Archive for Columns
Saturday, December 26, 2009 21:49
Yesterday TIME featured a short interview with the new world's new number 1 Magnus Carlsen. Despite the fact that there were only ten questions with relatively short answers, I liked it so much that it got me thinking about chess journalism in general. Why can't interviews with chess players always be this sharp?
The main reason why I thought the...
Thursday, December 24, 2009 8:12
Two interviews with World Champion Viswanathan Anand have appeared in Indian newspapers this week, and in one of them he makes a remarkable statement. To the question whether GM Ganguly will again be in his team of seconds for the match against Topalov, the World Champion answers he's doesn't know yet. "But one thing is for sure, Magnus Carlsen (...
Monday, December 14, 2009 1:06
With the first decade drawing to a close, many sites look back on the past ten years and publish their lists of ‘greatest’ movies and books, most influential people, most important historical events and most significant technological developments. In chess, it’s not difficult to establish the most important change, which is of course the rise of...
Wednesday, December 02, 2009 22:19
"In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock," said Harry Lime in Orson Welles' The Third Man. In FIDE, for twenty years they lacked democracy and love for chess, and what did that produce? The zero-tolerance rule.
For the first time since Toiletgate,...
Wednesday, November 25, 2009 19:20
Now that I've finally accepted that I probably won't be World Chess Champion, it's becoming increasingly difficult for me to set goals in chess. What's worse, I've noticed I am trying to force my will upon my opponents by different means than winning the game.
If you play blitz or bullet online, you've probably encountered opponents who, after...
Tuesday, October 20, 2009 19:37
In the final part of our coverage of the lectures held at the Valencia, birthplace of modern chess symposium in Valencia during last month's Karpov-Kasparov match, we will take a closer look at the mysterious 'lost' chess treatise by Francesch Vicent, and why its discovery implies an absolutely spectacular revolution in chess history.
There were...
Friday, October 16, 2009 17:52
I’ve been known to defend the position that women’s tournaments are all nonsense: after all, we don’t have math competitions especially for women, nor do we have girls-only musical concourses. But a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, pleading for abolishment of women’s FIDE titles, made me think again.
Barbara Jepson’s piece is actually a...
Friday, October 02, 2009 3:24
During last week's Valencia, cradle of modern chess festival, the audience could not only enjoy the Kasparov-Karpov match, but also a series of lectures on the history of chess, with special attention to Valencia's role in it. As promised, we'll now return in more detail to the lectures that were most interesting in our opinion. The first is about...
Sunday, September 13, 2009 22:13
In just over a week, Gary Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov will play an exhibition match in Valencia, Spain, as part of the festivities of the Valencia Cuna del Ajedrez Moderno program: “Valencia, birthplace of modern chess”. ChessVibes will be in Valencia to report on the match between the two K's. As an introduction to the festivities in Valencia, I...
Saturday, August 22, 2009 0:56
It's an endless - and often pretty boring - debate: are men better in chess than women? But recently, there was an interesting blog discussion about the All Girls US Chess School in which some points where raised that are not usually heard in this debate. Its conclusion can be especially useful to chess teachers.
It all started with an article by...
