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My thoughts on chess and life...

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Gert Ligterink On Ivanchuk's Chess Obsession

Submitted by SonofPearl on Mon Jan 26, 2009 1:03pm.

The Corus website has a nice piece about Ivanchuk, illustrating his obsession with chess.  Link here. H/T Dennis Monokroussos. Read more »

Chessbase Instructional Video Previews

Submitted by SonofPearl on Sun Jan 25, 2009 1:55am.

If you like chess (and if you don't what are you doing on this website?!) then you will probably enjoy the previews of Chessbase instructional videos available at their YouTube channel. An nice example is below from the evergreen Viktor Kortchnoi... Read more »

The Chess Art Of Carina Jørgensen

Submitted by SonofPearl on Sun Jan 18, 2009 7:00am.

A while ago I discovered 21-year old Danish artist Carina Jørgensen (pictured right, engaging in some martial arts training!), who has a section of her online portfolio dedicated to chess.  It includes portraits of famous chess players as well a... Read more »

1st Anniversary Of Bobby Fischer's Death

Submitted by SonofPearl on Sat Jan 17, 2009 6:48am.

"All I want to do, ever, is just play chess" - Bobby Fischer Rest In Peace Read more »

Garry Kasparov - Taking A Stand

Submitted by SonofPearl on Tue Jan 13, 2009 1:06pm.

It's nearly 4 years since Garry Kasparov announced his retirement from competitive chess to take on new challenges in the dangerous world of opposition politics as leader of The Other Russia organisation. BBC Radio 4 has a fascinating interview w... Read more »

Why are there so few women GMs?

Submitted by SonofPearl on Sun Dec 28, 2008 7:45am.

The sound you can hear is a can of worms being opened... Fear not; I'm not going to debate the answer to the question in the title of this blog post, but I was fascinated to read a recent article of this title which questioned the idea that there... Read more »

Der Spiegel on Ivanchuk 'Doping Scandal'

Submitted by SonofPearl on Sun Dec 14, 2008 12:15am.

It seems that chess only hits the headlines when there's a scandal or controversy of some sort.  The popular German weekly magazine Der Spiegel has published a story on the Ivanchuk 'Doping Scandal' - English translation here. It's a good summar... Read more »

WCC Coverage - Making It Happen

Submitted by SonofPearl on Wed Oct 29, 2008 2:03pm.

When Erik first asked me in early October what I would be doing to cover the WCC for Chess.com, my initial reaction was that work commitments would prevent me from covering the games live. But I simply couldn't shake the idea of covering the game... Read more »

Nice Flash Chess Game

Submitted by SonofPearl on Sat Oct 25, 2008 1:45pm.

Wow, I haven't written a blog post in ages!  This one will be short and sweet.  I just wanted to share my discovery of a nice looking flash chess website: http://flashchess3.com/ It has very nice 3D graphics and the piece movements are very sm... Read more »

Chess Ratings: A Necessary Evil?

Submitted by SonofPearl on Sun Sep 7, 2008 6:59am.

Rating (noun): a classification according to order, rank or value ... an estimated value of a person's position (From Chambers 21st Century Dictionary). Why do we have chess ratings?  Shouldn't arguments over who is the best player be settl... Read more »