Sunday, November 18, 2012

Shut Up Patzer, Make A Move

Hat tip to the Nairobi Chess Club Facebook page for sharing this. A chess scene by director Stanley Kubrick from his film "The Killing". It is also a scene quite familiar to us all, I think, although less so for me in the last couple of years.

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Brooklyn Castle

A doco. Looks like one to look out for.

Thursday, October 04, 2012

Max Gives Up Uni for GM

It turns out that Australia's latest international master is a sort of local celeb in Manly. Here he is, again, appearing in the pages of The Manly Daily.

Dee Why's Max Illingworth aims for chess grandmaster title.

Saturday, September 08, 2012

International Master Max Illingworth

It has been a long while since I did anything chess related. So long, in fact, that even the blogging platform that I use to publish this blog looks completely unfamiliar! I had to take a few moments to find my way around.

However over the last week or so I've been quite completely absorbed in chess, thanks to the Istanbul Olympiad. Rushing home after work to watch the games, re-signing up to Playchess and even reading Australia's numero uno chess forum again (same old, same old threads). It's been great.

While the 2010 edition in Khanty-Mansiysk passed over me, this year's event in Turkey had something special. Well, a few actually. The Aussie teams are filled with young debutantes. Good to see the ACF give some of these young guns a chance. And it looks to have paid off!

Max Illingworth is now an international master. I think those of us who have known this kid (I still think of him as a kid) for a long time will feel quite happy about this. Well done Max. I'm so happy about that, I thought it deserved a post. He can play with style, too. Check out his round 4 finish.

And a hat tip to ever intelligent and well-informed fellas over at Chesschat for bringing me this news.

Speaking of news, I do have a disappointment. The so-called "chess media", and we all know who they are (hint: bloody Europeans) are as dull as ever. They still apparently have not learned that there is far more to chess than who won, lost or drew; or that Kasparov is visiting. And that's if they can even be bothered to be timely with their so-called reports.

 Sayonara.