Worrying times

[AustinElliott]

For those interested in the (ongoing) discussion of mask wearing, there is a very good article in The Atlantic by the excellent science writer Ed Yong which discusses what is, and isn't, currently known.

[Tim Spanton]

For those interested in the (ongoing) discussion of mask wearing, there is a very good article in The Atlantic by the excellent science writer Ed Yong which discusses what is, and isn't, currently known.

VERY interesting stuff, but few conclusions!

https://beauchess.blogspot.com/

[Matthew Turner]

A British company claims to have vaccine for coronavirus. See if you can guess which one?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/20 ... akthrough/

[NickFaulks]

I hope they don't test it on beagles.

[John Clarke]

Not so much a straw in the wind for print media, as the whole bloody haystack:

https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/life ... ast-editor

Iconic titles in other countries to disappear soon? (Including, one nastily hopes, Der Spiegel.)

This could even result in a severe backlash against the NZ government (whether that would be fair is of course open to debate, but people aren't always rational when they're already on edge), despite its near-faultless handling of the crisis so far.

[Mick Norris]

Interesting article John

How the hell did one foreign company end up owning nearly all the magazines in one country?

Well yes

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Surely they can restart and produce and print imagazines n New Zealand if the demand is there? It is a bit silly, I agree. Does this impact any UK magazines? Does it impact any chess magazines? Are BCM and NiC and CHESS and others I forget still being printed?

[JustinHorton]

Anyway, how to occupy oneself during the long weeks of lockdown?

Well, as it happens, I used to copy all my OTB games into scorebooks, all the way through since I first started playing tournament chess in the mid-Seventies until a few years ago, when I got out of the habit.

I still have all my scoresheets, though, and I've always meant to get around to it, but obviously, even though I play fewer than twenty games a year now, the pile has got bigger and bigger and it has got easier and easier to put off for another year. I could and should have done it over one summer or another, but I've never managed to persuade myself to do it.

And then, suddenly,a long period of unexpected inactivity, and a chance to get the job done. So that's what I've been doing, hampered only slightly by the discovery that I'm almost out of Tippex.

And so it was that I discovered that my 100 Game Scorebook, bought at what was then the London Chess Centre more than ten years ago, only has space for 98...

I have finished. Hurrah! Well, finished apart from the Tippex bit, but we might have to wait for the estado de alarma to be lifted before I can sort that out.

Anyway, would you like to see the worst move I played in all that time? Course you would.

I wsa playing this kid, possibly the most annoying I've ever played in the sense that he had a whole repertoire of bad habits: he had eating during the game and dropping the food onto the chessboard, he had fiddling with the pieces when I was my turn to move and he had standing up at the board for long periods of time, but he also had his pièce de résistance which was standing almost directly behind me while I was thinking, presumably in order to assess the position from my point of view. My official position on such things is that kids with bad habits will lose these habits when they grow up, whereas old players with bad habits will not, but this is not necessarily my attitude while actually playing.

Be that as it may, I was a piece down for a good deal less than nothing and should very likely have resigned. But instead I summoned all my swindling ability and somehow I was able to claw back couple of pawns and hack my way into a position where it looked like I should draw - and so I should.

Provided I didn't play the wrong move in this position.

[Matt Mackenzie]

Well, the "worst moves on the board" there are giving up the various pawns for nothing ( pawn to b6/f6/g5)

I presume it was *slightly* more subtle than that?

[Simon Brown]

a5?

[Matt Mackenzie]

From his commentary I presume JH was White......

[IM Jack Rudd]

Well, the "worst moves on the board" there are giving up the various pawns for nothing ( pawn to b6/f6/g5)

I presume it was *slightly* more subtle than that?

Those are three of the four losing moves; the other one is 1.Kd3, to which I take it the rejoinder is 1...Kd5, and black can stop the kingside pawns with the bishop while taking the b-pawn with the king.

[JustinHorton]

Indeed. What was I thinking of.

[Matt Mackenzie]

Jon Ludvig Hammer did something like that (against Topalov) in a super-tournament a few years ago.

[JustinHorton]

If you enjoyed that, you might like this (also from my mass write-up).



White to play has available four pawn moves on the queenside.

(a) to what result should each one lead with best play?

(b) which one was my selection?