by scribe | Nov 10, 2011 | current news, games, off-topic, ruminations, tournaments
I suspect that everyone reading this blog can figure out the following riddle: He’s been played with for centuries and lives the majority of his life one step at a time, often moving between darkness and light, and when he’s trapped, his life is over. This...
by scribe | Nov 7, 2011 | off-topic, people, ruminations
A few weeks ago I got a wonderful surprise in my e-mail. A reader named Edson José Cortiano, who lives in Brazil, sent me several chess cartoons that he has drawn, and he has given me permission to post them in my blog. I have to apologize that my blog is not ideally...
by scribe | Nov 3, 2011 | games, off-topic, openings, people, ruminations
One of my stranger quirks is that I have kept a diary for most of my life. My parents gave me my very first diary on Christmas in 1963, when I was five years old, but I didn’t stick with it for very long. They tried again, giving me a five-year diary when I was...
by scribe | Oct 29, 2011 | endings, games, tournaments
The Four Endgames of the Apocalypse are the most notorious “common” endgames in chess, endgames where normal chess concepts go out the window and which lead otherwise sane chess players (??) to pound their heads in frustration. They are: K+Q versus K+R...
by scribe | Oct 25, 2011 | current news, off-topic, openings, ruminations
It’s Blog Stats time again! About a year ago I wrote a post called “Counting Down the Hits,” where I listed the top 15 posts from this blog in total page views. I also counted down seven “undeservedly neglected” posts, some of my...
by scribe | Oct 23, 2011 | current news, ruminations, tournaments
Extra! Read all about it! The Western States Open concluded tonight in relatively predictable fashion. Sergei Kudrin, who was leading after round four (see my previous post) played two draws that must have lasted about twenty minutes total. That gave him a 5-1 score....
by scribe | Oct 23, 2011 | chess clubs, current news, people, tournaments, US Chess League
Two-thirds of the way through the 2011 Western States Open, and the leader is no surprise. Sergei Kudrin is always such a reliable presence at these Reno tournaments that it seemed strange when he wasn’t here in April. (I think he was playing in some other...
by scribe | Oct 21, 2011 | off-topic, ruminations, tournaments
I arrived in Reno last night, and I will be playing in the Western States Open chess tournament beginning about three hours from now. But today I won’t write about chess: I’ll write about something I saw last night that surprised the heck out of me. Last...
by scribe | Oct 17, 2011 | chess clubs, endings
This weekend I played (and botched) a pretty cool endgame. Here’s the scene: I’m playing tandem chess at one of Mike Splane’s chess parties. I’m Black, and my teammate is Richard Koepcke, a National Master. Our opponents are Gjon Feinstein...
by scribe | Oct 14, 2011 | off-topic, ruminations
For various reasons I hauled out a trunk yesterday that I had not opened in about ten years. I wasn’t even entirely sure what was in it any more. It turned out that about a third of the trunk consisted of souvenirs from my semester in Russia. I studied in...
