by scribe | Oct 30, 2008 | Chess Lecture, games, people
As many of you know, the world championship has ended, and Viswanathan Anand has finally left no doubt in anybody’s mind who the champion is, with a convincing 6.5-4.5 victory over Vladimir Kramnik. Kramnik at least made a fight of it, with a...
by scribe | Oct 22, 2008 | ruminations, tournaments
Michael Aigner’s comment on my last blog post jogged a few memory cells for me. Specifically, he felt that he had a fairly rotten tournament in Reno, and he lost rating points, and yet he actually won some prize money. That reminded me of some tournaments I had...
by scribe | Oct 21, 2008 | Chess Lecture, endings, games, tournaments
In my last post I promised to show you the endgame from my last-round game at the Western States Open. It was the last game in the entire tournament to finish, and by winning this game I managed to tie for second place under 2300. In this endgame miracle, I somehow...
by scribe | Oct 20, 2008 | endings, games, tournaments
Many years ago there was a cartoon in The New Yorker that shows a frumpy old housewife with permed hair, standing in a house that is the epitome of depressing: a bare light bulb dangling from the ceiling, a flea-bitten dog, a bald husband with a t-shirt and a beer...
by scribe | Oct 18, 2008 | games, people, tournaments
While Viswanathan Anand and Vladimir Kramnik are battling it out for world supremacy in chess, 245 chess players have come to Reno with a more modest goal — supremacy in the Western U.S. This is a very modest turnout by the usual standards of the Western States...
