Nov 19, 2013 · 2 minute read · Comments
Carnegie Mellon UniversityPittsburgh Symphony OrchestraPittsburghmusicfluteBaroque fluteviolinviolacelloWolfgang Amadeus MozartJohann Sebastian BachGoldberg Variations
David Harding, Noah Bendix-Balgley, Lorna McGhee, Amit Peled I attended a special chamber music concert at CMU that featured some truly excellent musicians.
The musicians I was particularly interested in seeing Lorna McGhee, the current principal flute of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and violinist Noah Bendix-Balgley, the concertmaster, both of whom are relatively recent additions to the orchestra. The other two musicians, also fantastic, were violist and CMU professor David Harding and cellist Amit Peled.
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Nov 19, 2013 · 2 minute read · Comments
chessWorld Chess ChampionshipMagnus CarlsenViswanathan AnandBerlin Defense
In my continuing coverage of the World Chess Championship between Anand and Carlsen, today I cover round eight, in which apparently Carlsen took a break by playing safe for a quiet draw.
Game and notes below:
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Nov 18, 2013 · 2 minute read · Comments
chessWorld Chess ChampionshipMagnus CarlsenViswanathan AnandBerlin Defense
In my continuing coverage of the World Chess Championship between Anand and Carlsen, today I cover round seven, in which apparently Anand took a break by playing safe for a quiet draw.
Game and notes below:
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Nov 17, 2013 · 1 minute read · Comments
musicrecorderPittsburgh Recorder SocietyPittsburghcookies
At the third meeting of this season of the Pittsburgh Recorder Society, I was pleased to see that we continue to add members. Wow. We already had a huge turnout last month!
Snacks!
Nov 15, 2013 · 2 minute read · Comments
chessWorld Chess ChampionshipMagnus CarlsenViswanathan AnandSemi-Slav
In my continuing coverage of the World Chess Championship between Anand and Carlsen, today I cover round five, a subtle positional battle in which Carlsen won in the ending. This was the first win by either player in the match!
Game and notes below:
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Nov 14, 2013 · 1 minute read · Comments
chess
For The Chess Improver, I wrote “Whether an interesting opening idea is good or bad depends on context”.
Nov 13, 2013 · 2 minute read · Comments
chessWorld Chess ChampionshipMagnus CarlsenViswanathan AnandBerlin Defense
In my continuing coverage of the World Chess Championship between Anand and Carlsen, today I cover round four, the most exciting and longest game of the match so far! Things are really heating up!
Game and notes below:
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Nov 13, 2013 · 3 minute read · Comments
chessBerlin Defense
I have a confession to make.
For the last thirty years of my life, I have considered the Berlin Defense in chess to be boring. As a result, even as a child, I refused to play the main line as White, and I certainly never played it as Black. The quick Queenless middlegame that results from the main line did not appeal to me for either side.
I didn’t play chess or follow chess news from around 1988 to 2004, so I returned to chess bewildered by the apparent popularity of the Berlin Defense among the world elite. I learned that Vladimir Kramnik had used it successfully as a drawing weapon for Black against Garry Kasparov in 2000. Just hearing that made me even less interested in the opening for either color.
My awakening
But everything changed for me this year on April 17, when, while following the Chess Improver blog (which I now contribute to), I saw an amusing post by GM Nigel Davies, “Not In Front Of The Children”, in which he gave some amusing and brief annotations to a game from 1992 that, when I played over it, totally fascinated me, because it was so unusual that he was basically saying, young novice chess players might not understand what went on.
This was a game in which Black won, not drew, with the Berlin Defense, and won in such fashion that I felt compelled to analyze the game for myself to see where exactly White had gone wrong. In analyzing the game, I felt I learned a lot about the subtleties of this defense, and even so, realized how just how much more there could possibly be to it, because of the obvious asymmetries between the two sides and the lack of Queens on the board.
I even discovered that there are even entire books devoted to the Berlin Defense, e.g., John Cox, “The Berlin Wall”, from 2008 and Igor Lysyj and Roman Ovetchkin, “The Berlin Defense”, from 2012. I have not read them, but the game I saw definitely led me to realize that what I thought was boring, I simply did not understand. When I understood more, I found it less boring.
Why I am writing about the Berlin Defense now
I offer my analysis of this old game below, as a supplement to my analysis of the recent exciting round 4 game of the World Chess Championship between Anand and Carlsen.
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