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.
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 …
Aces 78 Valkyries 72
Can you believe it, Los Angeles at Golden State this Saturday has playoff implications, insofar as the team that wins that game shall be #8 in the standings. The Sparks have won eight of nine, and seem to have kicked that ridiculous habit of taking off one quarter per game. I’ve missed most of Los Angeles’ turnaround. I’m not as close to finishing this book of my chess teacher’s teachings as I thought, and time is running out. I’m either dying or fading fast, and I won’t be able to put this book together in a mad rush — I …
Playing the right way
Basketball coaches often talk about “playing the right way”. Execute sound fundamentals as an individual, cooperatively create and use space as a teammate, be heard and be polite, play hard and play clean, and so on. Winning is swell, but it really oughta take a back seat to playing the right way (in real life and beer commercials, winning is what matters most, which is a societal flaw). Chess is the same way, but the difference is that most chess coaches think teaching kids to play the right way is drilling them in master practice. Master practice is the right …
Los Altos library sale
Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess is one of the very few beginner’s books that’s evergreen and excellent, so it kinda sucked to find it at a library sale for $1, because that means it’s not in the library.There’s a cool solo RPG system Wretched and Alone, in which you are, well, wretched and alone in various settings. Draw cards from a standard deck to find what’s trying to kill you that day, deal with it, and journal it. It’s optional though suggested that the player have a Jenga set (or something like that) nearby to represent the character’s gradual (or sudden) …
Did every old-timer get 30 years younger on International Chess Day, or was it just me
July 20 is International Chess Day, so I entered a marathon 5 3 tournament on lichess (rather than do the housecleaning for which I set the weekend aside). Against a 22-year-old Brazilian CM, I played like I was 30 again:
Laurence Faust, please pick up the white courtesy telephone
LeBron’s in the news because at least one team would rather wait for his Lakers contract to end than acquire him now. I scrolled through LeBron’s basketball-reference page, trying to find some way to summarize what the chap has accomplished. He has four spots of gold ink, signifying the all-time career leader in that metric. LeBron has four. Kareem has four. Michael has one. Wilt has five. Perhaps LeBron figures with another 80 or 200 more games, he can tack on another spot of gold ink — from *this* era. The bb-ref algorithm for figuring one’s Hall of …
Bought, for $111
Bob Long was a chess publisher who knew what club-level players needed to read. One of the smartest things he ever did was to buy the rights to Cecil Purdy’s work. Purdy was the best chess teacher for students and average players. There are really two levels of chess teacher: The teachers who turn masters into grandmasters, and bad players into good players. Chessplayers are delusional halfwits who think they need the books written by the first type of teacher, when what they actually need is the material written by the second. Cecil John Seddon Purdy was the best of …