by scribe | Dec 4, 2012 | games, openings, ruminations
Recently Gjon Feinstein showed me a Paul Morphy game that he had recently shown to his students. Like so many of Morphy’s games, it was short and sweet. Paul Morphy — Bottin, Paris 1858 1. e4 e5 2. c3?! (Pretty unconventional by modern standards) 2....
by scribe | Jun 10, 2012 | chess clubs, people, positions, tournaments
I can never predict how well my lessons are going to go at the Aptos Library chess club. It seems to depend completely on which kids show up that day, what kind of mood they’re in, and other unknowable random factors. Last Tuesday was a really good day. We had...
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 | Oct 5, 2011 | chess clubs, games
When I give chess lessons at the Aptos Public Library, it’s always a challenge to make them concise enough. For this age group (roughly 6 to 12) I have found that 15 minutes is about the limit of their attention span, or 20 minutes if the lesson is going well....
by scribe | Apr 2, 2009 | Chess Lecture, Chess Life, off-topic, openings, people, tournaments
I’ve been slacking off on both my chess blog and my chess studying so far this year. Just look at those single-digit numbers of posts: 7 in January, 4 in February, 6 in March. But there’s good news, chess fans! With my first big tournament of the year...