by scribe | Mar 6, 2015 | openings, positions, ruminations
First of all, let me announce that my last post, Grading the Openings (Part One), unexpectedly turned into the biggest hit I’ve ever had on this blog. The blog had 1136 visitors yesterday, which is three times more than I have ever had in a single day (except...
by scribe | Mar 4, 2015 | openings, ruminations
Rob Weir, the statistician whom I mentioned in my last post, graciously shared with me a data base of the performance of all the openings, organized by ECO code. This allows us to create something that I’ve never quite seen before: a “report card” of...
by scribe | Feb 28, 2015 | Chess Lecture, games, openings
My last post on the French Defense, a few days ago, attracted more comments than any post I’ve written for at least a couple years. So let’s continue the conversation. One of the commenters (Brian Wall, I’m looking at you) asked, “What...
by scribe | Feb 26, 2015 | openings, ruminations
About 50 years ago, the Yugoslav chess magazine Chess Informant introduced a new classification system for chess openings. For chess players it was like the invention of the metric system: it systematized the nomenclature that varied wildly from country to country....
by scribe | Feb 23, 2015 | chess clubs, openings, positions
Yesterday I met for a short chess session with Gjon Feinstein, Mike Splane, and Eric Montany. Mike showed us a game he played at the Kolty Chess Club last week that features a new variation he is exploring in the French. He played it against an expert named Lev (I...
by scribe | Feb 16, 2015 | openings, ruminations
What do you think? Good? Bad? Ridiculous? It seems to me that with the move 1. a3, White is saying to his opponent, “I will agree to play Black, and I believe that in any opening you might choose to play, I will be able to find a variation in which a3 is a...
