by scribe | Sep 21, 2017 | current news, endings, literature, positions, tournaments
Watching the World Cup is just like watching a master class in endgames! We’ve already had three matches decided by very difficult K+R versus K+B endgames, with equal pawns on both sides. Today, in the semifinal round, the masters decided to teach us a class in...
by scribe | Jan 3, 2016 | current news, endings, people, positions
Yesterday I played my first chess of the year, getting together with Gjon Feinstein and Mike Splane and Juande Perea and Austen Green for speed chess. I had a very good time except for the fact that I kept losing on time. Five-minute chess is not my thing, especially...
by scribe | Jun 5, 2015 | current news, endings, positions
In my last post I wrote about the amazing 2N versus P endgame that Hans Niemann won recently at the Chicago Open. In that post, with help from the computer and especially the Nalimov tablebase, I wrote about the “Niemann maneuver” and generally gave the...
by scribe | Mar 5, 2013 | literature, positions
This morning I had a really cool puzzle idea: Can you create a chess version of rock-paper-scissors? To state the puzzle more precisely, I need to use the old-fashioned English Descriptive Notation, rather than algebraic. The advantage of English Descriptive —...
by scribe | Oct 29, 2011 | endings, games, tournaments
The Four Endgames of the Apocalypse are the most notorious “common” endgames in chess, endgames where normal chess concepts go out the window and which lead otherwise sane chess players (??) to pound their heads in frustration. They are: K+Q versus K+R...
