by scribe | Oct 26, 2017 | chess clubs, games, positions, translations
In 1978, I was an exchange student for a semester in what was then called the Soviet Union, studying Russian language at what was then called Leningrad State University in the city then known as Leningrad. One of my biggest goals for the semester was to participate in...
by scribe | Oct 20, 2017 | games, openings, positions
In my last post I showed you a game where the computer completely embarrassed me, by playing as if it were the reincarnation of Aron Nimzovich. Of course, after that game I had to get my revenge, and there is no better way to get revenge against a computer than to...
by scribe | Oct 17, 2017 | games, literature, people, positions
(A post in the Halloween spirit.) Last night I was playing chess against Shredder, the computer program, and set its rating at 2220. At that very moment, through a glitch in the time-space continuum, the ghost of Aron Nimzovich was summoned and possessed my computer....
by scribe | Sep 14, 2017 | current news, games, positions, tournaments
Every landslide begins with one little pebble. And then another, and then a few rocks, and then a boulder, and then a whole hillside is moving … That’s what it must have felt like for Alexander Grischuk when he was on the receiving end of an overwhelming,...
by scribe | Sep 9, 2017 | current news, games, people, positions, tournaments
In a fairer world, we would all be talking about Xiangzhi Bu today. At the World Cup, he just defeated the World Champion, Magnus Carlsen, in a game straight out of the nineteenth century. Bu played a daring bishop sacrifice on move 15; Carlsen accepted his challenge...
by scribe | Sep 6, 2017 | current news, games, positions, tournaments
One of my favorite events of the chess calendar is here, and in fact the first round nearly got by me before I realized it. Yes, it’s the month-long chess orgy known as the World Cup. What I don’t like about the World Cup: It’s not a world...
