by scribe | Aug 22, 2011 | games, openings, positions
Last weekend, at one of his chess parties, Mike Splane showed us the following miniature game where he won in 13 moves (!) against the Fort Knox Variation of the French Defense. Oh, were you expecting instructions for breaking into the U.S. Bullion Depository? Sorry,...
by scribe | Aug 13, 2011 | chess clubs, people, positions, ruminations, tournaments
Last night I met with Gjon Feinstein, Mike Splane and Dan Burkhard to go over some recent games. Mike and Dan had just finished playing in the seven-round Kolty Chess Club championship. Dan tied for fourth, with three wins and four draws, and he was very eager to show...
by scribe | Aug 9, 2011 | Chess Lecture, off-topic, ruminations
The last of my long-time animal companions has passed away. Willie, our dog, lived to be just shy of 17 years old. He was in very fragile health for the last three months. He started having seizures in May, probably due to a brain tumor. He also was bothered by a...
by scribe | Aug 3, 2011 | current news, off-topic, people, tournaments
Of course, chess groupies knew that this day would come, but it is still a sad day for all single male chess players (i.e., all male chess players under the age of 30): Elizabeth Vicary has gone and gotten herself married. She is no longer the Elizabeth Vicary that we...
by scribe | Aug 3, 2011 | current news, off-topic
In a recent post, I mentioned that October 9 is National Chess Day in the U.S. Alas, in my never-ending quest to provide you accurate and timely information in this blog, I now have to correct myself. According to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. Senate voted...
by scribe | Jul 29, 2011 | Chess Lecture, current news
There has been a lot of discontent among ChessLecture subscribers recently about the erratic timing of updates, culminating in a complete hiatus in new lectures for almost two weeks. I can finally give you some answers about what has been going on, although the...
by scribe | Jul 27, 2011 | Chess Life, people, ruminations, US Chess League
As many of you probably know, Google uses a measure called PageRank to evaluate the “importance” of Web pages. It’s a simple scale that goes from 0 to 10, with 0 being the least important and 10 the most. I found out only a couple weeks ago that you...
by scribe | Jul 24, 2011 | games, people, positions
Yesterday I got together with two old friends and one new one for some chess at Barnes and Noble in San Jose. The “old friends” were Gjon Feinstein and Cailen Melville, and the “new friend” was Uyanga Byambaa, a student from Mongolia whom Gjon...
by scribe | Jul 21, 2011 | current news, people, tournaments, translations
This morning I was browsing the Internet to see what is going on in the chess world. Quite a lot, actually. The headline events are the Biel chess festival in Switzerland, where Magnus Carlsen is leading the grandmaster tournament after three rounds, and the World...
by scribe | Jul 20, 2011 | current news, literature, openings
Did you know that July 20 is International Chess Day? If you’re wondering, the significance of July 20 is that it is the day, in 1924, when FIDE came into existence. It’s not entirely clear that this is a reason for celebration, but there you have it...
