Amazing chess art

One of the fun things about lecturing for ChessLecture is the feedback I get from listeners. One of my fans is Carina Jørgensen, who also has posted a couple of comments here. She is an art student in Denmark and a rapidly improving chess player. She played a lot of...

Round-Robin Bliss

Yesterday I played the first round of what will probably be my last tournament of 2007 – the Santa Cruz Cup. This is a delightful rarity in American chess, a European-style round-robin tournament. Most rated American tournaments are run in the (ironically...

Paul Hoffman’s “King’s Gambit”

A couple weeks ago, I finally had the chance to read Paul Hoffman’s new book, King’s Gambit. Ironically, I was playing in a chess tournament at the time, and had a lot of time to kill between rounds. I don’t think it helped me win any games, but it...

Two Chess Personalities

As you know if you read my last two posts, last weekend I played in the Western States Open in Reno, Nevada, always one of the best-run and most popular tournaments of the year in this part of the country. About 340 players were on hand to celebrate the...