New GM’s Sprouting Like Weeds

June 1, 2014

Okay, stop it! Just… stop it! Like anyone else, I love it when I read about new American kids getting IM and GM norms and titles. But then I get two notifications in one day on my Facebook news feed. From Ted Castro: Kudos to 13-year old IM Sam Sevian for securing his 2nd GM […]

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News About Jesse

May 27, 2014

He’s alive and going to be just fine but… Jesse Kraai just posted on Facebook that he was clipped by a motorcyclist yesterday while he was riding his bike. The motorcycle was going 40-50 mph. He doesn’t remember anything after that, but he apparently went over the handlebars, hit his head and skidded to the […]

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Noooobody Expects the Hook and Ladder Trick

May 22, 2014

Thanks to Mike Splane for pointing this one out! On Tuesday Gata Kamsky won the United States Championship, in a pair of 25-minute playoff games. Here is the position in the decisive game, Kamsky playing White against Varuzhan Akobian: FEN: 2r2k2/q4p2/8/p4Q2/8/4P1P1/P4PP1/3R2K1 w – – 0 37 In this position Akobian played 37. … Qc5? Of […]

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A Tale of Two QGD’s

May 13, 2014

Over the weekend I spent a lot of time studying a fascinating game from the first round of the U.S. Women’s Championship, won by a 13-year-old girl from the Bay Area, Ashritha Eswaran. Eswaran is the lowest-rated player in the tournament and a relative newbie to top-level adult chess, although she has been extremely successful […]

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Ill Legal Mates

May 12, 2014

Yesterday I played a blitz game against Gjon Feinstein that featured not one but two Légal Mates! One of them was the standard one, the other was a modified version that I had n0t seen before. Both of them remained only in the annotations — they didn’t actually occur on the board. What was odd […]

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Two Birds With One Stone

May 6, 2014

Two so-called “problems” that some people have with chess: (1) Too many draws. (2) A confusing stalemate rule. Note: I didn’t say that these are problems for me. I’m happy with chess the way it is. Nevertheless, some people aren’t and it occurred to me this morning that there is a way of addressing both […]

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Free Chess Tournament!

May 3, 2014

Yeah, I thought that headline would get your attention. It’s true: Every year I run a free (unrated) chess tournament for kids at the Aptos Public Library. Today was the day for this year’s tournament. For me, it was a huge unqualified success, because: We had a big turnout, 31 kids (slightly less than last […]

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History Time

April 25, 2014

It seems like forever since my rating has been over 2200. How long has it been, exactly? Well, take a look at this graph. The last time I was over 2200 was after the World Open in 1995, before I even moved to California. For the longest time my rating just seemed to go down […]

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Punch and Counterpunch

April 23, 2014

Over on my Facebook page, Damian Nash asked if I had posted any of my games from Reno online. So today I’ll show you my hardest-fought and in some ways most miraculous game from last weekend’s tournaments. I think it’s too long and too messy a game to make a good ChessLecture, but I am […]

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Charmed (Far West Open Results, 2014)

April 21, 2014

Did you ever have a charmed day? A day when everything works out right? Well, that was Easter Sunday for me. First, when Kay and I went out for lunch, I ordered a slice of carrot cake and got two! Well, one and a half. The woman behind the counter cut off a piece that […]

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