Currently I'm working my way through John Nunn's book entitled "Winning Quickly at Chess."  It is a book that attempts to demonstrate that many people lose at chess early in the game because of some basic flaws in their thinking.  I'm going through the book at the rate of about one game a day and entering them into Chess base so that I can go back and forth through the variations.

It's an interesting self-assignment.  We'll see if it pays off when I go to play over-the-board or online.

You won't find out about it on CNN but the World Chess Championship is underway in Mexico City.  The official FIDE page is available here:

Link to MEXICO 2007 World Chess Championship - World Chess Championship 2007

Alas, it's not going very well for the machine in the latest computer versus grandmaster match. The link to the match is here and This Week in Chess has a report here.

Surprisingly I'm looking forward to a database!  It's a database -- and the dominant database -- for chess players.  It's in a new version and I have it ordered but it hasn't arrived.  A little bit more specifically: I'm in Washington DC and I don't have it yet.  The new version has been worked on for a couple of years and is supposed to be a major improvement on the version I currently use.

One of my problems -- recently -- is that the quality of my chess play has decreased recently.  There are two reasons for that: a sudden, routine, formulaic approach to my play; and, a lack of vision.  I've been reading this book in my attempt to solve the first problem.  Aagard is a engaging author and I've really enjoyed some of his other books -- this one is mostly a collection of positions to solve.  I'd like to see publishers take books like this and find a way to make the problems available in digital format.  I know that I'm talking to myself here, but still it would be nice to combine hard copy with problems and exercises for Fritz or other game playing programs.