Chess:
Why stop at a Four Pawns Attack when you can enlist five, or six. Recently I've had very little time for chess. If you don't play, your game suffers. This sad and simple fact was brought home to me when I started losing badly to my sparring partner of 30 years Vince, despite Vince having had triple bypass surgery and being doped up on all kinds of pain-killing medication.
Deadlines met, for the most part, I decided to do a little studying. Vince often plays the Sicilian Dragon. One of White's typical strategies against the Dragon is to hurl the kingside pawns against the enemy king.
This got me thinking about pawn storms in general and then I remembered the stunning chess game.
Anand Dominates Rapid Match Against Shirov
Ruslan Scherbakov examines interesting opening ideas in women's games
Nakamura and Robson Show Off Their Promise
Two recent exhibition matches in St. Louis could help pave the way for an American to have a shot at the world title after the next chess championship match in 2012. One pitted Hikaru Nakamura of the United States against Ruslan Ponomariov of Ukraine, the other was a face-off between Ray Robson and Ben Finegold, both Americans.
The contests were intended to give Nakamura, 23, and Robson, 16, valuable experience.
Robson was supposed to play Viktor Korchnoi, the octogenarian grandmaster. But Korchnoi dropped out at the last minute, and Finegold, 41, who lives in St. Louis, replaced him.
The chess matches were six slow games followed by four rapid games.
