by scribe | Apr 2, 2011 | Chess Life, people
I just learned, courtesy of Bill Brock’s Chicago Chess Blog, that the USCF member pages have added another new wrinkle: a line that indicates your ranking in the whole country. My current rating is 2093Â 🙁 . That puts me at #1290 in the country, which is...
by scribe | Mar 28, 2011 | chess clubs, people, ruminations
Anyone who can teach chess to kids has my utter, undivided admiration. This year, for the second time, I am teaching a chess class for five weeks at a local kindergarten-through-fifth-grade school. I was pretty disappointed with how the class went last year, and...
by scribe | Mar 24, 2011 | literature, people, tournaments
As long-time fans of the Peanuts comic strip know, Charlie Brown’s favorite baseball player is one Joe Shlabotnik, whose claim to fame is that he gets sent down to the minor leagues and bats .143 (which is really bad). He epitomizes the same sort of lovable...
by scribe | Mar 22, 2011 | current news, people, ruminations
Seriously, why? It makes life so much more miserable for those of us who don’t. If this were a baseball blog, I would be writing now about the Barry Bonds trial. But I don’t have to dive into that cesspit. The chess world now has a scandal of its own. As...
by scribe | Mar 7, 2011 | games, people, positions
Yesterday I had a mini-chess salon at my house, with only two guests: Gjon Feinstein and Mike Splane. Gjon has been to my place many times — so many that he even knows which legs of my chess table are loose! For Mike, on the other hand, it was his first visit....
by scribe | Feb 14, 2011 | current news, people
Yesterday Michael Aigner, Bay area chess coach extraordinaire, was featured in the chess column of the New York Times! The column focuses, of course, on his success as a chess coach, launching the careers of Steven Zierk and Daniel Naroditsky (recent winners of the...
