Today, Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States uncovered a seven-year-old bug in a computer program I wrote years ago.
Here’s what happened:
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Yesterday was the first round in the annual Pittsburgh Chess Club Championship, and I am playing in it for the first time in two years. I mentioned earlier that I have won the PCC Champion title twice, in 2006 and 2007.
I’m excited that this year the format has been augmented with some special prizes:
All players have been invited to submit their game scores for consideration for these prizes.
Well, I’m not submitting my game score from round 1! Although I won my game, bit was a result of a swindle in which I lured my opponent into walking into danger in an otherwise drawish endgame, after which he suddenly completely fell apart.
Of course, most chess games played by humans are “ugly” like this in some way (and I have written posts about how I have been on the receiving end of swindles), so we have to embrace this reality; most games also have their cute moments. I think my game is worth looking at for the swindle that worked.
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One month ago, I reported on my sixth and final game in a Pittsburgh Chess Club Tuesday night tournament. A lot of things came up after the end of that tournament that led me to not finish this report on how the critical final game went between my two opponents, Kurt Wallnau and Ed Dean, who had won their games against me in the fifth and fourth rounds, respectively.
Here’s my report on who won and on practical psychology and style in chess, and of course, what the definition of “best chess player” should be.
Read On →If, like me, you believe that you should get regular exercise, you probably have some kind of intention, or better yet, a concrete plan and schedule, for achieving it. However, if you are like me, you are human and fallible, and also deal with unpredictable periods of stress or overwork or fatigue or laziness.
This post is about three questions I ask myself when I am supposed to be doing a workout, but don’t feel like it. I hope this checklist will be helpful to you as it is to me.
I was reading the January 2013 issue of “Chess Life” magazine (which you can read online as PDF if you are a USCF member) and couldn’t help notice that by sheer coincidence, two different articles happened to mention how the article’s subject was shaped through their experiences playing chess in their childhood with their fathers. I was very moved because I always get emotional when reflecting on how chess gave me a special bond to my father as well. Similar stories are often true for children and their parents, through any shared activity at all, whether music, hunting, cooking, baseball, sewing, auto repair, stargazing, etc.
Here are two excerpts from the articles:
Read On →Last night was the first meeting of the new Pittsburgh Scala meetup.
And this morning I suddenly signed up to attend the Northeast Scala Symposium (NE Scala) being held soon in February in Philadelphia!
2013 is my “year of Scala”. What does this mean?
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