With the Thanksgiving holiday soon approaching, looks like it’s time I finish up some painting around our home. My wife has taped about every piece of trim we have in our home so I’m guessing that’s some sort of hint to get things moving. Concerning the site, I’ve been working hard on our new pages. I created a very nice chart for the dominoes strategy guide (American-style) that should help to explain the process I’ve developed to play the game. I didn’t realize dominoes was so popular. From the NY Times:

The games almost always draw spectators, so perhaps it is no surprise that the ESPN sports network has declared dominoes the next big spectator sport and is promoting it as both a colorful cultural touchstone and a highly competitive game, complete with rankings, formal tournaments, celebrity events and sponsors.

I’ll be working more on this guide in the coming weeks, including a fair amount of playtesting on the many dominoes-playing sites such as Yahoo and Pogo. It’s not uncommon to find several thousand players enjoying the game at any given time day or night. What a powerful, explosive scoring game American Dominoes is!

For me, this weekend was quite satisfying. On Saturday we had Kevin Harvick coming close to winning his record-tying 10th win in the NASCAR Busch Series, finishing a close second to Matt Kenseth. I’ll forgive Matt…I guess…since he is from Wisconsin, home to my favorite NFL team the Green Bay Packers who defeated their bitter rivals the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday 23-17 at Minnesota. And just after that, we saw the Nextel Cup Series race end with an exciting finish….and Kevin Harvick wins it! How sweet it is.

A great combination….Farvick.

In a sport decorated with so many interesting and colorful personalities, a gentleman by the name of Bob Cooper defeated about 500 RPS specialists on Nov. 11th to take down the Rock Paper Scissors Championship. It’s been awhile since someone from Canada hasn’t won this thing, but the trophy will be hangin’ with Mr. Cooper in London until he defends his title next year (at least they got hockey back). The rest will have to live with the shame of defeat. It’s a bitter pill but they could have better prepared themselves by studying our Rock Paper Scissors strategy guide. I’d advise you to seek out the retired legend Master Roshambollah for some advice…but he’d probably just beat you even quicker.

Another chapter in the man versus machine battle is about to be written later this month when Vladimir Kramnik takes on the ultra-powerful software program Deep Fritz in a much anticipated matchup. The official announcement was displayed on Mr. Kramniks site and reads as follows:

Classical World Chess Champion Vladimir Kramnik vs. the world’s leading chess computer, Deep Fritz: The much-anticipated WORLD CHESS CHALLEGE (WCC) 2006 will be held from November 25 to December 5, 2006 in the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bonn.

The first game in the match is scheduled for Saturday, November 25, and I’ll be posting updates throughout the proceedings. For his part, Kramnik is apparently quite humble when estimating his chances against the silicon opponent.

“The machine is the clear favorite, but don’t discount me just yet. I know
some top players would be very nervous about playing the computer – they might even avoid this kind of match. That’s understandable since a cut-and-dried defeat can affect your future game.”

When the human player makes a mistake in these types of matches, it is typically brought on due to tiredness or loss of concentration (not one of mis-understanding). In any case, it’s only a few weeks until we’ll know the results of how this one will turn out!

This morning I had the unexpected pleasure of being introduced to a great puzzle game known as Hanjie from the webmaster of hanjie.expert2.be (the link is in Dutch, but I think you can work your way through it). I can’t believe I haven’t played this game before, which is in the Sudoku-style family of games, because it is certainly fun and quite addictive. From the Wiki article:

are the first subset of picture logic puzzles, in which cells in a grid have to be colored or left blank according to numbers given at the side of the grid to reveal a hidden picture. In this puzzle type, the numbers measure how many unbroken lines of filled-in squares there are in any given row or column. For example, a clue of “4 8 3″ would mean there are sets of four, eight, and three filled squares, in that order, with at least one blank square between successive groups.

These puzzles are often black and white but can also have some colors. If they are colored, the number clues will also be colored in order to indicate the color of the squares. Two differently-colored numbers may or may not have a space in between them. For example, a black four followed by a red two could mean four black spaces, some empty spaces, and two red spaces, or it could simply mean four black spaces followed immediately by two red ones.

I was pretty confused at first, but after some much needed explanation I got the hang of it and ended up solving my first Hanjie puzzle in about 30min. I was so satisfied with my result I went downstairs to describe this new game to my wife (also a Sudoku fan). But when I started to explain the mechanics of the game, you color in blocks based on the external number sets surrounding the grid, she started laughing and went off into her secret hiding place (Christmas presents) and produced a Hanjie puzzle book!! It seems she was going to surprise me with a new challenge but through an interesting twist of fate I beat her to the punch (whoops!). In any case it works out for me since now I can enjoy them immediately (and I’ll get to work on a Hanjie strategy). Here’s the finished puzzle, called the “Little Dragon”.

Pretty Sweet, right :)

For those of you who don’t know, I love to watch the races of the NASCAR Nextel Cup and Busch series and I’m also a long-time Kevin Harvick fan. Kevin has dominated the Busch Series this season having already clinched the title a few races ago. Not one to rest on his laurels, Harvick took 1st place in Saturdays O’Reilly Challenge 300 at Texas Motor Speedway, giving him 13 wins this season in both series combined (a huge accomplishment).

My wife and I traveled to see the races at Kansas City and Talladega this year, and we had a blast at both of them. Alabama was particularly beautiful with its rolling hills and beautiful landscapes, and we also enjoyed our hotel and surroundings in Atlanta, GA. I look forward to catching a few more races in person next year as well. Congrats Kevin, and good luck in Sundays race as well!

UPDATE: Harvick finishes 3rd in the Cup Race with a wild ending!

I was searching for some information on the upcoming man-versus-computer match between Vladimir Kramnik and the Fritz program this month and stumbled upon a fantastic interview that dates back to 2004. In Kramniks interview, Vladimir discusses the game of Chess from an emotional point of view that comes from many years of experience and knowledge of the game. He talks of the constant stream of logical thought that plagues most chessplayers even while away from the board, and how it affects his personal life and much more.

When you begin to understand a game of chess in its full depth, you find that certain rules become blurred. Suddenly you feel that one needs to create a little space here and attack there. But why it is like that, you don’t know. To play according to textbooks is fine, up to a certain level. Perhaps up to master level, but not to grandmasters. At this level you have to feel the game. It comes to you.

I’ll have to keep searching for more details on the Fritz match, as it always turns the media spotlight back around towards the great game of Chess and gives it some much needed exposure. When I find out something, I’ll be sure to post it!

Looks like it’s that time again. When the masters of Rock Paper Scissors travel north to Toronto to decide this years winner in the much-hyped annual Rock Paper Scissors Championship. If you haven’t ever seen it you may want to check it out. Better read through our RPS strategy guide before you go head-on into the competition, however. Master Roshambollah liked it and he’s a world champion…perhaps you’ll be the next big thing. Anyway, send us some pics if you’re heading up there!

I’ve spent my 30th birthday so far solving the ultra-tough five star Sudoku puzzle from Michael Mepham of SudokuList.com which I’ll admit took me awhile to work through. It ate up most of the hour I got back from the Daylight Savings time rollback. Todays plans include football, cake and general relaxation. Yesterday we celebrated with friends and family, with my wife Nicole treating us to a Thanksgiving-esque offering of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and plenty of cakes and pastries. Mmm. I received some great gifts such as two much-needed new CDs (I’ve been desperate for new music) which I’m enjoying as we speak. It was hard to wait for everyone else to wake up…I like to listen to my music looooud.

Per tradition, I always check my birthday horoscope, the only day of the year I peek into the future. So here is the general forcast for myself, Richard Dreyfuss, Winona Ryder and some thousand other lucky people who share my birthday…

When a Quarter Moon occurs in your Return chart, as it does this year, you are at some sort of a turning point in your life, in terms of personal growth. Events that occur this year act as catalysts that get you in touch with some important issues in your emotional life…Around the time of your birthday this year, the Sun conjuncts both Venus and Mars. This configuration indicates that personal magnetism runs very high this year, and that this has the potential for being an especially creative year.

We’re planning some big things for 2007! We’ve been preparing lots of new strategy guides, some of which have been in research for over two years, and are just about ready to launch them. Alright, I’m off to partake of turkey leftovers and the much anticipated self-induced tryptophan haze.

Hi, my name is James Yates and I’m the owner of the popular gaming site Chess and Poker Dot Com. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you for checking out our brand new blog, where I’ll periodically be offering updates and news concerning our work here. So without further ado, let’s get to it! October is always a great month for us, and this one is no different as we celebrate not only my birthday and wedding anniversary but also 3-years of offering great gaming strategy guides!

ChessandPoker.com was founded in October 2003 with the purpose of providing gamers with a better understanding of the strategy games they were playing. Our Tic Tac Toe strategy guide was the first page we displayed based on a recommendation from my wife, and I’m glad to report that it remains one of our most popular pages to date. We worked hard to meet our deadline for an official launch in January 2004, luckily, since the birth of our son Thade shortly afterwards made the month quite hectic (and enjoyable) indeed!

In the following years, we continued to develop many more guides for the gaming community, from the widely praised Limit Holdem strategy guide to the ultra-popular Sudoku and Rubiks Cube strategy guides. I’d like to welcome you to ChessandPoker.com to watch as our gaming repertoire expands and we add updates and news to our brand-new blog. Thanks for your constant support, letters and comments!