How I Got Here, and What Comes Next

June 26, 2015

First, let me make a promise: This will be the last post in which I write the number 2203. I am sure that some readers are getting bored of it by now. However, I do want to write one more entry about how I got my rating over 2200 after these many years, because I […]

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My Browne Story

June 25, 2015

Well, I was going to finish my coverage of the National Open by showing you part of my last-round game… but then the news came yesterday that blew all of those plans to smithereens. Walter Browne, the six-time U.S. Champion, has died. Browne gave a 25-board simul at the National Open, and also played in […]

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This, That and the Other

June 23, 2015

So many things going on at once, and I’d like to write a separate post on each of them but then it would take too long. So here are three separate, unrelated pieces of news at once. This My rating graph since 1991, downloaded from the USCF website. It’s official, my highest rating in almost […]

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Dana 1, Father Time 0

June 22, 2015

This weekend, at the National Open in Las Vegas, I finally returned to the chess Valhalla: a rating of 2200, the minimum (and only) requirement to be a National Master. Never mind that I’ve been rated 2200 before. Never mind that I am already, in fact, a Life Master (2200 plus five master norms). Chess […]

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Trump Cards (in Chess!)

June 11, 2015

Although there are no cards in chess, and no “luck of the draw,” trump cards definitely do exist. A trump card in chess is a dangerous threat that you keep in reserve to play at the right moment — often in combination with another trump card. Here’s a game I played against the computer yesterday […]

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The Fine Print

June 5, 2015

In my last post I wrote about the amazing 2N versus P endgame that Hans Niemann won recently at the Chicago Open. In that post, with help from the computer and especially the Nalimov tablebase, I wrote about the “Niemann maneuver” and generally gave the appearance of understanding what was going on. In this post […]

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Hans Niemann and the Fifth Endgame of the Apocalypse

June 1, 2015

I’ve written before about the Four Endgames of the Apocalypse — the four rare endgames that all chess players dread, which occur just often enough (like once or twice a lifetime) that you really ought to know them. They are: K+Q vs. K+R K+B+N vs. K K+Q+RP vs. K+Q K+R+B vs. K+R There is one other […]

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The Internet Never Forgets

May 26, 2015

Yesterday I got a terrific comment on a very old post, one that also happens to be a favorite of mine: Jerry Hanken on Reshevsky vs. Fischer (2010). That was a post about the aborted Reshevsky-Fischer match from 1961 and how it fell apart, and it ended with a wonderful anecdote that the late Jerry […]

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Matrix Chess… Reloaded

May 24, 2015

I wrote recently about my new training idea: playing 10-minute games against the computer, with the condition that I can take one “time-out” of unlimited duration during the game to analyze the position better. One of my readers, I forget whether it was here or on Facebook, said that it reminded him of “The Matrix,” […]

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Daisy Sue Update

May 20, 2015

Going off topic again! I don’t plan to turn this chess blog into a pet blog, but I thought some of you might like an update on how Daisy, the new puppy, is doing. Plus, more pictures! After all, what’s the point of having a cute puppy if you can’t post cute puppy pictures? First […]

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