Musings on chess, and lesser things
Posts on chess
Plans have gone awry. Chaos ensued. Unfortunately, my tournament has taken a turn for the worse. Several, in fact. I’ve now dropped points against Nick van der Nat and Daniel Jere, two of Africa’s most talented chess gems. I’m not in anything resembling form, but they both played brilliantly, and deserve to be where they …
I’m alive; and even more importantly, back in the land of internets. But I’ll make it up: this post will be unnaturally long, and you can expect daily updates of the tournament for the next week. Having survived two safaris, I’ve now settled down into our hotel in Johannesburg in preparation for – shock! – chess. …
A very quick update on the run as I am late for, yes, a safari. But I felt obliged to write a quick something-something in mass response to the various “Are you alive?” emails and texts I have received (mainly as a result of teaching my mother how to use a computer before I left …
Like the irresistible mistress she is, chess found a way to draw me back in, even in these unfamiliar territories. I’m back in Santiago, and last night Tristan and I visited the Chilean Chess Club for their weekly blitz tournament. It was something of a relief to be surrounded by chess players, I have to admit; while …
A lot’s happened since my hurried mid-Doeberl update, which has caused me to neglect the website once more. So here’s what you’ve missed… The end of the tournament almost gave me the chance for a fairytale finish to my last chess event on home soil (for the foreseeable future). In the final round I was paired …
A very quick update in the break in between rounds 5 and 6 at this year’s Doeberl Cup. After taking a half point bye in round one and grinding out a win in the last game of round two against the extremely talented Justin Tan, I managed to finally get a bit of rhythm to …
For roving chess players, nostalgia is usually an emotion felt about time, not space. Wistful longing for the days of classical time controls, adjournments, and high quality endgames are common. And it’s also not that rare to hear an experienced player complain about how databases and computer programs have destroyed a lot of the magic …
“Chess is life”, Bobby Fischer once famously quipped. Not to be confused with the distinct yet uncannily similar view of his arch-rival, Borris Spassky: “Chess is like life.” Perhaps both are captured in yet another World Champion’s opinion, that of Fischer’s successor, Anatoly Karpov: “Chess is everything.” What got me thinking about such depths of …
Unfortunately, the lost bank cards proved to be the most insignificant of the blows dealt to me last week. So here is a post I wrote a while ago but never got around to uploading. Why is it that chess players in fiction are always painted as crazy, or evil, or both? I remember reading …
[Ed: Tritty wrote this for me after four rounds of the tournament, but my slackness from within the depths of chesstacular failure has led me to only post this now. Apologies. It also has a lot of inside jokes, as any great adventure of four twenty-somethings to a new country should. Nonetheless, it paints a …