"The Prince's Gambit" in The New Yorker

"The Prince's Gambit" (abstract only) in The New Yorker does a good job of presenting Magnus Carlsen to a general readership.  The story concludes with his desire to do well in the Amber tournament, so it is nice to see Carlsen joining the leaders today.  Worth picking up.

Jeremy Gaige (1927-2011)

According to the The Philadelphia Inquirer, chess historian Jeremy Gaige died in that city on February 19th of emphysema at the age of 83.  His Chess Personalia: A Biobibliography has been an indispensable desk reference for all chess journalists.  Hat tip to Mark Weeks.

Kavalek on Gligoric

Lubomir Kavalek has a great piece on Svetozar Gligoric titled Chess Legend Turns to Music (reprinted at ChessBase), which uses the release of Gliga's new album as the occasion to analyze the wonderful game Petrosian - Gligoric, Zagreb 1970 (which seems to have inspired his own fascinating game Keene - Kavalek, Teesside 1975).  Gligoric's album has previously been discussed at Chessvibes, but I could find no further information.  Likely it will be a while before it is released in the US.  Meanwhile, we can enjoy this wonderful game, which presents a fascinating response to the Bayonet Attack.

Lego Chess Set

Melanie Penola recommends you Build a Chess Set Out of LEGOs, in a way which seems more child-friendly than the Lego Star Wars chess set noted here last year.  I think my son will be inspired by this one.  (Direct link to the Instructables instructions).

Learning to Sense Danger at the Amateur Teams

Goeller - Williams, White to play
Should White play 25.Bxb6 or 25.Rxb6?

Goeller - Lima, White to play
Should White play 21.g4 or some other move?

Kopec - Goeller, Black to move
Black wants to play Bxf3 and dxc4, but in what order?

I have annotated three of my more interesting games in a piece titled "Learning to Take My Opponent's Threats Seriously at the 2011 World Amateur Teams."  That sums up the big lesson I needed to learn from my games, and the three diagrams above show the crucial position from each game where I went wrong because I did not think carefully enough about my opponent's threats.  I did see the threats and sensed the danger.  I just did not take those threats seriously.  Fortunately, I was able to get a draw in two of the games.  And I managed a 50% score on Board One for our team, so I'm pretty happy with how things went overall.


I will be posting some more games and stories from the recently concluded World Amateur Team tournament soon.