by scribe | Jan 5, 2015 | current news, ruminations, tournaments
Back when I first joined the USCF, in 1972, you had to wait months to find out your new rating after you played in a tournament. Nowadays, if the tournament directors do their job quickly enough, you can find out overnight. In fact, Michael Aigner found out even...
by scribe | Jan 4, 2015 | current news, people, tournaments
The New Year Championship has just wrapped up, and the victor in a runaway was the Chinese grandmaster, Xiangzhi Bu, who beat IM Andrey Gorovets in the last round to finish with a score of 5½ out of 6. There was a four-way tie for second at 4½ points, including the...
by scribe | Dec 10, 2014 | Chess Lecture, current news, games, tournaments
Thanks to Gjon Feinstein and Mike Splane for telling me that GM Melikset Khachiyan has posted a lecture on chess.com about the game that we played in the recent Reno tournament. If you’re a member of chess.com (and you should be, because membership is free), go...
by scribe | Nov 23, 2014 | current news, ruminations, tournaments
Today, as I expect most readers of this blog know already, Magnus Carlsen won the 11th game of his match with Viswanathan Anand to retain his world championship title. The final score of the match was 6½-4½ (+3 – 1 =7 for Carlsen). What can I say? I think the...
by scribe | Oct 22, 2014 | current news, openings, ruminations, tournaments
A few final thoughts about the Reno tournament… (1) The ratings went up today and I was surprised to see that my rating didn’t go up as much as I thought it would. Only from 2164 to 2182. This means that if I had won my last-round game against GM Sergey...
by scribe | Oct 19, 2014 | Chess Lecture, current news, positions, tournaments
What a finish to the Western States Open! In the last round, I almost… Beat my first grandmaster (a bucket list item) Tied for first in an open tournament, for the first time in 20 years Scored another historic victory with the Bryntse Gambit Got my rating back...
