Thanks to Keith Rose for 185 games from the recent Dundee & Angus Chess Congress 2011.
Also added in the games from 2010, 2009 & 2008 to the CS downloads page.

Also, all those games can be replayed on screen from the excellant Dundee & Angus Chess Congress website: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.dundee-congress.co.uk/games.htm">http://www.dundee-congress.co.uk/games.htm</a><!-- m -->

…of my updates for the year, not the Congress, but while I have your attention…

Games are now available to play over and/or download from the website:
http://www.dundee-congress.co.uk/games.htm

Feedback has been compiled and can be seen at:
http://www.dundee-congress.co.uk/feedback.htm
I have commented on some of the comments/suggestions -

Expensive food/facilities, time to serve food
Longer games
Four tournaments instead of three, higher grading limits for Major
Shorter lunch break/lunchtime activity
Analysis room
Spring allegro
FIDE rate

- on the web page. I would be pleased to receive any further comments either on the feedback or on my replies – there is a comment form on the feedback page.

If you played in the congress, thank you. If you didn’t then perhaps next year? Date is set at 12-14 October, same venue.

I'll be in Oban when this starts so I'll wish all of our juniors taking part in the event the best of luck. Having had the pleasure of playing Colin and Anna during the year, watching Cristina's games at the British Championships and in Scotland throughout last season and chatting to Ali at events during the season, I'm delighted to see them taking part in this years world youth championships.

I hope you all enjoy the Championships, which is important and get results that you are happy with, which I'm sure is more important to you. Keep us up to date, if you can, with how things are going.

Best Wishes

David

Ps It would be nice to see a report on the event by one of our participants in the next Chess Scotland magazine.

Pps Championship website is here <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.wycc2011.com/">http://www.wycc2011.com/</a><!-- m --> Our juniors can be found here <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://chess-results.com/tnr58159.aspx?art=25&fedb=SCO&lan=10&turdet=YES&flag=30">http://chess-results.com/tnr58159.aspx? ... ES&flag=30</a><!-- m -->

Good luck to our two representatives in this prestigious event. It will be tough, but I hope they both achieve their goals.

It might be nice to have some sort of updating scale on the home page to show how the Sensory Board Fund is progressing. Not sure how easy it is to do, or if our hardworking Webmaster has the time to do it.

This sort of visual may possibly then entice others to donate.

Just a reminder that the Wester Hailes Junior Congress is on next weekend, Sunday 20th Nov.

Details and entry on-line at http://www.lothianschoolchess.org.uk

Are there any chess players out there in the Buckie/Banff area or nearby who either want to help run a club or help juniors play?

Please let me know - ye ken ye want tae!

The app e+Chess (for iPad or iPhone or iPod touch) is now live on iTunes - read all about it on <!-- w --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.eplusbooks.com">www.eplusbooks.com</a><!-- w -->. The reason I'm flagrantly pushing this on the Chess Scotland noticeboard is that one of the books available now is Andy Burnett's Streetfighting Chess. The app is free (and contains a free copy of Capablanca's Chess Fundamentals with an introduction by Jeremy Silman). Andy's book (available through the Store on the app) is US $ 14.99 - I don't know what that comes out as on the UK ITunes store. Any Scottish authors or publishers who would like their books to look like Andy's - get in touch with me!

While at swim meet this weekend I attended a talk given by the performance director of swim scotland on defining what exactly is talent and a new view on why junior high flyers frequently do not become senior high flyers. One of the problems they have identified is that in the past they have concentrated on identifying talent based on a swimmer's personal best times (pb: think chess grading) and wasted a lot of resources on a group that always experienced high drop out rates.

There are some obvious reasons why one swimmer appears better than another within a particular age group e.g. when born - rank any bunch of swimmers with the same birth year and you will find the vast majority of the top 10 or 20 will be born in the first quarter. No doubt something similar will apply in chess.

The main factor they focused on in this talk was mindset and because they believe it is such a significant factor it is now part of the selection criteria for the national squads.

In essence they have identified two main mindsets - 'fixed' and 'growth' which all swimmers (indeed the academic work behind it is not sports based and so applies to all of us in most activities) have a mixture of. See page 4 of the following pdf http://www.scottishswimming.com/assets/f...0Oct11.pdf
In summary the 'fixed' mindset basically has at its core the belief that your success is essentially largely due to natural talent, whereas a 'growth' mindset emphasis that success comes from hard work. Those with a growth mindset tend to seek new challenges, are not put off with having to work hard to learn new skills and take ownership of their own success. They tend to be less put off by set backs. Those that have the fixed mindset tend to shy away from doing things that they think may show that they are not talented. If you believe that your talent is innate it is much harder to justify the work to progress beyond whatever level your 'natural talent' gets you to.

As consequence, the growth mindset is to be taught/encouraged in swimming training. One study showed that simply the language used to praise success has a significant impact: those praised in a growth mindset manner ("you've worked hard for that ...") progressed faster than those that had fixed mindset praise ("You are talented").

Thoughts?

With less than six months to go until the Prestwick Airport Congress 2012, I thought I would mark the event with a game from the Open section of the 2011 Congress. This one features the Ayrshire Champion Elliot Frew against Mike Surtees from England. Both were graded 2148 at the time of the event.

[pgn][Event "Prestwick Airport Open"]
[Site "Prestwick"]
[Date "2011.05.15"]
[Round "4"]
[White "Surtees, Mike J"]
[Black "Frew, Elliot"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "B22"]
[WhiteElo "2148"]
[BlackElo "2148"]
[PlyCount "86"]
[EventDate "2011.05.15"]
[EventType "swiss"]
[EventRounds "5"]
[EventCountry "SCO"]

1. e4 c5 2. c3 d5 3. f3 e6 4. Nh3 Nc6 5. d3 Nf6 6. g3 Be7 7. Bg2 dxe4 8. fxe4
e5 9. Nf2 Be6 10. Be3 Qd7 11. h3 O-O 12. Nd2 Rfd8 13. O-O Rac8 14. Nf3 Ne8 15.
g4 Qc7 16. Qe2 b5 17. Rfc1 Qb8 18. g5 a5 19. Rd1 b4 20. Ng4 Bxg4 21. hxg4 Qb5
22. Bf1 Rb8 23. Rd2 Qb7 24. Qh2 f6 25. Qh3 fxg5 26. Nxg5 Bxg5 27. Bxg5 Rd6 28.
Rf2 Rg6 29. Qh5 Nf6 30. Bxf6 gxf6 31. Be2 Qe7 32. Bd1 bxc3 33. bxc3 Qd7 34.
Bb3+ Kg7 35. Rg2 Qxd3 36. Rd1 Qe3+ 37. Kf1 Rb7 38. Qf5 Rh6 39. Rg1 Rh2 40. Rd7+
Ne7 41. Rxe7+ Rxe7 42. Bd1 Qd3+ 43. Ke1 Qd2+ 0-1[/pgn]