50 Years of Chess: Year 21A

As we move to 1992 in my retrospective look at my chess career, I face a dilemma. In 1990 and 1991 I had trouble finding any good games to show you, but in 1992 I have the opposite problem — too many good games. There’s one that, in my notebook, I call a...

Anti-Chess

For every good, instructive game that I play against the computer, there must be two or three really awful games. Here’s one that I played this morning that is so bad that it’s good. I’m playing White, Fritz (with its rating set to 2025) is playing...

Back in Business!

My computer issues have been taken care of, thanks to one of my readers, Marshall Polaris. Marshall is a Kolty Club member, a fan of this blog, and was also a participant on the Kolty Club team in the U.S. Amateur Team West tournament back in February. (Back in the...

Checkmate with a King… Almost

Maybe I show too many computer chess games in this here blog… but here we go again. I love playing against Shredder, because we get some of the wildest positions I’ve ever seen. This week I was able to threaten one of the rarest moves in chess – checkmate with a king!...

The Unbreakable Pin and the Long March

This week I played a game against the computer that featured two of my favorite strategic themes. The unbreakable pin is, of course, well known. The second concept, the Long March, is one that I named but of course didn’t invent. It’s simply the plan of marching the...