Author Archive

« Previous Entries

USCF Rating Distribution

Friday, June 6th, 2008

I used the USCF membership rating database to compute the rating distribution for “active” players with established (that is, not provisional) ratings. My definition of “active” is at least one USCF tournament result in the last year. The graphs are below.
I’m thinking about writing a script to automatically harvest the data and regenerate these graphs [...]

My game against a future U.S. Champion

Thursday, May 15th, 2008

I was getting rid of some junk yesterday, and I was about to toss an old score book that I’ve had since I first started playing tournament chess in high school. But I decided first to look up some of the names of my opponents, and that’s when I made an interesting discovery.
In the fourth [...]

Team 45 45 T37 Round 3

Sunday, May 11th, 2008

I have a three-game winning streak in the Team 45 45 T37 tournament.

Game board

End-of-game variations in ChessBase 9

Saturday, May 10th, 2008

My previous post had a number of variations that explored possible continuations following the last move of the game. ChessBase 9 unfortunately makes it pretty difficult to do this. For my future reference, and to possibly help others, here is Mig Greengard’s workaround:

At the last move, press T and enter any random move as a [...]

MCC May Swiss Round 1

Thursday, May 8th, 2008

I was back at my club Tuesday for the first time in a while, and I had a nice upset win.
In particular, I was pleased with my 15th move (as White). I was worried that my kingside pressure was draining away, and that the initiative might turn in Black’s direction. My solution was [...]

« Previous Entries