The Moves You Don’t Even Look At

September 16, 2018

Sometime in my early twenties, I read Alexander Kotov’s famous book Think Like a Grandmaster, which revolutionized how chess players think about thinking. From Kotov I learned the idea of making a list of candidate moves, and analyzing each move once and only once (instead of bouncing back and forth between variations, which was my […]

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“Where Did I Go Wrong?”

September 13, 2018

“Where did I go wrong?” is a lament that every chess player sings at one time or another. Here’s a game I played against Shredder, the computer, recently that had me totally baffled after the game was over. I felt as if I was winning the whole way, but in the end I had to […]

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Chess Tsunami Hits San Francisco Bay

September 4, 2018

When you are an adult playing chess in the San Francisco Bay area, it sometimes feels as if you are that last person holding your finger in the dike, trying to keep the sea of young players from completely wiping out the older generation. Sometimes, the old folks actually do win. And then there are […]

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Epic Fails

September 1, 2018

In my blog posts I probably give the impression that I win most of my games against the computer. Of course, it’s only natural that I prefer to show the games where I played well. Also, because I intend this blog to have some instructional value for human players, I feel as if my readers […]

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It’s All About Timing

August 27, 2018

Who do you think is better in this position? What is White’s plan, and what should he do next move? Position after 25. … Nf8. White to move. FEN: r3rnk1/4pp2/1qnpb1p1/p1p3Pp/PpP1PP1N/1P1P2QP/1RN1B3/5R1K w – – 0 26 In this game I was playing White against Shredder, the computer, set at a 2050 rating. It had thrashed around […]

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Abstract Versus Concrete

August 24, 2018

Here’s a game I played against the computer that I thought was really interesting — not in a “fireworks” way but in a “strategical planning” way. It went down to a queen-and-pawn endgame, but what is interesting is that the endgame was present as a looming possibility throughout the middlegame, and affected all the middlegame […]

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Dolg, Nyega, and A Gentleman in Moscow

August 20, 2018

Why not start out the week with a book review? Okay, I admit it will take us off topic, but I really enjoyed Amor Towles’ novel A Gentleman in Moscow and would like to encourage other people to read it. I remember my Russian teacher in college expounding at length on certain concepts he felt […]

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A Reunion and a Paradox

August 13, 2018

Three posts in three days! Woo-hoo! I’m not promising to make it four for four, though. Last night I had a reunion with a former student of mine named Cole Ryan. He was one of the few kids who stuck with the Aptos Library Chess Club all the way through high school. (And he also […]

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The Statute of Limitations

August 12, 2018

Two posts in one weekend! Just for fun, here is another game between me and my computer. It’s a King’s Gambit that goes a little bit haywire, but most unexpectedly goes all the way down to an opposite color bishops endgame. I find it fairly hard to beat the computer with the King’s Gambit. It […]

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Master of Improvisation

August 11, 2018

Master of Business Administration, Master of Chess, … All of these titles describe Mike Splane, but I would like to add a new one to them: Master of Improvisation. Mike sent around an e-mail yesterday with a game he had just played at the Kolty Club on Thursday night. It obviously had to be something […]

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