Tactics Time Newsletter: 50 Shades of Play

Published: Sat, 02/14/15

50 Shades of Play

Happy Valentines Day, -- Hope that you are having a nice weekend!

I'm heading to see the movie "50 Shades of Grey" tonight, with a girl I have been dating for a few months now, Alisha.

For those keeping score at home, my previous girlfriend Mia (the Hungarian Yoga instructor) and I broke up last year after being together for about 3 years. It just wasn't working out, but I'm very excited about my new relationship :-)

Alisha and I met taking the commuter van everyday from Colorado Springs to Aurora, where we both work, so we had lots of time to get to know each other, which has been great. She was "Miss Colorado Springs" 2007 in the Miss America pageant, which is pretty cool!

Tactics Question 1

Sometimes I am bad about leaving off variations. This position, with White to move, came from my newsletter entitled "Secret Sauce".

The answer I gave was "Cory has a very nice mate in 3 with 28. Qe8+ Kf6 29. Rf8+! Bxf8 30. Be5#"

David wrote: Maybe I'm missing something but I don't see the mate in 3 unless black is cooperative and replies 29..Bxf8.

What was my response?

Answer below.

Attack of the Clones

The Denver Chess Club has an exciting tournament coming up where you can play multiple rated games at the same time.

Every entrant registers as himself but can also register up to two "clones", with a maximum of three entries.

No one plays themselves.

Clones play simultaneously, so each round a player with two clones will get three pairings. All games are rated as normal.

The tournament is May 16, and I am excited about it! I plan on playing with all three clones!

Details here

Tactics Time 2 Review

Edward Scimia wrote a nice review about Tactics Time 2 on the website "About.com".

Edward writes: "One of the best ways to improve as a chess player, especially if you’re at the intermediate “club player” level that makes up the bulk of rated chess players, is to work on tactics. One of the easiest ways to sharpen your tactical vision is to work through a problem set that offers a variety of positions and tactical motifs: blast through those problems again and again, and the patterns will become etched into your brain."