by scribe | Mar 24, 2008 | Chess Lecture, openings, tournaments, US Chess League
Four more days until the first-ever U.S. Championship Qualifier! This morning I checked out the advance entries (as of last Wednesday). There are 87 people on the list, plus two possibles. Surprisingly, there are only 7 grandmasters entered, and 12 international...
by scribe | Mar 13, 2008 | Chess Lecture, Chess Life, off-topic, tournaments
Back from my four-day sojourn in Houston, that is. I went to the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, in order to learn what’s new in our solar system and hopefully find some topics for articles. I did come back with a couple of ideas. I won’t discuss...
by scribe | Mar 4, 2008 | people, ruminations, tournaments
Okay, to get a little discussion going, today we’re going to talk about one of everybody’s favorite topics: ratings. What do you think about them? Are they a blight on the game of chess? A useful yardstick for gauging your own improvement? My own attitude...
by scribe | Mar 2, 2008 | endings, games, tournaments
Hi chess fans! There are many places on the Web where you can read about the super-GM tournament in Linares, but only here can you read about the Santa Cruz Cup! Today we “almost” finished the round-robin portion of our tournament, but there is one game...
by scribe | Feb 28, 2008 | Chess Lecture, games, positions, tournaments
If I ever write that book of amateur games told in “story” fashion (or “melodramatic,” a word some of our readers took issue with), here is one that I will have to include. This was the game between Dan Burkhard (White) and Jeff Mallett (Black)...
by scribe | Feb 27, 2008 | Chess Lecture, endings, people, tournaments
This is just an entry devoted to odds and ends of various kinds. First of all, I just wanted to let everybody know that I’ve gotten over my blunder of last Sunday, which I wrote about in my post “Back to Square One.” I now realize it was not the...
