I was proctoring a scholastic chess tournament today, and for the first time in my life I saw Fool's Mate in a real, live game. I had only ever previously seen it in chess books as an existence proof of the two-move checkmate. I described it t...
My daughter and I attended the 2012 Susan Polgar Open Championship for Boys and Girls June 2-3, 2012 in New Orleans. Format was G/45; six rounds, three per day. GM Susan Polgar did a great job with the event. She made a point of being accessibl...
This is a game that my daughter lost at a recent scholastic chess tournament. She's 8 years old, so the blunders are not too shocking. Below is a "refinement" of mine of how Black's strategy could have been done more cleanly. I'm stil...
This is a nice example of a game where just one pawn makes all the difference.
In this game, I gave the Hyper-Accelerated Dragon a successful try. It was my first attempt with the opening. It would be interesting to play it out again from a different move 8 by White. Here it is:
Here's a recent game I played with one of my long-ago graduated college students.
The game below is the first tournament game that my 7-year-old daughter successfully recorded (today, April 16, 2011). I think it has some interesting lessons for beginners, and some definite amusement value for veterans. Her play was by no mean...
I was able to trap my opponent fatally in this game. What I am trying to analyze in this blog post is to determine where he went wrong in the opening. I think the fatal mistake was 12. f4. At the time he made it, it looked like a great move, bu...
Both of these games feature opening blunders by my opponent. These blunders were basically just missed tactics. The first game highlights an effective use of the Queen's Gambit: In the second game, I wanted to experiment with the Hyper-accele...
I had a massive lead, but somehow threw it away at the end!
In this very quick game, my opponent got off to a great start in the Sicilian; however, due to some subtle mistakes, fortunes reversed quickly. I'm analyzing this game in part to try to pinpoint what the critical mistake was. Having analyzed ...
In this post, I analyze two games against my frequent opponent AG. In each case, one of us rapidly lost due to subtle but decisive opening blunders. In game 1, we might say I botched the Sicilian: In the next game, my opponent arguably botch...
Absolutely crazy game! Lots of fun and very challenging.
This is another game that my frequent sparring partner AG and I just finished.
This is a live blitz game I just played. I was doing well, but ran into time trouble and totally choked.
In this post, I analyze four games I played against AG. Each game ends in checkmate in under 20 moves. This first game is checkmate using two bishops. In this next game, I was so focused on my attack plans that I overlooked an attack on my ...
For those of you reading the blog and curious, here is my background. I am a Computer Science professor at a small liberal arts college in the southern U.S. I play chess online for fun, largely with students and colleagues from my college. I al...
This is a game against one of my current students. I think that he and I are evenly matched overall. I made numerous tactical mistakes, but I think overall I had a better strategic vision that helped carry me through. It is a good lesson in not ...
This is a really fun game I played against one of my former students. Although I did not win, it was very educational. It was my first attempt to play the King's Indian Defense.
