Finally!
Pirate Week
Three strange pirate-related things happened to me last week. Now there's a sentence you don't see every day. Admittedly, some of the links to buccaneering are a little tenuous, but it still makes for an unusual theme. It started when I found ou...
Before Thirty…One.
Two years ago, I wrote a post entitled “Before Thirty” in which I detailed plans to complete some of my life goals. One of them was to publish a book before my thirtieth birthday (by the way, I got to that handstand in the end). The book was to be...
Book review: Gelfand's "Positional Decision-Making"
“Positional Decision-Making in Chess” – Boris Gelfand (and Jacob Aagaard) Quality Chess It’s rare that a chess book holds my attention well enough that I finish it in one sitting. It’s rarer still that I have the opportunity to review two s...
Magic chess
There's so much chess going on at the moment that it's hard to keep up. I'm not talking about Biel - for the most part, with the exception of the incredible Navara-Wojtaszek clash, it's been pretty lacklustre - but rather the Politiken Cup and the...
Book Review: Sergey Kasparov's Swamp
“A Cunning Chess Opening For Black” – Sergey Kasparov New in Chess “Lure your opponent into the Philidor swamp!” promises the subheading on the book’s cover, accompanied by a ghastly green-and-brown photo of – literally – a swamp. A non-chess...
A quick morning puzzle
A couple of months ago, I had a rare occasion to play against a fellow Australian in the 4NCL league match weekend in England. The Aussie in question is IM Justin Tan, an extremely talented young player who probably hasn't received the attention h...
A Chess Dispute
I can't believe I haven't come across this before. Over a century old, a minute's worth of chess-related slapstick, and now I really want to buy a hat.
How to prove you're not a cheater
The recent ‘cheating’ scandal at the European women’s chess championship is incredibly sad. This story stands apart from the recent ‘Georgian GM’ and Indian ‘phone legs’ incidents in that the accused, Mihaela Sandu is almost certainly innocent. I...
Book reviews: "Liquidation on the chessboard" and "Taimanov: The English Attack"
That title is pretty horrible, but I'm told it's very "googleable". Let's go with that. I recently received three books from New in Chess. Two of them are your run-of-the-mill chess books: well written, somewhat typical and, simply, good books. N...
Micro movie review: 'Jupiter Ascending'
My ten-word review of the much-hyped Wachowski brothers' sci-fi flick Jupiter Ascending: Expectation: The Matrix meets Star Wars. Reality: Sharknado meets Frozen.
Men, Women and Nigel Short 2: An academic response
SUMMARY: Short’s article was not as controversial as it has been made out to be Short based his claims on two recent academic contributions – one statistical comment and one study on FIDE data – that suggested that gender gaps cannot be explained...
Men, Women and Nigel Short
(See also the second, more technical follow-up: Men, Women and Nigel Short 2: An academic response) Much to my amazement, chess has hit the front pages of the mainstream media for the third time in a fortnight. This time, however, it's more a ...
So What?
For the past week, the chess world has been abuzz with reports of GM Wesley So's involuntary forfeit at the recent US Chess Championships. For the non-chess readers of my blog, the short version of the story basically goes like this: So, the numbe...
A tale of tie-breaks and rugby
A while ago, I wrote a post about tie-breaks in chess. It was inspired by a research proposal I submitted on social network formation as applied to round-robin chess, which basically consisted of a lot of mathematics. One point to come out of it...
Thicker than water
Many people are surprised to hear that I come from a family of extremely talented artists. They are usually even more surprised to discover that I cannot draw so much as a realistic stick figure. I think I made flip-book once that made some sense...
Translating Yoga
One of my New Year's resolutions (actually, if I'm being honest, a regular, unsatisfied customer on the list) is to do yoga. But this time, I've tried to make the resolution a bit more specific and quantifiable: I have to complete 8 weeks of conse...
Hottest 100 Song Entries, 2015
First (substantive) post is now up: My top-ten songs as entered in Triple J's Hottest 100 Countdown competition. Vids and reviews here: http://www.davidsmerdon.com/?p=1636
2015 – We’re Back, Baby!
After a long hiatus, the blog is back. I decided to trial a Christmas/New Year period offline, coinciding with a much-needed trip back to Australia. I was fortunate to be invited to play in the Australian Open chess championships in Sydney, which ...
A golden GM-norm opportunity in Melbourne
It's this time of the year in Amsterdam - when the temperature hovers around zero during both day and night, when the wind slices your face as you cycle through the horizontal, unforgiving rain - that I start my annual pine for Australia. Fortunat...
Hugging the world
Here's a quick little puzzle that's kinda cool: Imagine that someone (or, probably many people) managed to tie a rope around the entire world, lying it on the ground across the equator. You could say that the rope literally hugs the whole earth, ...
Joking with the Germans
I've had a reasonable start to my German chess league ("Schachbundesliga"), although not as impressive as my team as a whole. Werder Bremen (the mighty Green-and-White) currently sits equal first on the ladder with the behemoth Baden-Baden on 100%...
Carlsen-Anand, World Chess Championship 2014: My tip
The build-up for the world championship rematch is reaching fever point. Magnus Carlsen, the undisputed world number one, and reigning classical (as well as blitz and rapid, by the way) world champion. Vishy Anand, the three-times champion, coming...
Braying for blood
When you're a kid playing chess in Australia, you hear these stories about this magical, mystical place called 'Europe'. A place where some people's houses are older than the first Australian colonies, where soccer is actually considered a real sp...
