The last several days have brought our first nasty weather. It’s been cold dreary and we had our first snow. Now today it's warmed ...

     English FM John Littlewood (1931-2009) was always a dangerous opponent who on a good day could defeat anybody. In any tournament he pla...

     The fields of problems and of practical games are far removed from each other. Problems are artificial constructions in the form of of ...

     When annotating games for this Blog I always use the latest version of Stockfish at 10-15 seconds per move, but is it the best engine t...

     Re the title...is it spelled woolly or wooly? Wooly is predominantly used in American English while woolly is predominantly used in Bri...

     IM Michael Valvo (April 19, 1942 in Albany, New York – September 18, 2004 in Chanhassen, Minnesota) was, by 1962, one of the top blitz...

     The better known first class players of the City of London Chess Club in the 1880s were George MacDonnell, Bernard Horwitz, James Mason...

     The year 1918 was a rough one because it was heavily influenced by World War I plus the Spanish Flu epidemic which resulted in life ex...

     As Rudolf Spielmann explained it the chess pieces, like stocks, have two prices: the par value and the quoted rate. The par value is th...

     Following Hitler’s appointment as chancellor in 1933, the Nazis transformed Germany into a one-party dictatorship that implemented raci...

     The Clemenz Opening (1.h3) is named after Hermann Clemenz (1846–1908) an Estonian player who played it in a tournament in St. Petersbur...

     Yesterday saw a swath of cold drizzle 250 miles wide and 800 miles long that hung around all day. It was a good day to browse some old ...

     In describing Levenfish’s play in The Soviet School of Chess, Kotov and Yudovich wrote, “Levenfish’s style in the middlegame is univers...

     John J. O'Hanlon was born in Portadown, a town in Northern Ireland and he passed away in Dublin on February 20, 1960. He was the Ir...