When is Forfeiting a Game Justified?

April 11, 2015

Amazingly, two controversies in the chess world erupted in one day having to do with the same issue: forfeiting a player for writing things on his scoresheet that he shouldn’t. Warning: All my reporting here is based on second-hand information. If there are any people who have first-hand information about either of these episodes, please […]

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Larry Evans Memorial — Highlights and Lowlights

April 8, 2015

For your viewing pleasure today, I give you four interesting positions from the 2015 Larry Evans Memorial. Two of them are from my games, and two are from other people. First, let’s look at the finish of the game that won the tournament. This was Andrew Karklins versus Alexander Ivanov in round four. Both players […]

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Larry Evans Memorial 2015 — No Cinderellas

April 6, 2015

I just got home from the Larry Evans Memorial in Reno, and there’s lots of news to pass along. First, the winner of the tournament was … drum roll … Alexander Ivanov. As you might recall, he was leading after day two with a 4-0 score, and he coasted into the finish line with two […]

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Larry Evans Memorial 2015 — Day 2

April 4, 2015

This year’s Larry Evans Memorial in Reno is chock-full of illustrious names. Seven grandmasters made the trip: Melikset Khachiyan, Alexander Ivanov, Sergey Kudrin, Jim Tarjan, Enrico Sevillano, Nick DeFirmian, and Walter Browne. What decade is this, anyway?! With DeFirmian, Tarjan, and Browne, you’d think it was the 1970s. It’s so great to see them playing […]

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Another bird post

March 24, 2015

No, not that kind of bird! (That’s a scrub jay who has taken up residence in one of our bushes, driving Max the cat wild.) I mean this kind of Bird: Position after 4. … b5. White to move. FEN: r1bqkbnr/p1pp1ppp/8/1p2p3/B2nP3/5N2/PPPP1PPP/RNBQK2R w KQkq – 0 5 Here’s the story. Mike Splane was playing his usual […]

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Happy Pi Day… April 3?

March 14, 2015

Going off topic today! Today is the “Pi Day” of the century, when the calendar reads 3/14/15 and the clock reads 9:26:53 am. We are supposed to be super excited about this because, after all, pi = 3.141592653… Perhaps I’m just contrarian by nature, but I am not planning to bake a pie or join […]

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Grading the Openings (Part Three)

March 10, 2015

Last time I wrote about the most popular opening variations, by ECO code. I also wrote about the best ones for White/worst ones for Black, by ECO code. As I expected this generated a bit of a reaction, especially from proponents of the Dutch Defense. Their comments raise some good issues about how to interpret these statistics, […]

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Grading the Openings (Part Two)

March 6, 2015

First of all, let me announce that my last post, Grading the Openings (Part One), unexpectedly turned into the biggest hit I’ve ever had on this blog. The blog had 1136 visitors yesterday, which is three times more than I have ever had in a single day (except during the 2012 World Championship match, when […]

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Grading the Openings (Part One)

March 4, 2015

Rob Weir, the statistician whom I mentioned in my last post, graciously shared with me a data base of the performance of all the openings, organized by ECO code. This allows us to create something that I’ve never quite seen before: a “report card” of all the chess openings. Which are best for White? Which […]

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Data-Mining the World Champions

March 1, 2015

Today I’m going to show you the two most fascinating chess graphs I’ve ever seen. Of course, they’re also the only chess graphs I’ve ever seen, but still I found them utterly remarkable. A statistician named Rob Weir did a principal component analysis of the opening repertoire of all 20 world champions (including Khalifman, Kasimdzhanov […]

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