Musings on chess, and lesser things
Non-chess posts
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 …
Well folks, we are well and truly on the road now, as I write this from the celebrated and historic Argentinean town of Mendoza. Some epic travel legs, a punishing crash course in speaking Latin American Spanish and a chronic course of insomnia has all added to what should be a stressful beginning to my …
Current packing list for four months backpacking in three continents: Eight brand new analog chess clocks, packaged and insulated Three Gardiner Chess coaching syllabuses Three large chess coaching books One full set of laminated A4 chess activity cards Twenty “Chess is cool!” wristbands Twenty souvenir toy koalas Bronze, silver and gold chess medallions One large …
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 …
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 …
March 8 was International Women’s Day, a day when (largely Western) society can come together to reflect on the advances made towards gender equality and the empowerment of women, and identify plans to pursue these ideals further. (March 8 is also International Pancake-Flipping Day, but this fact often gets lost in the day’s priority issue. …
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 …
So it transpires that this blog is the first hit if you Google-search “david smerdon”. And, hopefully, this stroke of good luck will help return all of my cards that were, shall we say, ‘misplaced’ from my wallet. Last night I attended Canberra’s Multicultural Festival, a quite respectable display of international stalls, community performances, overpriced …
[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 …