by scribe | Jun 10, 2011 | games, positions
Today I’m going to write about yet another team chess game. This is one that I played last night, playing Black with Thadeus Frei against Cailen Melville and Gjon Feinstein. We were using new experimental rules. The time control was 7 minutes for both sides, and...
by scribe | Jun 5, 2011 | games, people, tournaments
This afternoon Mike Splane hosted his second chess salon. (Well, he called it a party but I like the word “salon,” which calls to mind an image of erudite people gathered in a nineteenth-century drawing room, puffing pipes as they discuss Serious Issues.)...
by scribe | May 31, 2011 | current news, games, people, tournaments
The last day of the CalChess State Championship was kind of strange for me (I’ll get to that below), but it went about as expected for Sam Shankland. The tournament’s only Grandmaster surged at the finish, winning his last two games to go 5-1 and win the...
by scribe | May 21, 2011 | games, openings, positions, tournaments
Because George Michael said so! In my last tournament I had a disappointing finish, a draw in the last round against a class-A player named Roberto Aiello. In this game, as White, I experimented with a variation of the King’s Indian Defense that I have never...
by scribe | May 10, 2011 | current news, endings, games, positions, tournaments
The quarterfinal matches in the World Championship Qualifier are now complete, and my description of the tournament as “May Madness” is now even more appropriate than ever. First, just as in March Madness, upsets were the order of the day. The winner in...
by scribe | Apr 23, 2011 | current news, games, positions, tournaments
I’m playing this weekend in the Far West Open in Reno, one of the two traditional big tournaments of the year in this city. This year it seems somewhat smaller than in the past, with around 160 players. The top of the wall chart is also missing some familiar...
