Bye bye chain gang. Hello pawn chains.
A new youth offenders program in Alberta, Canada, has an innovative way to get young people back on the right track: chess. Read on for that story and other chess cornucopia in this edition of "In Other News."
Canada Tries Chess Instead Of Jail
This is hardly a life sentence; instead it's "Chess for Life." A 25-hour program in Alberta is a new alternative sentence to juveniles caught doing wrong.
According to the article, the idea is an outgrowth of recent...
Wesley So won the $37,500 first prize at the Your Next Move tournament in Leuven, Belgium. He was the only player to score 22/27 after a thrilling final round in which all key contestants lost.
So started the day with a 1.5-point lead over Levon Aronian and Sergey Karjakin, and the latter was his opponent in today's first round. With 1.b3, recently named as a great opening for blitz by specialist GM Maxim Dlugy, Karjakin outplayed his opponent in great style. The bishop pair!
Karjakin...
Some chess tactical ideas are very common. For example, I cannot imagine any experienced chess player who never had back-rank problems in his games.
Interference is pretty much at the opposite end of chess spectrum. Here is how Wikipedia describes it:
"In the game of chess, interference occurs when the line between an attacked piece and its defender is interrupted by sacrificially interposing a piece. It is a chess tactic which seldom arises, and is therefore often overlooked."
Here is a simple...
Titled Tuesday is back with nearly 400 masters, grand and otherwise, to battle in blitz chess! Enjoy the commentary with Chessbrah Aman Hambleton as GM Jon Ludvig Hammer, Ruslan Ponomariov, and more do battle!
Arkady Dvorkovich, a former Deputy Prime Minister and a former Assistant to the President in the Russian government, has announced that he is running for FIDE President. It is expected that Kirsan Ilyumzhinov will withdraw his candidacy soon.
Strong rumors became official news yesterday: that another Russian would announce his candidacy. The names of Anatoly Karpov, Andrey Filatov and Arkady Dvorkovich were the most likely, and as it turned out, it was the latter.
"I decided to nominate myself...
Wesley So lost his last two games today and saw his lead at the Your Next Move tournament shrink to 1.5 points. Levon Aronian and Sergey Karjakin have the best chance to catch him in the remaining nine rounds.
The fourth day in Leuven, Belgium was the first of two days of blitz. The time control was five minutes with a delay of three seconds each move. Nine rounds were played; tomorrow we'll see the same pairings with colors reversed.
His rapid wasn't good, but Anish...
"We work 25 hours a day."
"But there's only 24 hours in a day!"
"We just wake up an hour earlier."
—Eternal Call, a Soviet TV series (1973-83)
Our society's obsession with time knows few bounds. It is the golden age of atomic watches, appointments, alarm clocks, reminders, digital calendars, and $100 planners. "Alarmy," the app which has prevented me from oversleeping through countless morning exams, forces its masochistic possessor to photograph a pre-specified location in...
I really appreciate my readers' feedback and therefore always read your comments to my articles. One of them, by the Chess.com member rossmckinley1224, made me think.
Ross wrote: "For those of us struggling to achieve a 1000 rating on Chess.com, having played 400-500 games and trying to improve, these articles cannot be understood."
Thank you, Ross, for a very good point! Indeed many of my articles deal with topics that may be a little too advanced for Chess.com members rated 1000 and below....
