WIM Alexey Root, PhD

The documentary The Gentleman Driver follows four amateur race car drivers who pay to compete alongside professional drivers. Just as these amateur drivers spend money to race, one amateur chess player likewise sponsors an annual event where he plays chess with professionals. Some amateurs spend millions to compete in the sports that they love, money that they earned from being extraordinary businessmen.

Read an excerpt from a book-in-progress and then vote on a name for that book. The author of the book-in-progress, Lauren Goodkind, will pick one winner from the comments. That winner will receive a copy of her previous book 50 Poison Pieces: Solve 50 Puzzles Where the Unprotected Piece is Toxic.

The knight’s tour is recommended by GM Susan Polgar. In her free Chess Training Guide for Parents and Teachers, she wrote, “Try to jump with the Knight from one square to another covering all 64 squares on the chess board, landing only once on each square.” When I taught BayAreaChess students, some taking their first chess class and others rated up to 1000, I included the knight’s tour.

In this article, I review two instructional chess books published in 2018. Either one would make a great Christmas present! One is aimed at teachers, the other at kids. But both books would benefit chess players of any age, who know the rules of chess, have played several complete games, but are still learning tactical themes.

The recent World Chess Championship made me think of two iconic phrases. The first phrase is “six degrees of separation,” which states that a chain of “friend of a friend” statements can be made to connect any two people in six steps. In this article, I’ll share my two-step connections to the challenger, Fabiano Caruana, and to former World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer. The second phrase is “One Day More,” which is both a song lyric and a song title from the musical Les Misérables.

At the same time that Fabiano Caruana and Magnus Carlsen played that marathon-length game, 16 students from The University of Texas at Dallas (UT Dallas) took on their counterparts from the University of Belgrade. The Svetozar Gligorić Transatlantic Cup is played via the Internet Chess Club and the games are available here. The Svetozar Gligorić Transatlantic Cup is an annual fall tradition. This year, the 13th in the series, UT Dallas won 12.5 to 3.5. Wins count as one point, draws as .5 points each. In this year’s match, UT Dallas lost only one game, drew five games, and won 10 games. A big improvement for UT Dallas from last year, which was an 8-8 tie!