by scribe | Jan 21, 2015 | games, openings, people, positions
This Sunday I had the chance to meet with Gjon Feinstein, Mike Splane, and Eric Montany at a coffeehouse to go over my recent game with Ivan Ke. (See this post for some earlier discussion of the game.) We tore apart and dissected the game until there were only the...
by scribe | Dec 30, 2014 | Chess Lecture, games, openings
Today ChessLecture posted my lecture on my game with Sergei Kudrin from the October Western States Open. I’ve blogged about the game here before, but I didn’t post the complete game score because I wanted ChessLecture to release it first. Now that the...
by scribe | Dec 9, 2014 | chess clubs, current news, openings, people
Today’s chess club at the Aptos Library was one of the best I can remember. We had 18 kids, and everybody seemed to find a good match to play against. In the lesson I talked about an age-old trap: 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Nd4? 4. Nxe5?! Qg5 5. Nxf7?? Qxg2 6....
by scribe | Nov 12, 2014 | chess clubs, games, openings, positions
At Mike Splane’s last chess party, the question came up: “Is one bad move enough to lose a game?” Of course the answer is yes, if the move is really, really bad, like hanging a rook or a queen. But in games between more or less experienced players,...
by scribe | Nov 7, 2014 | current news, games, openings, US Chess League
Step aside, MadBum! There’s a new hero in town, and his name is VigPanch! The San Francisco (baseball) Giants have Madison Bumgarner, the hero of the World Series. But the San Francisco (chess) Mechanics have Vignesh Panchanathan, the #4 fourteen-year-old in the...
by scribe | Oct 22, 2014 | current news, openings, ruminations, tournaments
A few final thoughts about the Reno tournament… (1) The ratings went up today and I was surprised to see that my rating didn’t go up as much as I thought it would. Only from 2164 to 2182. This means that if I had won my last-round game against GM Sergey...
