Quickie Post

This weekend I’m playing in the Bay Area Chess Thanksgiving Festival (see www.bayareachess.com). This is the second tournament I’ve played in that was organized by Salman Azhar; I also played in the Memorial Day Festival earlier this year. He found a much...

Amazing Olympiad results!

While I’m working on my series of posts about the Bird Variation of the Ruy Lopez, I shouldn’t ignore the rest of the chess world. So I’ve just spent the last half hour catching up on the Chess Olympiad, which concluded yesterday in Dresden, Germany....

Bird by Bird, part 3A

We now move on to the third part of my series on the Bird Variation of the Ruy Lopez, and here it will get a little bit more challenging for Black. Michael Goeller notes, in his comment to “Bird by Bird, part 2,” that he has been playing the Bird Variation...

Bird by Bird, part 2

Okay, now back to our regularly scheduled opening analysis from Dana’s Secret Chess Filesâ„¢. In my previous “Bird by Bird” entry I outlined the general strategic themes of the Bird Variation of the Ruy Lopez: 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 Nd4. Note...