by scribe | Mar 26, 2020 | 2020 world championship, current news, ruminations, tournaments
This morning FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich announced that he was suspending the 2020 Candidates Tournament, which had just reached the halfway mark. As most or all of my readers probably know already, this was the tournament to select a challenger to Magnus Carlsen...
by scribe | Mar 23, 2020 | 2020 world championship, current news, positions, ruminations, tournaments
It was a good news, bad news kind of day for Ian Nepomniachtchi and for chess fans everywhere. On one hand, he won his second straight game and put more distance between himself and his pursuers. He beat Ding Liren in a very solid Ruy Lopez where Ding’s position...
by scribe | Mar 15, 2020 | 2020 world championship, current news, people, ruminations, tournaments
For anyone with even a passing interest in sports, this is a pretty weird time. You open the sports page of the newspaper… and there are no games. NBA, NHL, golf, soccer, … all canceled. Which makes this an even more remarkable time for chess fans, because we...
by scribe | Mar 11, 2020 | current news, off-topic, people, ruminations, tournaments
“Without a plan, you are lost.” This is something that my college Russian teacher (who was also a chess player) once told me. He was a spy during World War II, and he said that once he was on a train when the police came on and started checking...
by scribe | Feb 13, 2020 | chess clubs, games, positions, ruminations
I’ve got lots of candidates for the worst game ever played against the computer, but this morning I played one that has to be near the top of the list. I went from much better to checkmated in the span of six moves! I was White, Fritz 17 was Black, it was set at...
by scribe | Jan 26, 2020 | current news, games, ruminations
Now I have both of my new toys — my new laptop and my new edition of Fritz 17 (together with ChessBase), so I am back to normal for blogging purposes. I might as well use this post for a quick review of Fritz 17. I have to say that the change I was looking...
