by scribe | Sep 25, 2015 | games, openings, positions
So I won a Matrix chess game against Shredder on my computer (game/10, I get one time-out of arbitrary length, Shredder’s rating was set for this game at 2298) and was feeling pretty good about myself until I went over it with Rybka. Ugh! Position after 21....
by scribe | Aug 17, 2015 | chess clubs, games, openings, people, ruminations
I was away for a few days at a science meeting in Seattle, but now I’m back. I had a chess-ful weekend. First, Eric Montany invited me and the Usual Suspects to a birthday party at his house. There were, like, real people at this party, not just chess players,...
by scribe | May 26, 2015 | Chess Lecture, endings, openings, people, ruminations
Yesterday I got a terrific comment on a very old post, one that also happens to be a favorite of mine: Jerry Hanken on Reshevsky vs. Fischer (2010). That was a post about the aborted Reshevsky-Fischer match from 1961 and how it fell apart, and it ended with a...
by scribe | Apr 4, 2015 | current news, openings, tournaments
This year’s Larry Evans Memorial in Reno is chock-full of illustrious names. Seven grandmasters made the trip: Melikset Khachiyan, Alexander Ivanov, Sergey Kudrin, Jim Tarjan, Enrico Sevillano, Nick DeFirmian, and Walter Browne. What decade is this, anyway?!...
by scribe | Mar 24, 2015 | chess clubs, current news, games, openings, people
No, not that kind of bird! (That’s a scrub jay who has taken up residence in one of our bushes, driving Max the cat wild.) I mean this kind of Bird: Position after 4. … b5. White to move. FEN: r1bqkbnr/p1pp1ppp/8/1p2p3/B2nP3/5N2/PPPP1PPP/RNBQK2R w KQkq...
by scribe | Mar 10, 2015 | openings, positions, ruminations
Last time I wrote about the most popular opening variations, by ECO code. I also wrote about the best ones for White/worst ones for Black, by ECO code. As I expected this generated a bit of a reaction, especially from proponents of the Dutch Defense. Their comments...
