My First Hook!

March 29, 2016

Last weekend I played a 7-minute game that combined three of the things that I am best known for: the Bird Variation of the Ruy Lopez, the Hook and Ladder Trick, and … losing on time. Although I have written about the Hook and Ladder Trick many times and recorded a ChessLecture on it, I believe this […]

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And the challenger is…

March 28, 2016

In case you didn’t see it on any of the zillions of other chess news sites on the Internet, the Candidates Tournament in Moscow ended today with a clear winner: Sergei Karjakin. Karjakin and Fabiano Caruana entered the final round tied for first with 7½ points out of 13, and by a stroke of good […]

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Penultimate Round in Candidates

March 27, 2016

Let me start with an apology. I haven’t been following the Candidates’ Tournament in Moscow very closely — in particular, I haven’t been watching the live broadcasts, although I have been reading about the games on Chessbase.com afterwards. I guess my apathy is partly because it seems to be all the “usual suspects” playing, and […]

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Sensational Chess Club Battle

March 23, 2016

At present the two strongest players in the Aptos Library Chess Club are named Luke and Alex. It’s so interesting to watch them play, because they have contrasting strengths. I think Luke overall has a more solid understanding of the game. He has actually done some reading on his own. I don’t think Alex ever […]

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50 Ways to Beat Your Computer

March 21, 2016

I’ve been playing my computer a lot recently, in case you haven’t noticed. And if you have noticed, and you’re tired of seeing me write about meaningless games against my computer, I apologize. I alternate between thinking it’s a useful training method when I don’t have anyone else to play, and thinking it’s a complete […]

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Touch move again

March 19, 2016

Leave it to Hikaru Nakamura to give us another lesson in how not to play chess. That is, literally, how not to pick up the pieces and move them. Last year, he taught us not to castle with both hands. (You might remember that in an Armageddon playoff game with Ian Nepomniachtchi, he did the […]

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Go match — final reflections

March 17, 2016

My ISP had server problems the last couple days, so I wasn’t able to post in a timely fashion and the “news” is no longer news. The match between Lee Sedol, the top human go player, and AlphaGo, a new computer program developed by Google, ended in a 4-1 victory for the computer. As I […]

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Amusing game pair

March 10, 2016

Quick update on the go match: AlphaGo won game two and leads, 2-0. Lee Sedol sounds pretty discouraged. I think he may be beaten psychologically, which makes his chances of coming back to win the match slim to none. And now, back to chess and to my own struggles against the silicon opponent. Unlike Mr. […]

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AlphaGo beats Lee Sedol in game one

March 9, 2016

I am completely unqualified to talk about anything go-related, but still chess fans might relate to this news. In the first game of the match between AlphaGo (Google’s deep neural network-based AI) and Lee Sedol (generally considered the strongest go player in the world), the computer won by resignation. The commentary I read suggested that […]

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Crazy Rook Fianchetto

March 8, 2016

This weekend I met with Gjon Feinstein and Eric Montany and showed them some of my games from my most recent tournament, the U.S. Amateur Team West championship. One of my games was weird. The good news is that I beat a 2300 player, Steven Jacobi. Because I didn’t beat a single player rated over 2200 all last […]

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