I want to give a shout out to Official Staunton (not to be confused with House of Staunton). They have a fantastic website and frequently update their social media. If you follow me on twitter, you’ll note that a last month, I won an online giveaway. I’m generally somewhat cynical about giving strangers on the internet my address; I thought… Read more →
Welcome back everyone, this month we are examining the games of GM Alon Greenfeld. Greenfeld has a FIDE rating of 2546 and is 14th highest rated player in Israel. He earned the IM title in 1983 and the GM title in 1989. He is still somewhat active and plays a couple of rated games a month. According to Wikipedia, he… Read more →
I had planned on starting this post with that banal quote from Julius Caesar. Repeating that stale idiom would only serve to beguile my dear reader with hackneyed intrigue. So I won’t do that. The Marchand took place last weekend in Rochester NY at the Strong Museum of Play. There were a few upsets, and a couple of notable draws.… Read more →
Hello everyone! In a few days the Marchand will be well underway. I figured I should give you an updated list of GM’s that have preregistered this year. Last year we had a strong field led by current US Champion GM Gata Kamsky. This year we have another star studded field featuring some returning players and some new faces. Rumor… Read more →
Welcome back everyone, last month we learned about the legend Yuri Averbakh. This month the spotlight is on GM Sergei Azarov. Sergei Azarov has a rating of 2635 and is the second highest rated player from Belarus. I had some trouble finding information about his title confirmations. According to Wikipedia he earned the GM title in 2003. Unlike the previous… Read more →
Welcome to the February edition of the GM Spotlight. This month we are going to be focusing on the oldest GM on the list, GM Yuri Averbakh. At 92, GM Averbakh has a rating of 2445 and is the 280th highest rated player in Russia. He earned the IM title in 1951 and the GM title in 1952. As one… Read more →
Hello everyone, to learn more about the people who comprise the 1476 (as of 1/13/14) names on the FIDE GM list; I am starting a new series called, “The Grandmaster Spotlight”. Each month I will choose (at random) one grandmaster from the list of names. I will do some analysis on his/her games and will present my findings to you… Read more →
Perhaps this is a morbid tradition I’m starting. This year we saw the passing of GM Vugar Gashimov, GM Dragoljub Ciric, Kurt Meier and Alisher Anarkulov. The last two were included on this list for the strange circumstances that occurred that lead to their deaths. Again there are no real plans to recreate obituaries for these people, I just want… Read more →
If you’ve been a diligent reader, you may remember the post from last year, “10 Games from 2013“. To maintain some consistency across this blog; I will attempt to re-create the same post this year. I also wanted to add a new section to this post that I am calling, “The Player of the Year”. I choose this player by… Read more →
It took me a while to create this post. I wasn’t sure what I should write. Did I play well? Eh, sort of. Did my opponents help? For sure. I suppose I should start at the beginning, a few weeks ago, I played in the first ever, “Central New York” Open. The tournament took place in Syracuse University (GO ORANGE!)… Read more →