NOTES.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 9835, 18 September 1897, Page 3

NOTES.

Chess clubs who are not as yet affiliated to the New Zealand Chess Association should take an early opportunity of becoming so, and thus add strength to an institution which deserves support from all lovers of the game. The next succeeding congress will be held in Dunedin, and although that will be fifteen months hence, Otago players who think of taking part in it should begin to qualify themselves for doing so successfully by a course of study of endings and a fovr opening* A tttrdy of all or eren many

of the openings is too great an undertaking for a mere amateur, but such a work as Freeboiough's end games can be easily gone through in the course of a few months, and, moreover, the study of such a work is far more interesting and more improving than studying the openings. In the study of chess it must be sought to improve the understandings rather than the memory. Both are useful in chess when they co-, operate, but in chess memory without understanding is useless. As Mr Mason justly says, the memory required is the remembrance' of principles, not of details.— Otago Witness. The private match at Wellington between Messrs Mason and Still has been concluded, and has resulted in a victory for the first named. The complete score was :—Mason 7, Still 3, drawn 2. The chess editor of the Birmingham Weekly Mercury is certain sure that if any lady could succeed in beating Lasker, Pillsbury, or Tarrasch no man on earth, " chessmad or otherwise," could ever be persuaded to marry her. In the championship tourney of the Auckland Chess Club Mr Ashton is leading with 6 wins and 1 loss, and Mr Eyre (late of Christchurch) and Mr Lelievre come next with 6 wins and 2 losses each.

Many players have the habit of pinning the knights with bishops simply and only for the purpose of doubling pawns. Mr Lasker, in his " Common Sense in Chess," remarks : " To speak in the early stage of a game of the weakness of a double pawn or an isolated pawn for end-game purposes is nothing but a chimera." Mr Steinitz, in "The Modern Chess Instructor," says: "Pinning a knight early in the game ought to be disadvantageous, as it must lead to a loss of move or of value in exchange."