Run-DMSteve

  • World Chess Championship, Game 3: Norway fights to keep its shit together

    Today, World Champion Magnus Carlsen and the challenger, Fabiano Caruana, maneuvered but could not out-maneuver each other for four hours and 49 moves. That’s three games and three draws. It could be that the chess championship has never seen two players so closely matched, as if the Boston Red Sox, who…

  • Oh to be young, gifted, and chessed

    When you’re teaching chess to kids, it helps to use superheroes in your lessons. For example, François-André Danican Philidor, a musician and composer and the best chess player of the 1700s. In 1783, Messr. Philidor revealed his superpower: He could play chess blindfolded, that is, without sight of the board.…

  • World Chess Championship, Game 2: I never met a game that makes me feel the way that you do

    In the 1990s, I worked on a computer chess game called Power Chess. Among other tasks, I wrote thousands of lines of dialog for the game’s talking chess coach, demonstrated the game for the press, and often acted as liaison between Elon, the game’s designer (a genius), and the rest of…

  • World Chess Championship, Game 1: Please come back for Game 2

    A few years ago, I had the opportunity to play chess against a 16-year-old named Alexandra. She wasn’t a master, but she had just returned from the world high school chess championship, held in Turkey, so you can bet she knew her way around a chess board. The occasion was…

  • You say that Magnus Carlsen is a bad mother – (Shut your mouth!)

    I know what you’ve been thinking. “Will an American ever again play for the world chess championship?” It hasn’t happened since Bobby Fischer dethroned Boris Spassky in 1972. There hasn’t even been a native English speaker in the challenger’s seat since the UK’s Nigel Short lost to Garry Kasparov in…