by scribe | Jan 18, 2017 | games, openings, positions
Yesterday I wasted a ton of time playing against Shredder on my computer, and losing game after game… Finally I “dumbed the computer down” to a rating of 1977 just so that I would have a chance to win. And what do you know? I got a chance to play...
by scribe | Jan 2, 2017 | Chess Lecture, current news, games, people
Welcome back! I’m officially ending my blog hiatus today, but I have to warn you that posts will continue to be very sporadic for the next month or two. My book still isn’t finished yet, and that has to be the #1 priority. Still, I will post here when I...
by scribe | Oct 9, 2016 | games, openings, positions
One of my favorite ChessLectures ever was called “Double Queen Sacrifices,” in which I talked about the ultra-rare games where one player sacrificed a queen twice in the same game. Many chess players don’t even sacrifice two queens in their whole...
by scribe | Oct 2, 2016 | games, positions
To be or not to be? To play e5 or f5? These are the great dilemmas in life. A few weeks ago I wrote about a game I played with Shredder where I had to make a decision between e5 and f5 at a crucial point (although as Gjon Feinstein pointed out, d4 was also really...
by scribe | Aug 28, 2016 | chess clubs, Chess Lecture, endings, games
We’ve arrived at game number six in my series of Six Memorable Games. It is not at all a perfect game, but in some ways it is a perfect illustration of both the good and bad features of my chess: occasional moments of creativity interspersed with frustrating...
by scribe | Aug 24, 2016 | Chess Lecture, games, people, positions
A couple weeks ago I got a really cool surprise in my e-mail. A chess player named Frank Brown, whom I didn’t know previously, sent me a photograph that he had taken in 2009, when I played against grandmaster Jesse Kraai on one of the top boards at the Western...
