by scribe | Dec 31, 2022 | chess clubs, Chess Life, current news, endings, ruminations, tournaments
Fifteen years ago, when I started this blog, I called the first post Remembrance of Things Past. It seems like an odd way to begin a chronicle that literally had no past at that point. But it gives me a perfect title for today’s entry, written on the last day of...
by scribe | Dec 22, 2022 | endings, games, literature, positions
Today I’m going to finish my series of posts on one of the classic rook-and-pawn endgames: the endgame with balanced pawns on the kingside, and with one player enjoying an outside passed pawn on the queenside. The prototypical position is number 367 in Reuben...
by scribe | Dec 3, 2022 | endings, literature, positions
I hope you’re ready for some very, very challenging endgame analysis! Today we’ll have what I think is the most difficult and interesting of my four posts on what I call the “Fine endgame”: rook plus 4 pawns versus rook plus 3 pawns, with the...
by scribe | Nov 12, 2022 | endings, literature
Last time I introduced a new series of four posts about a very basic (but very difficult) rook and pawn endgame. It’s the endgame where one side (we’ll say White) is a pawn up, and that pawn is an outside passed pawn (we’ll say an a-pawn). As per the...
by scribe | Nov 6, 2022 | endings, literature, tournaments
I’m back! Actually, I never left, but this blog has been silent for seven weeks, so some of you may have been wondering where I went. My apologies: I was busy with other things (like a book proposal), but to be honest, I just didn’t have any topics that...
by scribe | Sep 11, 2022 | current news, endings, people, ruminations
The latest news that has blown up the chess Internet came in two waves last week. First, at the Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis, world champion Magnus Carlsen lost a game to a young but rapidly improving American grandmaster, Hans Niemann. Hans grew up in the San...
