I most dislike playing chess against opponents who used to be my students. If they bought into the methods that my coach taught me, it’s like playing against superior versions of myself — they’ve got everything I gave them, plus whatever else they picked up along the way. If they did not buy in, then I feel additional pressure to smash their stupid faces, in a manner to suggest: See? If you’d gone with the program, you would’ve won this game. I tried retired from over-the-board play, but following my lecture last week, the Kolty club asked me to fill …
Month: May 2025
Like I said
One of the troubles I have with blogging, I said, is that “good” stuff is set aside for inclusion in a book, while throwaway items go on FB or BlueSky, and there’s only rarely anything in between. Then I launched this blog because I needed someplace to cover the WNBA developments (Golden State gave me my first team since Sacramento folded, but Los Angeles hired my coach), and even chess (because I broke the chess blog). I also said I would post some crap, rather than think too much about where it belongs. So here’s a picture of today’s Amazon …
Sparks 83, Valkyries 82 (exh)
Los Angeles spoiled the first game in Golden State history in San Francisco on Tuesday. Sparks guard Aari McDonald scored 10 of her 12 points in the 4th quarter, including a 3-pointer to break the game’s last tie, and two free throws to put the visitors ahead by 4 with 0:05 remaining. Both coaches — Natalie Nakase for Golden State, and Lynne Roberts for Los Angeles — made their WNBA debuts in the preseason exhibition. The Sparks visit San Francisco again on the 16th for the teams’ official openers. *** My custom is to write something like a wire service …
Sparks at Valkyries tonight in WNBA preseason play, and so begins my 19th year covering Coach Roberts’ teams
Near the end of ’00s, University of the Pacific coach Lynne Roberts called me, after receiving a tip about sisters who were playing junior college ball in the Bay Area. “The Zasly twins”, I said. Laura and Katie were standouts at Aragon HS, less than a mile from here. “I knew you’d know”, she said. At the end of the conversation, I said: “They can help someone, but not us.” (The Zaslys went on to play at Notre Dame de Namur in the PacWest Conference.) Three or four years later, Pacific signed a post from nearby St. Mary’s HS in …
From never expected that
I’m playing in an online tournament — a “thematic” — in which every game must begin with the Danish master Severin From’s invention 1. f4 e5. I like these events because as White, I can transpose to a King’s Gambit with 2. e4!, and as Black, the fun is quickly evident: 2. fxe5 d6 3. exd6 Bxd6 threatens mate in 3. A time control of 3 days per move is leisurely, at which some opponents disappear, or don’t show up at all. One chap timed out from the white side, so the second game of the doubleheader began, and I …
Hello world
I said that I neglect my blogs because if I write or imagine something worthy of a book, I save it for a book. And if it’s not serious enough to keep, I put it on Facebook. Eventually, nothing gets blogged, because FB posts are so much easier to write than blog entries. On a social network, you’re connected to the readers somehow. Sometimes you tell people “how the hell do we know each other”, but there’s always something — even a friend of a friend of someone whose comment you liked shares a sliver of your experience. …