by scribe | Jul 19, 2020 | Chess Lecture, endings, games, positions
For every good, instructive game that I play against the computer, there must be two or three really awful games. Here’s one that I played this morning that is so bad that it’s good. I’m playing White, Fritz (with its rating set to 2025) is playing...
by scribe | Jun 14, 2020 | Chess Life, endings, games, literature
In the past I’ve mentioned the “Four Endgames of the Apocalypse,” the four supposedly “elementary” yet ferociously difficult endgames that even grandmasters screw up sometimes: K+Q versus K+R; K+B+N versus K; K+R+B versus K+R; and K+Q+RP...
by scribe | May 9, 2020 | Chess Life, endings, games, positions
Old-timers like me can remember when every issue of Chess Life came with a Larry Evans column called “What’s the Best Move?” Evans would give you positions with three choices of possible moves. The idea, I think, came from a book of the same name...
by scribe | Apr 27, 2020 | endings, positions, Uncategorized
Here’s a challenge of a kind I haven’t seen before. I’m going to show you three very similar positions. In the first, it’s Black to play and win. In the second, Black has to play exactly the same first two moves, and you have to show that the...
by scribe | Apr 6, 2020 | endings, literature, positions
With nothing much going on the world of chess, I’ve been playing against my computer a lot. It’s a bad habit, really. But one somewhat unexpected benefit is that I’ve gotten to play a few interesting endgames recently. When I play against Fritz, I...
by scribe | Mar 17, 2020 | 2020 world championship, current news, endings, games, positions, tournaments
This year’s Candidates Tournament, which will select the next challenger to Magnus Carlsen for the World Chess Championship, started with a bang. Although some might argue that it was unwise for FIDE and the Russian Chess Federation to proceed with the...
