by scribe | Dec 30, 2013 | current news, people, ruminations
Just over a year ago, Magnus Carlsen made his first appearance in the Bay Area, an (apparently) hastily arranged and under-promoted event that left chess players wishing for more. Well, our wish has come true. Magnus is coming to Silicon Valley in January, and he has...
by scribe | Dec 26, 2013 | current news, ruminations, tournaments
In one week the Bay Area International will start, and if this isn’t the most fantastic tournament ever held in this area, I don’t know what is. It will have 68 players, including 15 Grandmasters and 19 International Masters. In other words, half of the...
by scribe | Dec 20, 2013 | games, positions
Ordinarily a twelve-move draw isn’t something I write a blog post about, but this was kind of a surprise to me. I was playing Shredder again yesterday, which usually wins about twenty (or fifty?) games against me for every draw it gives up. We played a familiar...
by scribe | Dec 16, 2013 | Chess Lecture, Chess Life, games, people, positions
Lately, over the last month or so, I have been playing more chess against the computer. This training technique (if you can call it that) needs to be employed with the utmost caution, if at all. The reason is that it’s so easy to become discouraged and get...
by scribe | Dec 13, 2013 | current news, people
It’s pretty cool when I am surfing a website that has nothing whatsoever to do with chess, and up pops an article that’s not only about chess but about somebody I know! I wrote about Luke Harmon-Vellotti here back in 2008, when I managed to defeat him in a...