Magnus Carlsen coming back to Bay Area

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...

More Silly Computer Chess

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...

Prodigy Update

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...