SchemingMind Online Chess Journal

Modern chess engines running on very modest computer hardware can easily outclass any grandmaster. But are they actually fun to play against?

In this article, Michel Germain clarifies the rules of Alice Chess.

In September 2010 David O'Shaughnessy published an article titled Castling in Chess480: An appeal for sanity in which he suggest that the Castling rules in my 2005 article  Castling in Chess960: An appeal for simplicity lacks sufficient weight in its appeal to change the Castling rule in Chess960.  He was right but not for the reasons he gave.

The history of chess reaches back to time immemorial, as can be seen from the numerous myths which surround its origin. The game has traditionally served as a parallel for human life and often as a metaphor for war, wit and virtue. It has, over the ages, permeated the worlds of culture and art. For example, from the17th to the 19th centuries, it was the subject of drama (Thomas Middleton, Samuel Beckett), fiction (Stefan Zweig, Samuel Beckett, Julien Gracq), painting (Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris), sculpture (Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst), poetry (T. S. Eliot, Giacomo Leopardi, Jean Louis Borges) and music (Francois André Philidor, John Cage).

Between 2010 and 2011 I played a two-game match against Rosario DiPeri, one of SchemingMind's Senior Masters. He beat me easily with White and we drew the other game, which was a fascinating struggle in the Sveshnikov Variation of the Sicilian defence. At one point he chose to go into what I considered a dubious line, but I couldn't exploit it and he defended formidably. After the game I decided to investigate it further and I analysed the game with a strong computer, and came to the conclusion that this continuation loses by force. Here are the findings.

Has anyone composed any Benedict Chess problems yet? Here's a good one.

The purpose of this article is to give a small but consistent and robust door to the study of this as beautiful as hard game. I want to emphasize that this is an inexhaustible work, and all the great players study all day as a full time dedication, but you will also notice as soon as a flash, how you can improve your chess, following this few recommendations.

Chess players often enjoy solving tactical puzzles in order to improve their combinational abilities. We can find these challenges in books on tactics, our favorite chess magazine, the chess column at the local newspaper, educational software, or websites dedicated to the subject. The authors of these puzzles often provide us with one or more bits of the following information…

In 2002 I flew to Reno to play my very first large tournament ever. It was the “20th Annual Western State Open”. The main reason I participated in this event was because one of my dreams at the time was to play in a simultaneous exhibition and be able to beat or draw the GM. The tournament offered the opportunity to play a clock simul against IM John Donaldson, and a non-clock simul against GM Andy Soltis. At the time I had a rating of 1540 with the US Chess Federation.

In the match of the Standard Chess League (season 2): Friends Around the World vs Tao the Watercourse Way, I had the opportunity to play two games against ngu, one of which ended with a draw, and the other I won. Given below is the analysis of move played in one of those games.