by scribe | Nov 10, 2011 | current news, games, off-topic, ruminations, tournaments
I suspect that everyone reading this blog can figure out the following riddle: He’s been played with for centuries and lives the majority of his life one step at a time, often moving between darkness and light, and when he’s trapped, his life is over. This...
by scribe | Nov 3, 2011 | games, off-topic, openings, people, ruminations
One of my stranger quirks is that I have kept a diary for most of my life. My parents gave me my very first diary on Christmas in 1963, when I was five years old, but I didn’t stick with it for very long. They tried again, giving me a five-year diary when I was...
by scribe | Oct 29, 2011 | endings, games, tournaments
The Four Endgames of the Apocalypse are the most notorious “common” endgames in chess, endgames where normal chess concepts go out the window and which lead otherwise sane chess players (??) to pound their heads in frustration. They are: K+Q versus K+R...
by scribe | Oct 9, 2011 | games, openings, people, positions
Yesterday I got together with Cole Ryan (see my post from last week) and Gjon Feinstein for some game analysis and speed chess. We played 8-minute games with lots of analysis between, so we only had time for five games, which went more or less as you would predict....
by scribe | Oct 5, 2011 | chess clubs, games
When I give chess lessons at the Aptos Public Library, it’s always a challenge to make them concise enough. For this age group (roughly 6 to 12) I have found that 15 minutes is about the limit of their attention span, or 20 minutes if the lesson is going well....
by scribe | Oct 2, 2011 | games, people, positions
As I said in my last post, I’m determined to post more often here in October than I did in September. Even if it means writing about blitz games! Yesterday I met with Cole Ryan, whom I had not played with in two or three years. I’ve known him since he was...
