Chess Club Live Blog

  IM Cyrus Lakdawala is prodigiously good at publishing books and always seems to find titles that most club players at a bookstall would browse if not buy outright. We all have been his victims at some time or other if you are a typical tournament chessplayer. We lose a chess game then flock to a bookstall buying opening books, middlegame strategy and endgame tomes like it would have made a difference. His latest book is no exception given that it is a book that supposedly teaches the reader how to beat the world chess champion and strongest-ever chess player by Elo. It is very curious that the book kicks off with a chapter about how Magnus avoids loss by either a win or draw, which seemed a rather strange way to delve into his defeats given the book's title. Another curious fact is that Magnus Carlsen now owns New in Chess so this book is about the owner of their book publishing company and may explain the curious first chapter. As you know with my reviews I don't necessarily...

 Lichess, Stockfish and Leela Chess Zero are non-profits who develop chess software out of the goodness of their heart until someone comes along who does it better. Then their altruism is replaced by self-righteous rage. This story begins way back in the long and distant past when I was an undergraduate at Imperial College, the internet was still a new thing and most people on the planet didn't know what it was let alone use it. As a university student, it was like being a pioneering explorer. I concerned myself with exploring the chess universe. This consisted of the ICS (Internet Chess Server) and various chess bulletin boards. Albert Silver was not well known at this time but was a man with a vision. He invented a graphical interface for online chess for a chess software company called Convetka Ltd who were creators of Chess Assistant and became immortalized in the process as being one of the pioneers of online chess for his innovative graphical user interface. Convekta Ltd was ...