by scribe | Mar 27, 2016 | current news, people, tournaments
Let me start with an apology. I haven’t been following the Candidates’ Tournament in Moscow very closely — in particular, I haven’t been watching the live broadcasts, although I have been reading about the games on Chessbase.com afterwards. I...
by scribe | Mar 19, 2016 | current news, openings, people, positions, ruminations, tournaments
Leave it to Hikaru Nakamura to give us another lesson in how not to play chess. That is, literally, how not to pick up the pieces and move them. Last year, he taught us not to castle with both hands. (You might remember that in an Armageddon playoff game with Ian...
by scribe | Mar 9, 2016 | current news, off-topic, people, tournaments
I am completely unqualified to talk about anything go-related, but still chess fans might relate to this news. In the first game of the match between AlphaGo (Google’s deep neural network-based AI) and Lee Sedol (generally considered the strongest go player in...
by scribe | Mar 1, 2016 | endings, people, positions, tournaments
I’d like to show you a position from my one loss in the U.S. Amateur Team tournament. It came in round two against Neel Apte. Although I hadn’t played him before, I consider him sort of a “classmate,” because there are three or four Bay Area...
by scribe | Feb 27, 2016 | current news, off-topic, tournaments
First, apologies for not writing very many posts this month. I have minor hardware issues. The power cable for my laptop is not working any more and I have ordered a new one, but it hasn’t arrived yet. So for the last week I have been turning on my laptop very...
by scribe | Feb 16, 2016 | chess clubs, current news, people, tournaments
This weekend I played in the U.S. Amateur Team West tournament, on a team called “Stean Punks,” which consisted of me, Larry Smith, John Wilson, John Williams, and Richard Robinson. It was, as always, a lot of fun to play in a team tournament. I actually...
