Caruana and Richter: Who Had a Better Week?

September 3, 2014

Fabiano Caruana and Paul Richter: Who had a better week? You probably think I’m joking. The whole chess world knows about Fabiano Caruana. The 22-year-old Italian/American, playing in the strongest tournament in chess history, the Sinquefield Cup, has scored an unbelievable 6-0 in the first six rounds. He has beaten Topalov twice, Carlsen, Nakamura, Aronian, […]

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Results — CalChess State Championship 2014

September 1, 2014

This weekend I played in the CalChess (i.e., northern California) state championship, which was well organized and well attended. We had in the neighborhood of 250 to 260 players, which means among other things that we trounced southern California, which had “only” 160 or so. Bay Area Chess, which organized this tournament as well as […]

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Computer problems, state championship, chess after marriage

August 29, 2014

Once again, I’m having problems with the Comment function on my blog. It seems to be a different problem this time from the ones earlier this year, but equally unsatisfactory. My blog is not accepting new comments, and all the old ones have disappeared as well. I hope that this situation is temporary, because a […]

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Hallucinations and Beauty

August 26, 2014

At Mike Splane’s chess party I showed a game I played against Paul Richter (a teen-aged expert and soon-to-be master, with a rating around 2180) that I’m also planning to give a ChessLecture on. The game had a beautiful finish, but I also had a curious blind spot that might have cost me the victory […]

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Another Master?

August 24, 2014

At Mike Splane’s latest chess party, which was held today, Juande Perea showed three of his games from the recent Kolty Club Championship, which he won in impressive style. Juande scored 5-0 in the games he actually played, plus he took two half-point byes for non-chess reasons, so he ended with a score of 6-1. […]

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Olympiad is Over

August 14, 2014

The last round of the Chess Olympiad is in the books and, no surprise, China won. They beat Poland, 3-1, making any discussion of tiebreaks academic. As I mentioned in my previous entry, they completed the event with only one loss out of 44 games, a truly dominating performance. Hungary (the only team to even […]

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One Round to Go

August 13, 2014

With one round to go in the chess Olympiad, the U.S. is still in contention for… something, and the gold-medal team is in my opinion all but decided. China beat France in round 10, taking over sole first place with 17 points (7 wins, 3 ties). The only team that could pass them is Hungary, […]

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Quick Olympiad Update, Plus Dana’s Solution to World Politics

August 11, 2014

Bobby Fischer can breathe a sigh of relief. If only he were still breathing, that is. Sam Shankland isn’t going to beat his record of 19 consecutive wins, because Sam drew in round nine of the Olympiad. Still a good result for Sam — a draw as Black against a higher-rated player, Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu. The […]

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Only 12 Games Behind Fischer!

August 10, 2014

What do Mathias Ssonko, Martin Martinez, David Gluckman, Aman Hambleton, Guillermo Vazquez, Jahongir Vakhidov, and Judit Polgar have in common? Answer: They are the victims of the juggernaut that has been Sam Shankland at the Chess Olympiad in Tromsø, Norway. After eight rounds of the tournament, Shankland (the alternate for the U.S. team) has a […]

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Rip Van Winkle Returns

August 1, 2014

A few years ago,  Santa Cruz seemed to have more good players hiding in the woodwork than any other city its size. But this week, one of them has come out of hiding in a big way! I refer to James Tarjan, a grandmaster and frequent contender for the U.S. championship in the 1970s who […]

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