by scribe | Dec 13, 2012 | people, ruminations, tournaments
Consider this: A little kid walks into a scholastic chess tournament in St. Petersburg one day. He’s unrated, so he probably plays on one of the bottom boards. He loses two games and then goes home. According to the tournament report he finished second-to-last,...
by scribe | Dec 12, 2012 | chess clubs, Chess Life, openings, positions, ruminations
Today’s post is a grab bag of topics… 1) The Aptos Library Chess Club has been a hopping place lately. Two weeks ago we had 23 kids, which forced us for the first time to use every single board and set in our collection. This week we had 16, I think. I...
by scribe | Dec 7, 2012 | Chess Life, current news, literature, people, ruminations
One of my favorite scenes in the documentary Brooklyn Castle, which I reviewed here recently, was the one where (spoiler alert!) Rochelle Ballantyne won the national girls’ high school championship on tiebreak, earning herself a scholarship to the University of...
by scribe | Dec 4, 2012 | games, openings, ruminations
Recently Gjon Feinstein showed me a Paul Morphy game that he had recently shown to his students. Like so many of Morphy’s games, it was short and sweet. Paul Morphy — Bottin, Paris 1858 1. e4 e5 2. c3?! (Pretty unconventional by modern standards) 2....
by scribe | Nov 29, 2012 | chess clubs, current news, literature, people, ruminations
Yesterday I finally had my chance to go to San Francisco and watch the movie Brooklyn Castle, which I have already blogged about a couple times before (here and here). There are a few spoilers below — hopefully small ones — and I will flag them for any...
by scribe | Oct 23, 2012 | off-topic, ruminations, tournaments
Some of you might recall that my last post ended with the words, “And now it’s time for me to brave those snowy mountain passes and drive back home.” Well, it turned out to be a little bit more of an adventure than I bargained for! In fact, I’m...
