Looking ahead

For fun, I just did something I never do: Look at the pre-registered entries for the next tournament I’m playing in, the Western States Open in Reno. It’s still ten days away, so there will surely be more entries, but here is how it looks so far in the...

Dixit Magister (part 3)

This is the third part of a three-part series. To make things more convenient, here are links to the first part and the second part. As one commenter observed after Part 1, the story is about the man-versus-machine battle. True, that’s a big part of the story,...

Dixit Magister (part 2)

This post is part two of a three-part series. As explained in my previous post, it is an article that I wrote in 2007 but never published, in which I tell the story of the best game I ever played. More than that, it is an attempt to take non-chess players inside the...

Seeking Clarity

“I woke up with a headache like my head against a board/ Twice as cloudy as I’d been the night before/ And I went in seeking clarity.” — Indigo Girls, “Closer to Fine” Besides being a line from one of my two favorite songs in the...

State Championships

In my last post I did not have any information on who won the Northern California state championship. I will now make up for my shortcomings as a reporter by telling you who won all the state championships this weekend. (Labor Day weekend is the traditional time for...