit too seriously Joking apart, I am very pleased that you are finding Chess Corner so informative and enjoyable, and I hope that continues to be the case.

Anyway, on we go with this issue then, and I’ve decided to go easy on you this month – I guess you deserve it after the in-depth nature of the March issue. Do be warned though, I have a real corker planned for May, so it is only a temporary let up This month, we are going to deal with openings. I think the two most common questions I am asked, are probably:

"how do I go about choosing an opening?" & "how do I go about learning an opening?"

I must say, that here I find myself a bit stuck between a rock and a hard place, in that I want to answer your questions, but also I have to be extremely careful on this issue. When first starting to learn about openings, there is often an excited impulse to go out and buy a truckload of books, plus an opening encyclopaedia or database, and dive in like there is no tomorrow. Remember the robot in the movie Short Circuit? “Input! Input!” it would cry as it sped-read through mountains of books. Unfortunately, human-beings are not robots, and in the “dive right in” approach we usually do more harm than good.

What I am about to tell you, (before getting to the answers to the two questions above), is probably the most useful advice anyone can give you with regard to openings. I apologise if it appears to be a bit of a rant, but it is ever so important, so I hope that you can just tolerate me for a minute or two

Let me first say (and I can not stress this strongly enough), that opening knowledge will do nothing for your playing strength. Playing strength comes from technique and an understanding of chess principles and positions. It comes from hours and hours of play and study on middlegame and endgame, of tactics, strategies, new ideas, positional play, positional themes.

These are the essential qualities that will decide how strong you play the game, and a failure in any of these aspects will subtract points from your rating. This is why serious chess players, masters, candidate masters, spend hours playing chess and analysing their games, identifying flaws to work on. There can be no substitution for this if you wish to improve your game. Put simply, if you decide to play the Queens Gambit, and lose badly in the opening, your weakness is not your lack of knowledge on that opening – your weakness is in basic chess principles of how to open a game. So, the first thing I will do here, is to list those principles:

-- move 1 or 2 pawns in to the centre early on
-- develop minor pieces early “bishops and knights out like lights”, and towards the centre.
-- castle early, to both protect the king, and bring a rook in to the centre where in most cases it will be most useful.
-- Move pawns sparingly, remember they can not move backwards.
-- avoid bringing your queen out too early, it can expose her to attack and cost you much time in having her chased around the board.
-- avoid moving the same piece repeatedly.
-- avoid launching premature attacks.
-- keep your moves constructive. Never play something just because it looks good or you can not think of anything better, have a good reason for every move you make, and be mindful of your opening strategy, (and that of your opponent), stick to it. It is better to have a faulty plan or strategy than no plan or strategy at all.

Remembering the above basic opening principles, and letting them be your guide in how you open a game, will do far more for your opening technique, than learning a set sequence of moves. Learning the above principles will enable you to play most openings relatively competently, infact -- there are some exceptions I admit, but mostly it is true. Why can Garry Kasparov (and 99 percent of strong chess players or masters) play any opening they choose? It is not because they have a mental database containing lines and lines from all openings – it is because of their understanding of chess principles.

It is a fact, that there are not many people who can not learn a set sequence of moves by heart, it really does not take much. Furthermore, investing a huge amount of time in doing this, is a waste, take it from someone who has made the mistake of doing so, and wishes to warn you against doing the same Let’s say you have spent a few hours learning 20 moves from the Benko gambit, and on the 13th move, your opponent plays something that completely surprises you. You are on your own, and those few hours are wasted. Learning a line only helps you if your opponent co-operates in allowing that line. Once that possibility is ended, you are then relying on your technique, and that is why I say that learning openings will not increase your playing strength. We can be technical, of course, and say that through openings you can learn about positions and themes, but I think that just goes to support my statement – it is still not only by learning lines and variations.

Ok then, hopefully I have made my point, because if there is a rush of GoldToken members to chess shops in the search of opening books following this article, I will be devesatated The time to get in to a serious study of openings is when you are already an above average player. I was recently speaking to the coach of a strong International Master, who told me that his player was a National Master before he had done any serious opening study. Up to that point, it had all been playing chess, analysing his games, endgame and middlegame study. If we need further evidence of this, we only need to look at the Soviet school of chess players. They are among the strongest in the world and they learn chess endgame and middlegame first, and by the time they get in to learning openings, are candidate masters.

Following this example can do no one any harm at all. However, should you be wishing to build up an opening repertoire, and be asking the questions I started off this rant with, then I will do my best to guide you in doing so.

-- how do I go about choosing an opening?

Firstly, it is no use choosing to play an opening that does not fit your style of play. So, you must know your style and preferences inside out, when considering openings to adopt. For example, if you do not like playing cramped positions, then the French Defence to 1.e4 would be like shooting yourself in the foot. 1…e5 or 1…c5 would probably be more your type of thing, and those two moves give a vast array of possibilities to choose from. Also, how do you balance material against position? If material takes precedence, then you probably wont want to consider gambits or lines involving sacrifices. If vice versa, then gambits and sacrifices in return for some kind of positional compensation or initiative, may be your kind of thing.

It is very important, when choosing an opening, that you enjoy playing it. Maybe this is an obvious statement, but it is often overlooked. Maybe times there are certain things that influence us in our choices, Grandmasters play it, it’s in fashion, etc. so we adopt it ourselves. How many chess players have chosen the Najdorf Sicilian because of Kasparov’s prowess with it? How many people have adopted the Petroff Defence due to Kramnik’s liking and nice results with it? To base our choice on this alone, is often unwise, because if the opening does not make us enthusiastic, if it bores us, if we do not enjoy playing it or believe in it, then it will reflect in our chess.

So, when choosing an opening, do it with your playing style and preferences in mind, play through a few games and get a feel for the particular opening; if you don’t like it or if it does nothing for you, move on – if it appeals to you, delve a bit deeper into it and do some experimenting.

-- how do I go about learning an opening?

Ok, so you have decided that you want to play the Budapest Gambit. Firstly, let me tell you that you are not alone! There are many other players around with this problem, and most respond well to therapy! Oops, sorry … just a little joke …

I think it was Bobby Fischer who once said, (with regard to openings), “know everything about a little and a little about everything.” To get straight to the point, once you have chosen your openings, you have to get to know them like the back of your hands, they become your right arm (or left as the case might be). 95 percent of opening knowledge in your head, or preparation, or analysis, must be regarding your adopted openings, with the remaining 5 percent at the most having a general understanding of other openings. Even the best memories have their limits, so we must maximise the productivity of what we give our brains to remember. Best that we utilise most of the opening attention to our openings, keeping other openings to a minimum. To be honest, if anyone would ask me how to play the Ruy Lopez, I would not have a clue of how to answer, yet it is one of the most common openings in amateur and professional chess alike. I don’t play it though, I play the English mostly as White, and the Sicilian as Black. So, what is the use of me investing time and memory space in to the Ruy Lopez? None. I know the moves to get to the Ruy Lopez, I can give a few lines, and I know a couple of general characteristics of it, but that is it. You have to apply the same discipline when working on your openings. Keep to the point and don’t be complicating matters by looking at Birds opening as white if you’ve decided to open with d4. Keep to your openings, and do not focus on learning lines, it is a mistake. The correct approach to opening study, is to do the following.

-- look at recent top level (master) games featuring that opening. When I prepare a new opening, I play through at least 50 games.

-- Find a GM who plays that opening regularly, an exponent of it, and follow his / her games. Analyse them deeply, and if you can find some of their annotated games, even better!

-- concentrate on discovering the positional themes and characteristics of the opening. If needs be make diagrams of important positions and outline the strategies for both sides. Are there weak squares often, does black tend to get a bad bishop, is there frequent opposite side castling? All these factors give you pointers as to extra chess study you can do to capitalise on the themes of your openings. Furthermore, if you are surprised by a new move, you will not be fully on your own as you would if you had just learned lines and variations. This is because you will have quite an in-depth knowledge and experience of the positional and thematic aspects, and a new move should not spell disaster to you.

-- look for new moves and new ideas within your openings. There is a lot to be said for the element of surprise in chess, and the undiscovered. If you can surprise your opponent, more often than not, you will have the upper hand.

When you have done this, and you are happy with your study and understanding of the opening, play it as much as you can, obviously away from a tournament if at all possible. You can take on a chess computer or chess engine, ask members of your chess club, or invite a friend around for some training games. Also, utilise GoldToken, it is an excellent practice ground. You can try arranging the opening by prior arrangement, enter a themed tournament, or even ask in the Chess Discussion Board for practice opponents – someone might be wanting to practice the Sicilian as White, just as you are looking to give it a work-out as Black. These are just some of the options available to you.

It is very important, that you analyse each game you play, win lose or draw. By this, you will gain experience in your openings (something which there is no substitution for) and you will learn to appreciate it’s subtleties and avoid its traps. As with above, look for important and regular positions, turning points, novelties, new idea’s, etc. Make notes, use diagrams, you can never know enough about the openings that you play. Lines and variations are not all there is to chess openings, there is much more to it than that, no aspect of chess is ever that simple.

I hope that this has helped you if you are looking to make a start in building your repertoire, and I hope above all else that it goes some way in to helping you go about it in a productive way with a good chance of a valuable return on your time investment. Have fun looking and testing, analysing and preparing -- and see you next month!

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Newsletter Picture Hunt

It is all about April Showers this month -- somewhere around the site you will find 12 pictures relating to April Showers. When you have found them all, message Badger with their locations, and the quickest 10 correct will win a prize! Good Luck!!


Winners for last month's hunt for the Shamrock's, (in order sent in), were:

#1 Honeybear
#2 pepperbeach
#3 M & M
#4 JenJen
#5 Cutie Patootie
#6 SarahMills
#7 Nargada
#8 Nan54
#9 Brendans Grandmom
#10 tobalea

Congrats to the players above, and better luck this time to those who missed out

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Discussion Board Hosts kindly sent in by Jane

Sometime ago I was asked to preside over a Club for the Discussion Board Hosts. It became a reality around March 1st. More about the Club later.

The Discussion Board Hosts have a responsibility to keep the board they are hosting alive by all kinds of methods; in the process, they must obey discussion board rules. It seems to work the mind alot to keep coming up with ideas that will keep people responding in some way.

Toward the end of the month, a poll will be made for the moderators to vote on. They choose the host who has done the best job during that month hosting their board. That host will then receive an award from Badger, a membership.

More about the Discussion Board Hosts Club: in the same club there is an opportunity to communicate with other members who also host. We all would urge everyone to join in hosting a Discussion Board. You'll be glad you did!

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Testamonials Of The Month

A quiet little gal from Queens stumbled upon this site 4 years ago. It was fairly new and didn't have many games and there was a small group of people playing here. Why did she stay? There was something different about this site. It was warm and it was friendly. So she brought some of her friends here and made herself at home. And home is what GT is for most of us. It's not the games, although they are fun, it's the people! I have made many friends here and I continue to make new ones everyday. I have been thru some tough stuff in the last few years and the people here have helped me to keep my sense of humor thru it all. I have spent countless hours here playing games and laughing till my sides hurt! I am proud to be a member here and thanks to all that help to make it the greatest site on the net!

Tessa

Goldtoken has been not only a pleasure but a godsend for me. I joined GT in November of 2001 upon the recommendation of another player that I was playing with at another site. I immediately knew that this was my home. As a single parent of a young son and working
full time, I needed some form of recreation that I could do but also be here for him. Also I needed something to help me deal with major physical pain. I have/had major arthritis and
playing at my games helped me deal with the constant pain. At first I played a few games
and then a few more and then found that I needed to upgrade my membership so I could play still more games.. Then I decided to join in on the glorious world of Clubs.. I felt as if I had died and gone to heaven.. Well, almost.. What wonderful caring people I have had the pleasure of playing with and becoming friends with.. Some not just friends but family! This is a funtastic site to be a part of..

Nan54

Anytime you are feeling down, like you don't have enough of whatever it is you need, remember this story: I couldn't renew my membership (finances have taken a dump) and I let all my clubs know I would be leaving. Some wonderful angel paid my membership for a YEAR! And I was told Badger had to turn down several more people that wanted to pay it! This is a loving family site with wonderful people! And I am so blessed to be here. Thank you all! love, BB

Would you like to make your affection for GoldToken known? Please send your testamonials (or any other material submissions) to me, prophy tactics or email them to prophytactics@goldtoken.com for possible inclusion in future editions -- thank you!

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