This is a great, if unorthodox puzzle. We all know that the gain of a tempo in the opening provides a good advantage; we all know that the gambit of material is very often more than compensated for by better development. Well, in this position, black has not moved a piece and white has a […]
Category: Musings
You Are Superhuman
(I would strongly encourage you to try to find a win for white before reading) Modern day computers may be able to perform quadrillions of operations a second with unerring accuracy and total precision, but you can lean back with your hands on your hips and laugh in their expressionless faces. They are little more […]
J’Adoube
In chess, the ‘touch-move rule’ states: If a player (whose turn it is to move) touches one of his pieces, it must be moved if it has a legal move. In addition, if a piece is picked up and released on another square, the move must stand if it is a legal move. If an […]
Five Stages of Grief
There are said to be five stages of Loss and Grief: Shock and Denial; Anger; Dialogue and Bargaining; Depression and Detachment; Acceptance. Loss of a loved one aside, nowhere do these apply more than to a game of chess. Shock and Denial A few moves ago, you had a great position and everything was going […]
Win From Nowhere
A film sequence that has always stuck in my mind, as an admirer of both chess Grandmasters and secret agents, is from the Bond movie ’From Russia with love’. The Arch Villain is playing in a Grandmaster tournament in Venice when he receives a glass of water on a paper coaster. When he takes a […]
Bad Losers
I used, too many years ago to count, to play in the Birmingham League which had a 40 move time control at which point, a player had the right to adjourn the game and seal a move. For those not familiar, this means that one player makes a move but instead of playing it on […]