I’m back. I’m not sure for how long, but I’m back for now. I have a lot of thoughts about returning to chess, and my “role” in the community going forward but I’ll save those for another post. I had the opportunity to play in my first chess tournament in a while. As one might expect, I was a bit… Read more →
I recently competed in the 2016 Cleveland Open. This summer I’ve taken a lot of time off from chess. Since my previous experience in Canada I haven’t felt motivated to compete. Since the NY State championship is approaching I figured that now would be a good time to get back into “form”. Aside from some online games I haven’t been playing… Read more →
On the weekend of April 15, I competed in the Niagara Falls Open held in Niagara Falls, Ontario. As this was only my second time playing in Canada I was unsure of what to expect. This tournament, like many before it, had it’s trials and tribulations. There was drama and intrigue. It is unlikely that I’ll be returning to play… Read more →
Greetings everyone, today we have a special treat. FM Ben Dean-Kawamura has once again annotated a critical victory of his. This time over GM Bryan Smith. You may remember Ben from his annotations from the 2014 Marchand. In 2014, he defeated GM Kekelidze in a wild game. But that’s not all! Ben created a python script which changes changes chess annotation into beautiful… Read more →
I read a lot of articles that tell the reader to try and take “lessons” away from tournaments. For me the lessons sometimes come long after I’ve finished a tournament. Sometimes the lessons can be quite painful. There are times when I struggle to take a lesson away from a particular game or event. In the Marchand this year, I learned a… Read more →
It is with sorrow that I announce that, after a valiant effort, I have relinquished my crown of Central NY State Chess Champion. I look back on my time as your champion with nothing but happy memories. One day soon I hope to reclaim the title. For now, I am content in knowing that the crown rests with a formidable… Read more →
I competed in the 20th Arkport Open this past weekend. I’m going to take an excerpt from my previous post about the 19th Arkport Open: This tournament has a special place in my chess career because it was the first “big” tournament that I played in when I returned to chess SEVEN [sic. EIGHT] years ago. This year there was a four-way tie… Read more →
The New York State Championship is becoming one of my favorite tournaments. I look back on my previous tournaments and am filled with fond memories. This year Aleksandr Ostrovskiy won the tournament in impressive fashion with 5/6. This year was a good year for me. I played in the open section and performed well. I scored 3/6 and went +2 =2… Read more →
This past weekend I played in the 20th annual Bradley Open. It was a strange event for me and was quite the roller coaster. It was a smorgasbord of a tournament. Generally there is a theme to the way I play in a given tournament. This tournaments theme was potpourri; everything that could happen did happen. Let me explain; in… Read more →
A few weeks ago I played in the 61st Maryland Open. As usual the conditions were fantastic. Mike runs a fantastic tournament. My readers should make an attempt to play in his events. He works hard and we need more progressive minded people in the chess world. I did my new routine leading up to this tournament. My results were… Read more →