Dutch women’s chess champion Eline Roebers, 19, won the FIDE World Junior Girls Blitz Championship held last week in Lima, Peru. Roeber finished with a 12-1 score, clinching the title with a game to spare. I’ve always been a fan, though Roebers plays less interesting chess as a top international player than she did as a rising talent. That happens to almost every outstanding master (unfortunately). She tied for 5th place in the FIDE World Junior Girls Rapid event, winning the following game in rd. 1 against one of those host nation’s representatives.
Month: September 2025
About a Reddit post with a misleading head
Historian Edward Winter included a bit tangentially pertaining to Go in Winter’s page about Edward Lasker: Edward Lasker I think that Winter included that chunk on his page about Lasker because it’s about a book Lasker wrote. I think the chunk itself is primarily Cecil Purdy’s notion that Lasker should remove an appendix about Go from the chess book. In short, I think that section of Winter’s page of Lasker history could be encapsulated as “Non-chess-related appendix to Lasker’s chess book should be removed, said chess writer Purdy”. Here’s where some trouble is in store: On a Go subreddit, a …
French Defense thinking
There’s the Fort Knox variation of the French: 1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nd2 dxe4 4. Nxe4 Bd7 plus …Bd7-c6 to get that bishop outside the e6-pawn. I had this thought: If you are a devotee of the Fort Knox (which Capablanca played once as a kid), oughtn’t you be inclined to deal with the Advance French 1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. e5 with 3…a6 4…Bd7 plus …Bb5 when appropriate? I consulted a database in which the Romanian master Dara has played the Fort Knox more than other players. Dara doesn’t go for 3…a6, but the …
Chess by mail / You can play from the moon, you can play from jail
My friend Ed Bogas, a musician whose work you’ve heard if you don’t recognize his name, wrote the subject head in his song “Chess by Mail”, for the album Deeper Blues by King Bishop and the Squares (highly recommended). When I was 14, I took up correspondence chess, because my best friend was doing it. I flamed out immediately. Correspondence chess was like my introduction to paying bills — an item without arrive in the mail, and it demanded my attention within three days. 40 years pass, and I’m playing tens of correspondence games per day, simplified immeasurably by Internet …