by scribe | Sep 17, 2013 | Chess Lecture, literature, openings
At Mike Splane’s latest chess party, on Sunday, I saw Richard Koepcke lugging around a ginormous chess book that was about the size of a phone book, and I asked him what it was. To my surprise, it was a new book on the King’s Gambit! I refer to John...
by scribe | Sep 16, 2012 | games, literature, people, ruminations, tournaments
This is the third part of a three-part series. To make things more convenient, here are links to the first part and the second part. As one commenter observed after Part 1, the story is about the man-versus-machine battle. True, that’s a big part of the story,...
by scribe | Sep 15, 2012 | games, literature, people, ruminations, tournaments
This post is part two of a three-part series. As explained in my previous post, it is an article that I wrote in 2007 but never published, in which I tell the story of the best game I ever played. More than that, it is an attempt to take non-chess players inside the...
by scribe | Apr 24, 2012 | chess clubs, Chess Lecture, games, positions
At Mike Splane’s last chess party, he told each of us to introduce ourselves and “tell us one little-known fact about yourself.” I basically went blank, and the only little-known fact I came up with was that my favorite cereal is Grape-Nuts. Well,...
by scribe | Jul 3, 2011 | Chess Life, endings, positions
Well, this is really nothing to get excited about, but last night I finally won against Shredder 12 (full strength) on my Mac. The conditions were game in 10 minutes, with no time increment. You might say, “Wait a minute! Aren’t you the guy who wrote an...