by scribe | Jul 16, 2017 | current news, endings, people, positions, tournaments
Three years ago I wrote a post called The Seventh Samurai, which was motivated by the fact that I had looked at the list of the 100 top juniors in the world and saw seven Americans on the list. One of the names, Akshat Chandra, was unfamiliar to me then (though quite...
by scribe | Jul 1, 2017 | current news, games, openings, tournaments
This week the most exciting news in chess for me was that the American team got trounced by the Russians in the World Team Championship, 4-0. Come again? Well, the real news was the Ian Nepomniachtchi beat Sam Shankland, and while I would ordinarily make me very sad,...
by scribe | May 28, 2017 | chess clubs, Chess Lecture, current news, tournaments
Yesterday I wrote about the results of the Aptos Library Kids’ Chess Tournament, which I directed yesterday. I have two followups to that post. First, our local paper, the Santa Cruz Sentinel, had an article about the tournament with some nice photographs (but...
by scribe | May 27, 2017 | chess clubs, current news, people, tournaments
As fans of my blog know, on one day each year I do an impersonation of a tournament director. Today was the day! The 2017 Aptos Library Kids’ Chess Tournament was (in my opinion) a big success, with 33 participants, our second-largest total ever. One year we had...
by scribe | Apr 27, 2017 | current news, positions, PRO Chess League, tournaments
The Reykjavik Open concluded today, and the winner was not too big a surprise: it was Anish Giri, who went into the tournament with the highest rating. However, the way he won was definitely a surprise; going into round eight he was half a point behind the leaders....
by scribe | Mar 9, 2017 | current news, endings, PRO Chess League, tournaments
Yesterday I watched the PRO Chess League for the first time since week 2. (By the way, I finally found out that PRO is an abbreviation for Professional Rapid Online. That’s why it is obnoxiously capitalized all the time.) Naturally, I jinxed the team I was...
