by scribe | May 29, 2008 | Chess Lecture, people, ruminations, tournaments
Apparently not much, if you believe this article by GM Joel Benjamin at U.S. Chess Online. Benjamin was responding to a reader who asked why so many top U.S. players — Kamsky, Nakamura, Christiansen, DeFirmian, and Benjamin himself — who were eligible for...
by scribe | May 26, 2008 | Chess Lecture, games, tournaments
Today was Memorial Day in the U.S., a holiday that is often considered the informal beginning of summer. The Memorial Day weekend is an ideal time for three-day chess tournaments, which range in size from huge (the Lina Grumette Memorial Day Classic in Los Angeles) to...
by scribe | May 21, 2008 | Chess Lecture, games, people, tournaments
Today Alexey Root, in her blog on the MonRoi website, addressed the question I asked in my last post: should I should be satisfied with offering a non-rated tournament for the kids in my library chess club, or should I should try to get them into rated chess? I...
by scribe | May 16, 2008 | Chess Lecture, games, people, tournaments
At the U.S. Championship, that is. And the answer is: Of course! As a fan, I’ve got to root for the “home team.” And where I’m concerned, there are two home teams: San Francisco area residents: Josh Friedel 2.5/4 David Pruess 2/4 Sam Shankland...
by scribe | Apr 30, 2008 | Chess Lecture, Chess Life, games, literature
… or double your misery, or whatever. I now simultaneously have an article in Chess Life (which arrived in the mail yesterday) and a lecture on ChessLecture. As longtime readers of this blog know, the Chess Life article has been in the works since last fall....
by scribe | Apr 24, 2008 | Chess Lecture, ruminations, tournaments
Here’s an update that no one asked for, on the Santa Cruz Cup, aka The World’s Slowest Chess Tournament. We got started last October with an eight-man round robin, which finally concluded in March… almost. The trouble was that one game was still...
