by scribe | Feb 6, 2012 | endings, games, openings, people, positions
I’m going to have a couple posts this week about interesting endgame positions I’ve run into recently. One of them is from a blitz (8-minute) game I played last night against Gjon Feinstein, and the other is from a tournament game between two 1400-level...
by scribe | Feb 2, 2012 | current news, people, tournaments
As many readers probably know already, the Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival just ended, with one very familiar name on top — GM Nigel Short — and one very surprising one. The co-winner with Short was the 17-year-old Women’s World Champion, Hou...
by scribe | Jan 31, 2012 | off-topic, positions, ruminations
© Ben Heine 2011. Used with permission. While web surfing this weekend, I came across a series of mixed-media art that blew my mind. I’m not a big art fan ordinarily, but to me this isn’t art, it’s fun! 😎 The artist is named Ben Heine, he comes...
by scribe | Jan 25, 2012 | games, positions, tournaments
Today I’m going to show you a game that I played in Reno in October — a game that began with great promise but ended with multiple blunders by me. For that reason I had not planned to blog about it, but I changed my mind for three reasons. It illustrates...
by scribe | Jan 21, 2012 | Chess Lecture, current news, off-topic
I know, this month I have gone off topic much more often than I should, with the posts about my award and my new book. But I have one more off-topic post that I have to make, which in fact I have been sitting on for three weeks. My wife and I have adopted a new kitty!...
by scribe | Jan 19, 2012 | Chess Life, current news, people, tournaments
In every issue of Chess Life you can see dozens of upcoming tournaments. And yet for about 98 percent of them, you never find out who won. Only the big national tournaments ever get covered in the magazine. I was reminded of this when Pablo Pena sent in a comment a...
by scribe | Jan 17, 2012 | current news, literature, off-topic, ruminations
Yesterday Kay got an automated phone call from Fed Ex saying that we should expect a package before 10:30 am today, which required a signature. We had no idea what it was. “Are you expecting a package?” she asked me. Precisely at 10:26 the doorbell rang,...
by scribe | Jan 15, 2012 | people, positions, ruminations, tournaments
Last night Mike Splane was showing me and Gjon Feinstein a game he played in the New Year Open, and we got to this position. White to move. Black, a young player named Richard Yi, has just played 18. … e5!, a move that Michael says that he completely overlooked....
by scribe | Jan 11, 2012 | Chess Life, people, ruminations
It’s got to be the guy who plays the most games, right? I think that there’s no question that the most active player in top-level international chess is Viktor Korchnoi. According to the following highly unofficial statistics that I found on this web page,...
by scribe | Jan 9, 2012 | off-topic, people, tournaments
So you all must be wondering, “Why were you, a chess blogger living in the San Francisco Bay area, not at the Northern California International chess tournament last week?” Unfortunately, this tournament always seems to conflict with the Joint Mathematics...
