Yesterday davejitsu asked where he might learn about masters from the past. I made a few suggestions, including our own Chess History Group and Batgirl's blog, and then he came back and asked whether I thought Capablanca or Fischer was the better... Read more »
In a local shopping centre the other day I saw a rather large girl in a low-cut dress. She had a treble clef and a couple of quavers tattooed on her breast. She had good skin tone and colour, and in spite of her weight the tattoo was attractiv... Read more »
It was two days before Christmas at the North Pole and Santa had just returned from kibitzing at the European Rapid Chess Championship in Warsaw. The elves had worked well in his absence and he was looking forward to a trouble-free Christmas Eve ... Read more »
Do you suffer from chess blindness? Do you sometimes, in spite of the relatively unlimited time allowed on chess.com, make an error that would have been obvious to a backward five year-old with a squint? I do, and I never realised why until my... Read more »
Although bluebottles in the surf may be more of a problem than sharks, sharks can sometimes create problems for chess players. Especially sharks in the park. Sharks in the park come in many guises and with vastly differing talents. During the 1... Read more »
Playing chess can be a bit like swimming in the surf. Everything may look safe enough above the breakers but all manner of nasties lie below. Visitors to Australia often ask about the danger of shark attack, but those are so rare that most loca... Read more »
Do you think that luck plays a part in chess, or is it purely a game of skill? As one of my opponents said recently, “Chess is a game of cool calculation; luck has nothing to do with it.” If chess were played solely on the chessboard and ... Read more »
As the millennium approached I was the breakfast announcer on AIR-FM, a community radio station in Sydney's west. I'd been thinking about the Seven Wonders of the World and realised that there were, in fact, twenty-one of them—seven each from... Read more »
Somebody once said that if your boss offers you a bonus to get a job finished on time that's incentive; if he threatens dismissal, that's motivation. My boss went a bit farther than either of those—he once threatened me with death. It was a ... Read more »
Have you noticed that sometimes people who have spent a great deal of time on chess.com suddenly disappear for a while? I've just had a break myself and it extended much longer than intended—probably about six weeks. Of course I wasn't comple... Read more »
DozyAustralia
You won't find any advanced chess analysis here, but there'll be plenty of stories about chess and chess players -- often with an off-beat twist.
Feel free to add your comments (pro or con, I don't mind which) or drop me a message.
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The following chess stories appear on my personal web page, Tomorrowland. Some of them have already been published on chess.com, others have not. Click on the links to read them.
A Kind of Immortality
Chess for Grasshoppers
Chess Genie
Chess on the Internet
Chess with Mother Goose
It's About Time
Logic: The Knight's Tour
Maroczy Chess Club
New South Wales Open
Starting a Chess Club
Sweet and Sour Chess
Sydney Simuls
Xmas 2004: Natural Ability
Xmas 2005: The Santa Gambit
Xmas 2006: Die Götterdämmerung
Xmas 2008: Santa's Mate
Yogi Berra, Chess Guru
Mating Positions & Traps
The best selection of Mating Positions and Opening Traps I've seen anywhere can be found in Le Blog de la Batgirl.
They're well worth a visit.
To play through them, click on the link and locate them in the sidebar box at the right of her blog.