I arrived in Las Vegas after the Christmas holiday by driving up with my mom from my home in Southern California. I entered the tournament largely because it's convenient: I got to combine a visit with my mom with the excitement (and potential t...
I'm just including the first 6 moves because the rest are irrelevant. This sequence should serve as a warning; it's very rare that your opponent hangs a pawn in the very beginning of the game. More likely, it's a well-tested trap or &q...
It looked as if a draw (or better) could be achieved until I gave away a rook in an endgame where each side had two rooks. At times it looked like I was sure to get up a piece. This was my most virtuous performance (up until the rook is squandered...
White dominated the game using time-tested strategy against the Sicilian, Dragon Variation. It goes to show that you shouldn't play a very sharp, very well-known opening unless you know it inside and out. I think I will prefer the Najdorf Sici...
I'm showing my other win before the losses. This game was against a girl who could have been about ten years old. (I'm not going to make any presumptions here... there are some six year old girls who would beat me silly in chess!) In...
Today was my first complete tournament since I was a teenager ten years ago. I finished first under 1200. My rating went from 920 to 909. I won two games as white and lost three games as black. My wins were quick, resulting in checkmate, and again...
Yesterday evening I played my first tournament game in ten years. I really shouldn't have won; the other player had a stronger game for most of it and could have clinched it on several occasions. However, I managed to get up a piece in the end...
In my previous post, I explored chess handicaps. Here I will look particularly at chess with dice, a way of artificially limiting the selection of pieces to move among those available to play in an orthodox chess game. There is more than one possi...
Chess handicaps are an interest of mine. These handicaps are designed to provide a more spirited, equitable game between players of disparate strength. The historical origin of the chess handicap is that games were frequently played for stakes, wi...
