by scribe | Dec 31, 2022 | chess clubs, Chess Life, current news, endings, ruminations, tournaments
Fifteen years ago, when I started this blog, I called the first post Remembrance of Things Past. It seems like an odd way to begin a chronicle that literally had no past at that point. But it gives me a perfect title for today’s entry, written on the last day of...
by scribe | Jul 12, 2022 | chess clubs, Chess Life, current news, games, literature, openings, people
Mike Splane, Life Master, Five-time Kolty Club Champion, and first posthumous author of “My Best Move” If you look through the July 2022 issue of Chess Life, you might find a familiar name on the last page. Mike Splane, whom I have mentioned many times on...
by scribe | Jun 11, 2022 | current news, games, openings, people
With this post, I bring to a close my pandemic project for this blog: a retrospective of all 50 years of my chess career (so far). I had intended to end the series with a game from 2021, my fiftieth calendar year of tournament chess. Unfortunately, the pandemic did...
by scribe | Mar 12, 2022 | games, positions
First, let me say that the title of this post is not literally true. However, it’s something that I like to tell my students, and it’s not as far-fetched as it seems. It’s intended to correct a very harmful mindset that starts affecting players as...
by scribe | Sep 28, 2021 | chess clubs, games, openings, people, tournaments
Photo taken at Mike Splane’s celebration of life, 9/4/2021 When Mike Splane asked me to play on his team (the Kolty Club team) at the 2020 U.S. Amateur Team West tournament, I enthusiastically said yes. He had been trying to get me to play on their team for...
