Submitted by
on Sat Aug 8, 2009 7:29am.
Raymond Smullyan is one of those towering intellects in the tradition of Da Vinci and Godden. His Wikipedia page describes him as a “mathematician, concert pianist, logician, philosopher and magician,” to which I would add Professor Emeritus... Read more »
Submitted by
on Sat Aug 1, 2009 1:26pm.
Petrov’s Defense, 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6, is another one of those defenses whose creator was not the player honored with its name. (Or is it the defense that is honored with the player’s name?) The defense was known in Lucena’s time, which ... Read more »
Submitted by
on Sun Jul 26, 2009 1:01pm.
In Part 1 of this blog I discussed mental processes for move selection as advocated by authors such as Silman, Purdy, and Heisman. I also noted the extreme difficulty of actually putting into practice any kind of thinking technique. I would no... Read more »
Submitted by
on Tue Jul 21, 2009 9:48pm.
After five full years of studying chess books, I think I’ve done a reasonable job of acquiring some basic theoretical knowledge of the game from authors such as Horowitz, Chernev, Silman, Nimzowitsch, Soltis, Reinfeld and many others. Yet how ... Read more »
Submitted by
on Thu Jul 16, 2009 10:50am.
As indicated in its title, strategy is the topic of the book The Art of Planning in Chess (Batsford, 2006) by Grandmaster Neil McDonald (pictured). The book consists of 36 annotated games that are selected to illustrate how strategy can evolve a... Read more »
Submitted by
on Wed Jul 23, 2008 7:33pm.
The Nimzowitsch Defense, 1. e4 Nc6, is named after the über-famous Aron Nimzowitsch (1886—1935), whose last name at birth was the 4-syllable ‘Niemzowitsch’. The opening, as others we have looked at in this series, was ... Read more »
Submitted by
on Fri Jul 18, 2008 1:30pm.
Not long ago, Sigma Xi, a research society of nearly 60,000 scientists worldwide that includes several Nobel Prize winners, asked their members to document how they first became interested in science. Was it a teacher? Something they r... Read more »
Submitted by
on Sat Jul 12, 2008 8:51pm.
The Danish grandmaster Bent Larsen (1935- ) has enjoyed playing out-of-favor chess openings since he was a child. This trait began around the age of 12 when he read a book that said modern chess masters were cowards for avoiding the King&rsq... Read more »
Submitted by
on Tue Jul 8, 2008 2:47pm.
A few days ago, American expert (USCF 2038) Tim Moroney, while competing at the World Open in Philadelphia, told me about a puzzle in which there 6 pawns all lined up on the same file. Intrigued by this morsel of information, I investigated ... Read more »
Submitted by
on Fri Jul 4, 2008 10:48pm.
In Steinbeck’s sequel to his famous book Cannery Row, his richly deep and delightful character Doc proclaims that “chess is possibly the only game in the world in which it is impossible to cheat.” He was, of course, talking... Read more »