by scribe | Jul 16, 2017 | current news, endings, people, positions, tournaments
Three years ago I wrote a post called The Seventh Samurai, which was motivated by the fact that I had looked at the list of the 100 top juniors in the world and saw seven Americans on the list. One of the names, Akshat Chandra, was unfamiliar to me then (though quite...
by scribe | Jul 1, 2017 | current news, games, openings, tournaments
This week the most exciting news in chess for me was that the American team got trounced by the Russians in the World Team Championship, 4-0. Come again? Well, the real news was the Ian Nepomniachtchi beat Sam Shankland, and while I would ordinarily make me very sad,...
by scribe | Jun 25, 2017 | current news, literature, off-topic, positions
I’m going off topic today to promote a book written by a friend of mine. This is a copy of the review that I posted at goodreads.com. Through the Shadowlands: A Science Writer’s Odyssey Into an Illness Science Doesn’t Understand by Julie Rehmeyer My...
by scribe | May 28, 2017 | chess clubs, Chess Lecture, current news, tournaments
Yesterday I wrote about the results of the Aptos Library Kids’ Chess Tournament, which I directed yesterday. I have two followups to that post. First, our local paper, the Santa Cruz Sentinel, had an article about the tournament with some nice photographs (but...
by scribe | May 27, 2017 | chess clubs, current news, people, tournaments
As fans of my blog know, on one day each year I do an impersonation of a tournament director. Today was the day! The 2017 Aptos Library Kids’ Chess Tournament was (in my opinion) a big success, with 33 participants, our second-largest total ever. One year we had...
by scribe | May 23, 2017 | current news, positions
Most of the time, when we talk about a “dream position,” we mean a position that is too good to be true — all the pieces in just the right places, working together like a team. The position below, on the other hand, is an ACTUAL dream position: a...
