On Fourth of July weekend, I had the pleasure of playing in my first international tournament held in Canada. My play was poor and I lost many FIDE points but my experience in Canada was quite positive. I corresponded via email with the organizer Graeme, who was helpful and organized. I was able to do a bit of sightseeing in… Read more →
Hello everyone, this is probably going to be my last update on the Olympiad. I’ve had a lot of fun bringing you the upsets and the latest news regarding the Olympiad. It’s been quite challenging and quite entertaining, but alas vacation is calling and I need to answer. As far as the chess for this round goes I want to… Read more →
Hello everyone, the picture of the girl that you all see is Luzia Pires (courtesy of David Llada), the legend from the third round who beat a WIM in 8 moves. I would like to offer an apology, I made an omission yesterday that I would like to clear up today. In what could possibly be the shortest victory in… Read more →
Welcome to the fourth edition of the Olympiad Recap here at LifeZugzwang. I realized yesterday that I will not be able to cover the last few rounds of the Olympiad due to a scheduled and much needed vacation to French Canada. Unlike yesterday I didn’t see any games that I thought were worthy of mentioning outside of the upsets that… Read more →
Another exciting day in Tromso, France managed to eek out a victory over a tough Armenian team and (much to my chagrin) the Americans lost to the Dutch. The Russians managed to climb to the top five once again after thoroughly dominating wily team from Macedonia (FYROM – Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia). As to be expected there were many… Read more →
Today was quite a dramatic day for the Chess Olympiad that saw quite a few upsets on both the team and individual level. As was the case yesterday I’m going to be very lightly annotating some games and discussing the results. You’ll note that of the first five teams with perfect scores none are from Eastern Europe; which is quite… Read more →
Greetings everyone, I’m going to do my best to give everyone a concise little recap of the news and games I find interesting from the men’s Olympiad. This is going to include individual upsets (with some light commentary on the openings) as well as team upsets and standings. The first round went pretty smoothly; the favorite teams won fairly easily… Read more →
Hello everyone, after witnessing GM Gata Kamsky win yet another US Championship. I thought it would be prudent to look back at some previous US Champions and their games. In this post, I will be focusing on what I consider the first “modern” US Championship played in 1936. I’d like to compile enough material for a “My Great Predecessors” style… Read more →
In this post, we will look at some amusing games I’ve played in the Scandinavian Defense. The vast majority of these were on ICC in either the three or 5-minute pools. These games don’t require much analysis. They should be a nice airy respite from the heavily analyzed mystery post to come (you know, the one that’s taken me almost… Read more →
I recently competed in the 60th Maryland Open in Rockville, MD. As usual the tournament was well run and the playing conditions were wonderful. The nice thing that keeps me coming back to Maryland to play is the way they run the tournaments. The time controls make sense, they provide boards and clocks and they even provide a continental breakfast.… Read more →