Odds and Ends 2014

Well, it’s December 31, a day that gets no respect because everybody is looking toward the new year. But it’s a perfect day for an “odds and ends” blog post, and that’s what I’m doing today. Everything today is either an odd or an...

“Nuke the GM!” Lecture Posted

Today ChessLecture posted my lecture on my game with Sergei Kudrin from the October Western States Open. I’ve blogged about the game here before, but I didn’t post the complete game score because I wanted ChessLecture to release it first. Now that the...

My Chess Life

I don’t mean to alarm you or anything, because my chess life isn’t over. I am planning to play next weekend, in fact. However, I have definitely played my last rated game of 2014, and that inspired me to go to my member page at uschess.org to see how I did...

Unacceptable Interference?

I have a question for other chess teachers/coaches, especially those who work with kids: How much intervention is acceptable, for teaching purposes, in a friendly game between two kids? Here’s the particular situation that arose in a game yesterday at the Aptos...

High-Class Abacus

In a comment on my most recent post, Hal Bogner used the delightful sobriquet “high-class abacus” to describe chess computers. Quoth Hal: “What’s with this worship of high-class abacus evaluations of positions in which their evaluations are in...