Upgrades to Elephant, Giant Spider, Cassowary, Blue Whale, Mammoth or Blackwidow Spider at 650K XP. It upgrades from Rhino, Eagle, Shark, Wolverine, Markhor or Bison at 350K XP. This size can house a smaller (equal to or less than 6’ long) boa. The minimum enclosure size recommended for housing one boa constrictor is at least 4’L x 2’W x 4’H. As usual, expand the move list to see the variations. UPGRADED to Boa ConstrictorCoil and suffocate other animals The Boa Constrictor is the 13th Land animal, and the equivalent of the Hippo, Ostrich, Killer Whale, Sabertooth Tiger and Komodo Dragon. Boa constrictors are active snakes that appreciate having plenty of room to stretch out, climb, and explore, and they quickly get bored in small or sparse enclosures.

In that game, I lost with the black pieces in a Ruy Lopez, so this time around, I was looking for some revenge. This game was especially interesting because I had played Mamedov in my previous tournament. I had the white pieces against Nidjat Mamedov, a relatively young grandmaster from Azerbaijan. The following game is from Benasque in July 2007, a tournament on the Spanish chess circuit. But every so often, this lesson gets through to me and I focus on thinking more strategically rather than in terms of concrete variations all the time. Normally, I must admit that I like to calculate variations. How do you think when you get to a quiet position? Do you try and calculate a lot of variations, or do you try to make long-term plans? Normally, in the absence of a lot of tactics, these are the sorts of positions where strategic thinking trumps brute force calculation.

Biggest boa constrictor