by scribe | Mar 17, 2011 | Chess Lecture, endings, games, tournaments
What is the hardest “normal” endgame in chess? I think the answer is probably K+Q+RP vs. K+Q. A few years ago no less an authority than Vassily Smyslov wrote a series of columns on this endgame for “64” magazine (in Russian), and you could...
by scribe | Mar 12, 2011 | off-topic, ruminations
Yesterday I was heading back home from the animal shelter, where I volunteer on Friday mornings, and noticed a helicopter circling around in the sky. Make that two helicopters. It was hard not to notice them, because they were so loud that it sounded like a war zone...
by scribe | Mar 8, 2011 | literature, off-topic
Some of you might have noticed that I had a short pause in my blog posts (two weeks, to be exact) before yesterday’s post on “The Art of Doing Nothing.” In case you were wondering, the reason is that I was writing the last two chapters of my next...
by scribe | Mar 7, 2011 | games, people, positions
Yesterday I had a mini-chess salon at my house, with only two guests: Gjon Feinstein and Mike Splane. Gjon has been to my place many times — so many that he even knows which legs of my chess table are loose! For Mike, on the other hand, it was his first visit....
