Well, sadly, I lost a ton of rating points this past weekend at the Kentucky Team Chess championship but it's a lesson in humility that isn't lost on me (and as a teacher I'm happy to have the experience to take back to my students). For example take the following position with White to move: What us White going to do? He just a few moves ago sacrificed his Bishop for two pawns to prevent a dangerous pawn storm as is now poised to fight to a draw with 1.c6! This was simple for even my opponent (Black) to see his dilemma here ... a piece to the good but drawing the game. However, it wasn't so easy for me to give up the piece for two pawns a few moves earlier. My opponent's fast play led to his yielding a draw where he should have had an easy win. This was probably my happiest moment of the event because I considered it a Marshall swindle (although perhaps not as clever or veiled as Frank's attempts).

If you're wondering why I don't have pictures it's because I neglected to bring my digital camera yet again. I'm a big dunce sometimes and it shows. I was declared the Assitant TD for this championship event so I was actually pretty busy anyway ... perhaps I should've blamed that instead of owning up to my absent-midedness.

I'm going to go ahead and form a team for next year and set aside some time for a few marathon training session to prevent a similar disaster from happening next year.

As a side note: I found out that "Miami" Fugate (the president of the Kentucky Chess Association) lost his wife this past week ... my thoughts and prayers are with him.

You'll hear from me tomorrow but for today I'm at a Team Chess Tournament! Wish me Luck!

Today is Susan's Birthday and we here at Chessvine wish her the happiest!

I was planning this morning on updating my readers on the Nalchik Grand Prix. However when I saw the official report by Chessbase I decided to totally change my direction this weekend to talk a little bit about two interests of mine that are extremely important in many chess related ventures (including but not limited to: blogging, website design, any kind of publishing, organizing). Take a look at this logo:

What do you notice. The first thing I note is a kind of simple elegance. It is a relatively inexpensive 'four-color' image. the design is pretty simple but an effective and warm logo to display for a chess tournament.

The design of these logos is likely not left up to a bid process but instead there is probably a FIDE insider with some very good graphic design skills. Several of the logos for FIDE events look very similar so I don't doubt it's the same artist. Most bloggers, website owners, and newsletter editors have to teach themselves a thing or two about graphic design to survive and get their viewership up.

Then there is the matter of digital photography. When people take pictures for a chess tournament report and they get home with a digital memory card full of fuzzy, blurry, or otherwise stupid looking photos they realize the importance of digital photography.

This has become a new interest of mine for that very reason. (I just told on myself, ich!)

These are the skills that chess professionals (meaning anyone with publishing aspirations) need to harness and cultivate in themselves.

Because of her response to this recent article I ran over to the UTB Scorpion blog to check out what WIM Luciana Morales was writing about. What do I find but plenty of evidence to support the idea that Luciana is a busy little bee ...Hopefully she won't tear my head off for saying that ... or offer to play me a chess match ... yikes!

Unbelievably, I come to find out that I'm part of the UTB blogs blogroll ... no doubt due to my capacity as the leader of both chess blogger groups on facebook. Luciana is on facebook and is pretty active (perhaps not as compulsive or obsessive as me, but that's another story).

I look down the blogroll and see that "Lizzyknowsall" (aka Elizabeth Vicary) is also listed so I cruise over there (did I mention I'm obsessive?).

I find this article by Liz regarding women and chess talent. I just love Ms. Vicary's writing style. She doesn't care how you'll take what she has to say but she's not afraid to lay all her cards on the table. She's on my facebook friends list too so the plot at this point has thickened for me. I'm starting to see a trend.