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Writing Chess in Fiction

by Subscriber HikaruShindo on Sep 08 2018 18:48 | 1406 views | 2 edits | Last edit on Sep 08 2018 18:50

Hello, and welcome to the only chess blog on the internet that’s written in the school library.

Still working on some other stuff, and since it’s post-Labor Day here in the States, it’s been a little busy. As I think I’ve mentioned on here, I’m an amateur writer, and this week I thought I’d put up a post I originally wrote elsewhere on writing fictional scenes with chess in them.


–––––––––––––––––––
...

Posted to Hikaru Junction

The Backward Facing Knight and Lolli

by Subscriber greenpawn34 on Sep 05 2018 16:59 | 644 views


Picked this book up on the 1986 Kasparov - Karpov World Championship
by Wade, Miles, Bronstein, Hartston....(phew!).... Blackstock, Martin....

Here is a picture of the cover listing all the names.
Title here

It’s OK, reasonable notes, nice bit of background chit chat and the book is built
to last (a lot of my books fall to pieces during study), but.....there is always a but...

Posted to The Planet Greenpawn

Bronstein and Chris de Burgh

by Subscriber greenpawn34 on Aug 28 2018 01:46 | 1871 views | 2 edits | Last edit on Sep 04 2018 23:25


Did You Know No.182.

That Chris de Burgh brought out a CD called ‘Best Moves’
and on the cover is a famous position from a Bronstein game.
Title here

Title here

{imgblock=/imgu/blog/1/b4u437199-1535419861.png}Title here{/imgblock...

Posted to The Planet Greenpawn

Yippee-ki-yay,

by Subscriber HikaruShindo on Aug 24 2018 03:03 | 1792 views | 1 edit | Last edit on Aug 24 2018 03:09

Hello all, and welcome to Hikaru Junction, the only chess blog on the internet that must have missed 60 Minutes. I’m working on a bigger project for next week, but for the sake of consistency I’ve dug up the games from my most recent tournament.

For those diehard fans among you, I’ll have to apologize and defer the topic to a later date, leaving you instead with

Qc_v9mTfhC8

Now, then, I could talk about industrialization and men's fashion all day, but I'm afraid work must intrude… ...

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Four Chess Books (what a naff blog title)

by Subscriber greenpawn34 on Aug 21 2018 22:16 | 1670 views | 2 edits | Last edit on Aug 24 2018 11:05


The Edinburgh Festival is in full swing so to avoid it I visited an out of
town book shop I had not been to for a while. Oh Joy. I picked up four
books all for £1.00 or £2.00 each. So a quick review and the challenge
of finding an RHP game I can link too. I find two out of four...Not bad.

Title here

The first thing I noticed was that of the 60 pages 27 were devoted to Draughts and...

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Aronian: Turn Off the Dark

by Subscriber HikaruShindo on Aug 08 2018 20:04 | 1705 views | 1 edit | Last edit on Aug 08 2018 20:08

Hello all, and welcome to Hikaru Junction,

the only chess blog on the internet whose author produced the startlingly insightful commentary “I think most likely is Aronian, for experience, consistency, and his recent superb form…Caruana is one of the stronger contenders, but he doesn't seem to play as aggressively, which I think will hurt him.” (176208)

As I’m sure you know, Aronian then proceeded to make me look like a fool by scoring 4.5/14, and Caruana doubled Aronian’s score to win the tournament.

In this handy-dandy graph I made, Aronian is the line far below everyone else’s. ...

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Chess for Dummies and a Pop-Up Book

by Subscriber greenpawn34 on Aug 06 2018 22:31 | 916 views


Title here

This is the painting ‘Cornered’ by G.C. Hindley circa 1900
Title here

A large copy of this painting hangs on the wall of the Edinburgh Chess Club.
We have on some evenings re-created the position in the painting on the board

1R4K1/6PP/8/3q2n1/8/Q7/2R5/4k3 w - - 0 ...

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Tournament (Redux)

by Subscriber HikaruShindo on Jul 25 2018 01:40 | 2671 views | 2 edits | Last edit on Jul 28 2018 01:14

Hello all, and welcome to the only chess blog on the internet that saw that ludicrous display last night– the blog I had been back-burner-ing was scuppered by the necessity to get my computer fixed. Regular service should be resumed next week, but instead this week we’ll take a look at a tournament I played during my last long absence.

I started off the tournament paired against a stronger opponent, and although it didn’t show in my play, it did in my scorekeeping– deciphering what I had meant by the following scoresheet, four months after the fact, proved immensely difficult.

Bad scorekeeping

Look at this mess! Not only did I make several scorekeeping mistakes in the first few moves, I marked down which color I was to pl...

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Chess, The Camel and Zwischenzug

by Subscriber greenpawn34 on Jul 20 2018 13:09 | 2016 views | 1 edit | Last edit on Jul 24 2018 20:27


This advert appeared after Arnold Denker won the USA Championship in 1944.
Title here

I have resized each pic to save your weary old eyes from squinting.
Title here

Title here

Title here

{imgblock=/imgu/blog/1/b4u437199-1531386541.png}Title here{/imgblock...

Posted to The Planet Greenpawn

Taking On the Traxler

by Subscriber HikaruShindo on Jul 15 2018 22:02 | 2447 views | 3 edits | Last edit on Jul 17 2018 18:39

Hello everyone, and welcome to the only chess blog on the internet that speaks to clients on the phone about quantities and type of copier paper. As I mentioned several posts ago, I’ve been re-watching episodes of The Office, set in Pennsylvania, and there’s a scene where one of the main characters (Jim, played by John Krasinski) plays a game against one of the other office workers.

To make a long story short, if you google: (“wilkes-barre” “krasinski” “chess” ) the first result is the following delightful little minature:

Krasinski–Yakov Estrin Istra 1947
1. e4 e5 2. f4 d5 {Estrin, as usual, seeks to control the game, and countergambits a pawn.} 3. exd5 e4 4. d3 Nf6 {If 5. dxe4 now, Nxe4 is uncomfortable for white: Qh4 is an immediate threat, and the knight is positioned well.}...

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A Chess Coincidence and 1813

by Subscriber greenpawn34 on Jul 03 2018 21:18 | 3294 views | 3 edits | Last edit on Jul 26 2018 13:56


Hands up everyone who knows about Egerton Smith (1774-1842 ).
Title here

1. 32-33 47-45
2. 22 -24 58-14
Is Fool’s Mate.

rnb1kbnr/pppp1ppp/8/4p3/6Pq/5P2/PPPPP2P/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 3...

Posted to The Planet Greenpawn

The Curse of the Electronic Chessboard

by Subscriber greenpawn34 on Jun 13 2018 11:19 | 4770 views | 1 edit | Last edit on Jun 13 2018 11:26


Hello again and first question of the day is...What is this?
Title here

It is infact the mascot for the 2018 Chess Olympiad which is being held
in Batumi, Georgia from the 23rd of September to the 6th of October.
I have not been able to find out the turtles name. All I can find is ‘The Turtle.’

The dates are important because the World title match between Carlsen and...

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The ‘Game of the Century’

by Subscriber greenpawn34 on May 23 2018 14:39 | 5202 views | 1 edit | Last edit on May 24 2018 10:13


Title here

Title here

Title here

Title here

Yes I know and also my quote from these pages way back on my 60th
blog when I was complaining about writers copying from each other ...

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Chess and the Indian Navy

by Subscriber greenpawn34 on May 11 2018 14:20 | 4131 views


Found in a 50p box at the ‘Homes for the Homeless’ Charity shop.
no title

The 50p is the actual change I got from the £1.00 I handed over.

A solid gold chess bracelet. Well not actually solid gold but when
I give it to my newest girlfriend, Bald Flo Jones, I will tell her it is.
{imgblock=/imgu/blog/1/b4u437199-1490275699.png}green pawns{/imgblock...

Posted to The Planet Greenpawn

The Milan Vidmar Trap

by Subscriber greenpawn34 on Apr 22 2018 16:59 | 4215 views | 2 edits | Last edit on May 10 2018 12:33


OOPS!
Title here

Apparently 100's of these were on sale at a tournament in Florida in 2002.
The position is correct, so are the names and the place.........but the price?
red pawns

Title here

At Hasting in 1926 Milan Vidmar (1885-1962) sprang a trap that with the...

Posted to The Planet Greenpawn

Karpov was Jack the Ripper

by Subscriber greenpawn34 on Apr 10 2018 00:22 | 4566 views | 3 edits | Last edit on Apr 10 2018 01:27


Title here

There is a moment in this film when Emma Prentiss (as played by
Jane Seymour) shows Inspector Frederick Abberline (as played by
Michael Caine) an artists impression of Jack the Ripper ( as played
by.....nobody really knows). She says she is selling the drawing to
The Stand Magazine but (and I’m sure most of you know this) the
grisly murders took place in London in 1888, the Strand Magazine...

Posted to The Planet Greenpawn

Chess Junk and Russian Endings

by Subscriber greenpawn34 on Mar 13 2018 12:57 | 8223 views


And this is how badly I am afflicted by the chess bug...
Title here

...I’m now buying broken china just because it has a chess theme.

My research, and here I remind my readers of my diligence in such matters,
took me to a small village in southern Italy called Polominto and it was here
I met with a one legged man called Luigi ‘He Who Hops’ who told me it wa...

Posted to The Planet Greenpawn

Tournament: Part II

by Subscriber HikaruShindo on Mar 04 2018 05:39 | 2828 views

Hello all,

And welcome back to Hikaru Junction, the only chess blog on the internet that waves the flags that the robots made. Today we’ll be looking at the second half of the last tournament I played, in which I scored 0/3 due to some atrocious mistakes. Cheers to schadenfreude! After scoring 1/3, with a win and two draws, in the first half of the tournament, I was a little demoralized, but still took a positive attitude into the first game. I was wrong to do so, as it turned out.

Charles Hua–HikaruShindo Empire City Open 2017
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 {I played the opening as usual, developing my pieces in fairly standard fashion.} 5. d3 Be7 6. O-O b5 7. Bb3 d6 8. c3 {The move weakens the d3 pawn– I generally prefer to only play c3-d4 as it’s more efficient if at...

Posted to Hikaru Junction

Tournament: Part I

by Subscriber HikaruShindo on Mar 01 2018 14:26 | 2296 views | 1 edit | Last edit on Mar 01 2018 19:48

Hello all–

Welcome to Hikaru Junction, the only chess blog on the internet with absolutely unimaginative titles. Today I thought I’d catch you all up on the last tournament I played in over the board, as a way of easing back into this blogging business. In any case, I last played at the Empire City Open in NYC, where I scored a rather pitiful 1/6. Hopefully my mistakes will prove instructive. Let’s get into it, then!

Mario Guevara-Rodriguez–HikaruShindo Empire City Open 2017
1. c4 f5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Nc3 e6 4. e3 b6 {Since White hasn’t fianchettoed his bishop, Black can control the light squares.} 5. Be2 Be7 {b4 is a better location, since it discourages d4.} 6. O-O O-O 7. d4 d6 8. Qc2 {White prepares to push the e-pawn.} Bb7 {Black finally fianchettoes, preventing the advance.} 9....

Posted to Hikaru Junction

Chess with Tal, Nana and Frodo

by Subscriber greenpawn34 on Feb 15 2018 00:46 | 8659 views | 3 edits | Last edit on Mar 04 2018 03:09


This is Frodo from one of the many L.O.T.R. Chess sets
Title here

Which gives me a great excuse to show the Frodo Game.

If any of you are coaching kids or just wanting a game to show
to your merry men down at the club then this is it. It's a classic. ...

Posted to The Planet Greenpawn

Chess Coincidences and ChessTraps

by Subscriber greenpawn34 on Jan 22 2018 14:11 | 7220 views | 1 edit | Last edit on Feb 13 2018 09:02


Title here

answer at the bottom of this page.
green pawns

Meanwhile....from the U.K. Metro last week we read:

Police in Oslo said they received several emergency calls
on Monday evening from residents who had hears screaming...

Posted to The Planet Greenpawn

Chess Blitz Tricks and the RHP Hall of Doom

by Subscriber greenpawn34 on Jan 03 2018 10:57 | 6789 views | 2 edits | Last edit on Jan 08 2018 20:19


Title here

Chess wise 2017 ended on a controversial note which had everyone in a lather.

Introducing to these pages the Russian chess player Ernesto Inarkiev
Title here

The 32 year old, named Ernesto after the Argentinean revolutionary
(and also a chess player) Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, was involved in a...

Posted to The Planet Greenpawn

RHP 2017 Chess Christmas Quiz

by Subscriber greenpawn34 on Dec 11 2017 12:25 | 6987 views | 1 edit | Last edit on Dec 11 2017 12:26


Every year I promise myself I’ll do something different and spend
11½ months trying to figure out what. No joy, so once again........
Title here

You will be asked to find the winning and sometimes the losing move
We will start off by pulling a Christmas cracker and reading the joke.

(1) Getyourhandoutofmypocket - willysan RHP 2017 (Black to play...

Posted to The Planet Greenpawn

Australian Beer and Chess

by Subscriber greenpawn34 on Nov 21 2017 13:49 | 8940 views | 1 edit | Last edit on Nov 21 2017 15:46


I’ve never been to Australia but I just know I’d like it out there.

I’ve never yet met an Australian lad I did not trust, like and get on
with. An Australian Red Hot Pawn member sent me this picture.
Title here

I requested more information and was duly sent this
photograph of the above picture in it’s natural setting....

Posted to The Planet Greenpawn

Paul Morphy in a 'B' Horror Movie

by Subscriber greenpawn34 on Nov 01 2017 17:34 | 12400 views | 1 edit | Last edit on Nov 19 2017 13:04


Hands up all those think this is the greatest film ever.
Title here

OK. Hands up all those who think this film is pretty good.

OK Hands up all those who think this film is totally naff.

OK. you did not like it and most of you have probably never seen it....

Posted to The Planet Greenpawn

Chess Books....and Hitler

by Subscriber greenpawn34 on Oct 18 2017 13:39 | 8441 views


Title here

Folkstone is an English coastal town in the county of Kent
I do not have a picture of Folkstone. Here is Winston Williams....
Title here

...holding up the Folkstone Chess Club’s ‘Pickles’ Trophy.

(Pickles was the name of the dog who found the stolen Worl...

Posted to The Planet Greenpawn

Chess: 'The Winning Way' (sometimes)

by Subscriber greenpawn34 on Oct 11 2017 22:04 | 5643 views


Magnus Carlsen won the recent Isle of Man tournament with a
score of 7½ pts from 9 games. Winning sic and drawing three

Here is Magnus with his silver trophy and membership voucher.
Title here

Of course it’s a fine state of affairs when our current World Champion does
not know the rules of our noble game but that, apparently, is the case here...

Posted to The Planet Greenpawn

Chess World Cup 2017 we have a winner

by Subscriber greenpawn34 on Sep 27 2017 18:51 | 6996 views | 4 edits | Last edit on Nov 28 2017 16:06


Title here

red pawns

The 2017 Chess World Cup has finished. Lev Aronian won it.
Title here

I thought we would take a look at some incidents and some games.

The sponsor had the board around the wrong way...

Posted to The Planet Greenpawn

Short Draws in the World Cup

by Subscriber HikaruShindo on Sep 10 2017 20:04 | 7016 views

Hello everyone, and welcome to Hikaru Junction, the only chess blog on the internet that wakes up every evening with a big smile on its face. I recently responded to a question in the discussion thread for the last blog: 174075, which made me consider the way I evaluate short draws, especially in a knockout format. This blog, we’ll be looking at several of the very short draws from the World Cup.

As I mentioned in that thread, my criteria for determining whether a short draw is merely annoying, or detrimental to the tournament, include the reasoning for the draw. To identify some of the "best" and "worst" short draws in the World Cup, I’ve taken each draw under 20 moves and applied the following method:

If the higher-rated player is Black, and thus both players (rather than, in th...

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Three World Cup Brackets

by Subscriber HikaruShindo on Sep 06 2017 13:54 | 7148 views

Hello everyone, and welcome to Hikaru Junction, the only chess blog on the internet whose castles stand upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand.

Today, I’ll be previewing each matchup in the second round of the world cup for the first three sections of the bracket, some more in-depth, some less so. I’ll cover several more tomorrow, and try to finish the day afterwards. Let’s get started, as I’m writing this between the tiebreaks finishing and the next game starting one day later. A final note: I’ll be listing players in the following format: Player(seed, pre-tournament rating.)

Section One

Magnus Carlsen (1, 2822) vs Aleksey Dreev (64, 2648)
This appears to be an easy win for the World Champion given the large rating disparity between the two players. Dreev has previously com...

Posted to Hikaru Junction

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