by scribe | Dec 9, 2013 | games, people, ruminations
The December version of Mike Splane’s chess party turned out to be a small affair. Usually we get 12 to 15 people at the parties, but this is a month when people have lots of other things to do. So only five people were there this time: Gjon Feinstein, Jim...
by scribe | Dec 3, 2013 | current news, games, positions
Today I’d like to show you one of my two time-pressure meltdowns from last weekend. This was the worst one, because it caused me to lose a game that I should have drawn and maybe even could have won. And as is often the case, the seeds of my defeat were planted...
by scribe | Oct 16, 2013 | games, people, positions
At Mike Splane’s latest chess party, on Sunday, Richard Koepcke showed us a game that involved a “hanging pawns” formation in the center, where the owner of the hanging pawns did not play actively enough, let them get blockaded, and eventually lost....
by scribe | Sep 9, 2013 | endings, positions, tournaments
In the comments to my latest post there was some interesting discussion of the “lost art of the post-mortem.” However, I was fortunate enough this weekend to have a delayed postmortem of two of my games from the CalChess State Championship. In this case...
by scribe | May 22, 2013 | positions, ruminations, tournaments
… and the reason I love it is that speed chess is ridiculously entertaining. … and the reason I hate it is that speed chess magnifies all of my worst tendencies. Both of these reason were on full display in a mind-boggling speed game that I played with...
