Obama's Running Mate?

Once again, read between the lines, and the latent presence of chess in this clip is hard to miss.

Losing Your Queen Made Easy

Another Wacky Wednesday doubleheader, kids. These two games are so short they give new meaning to the term miniature. Because they’re so short, I’ve posted both of them; it would have seemed stingy to give you only one. The blunders seem self-evident, making commentary unnecessary. In both games Black White resigned after the last move shown.

Okay, one comment: Notice how in this game, Black's failure to develop properly meant the loss of his or her queen was imminent. Hence the resignation.

The Chess Struggle

GM Joel in ecstacy. Or is it really Glenn Panner?

I’m actually a fan of former U.S Champion Joel Benjamin, but this shot of him seeming to space out at the U.S. Open two years ago, taken by a Chicago chess dad who’s also a great photographer, was too good to pass up.

Photo: johhnyscars via flickr

Wiping Off the Dirt

This clip hardly needs commentary, though I would point out that one of the hidden subtexts of the speech is obviously chess. Can you spot it?

Look, Ma, A Tactic!

It’s a Wacky Wednesday, indeed, when your humble blogger pulls off a combined discovered-attack-fork-pin

When we learn about chess, we learn about tactics, don’t we kids? Those great maneuvers like forks, pins, skewers, and discovered attacks that not only win material but are jolly-good fun to spring on our opponents.

The trouble is, those of us at the subterranean levels of chess skill seldom get to use those tactics, because our “board vision” is poor, and we can’t see the tactical patterns in our games. That’s certainly one of my biggest problems.

By some miracle, however, I saw one good tactic in this five-minute blitz game, which I won on time. It came to me like a bolt from the blue, possibly through the grace of Caissa.

Not that it was great game; it wasn’t. Getting pawn-forked with 11. e5 was unfortunate, to be sure. And of course I should have played 8. … Nxc4, instead of castling. Duh.

But forget about all of that. Look at 13. … Nxe3!!! Okay, maybe two exclamation points would have sufficed. But look what happens. White can’t castle out of this pickle because the knight attacks both castling paths. Is there any way to save White’s queen? (Killjoys: Bring it on.) 14. Nf3 doesn’t help. 14. … Nxf7+ forks the White king and rook and unleashes a discovered attack on the queen. The queen can’t capture the forking knight because she’s pinned to the king by the rook. She can’t capture the rook because the king is in check from the knight. It’s a double attack, the king must move, and the queen is lost. Rooks are exchanged, and although the Black knight is later lost a White bishop is captured in the course of that sequence as Black exchanges down to an endgame where White is just about out of pieces. (And yes, yes, yes, I know: she would have been even further bereft of pieces had I played 23. … Rxe1, leading to mate in two. You think I don’t see that, Liquid Egg Product? I mean c’mon.)

Sometimes chess is fun even for those of us who aren’t very good at it.

Oppenheimer Bombs vs. Einstein

Though Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer played this game back in 1933, somehow I wasn’t notified about it until Susan Polgar posted it on her blog last week. The members of the Castle Kimbark staff who were responsible for this oversight have been sacked.

The father of the atom bomb was clearly outclassed here, though Einstein seems to have known his way around the Ruy Lopez pretty well.

Game history downloaded from ChessGames.com.

And Howe!

It wasn’t the best of times, it wasn’t the worst of times; for the Ray School chess squad it was somewhere in between at yesterday’s tournament at the Julia Ward Howe School on the West Side, organized and directed by the Youth Chess Foundation of Chicago.

Ray’s Sonam Ford and George Vassilatos did win trophies at the sparsely attended meet, though the big winner of the day was Coach Trevor Scott’s Disney Magnet School, which won the team competition as it has so many times in the past year. Disney may now have eclipsed Burbank as the dominant elementary school in the Chicago public schools.

Peterson Elementary’s Jace Miyagi won the intermediate division, and top honors in the beginner’s section went to Justin Buschnyj of Burley School. The tournament’s overall champion was Brandon Truitt of Burbank, who won the advanced section, though not before Sonam spoiled Brandon’s perfect score for the day by beating him in a thrilling final-round game. Sonam finished in second place overall with 3.5/5. George’s 4.0/6 gave him an eighth-place finish and his second trophy this year in the beginner section.

More photos here; complete standings here.