The Student Draws the Master

The headline says it all! Yesterday, my student Atlee (~1500) scored his first draw against me in our weekly training game. I knew this was going to happen eventually, and I wondered what it would take for Atlee to draw or win. The short version: I blundered a piece...

50 Years of Chess: Year 42

Wow! We’re moving on up to 2013 in this retrospective, and in this year I have a rich selection of interesting games to show you. But — here’s the catch — I’ve already written about almost all of them on this blog. Here are some of the...

50 Years of Chess: Year 4

Time flies! We’re now up to 1975, which was the year of my graduation from prep school (Phillips Academy) and the start of my freshman year in college (Swarthmore College). Another major event during the year was my family’s move from Indianapolis,...

50 Years of Chess: Year 0

Recently it occurred to me that I’m getting very close to the 50th anniversary of my debut in tournament chess. There aren’t so many people who stay active in chess that long. Why not start a series of posts where I pick one game from each year to...

Not All Equals are Equal

Here’s a position I reached in a recent rapid game against Shredder. I’m White, and it’s my move. The computer is set to a rating of 2321. One of the nice things about Shredder is that you can stop the clock even during a “rated game,”...