by scribe | Aug 5, 2015 | chess clubs, people, ruminations, tournaments
As some of you may have noticed, when I write about games against kids in this blog I often quote their age-group ranking, as in “Yesterday I beat John Doe, the #48 14-year-old in the country.” Mike Splane noticed this and said, “Why don’t you...
by scribe | Jul 10, 2015 | current news, people, tournaments
Last weekend the World Open, the second-biggest open event of the year in terms of prize money, took place in Arlington, Virginia. I didn’t go to it this time. (The last World Open I went to was twenty years ago, and interestingly enough it was the last event...
by scribe | Jun 25, 2015 | current news, games, people, positions, tournaments
Well, I was going to finish my coverage of the National Open by showing you part of my last-round game… but then the news came yesterday that blew all of those plans to smithereens. Walter Browne, the six-time U.S. Champion, has died. Browne gave a 25-board...
by scribe | Jun 23, 2015 | chess clubs, current news, people, ruminations, tournaments
So many things going on at once, and I’d like to write a separate post on each of them but then it would take too long. So here are three separate, unrelated pieces of news at once. This My rating graph since 1991, downloaded from the USCF website. It’s...
by scribe | Jun 22, 2015 | current news, endings, people, ruminations, tournaments
This weekend, at the National Open in Las Vegas, I finally returned to the chess Valhalla: a rating of 2200, the minimum (and only) requirement to be a National Master. Never mind that I’ve been rated 2200 before. Never mind that I am already, in fact, a Life...
by scribe | Jun 1, 2015 | current news, endings, people, tournaments
I’ve written before about the Four Endgames of the Apocalypse — the four rare endgames that all chess players dread, which occur just often enough (like once or twice a lifetime) that you really ought to know them. They are: K+Q vs. K+R K+B+N vs. K K+Q+RP...
