Musings on chess, and lesser things
Non-chess posts
Unfortunately, to top off the Kiwi series of mis-adventures, I’ve come down with a rather embarrassing cold. So instead of being back at work in the land of normality and no chess boards, I’m at home, licking my chess wounds in a snot-infested grump. Humpf. I do have to say thanks to the very nice …
Chess can be the most beautiful of princesses, or the most of the most treacherous of mistresses. Unfortunately, there’s been no fairytale for me this tournament. Zong-Yuan Zhao convincingly showed why he is clearly the strongest player in Oceania, completing an emphatic tournament victory with an amazing 8.5 out of 9. He put the competition …
I once got a piece of advice from Manuel Weeks for how to deal with round robins and put together an opening repertoire – ‘Draw with black, win with white!’. Basically, a player should structure his openings so that he can comfortably equalise with the black pieces, while push for an opening advantage in the …
A warm welcome to our first guest blogger, Andrew ‘Fitzy’ Fitzpatrick, who reports on a week of New Zealand misadventures. Heading to NZ before the zonal was going to mean a heavy schedule of touristing and socialising before settling down and playing a serious chess tournament….In reality the two are probably the wrong way around, …
A ten day tour of the north island of New Zealand has kept me offline for far too long. But never fear, dear reader, for this week sees the 2011 Oceania Chess Championships, complete with regular blogging, vindictive ranting, glorious narcissistic boasting and depressive self-musing. Not to mention some guest-blogging from my fellow chess Contikians, …
January is a difficult time for making decisions for many Australians, and not just for New Year’s resolutions. It is also a frenzied month of voting for national radio station Triple J’s Hottest 100 countdown of the top songs of the year, released on Australia Day on January 26. It’s something of a tradition on …
And here they are: the best of the best from what was most likely the first ever chess haiku competition. Points were awarded for the first two; the others were awarded virtual pride. Checkered battlefield; Sweet victory or despair, By one deadly move! – Justin Tan Chess is a great wife: She feeds me …
Well, my prediction that most of you would struggle to fifty per cent was deplorably off – you all did remarkably well, and my efforts to displace Google have failed. Next year I’ll do better, including such improved questions as “What number am I thinking of now?” Congratulations to Ian Rogers and Tristan Stevens who …
So clearly I couldn’t decide on a title. As Fitzy has correctly pointed out in the comments, I am on a farm in Darwin and have limited access to civilisation. Rather than blogging, my days have been spent cleaning chicken and peacock poo, grooming horses, cuttng bamboo, and killing cane toads. (Literally, not state-of-origin-metaphorically, of …