If you’re bored this year by the chess scene, I don’t blame you. This year hasn’t been all that interesting. The good news is, that all changes today. For today FIDE has announced the first round pairings for the World Cup. The World Cup is the March Madness of the chess world; TIMES TWO! In the NCAA tournament, ~64 teams… 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 →
A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of once again playing in the 136th New York State Championship. I did a bit worse than last year and lost rating points but I felt I played well and was a few moves away from winning in both of the games that I drew. In one particularly painful example, I outplayed… 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 →
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 →
This past weekend was the 36th Marchand Open tournament. We hold the Marchand every year in Rochester, NY to honor the memory of Dr. Erich Marchand, who was a prolific author and player in his time. In my previous post I mentioned that there was a chance that GM Gata Kamsky would be playing. Gata did end up playing and… Read more →
Hello everyone, breaking news here in Rochester: Current US Champ Gata Kamsky is going to be playing in the Marchand! Gata Kamsky is the second highest rated player in the US and the 40th highest rated player in the world. In 1996 Kamsky challenged Anatoly Karpov in a 20 game match for the FIDE championship losing +3 =9 -6. In… Read more →
Now that we’ve all had some time to reflect and move on with our lives I decided to take a look back at some memorable blunders from the 2013 World Cup in Tromso, Norway. This all got started when I lost a game to an opponent where I was clearly better (+5 for you computers out there) and subsequently completely… Read more →
As the fourth round wraps up I would like to just take a moment here and say that the second game of the first tiebreaks between Morozevich and Tomashevsky was one of the most exciting and nerve wracking games I have ever seen. The game started off slowly with each side doing the cat and mouse. Finally after a slip… Read more →