Crunch Time

October 10, 2016

As many of my blog readers know, I’m working on a book project that has taken a lot of my time away from chess this year. That’s why I haven’t played in a chess tournament since February. It’s been hard to pass up on so many tournaments, because I usually like to play in at […]

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Most Amazing Game of 2016

October 9, 2016

One of my favorite ChessLectures ever was called “Double Queen Sacrifices,” in which I talked about the ultra-rare games where one player sacrificed a queen twice in the same game. Many chess players don’t even sacrifice two queens in their whole lives, so two queens in one game is pretty amazing. But this year there was a […]

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The Eternal Dilemma

October 2, 2016

To be or not to be? To play e5 or f5? These are the great dilemmas in life. A few weeks ago I wrote about a game I played with Shredder where I had to make a decision between e5 and f5 at a crucial point (although as Gjon Feinstein pointed out, d4 was also […]

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History Repeats

September 25, 2016

One of my teammates at this year’s US Amateur Team tournament, Larry Smith, has an interesting semi-blog. It isn’t publicly accessible like a blog is, but he sends out chess-related e-mails a few times a week to a couple dozen people on his distribution list. The e-mails are usually of the “position of the day” variety […]

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Olympiad Coverage in the New York Times

September 14, 2016

Here’s the good news: the New York Times had an article about the U.S. gold medal in the 2016 Chess Olympiad. Here’s the bad news: the New York Times had an article about the U.S. gold medal in the 2016 Chess Olympiad. What do I mean? Well, first read the article, “U.S. Wins Gold at Chess Olympiad With […]

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U.S. Wins Olympiad!

September 13, 2016

Did I call it or what?! You might recall that in yesterday’s post I wrote about the upcoming U.S.-Canada match: I think the one weak link for Canada is board one. Evgeny Bareev is a strong GM for sure, but board one is a really tough assignment and he has only managed 4½ out of […]

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U.S. Clinches a Medal! (2016 Olympiad)

September 12, 2016

Surprisingly, my predictions yesterday were not too far off the mark. In the penultimate round of the 2016 Olympiad, the U.S. and Ukraine both “took care of business” as I predicted. However, I was slightly wrong about Russia. I predicted that they would beat India, but in fact they only tied. That leaves the standings […]

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2016 Olympiad — Pre-Round 10 Predictions

September 11, 2016

The ninth round of the Chess Olympiad in Baku brought some clarity to the proceedings. On the men’s side, the U.S. team beat Norway, Ukraine beat India, and Russia crushed the home team, Azerbaijan. That leaves the troika of the U.S., Ukraine, and Russia on top of the standings with 16, 16, and 15 match […]

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Remember the Date!

September 10, 2016

September 10, 2016. That’s the day when both American teams, the men (or “open”) and women, were tied for first place at the Chess Olympiad. Does anybody with a better knowledge of chess history know whether this has ever happened before, with so few rounds remaining? Quick summary: Since my last post, the open team […]

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From Uganda to Azerbaijan to the Red Carpet …

September 7, 2016

… In one week! That’s the amazing odyssey of Phiona Mutesi, who is playing on the Uganda women’s team at the Baku Chess Olympiad. If the name sounds slightly familiar to you, it will probably become a lot more familiar later this month. Mutesi is the real-life heroine of the Disney movie Queen of Katwe, […]

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