Intimidation

November 10, 2014

You can have your Stockfish, your Rybka, your Houdini. I’ve got Max.

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Another San Francisco Giant

November 7, 2014

Step aside, MadBum! There’s a new hero in town, and his name is VigPanch! The San Francisco (baseball) Giants have Madison Bumgarner, the hero of the World Series. But the San Francisco (chess) Mechanics have Vignesh Panchanathan, the #4 fourteen-year-old in the country. There’s a very good argument that he has been their most valuable […]

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Chutzpah

November 2, 2014

A couple posts ago, I said I wouldn’t write any more about my game with Sergei Kudrin because I was planning to record a ChessLecture on it, and I didn’t want to post spoilers to my own lecture. However, an interesting point came up near the end that I DIDN’T address in my ChessLecture, so […]

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Look for the Penguins

October 30, 2014

Here’s the finish of one of my games from the recent Western States Open in Reno. It was round three, and I was White against Ganesh Murugappan, the #43 12-year-old in the country. FEN: 6k1/2p1rr1p/P2p4/1PnPpBP1/2n1P3/2B5/4K2R/7R w – – 0 81 Position after 80. … R8f7. White to move. Black has just moved his rook to […]

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Reno Odds and Ends

October 22, 2014

A few final thoughts about the Reno tournament… (1) The ratings went up today and I was surprised to see that my rating didn’t go up as much as I thought it would. Only from 2164 to 2182. This means that if I had won my last-round game against GM Sergey Kudrin instead of drawing, […]

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Almost My First Win Over a GM

October 19, 2014

What a finish to the Western States Open! In the last round, I almost… Beat my first grandmaster (a bucket list item) Tied for first in an open tournament, for the first time in 20 years Scored another historic victory with the Bryntse Gambit Got my rating back over 2200. But I didn’t. Instead, I […]

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How Could I Be So Blind?

October 18, 2014

This is a lament that every chess player utters at some point… some of us more often than others. My turn to utter it was yesterday. FEN: 7k/7p/P2R2p1/5p2/2p5/1K6/6rP/8 w – – 0 48 Position after 47. … c4+. White to move. Round one of the Western States Open in Reno. I’m playing White against Samir […]

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Millionaire Tournament Results

October 14, 2014

So So wasn’t so-so! (Sorry, I couldn’t resist!) I tried to look up the winner of the Millionaire Open in Las Vegas this morning, and it wasn’t as easy as I expected to find out who won. When I went to chessbase.com, usually my first source, there was nothing about the playoffs. Next I went […]

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The Agony of De-draw

October 12, 2014

On ABC’s Wide World of Sports, the late broadcaster Jim McKay used to talk about “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.” But in chess we have a third possibility, the agony of de-draw. The first seven rounds of the Millionaire Open in Las Vegas are over, and tomorrow is “Millionaire Monday.” The […]

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Oh, the Shame

October 9, 2014

I just discovered that Shredder lets you see your “rating progress,” just as the USCF does. I don’t know which to be more ashamed of… the fact that I have played more than 200 games against Shredder (that’s a lot of time-wasting, and it’s just in the last three months!) or the fact that my […]

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