All Tactics All The Time

Yesterday I got together with Gjon Feinstein, Cailen Melville and Thadeus Frei for some skittles chess and analysis. Cailen showed us one of his recent games. As so often happens, we got completely sidetracked by analyzing variations that never happened. It usually...

Aptos Library chess tournament

I’ll keep this brief, because I know most of my readers are here for world championship coverage. Once a year I put on my tournament director’s hat and organize a free tournament for kids at the Aptos Public Library. The tournament took place today (May...

Only beginners develop their rooks to h6 …

… Therefore I must be a beginner! Gjon Feinstein came over last night to play some speed chess and watch a couple lectures on ICC. We played four or five speed games (at a time control of game in 8 minutes, which perhaps for some people does not count as blitz)....

Interesting Endgame 1

I’m going to have a couple posts this week about interesting endgame positions I’ve run into recently. One of them is from a blitz (8-minute) game I played last night against Gjon Feinstein, and the other is from a tournament game between two 1400-level...

Chess salon number I’ve-lost-count

Mike Splane had another chess party at his house yesterday, probably about the fourth or fifth one I’ve been to, though I’m not really sure. I felt that this was the most interesting  one yet, at least for me. I brought a game that I lost in the recent...