by scribe | Dec 20, 2013 | games, positions
Ordinarily a twelve-move draw isn’t something I write a blog post about, but this was kind of a surprise to me. I was playing Shredder again yesterday, which usually wins about twenty (or fifty?) games against me for every draw it gives up. We played a familiar...
by scribe | Dec 16, 2013 | Chess Lecture, Chess Life, games, people, positions
Lately, over the last month or so, I have been playing more chess against the computer. This training technique (if you can call it that) needs to be employed with the utmost caution, if at all. The reason is that it’s so easy to become discouraged and get...
by scribe | Dec 3, 2013 | current news, games, positions
Today I’d like to show you one of my two time-pressure meltdowns from last weekend. This was the worst one, because it caused me to lose a game that I should have drawn and maybe even could have won. And as is often the case, the seeds of my defeat were planted...
by scribe | Nov 2, 2013 | endings, games, positions
Right after I posted Mike Splane’s game with Igor Ivanov I was going to post my own, but then I got too busy. But here it is — better late than never! I played against Ivanov in the 2002 North American Open, a tournament that went very well for me. We...
by scribe | Oct 26, 2013 | Chess Lecture, literature, people, positions, tournaments, US Chess League
Last night I went with Gjon Feinstein to attend Jesse Kraai’s book reading and signing at the NorCal House of Chess in Fremont, California. It was great to see Jesse again after three years. He looked trimmer, has grown a beard and now looks more like a starving...
by scribe | Oct 16, 2013 | games, people, positions
At Mike Splane’s latest chess party, on Sunday, Richard Koepcke showed us a game that involved a “hanging pawns” formation in the center, where the owner of the hanging pawns did not play actively enough, let them get blockaded, and eventually lost....
