I’m thinking about writing a script to automatically harvest the data and regenerate these graphs regularly. In my “copious spare time,” of course.

In the fourth round of the 1979 Atlanta Scholastic Congress, I was defeated by unrated player named Stuart Rachels. My rating at the time was 930 (provisional, based on 6 rated games). I was 14, and Stuart was 9.

Well, Stuart went on to become a somewhat better chess player than I ever did. About two years after this game was played, Stuart set the record for becoming the youngest National Master in U.S. history. Later he became an International Master, and he was the 1989-1990 U.S. co-champion. He retired from chess in 1993 and is now Professor of Philosophy at the University of Alabama.

At the last move, press T and enter any random move as a new variation. Then promote that move to be the main line. That makes the real last move of the game a variation. Now with the last move of the new (spurious) main line selected, press T and enter the real last move again. Now you will have the real last move twice as variations. Promote one of them to be the main line, delete the spurious variation and there you have it.

From Mig’s November 2004 “ChessBase Cafe” column at chesscafe.com

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 a square-clearing pawn sac. That’s not the sort of thing I can usually find during the game!

But with the Team 45 45 League’s T37 tournament starting up this week, I found myself with no enthusiasm for reviewing any of my standard opening choices.

After some reflection, I decided that I’m ultimately in this hobby to have fun. And, therefore, deciding to try some new openings because I’m bored or frustrated with what I’ve been playing requires no further justification.

So there!

Of course, in my Round 1 game (I was Black) my opponent opened with 1.f4, so neither my old nor my new prepared lines were much help. But I came out of the opening OK and was heading toward an approximately equal endgame when my opponent blundered it away.

Answer: It doesn’t do anything!

Here’s the e-mail I received:

The Publish option does not work in the moment. In the moment there is no other solution to transfer the HTML files of the script manually to your Server.

But one tab has me completely mystified. The tab is labeled “Publish” and it looks like this:

It certainly seems to me like this tab is intended to facilitate automatic uploading of the generated HTML to your web site. When I enter my server and access information into this dialog and press “Test,” it comes back and says something like “Connection open” after a few seconds.

But … I can find no way to actually get ChessBase to upload the game files! No combination of pressing buttons and selecting options on any of these tabs will make it do anything other than save the files to my local disk. I can find nothing in the documentation that even acknowledges the existence of the “Publish” tab.

Sheesh. I’m starting to think this tab has the same function as the push-to-cross buttons at intersections, or the door-close buttons in elevators—to make you feel stupid.

Can anyone solve this mystery for me?

What is Black’s best move after 22.Nh5?

Fortunately my opponent in Round 1 of the Team 45 45 League’s T36 tournament didn’t figure out the answer.

Last month I ordered two DVDs online from USCF Sales. The online ordering process required creating a USCF Sales online account, which was kind of annoying but quite common. What really frosted me was that they sent me a plain-text e-mail with my online account information in it, including my password.

I replied, expressing my displeasure at their odious practice of sending plain-text passwords around in unsecure e-mail.

Their response? None, zip, zilch, nada, after several weeks.

OK, then. No more purchasing from USCF Sales.