Ultimate Box Out
When a Bishop and opposing Knight (or vice versa) are exactly three squares apart, they "box each other out" (four squares are hit by both pieces).
Passed Pawn Endgame
Zugzwang
20 move rook pin
In a normal chess game, having a bishop pinned to your rook on your own back rank spells doom. In this case, I somehow managed to maintain the game for 20 moves without the help of my rook or bishop.
Really Strange Blitz Game
Wow, I just played a series of 5 blitz games against the same opponent, who was, when we started, 2 rating points better than I was. Our time control was 4/4 for all games, and after winning the first 4, I was reluctant to take my opponent's quic...
Less is More
Lately I've been biting off more than I can chew as far as my online correspondence games are concerned. I had as many as 55 games going at once, and it bothered me logging off with a bunch of games marked "My Move". I just resigned a game which...
Ending vs. Scandanavian
Cubefactor vs. themax2000 vol 1
Cubefactor and I have known each other for about 13 years, and chess has been a major part of our friendship for much of it. We have attended two chess camps together, and led our team (Jefferson HS, WI) to a conference title and second place fini...
The Spachuabish Gambit
So I just had an opponent play the following against me: 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 a6 Alright, that's fine. There are all sorts of lines which people like and I'm not writing to question 2. ... a6. My issue came when I looked in the game explorer and...
Pirc Improvement
I've been playing the Pirc Defense for some time now, and have played it in two of my last four rated games in the past three days. When I played it on Saturday (3/19/2011), it was clear that my Pirc was rusty, as sloppy play left me fighting to ...
McHenry Area Chess Quad Round 1
Yesterday marked my return to competitive chess as I competed in the McHenry Area Chess Quad Tournament. My performance was not as good as I had hoped, as I finished with one win and two draws, but that proved to be enough to put me in a three wa...
Return to Chess
I recently relocated myself (and my cat, Morpheus) to Waukegan (a semi-suburb of Chicago about an hour north of the city, traffic willing), and the move has proved to be a good decision as far as my chess future goes. Tournaments in the area are ...
