More Nepomniachtchi Genius

July 4, 2017

In my last post I showed a game between Ian Nepomniachtchi and Sam Shankland where “Nepo” played a favorite opening line of mine and won brilliantly. Curiously, this is not the first time he has done that! Here is a game that Nepo won against Anish Giri in 2013, featuring a double piece sacrifice. It’s […]

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Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death, But Don’t Make Me Change My Openings!

July 1, 2017

This week the most exciting news in chess for me was that the American team got trounced by the Russians in the World Team Championship, 4-0. Come again? Well, the real news was the Ian Nepomniachtchi beat Sam Shankland, and while I would ordinarily make me very sad, in this case I’m happy because Nepo […]

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Through the Shadowlands

June 25, 2017

I’m going off topic today to promote a book written by a friend of mine. This is a copy of the review that I posted at goodreads.com. Through the Shadowlands: A Science Writer’s Odyssey Into an Illness Science Doesn’t Understand by Julie Rehmeyer My rating: 5 of 5 stars I hope this book wins a […]

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What Do You Do When You Can’t Get an Advantage?

June 17, 2017

This weekend I ought to be in Las Vegas, playing at the National Open, but instead I’m at home playing my computer. The nice thing about playing the computer is that I can forget all of my losses and show you only my wins. So after losing about ten in a row against Shredder, I finally […]

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Books, King’s Gambits, and Cats

June 12, 2017

Yesterday I met again with Gjon Feinstein and Mike Splane, this time with Eric Montany as our fourth. For the last two years he has been working on a book, and this was the first time he had gotten together with us since he finished. Until this weekend, Eric had never revealed to us what the book was […]

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Flexing my King’s Gambit Muscles

June 3, 2017

How quickly can you spot the best move here? Position after 12. … Qxd5. White to move. FEN: rnb2rk1/p4ppp/5n2/3q4/2Np1R2/3B4/PP4PP/RN1Q2K1 w – – 0 13 This position arose in a blitz (game/7 minutes) game that I played against Mike Arne this afternoon. Mike is a veteran player who was rated in the 2300s in his heyday. […]

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Thrilling Conclusion of Kids’ Tournament

May 28, 2017

Yesterday I wrote about the results of the Aptos Library Kids’ Chess Tournament, which I directed yesterday. I have two followups to that post. First, our local paper, the Santa Cruz Sentinel, had an article about the tournament with some nice photographs (but no results). You can see me at the very, very far left-hand […]

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In Which I Resemble a Tournament Director

May 27, 2017

As fans of my blog know, on one day each year I do an impersonation of a tournament director. Today was the day! The 2017 Aptos Library Kids’ Chess Tournament was (in my opinion) a big success, with 33 participants, our second-largest total ever. One year we had 37. (Really, 36 is the most we […]

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Dream Position

May 23, 2017

Most of the time, when we talk about a “dream position,” we mean a position that is too good to be true — all the pieces in just the right places, working together like a team. The position below, on the other hand, is an ACTUAL dream position: a position that came to me in […]

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First game of 2017!

May 1, 2017

I know this seems like a weird thing to say on May 1, but yesterday I played my first chess against a live human opponent in 2017. I’m not completely sure of this because I might have played a couple of blitz games back in January or February, but I have been so busy with […]

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