Broken Pawn

In the Land of the Blind...

2012-02-08T18:08:00.006-06:00

  An expression I learned from my father is “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king”. Since I’ve never heard anyone else ever say it, I thought my dad thought of it himself, but when I researched the saying for this post it seems the saying goes back to at least the 1500’s. No matter where it came from, it’s a great all-purpose saying. I’ve used the phrase in a self-effacing way when complimented on being able to accomplish a task that seemed impossible but was easy for me because I possessed a tidbit of arcane trivial knowledge but I’ve also used it as a way to fend off someone who I think is trying to put down an accomplishment of mine by making a big deal out the obvious fact that knowing a little bit about something (and a little bit more than everyone else) does not make me an authority.

  I was the one-eyed man in the field of Electronic Data interchange (EDI) because 20 years ago I set up an EDI program so the coat manufacturing company I worked for could exchange purchase orders and invoices with their big customers like Sears, JC Penney, and Wal-Mart. EDI was one of the early attempts to standardize data exchange between companies. It was a set of vague standards that each company implemented differently. My company kept on hiring ‘experts’ who were really just one-eyed men who had managed pre-written EDI packages for small companies but floundered when trying to adapt their knowledge to a quarter billion dollar companies’ needs. I had left the company in 1990 but was hired back in 1993 to set up their program after 3 failed attempts by one-eyed men. Even though I knew nothing about EDI when I started, I knew all about the company’s other systems and was able to put together the entire program in a year. When I started writing retail software in Iowa, we were approached by Nike and New Balance to set up EDI programs between them and our customers. It was a task that a lot of bigger retail software vendors either couldn’t do or couldn’t do right or could do but had to charge a lot of money for, but I was able to set up a system where small mom and pop stores could send and receive orders and invoices with big companies easily. I wasn’t an EDI expert but since the other companies knew even less about it than I did, our company got lots of new customers because we were the only ones who could deliver a low-cost service. Thanks to the internet and E-Commerce, EDI has since gone the way of the dinosaurs, but I still get the occasional inquiry into my availability to apply for a job working on insurance or health-care companies’ legacy EDI systems thanks to being the one-eyed man.

  2 months ago, I received the latest copy of ‘The Chess Journalist’; the quarterly magazine of the Chess Journalists of America, which awarded this Broken Pawn their 2011 Best Chess Blog Award over the other self-nominated entry, making me a one-eyed man in the world of chess blogging. This issue had the CJA award winners listed, so I took a look inside to see if my blog and name was there. Not only was it listed among all the other award winners, there was even a picture of the broken pawn you see at the top of my blog. Having had my thirst for fame satisfied, I read the rest of the magazine and the first thing I noticed was an appeal from the editor Mark Taylor for contributors to the magazine.

  I’m more comfortable waiting for everyone else to refuse to help before I volunteer, but there was something about this appeal that spoke to me. I flashed back to when I had similar problems getting contributions for the church newsletter I put together for 8 years. I also thought that it would be fun to see some of my better posts in print, without resorting to publishing my own ‘Best Of’ book. The Chess Journalist goes out to the hundred or so members of the CJA, who would be a captive audience for my blog posts and since I have plenty of posts just sitting in the archives here at the Broken Pawn I picked out 2 of my favorites (On Any Given Thursday and A Winning Weekend), and sent an email to Mr. Taylor offering to polish them up for print so he could use them in the magazine.

  I received an email from Mark the next day thanking me for my offer but mentioning that while my posts were well written, they were likely too local for a national publication. Then Taylor asked me if I would be interested in writing a column in the magazine about chess blogging. I had to stop and think about that one. I enjoy writing about chess and other things but was I ready to be writing about writing? For writers? I’d be more like the blind leading the blind instead of the one-eyed man in the land of the blind. I don’t even have any philosophical musings about blogging to share since I just write what I feel like writing about.

  Despite all my misgivings and the nagging vision in my head of being ‘Dorf on Blogging’, I decided to take Mark up on his offer and write the CJA column. If I fall on my face it wouldn’t be the first time but some of the best things I’ve ever done were the result of doing things I felt unqualified for at the time but later grew into. I wrote my first column as an introductory piece trying to point out how easy blogging is, that the subject of the blog isn’t as important as the passion brought to the subject, and my own particular hang up of sticking to a consistent schedule. I gave Mark a choice of 2 titles ‘Your Inner Blogger’ and ‘The Blogger Within’ and he chose the latter. I got the magazine last week and there was my column on page 11 in a national publication. I thought it read well and Mark put a killer masthead on top of the column that is one of the cooler pictures of me I’ve ever seen.

The heading for my column in the Chess Journalist magazine. Others may find it pretentious, but I think it's pretty cool. I especially like the fact that unlike my book 'The Adventures of Bulldog Beagle' or the 'Best Chess Blog' award, I didn't have to pay for it.

I’ve been thinking about ideas for my next column on the hour long drive back and forth to work this week and yesterday I got an email from blogger Tim Brennan of http://tacticstime.com. He told me he liked my column and offered some blogging tips that I could forward to my readers. He also mentioning I would get more of the feedback I had asked for in my article if I included my email address! (DORF on Blogging!). I checked out his site and it is beyond slick and tightly focused towards helping players improve at chess by increasing their tactical skill. Tim looks to be a real heavyweight blogger and promoter with 3,000 twitter followers and his own Facebook page for his site. I felt great knowing a guy like this enjoyed my column and I feel a lot better thinking I’m heading into this new adventure being at least the one-eyed man and not totally blind.

Stuffed for Success

2012-02-04T18:55:00.019-06:00

The Thursday before last, I had the opportunity to eat lunch at the ‘Something Italian’ restaurant in the Des Moines Skywalk with a customer from work. On Thursdays, I get into work an hour early and only have a half hour lunch so I can leave at 3:30 to go to chess club, but a working lunch made It OK to spend an extra half hour eating on a Thursday.

Timeless decoratations in the classic 'Rocky' style.

Like most restaurants in the Des Moines Skywalk, ‘Something Italian’ was a place I’d never been to, even though it is less than a mile away from work. Like most of the skywalk restaurants, it caters to the working class lunch crowd and is only open for weekday lunches, although they also do catering and parties. When I walked in the restaurant it looked like there was a real effort to be ‘Italian’. There were pictures of famous Italians on the walls and a few old pizza signs but what caught my eye was the assortment of Rocky ‘action figures’ on a couple of the shelves. Now, that’s Italian!

There was a large amount of pizzas, pastas, and sandwiches available. I knew I was going to be playing chess later in the afternoon and didn’t want to get filled up, so I decided on having a ‘Sicilian’ sandwich of Ham, Coppicola, Salami, Pepperoni, and Mozzarella on a roll with some water. The customer (who runs half-marathons in his spare time) had the house special which was a turkey sandwich, also with some water.

On the left is the stomach-friendly turkey sandwich, while the gut-busting supreme 'Sicilian' is on the right.

  I figured the sandwich would be big and I wasn’t disappointed, but as I started to eat it, I was unprepared for how greasy the sandwich was. The cold cuts were heated up on a grill with peppers and the cold cuts were coated with grease and more of the grease ran into the crusty hoagie roll. As I was eating it, I started to feel like one of those hot dog eaters on TV when they look like they’ll vomit if they stuff one more wiener down their throat. I had to take a break from eating for a bit and eventually finished the sandwich, leaving most of the peppers and bread behind. My dining companion fared much better with his turkey sandwich, which wasn’t heated and probably wasn’t very greasy anyway. While I was waiting for my stomach to make room for more greasy cold cuts, I looked around and saw several people with napkins folded up a half-inch thick sopping up grease from their pizza and sandwiches. I’ll give this restaurant 5 stars for atmosphere, but zero stars for their food. Maybe their pasta is better, but I doubt I’ll give myself a chance to find out. It was a sluggish afternoon for me at work, and then I went home to relax for a half hour before chess club. Kathy had made me a salad, but I was too full to even think about eating any food.

  I have no idea what kind of nutrition is best for playing chess, but I’ll bet a gut busting greasy Italian style sandwich isn’t on the top of the list (Here is an article from ChessBase.com on the subject). I’ve always preferred to have a light meal like toast and fruit juice before a tournament and yogurt, apples, trail mix, and apple juice during the tournament, but that’s because I’ve always read about apple juice being so easily digestible that there was no blood diverted to the stomach, leaving more blood for the brain to play chess and always brought apple juice for my kids. Most of the younger players seem to have no problem sucking down Mountain Dew or Red Bull during a tournament, while Dave the barefoot chess player brings his own concoction of red caffeinated soda type stuff. I find that too much caffeine gets me so wired up that I can’t play good chess over an extended period of time but a small cup of coffee or 2 is great for our Thursday night hour long tournaments. In the 1978 world championship match between Anatoly Karpov and Victor Korchnoi, challenger Korchnoi accused Karpov of receiving assistance in the form of coded yogurt during the games. Presumably, the color of the yogurt was to convey to the champ what his seconds thought of his position and how he should proceed. I think it is laughable that the champ would take or even want this sort of advice during a game from lesser players, however the match arbiter ruled that Karpov could only have blueberry yogurt unless special permission was granted.

  Our Thursday night chess club has been very poorly attended lately. Scott and Zack have been absent, Jerry has been working, and Jon had some hospital time and has been recuperating at home for the last 2 weeks. Only Joe from Waterloo has been braving the winter weather to come in from out of town (Joe is from Michigan and has been sneering at this year’s Iowa winter). Even Chandler’s brother, Dalton has been missing because he hasn’t been doing his math homework and his parents won’t let him go to club until it’s done. On this Thursday only Joe, Jaleb, Chandler, and me and my grease stuffed belly were at the club at 6pm for the start of our blitz tournament. Since I was the 3rd rated player I got to play Joe. Joe fell into an opening trap and I managed to beat him in a tournament game for the first time in our 6 contests. I was ready to take on Jaleb round 2 when Dalton showed up, having finished his homework, and I resumed my role as house player and sat out the rest of the tournament. Maybe all my thoughts about nutrition and chess have been wrong for 30 years and if I only had been shoveling down pizza, fried chicken, and double bacon cheeseburgers I’d have been a master chess player years ago. Eager to try out this theory, I took Kathy out to lunch on Saturday to Taco Johns and had a Stuffed Grilled Taco with an order of French Fries and a Dr. Pepper. When I got home I played 3 minute chess for a couple of hours and the results were encouraging. You might say I was 'oozing' with confidence. Here is a sampling of my games.

This past Thursday, I was sorely tempted to walk over to ‘Something Italian’ for another gut-busting, grease-laden, and possibly chess improving Sicilian sandwich but I was so busy trying to get a project done I didn’t have the time. We had the same four players for Blitz and I took on Joe again. I had a good position as White using the Boris and was a pawn up in a Bishop vs. Knight ending but then my grease-deprived body let me down and with less than half a minute on my clock I lost my bishop to Joe’s knight fork, leaving me with this position, 17 seconds, and the move. If I just play Kg6, I drive away the knight from its defense of the h pawn and with Joe’s king so far away 2 connected passed pawns and the king easily win, but without the proper lubrication, my brain seized and I could only think about trading the last pawn off to secure the draw so I played g4 and g5. I managed to beat Chandler in the next round and was ready to raid the Salvation Army pantry for something greasy to shove down my throat or mainline directly into my bloodstream for my game with Jaleb when Dalton showed up again after finishing his homework.

It really stung to give away a half a point just because my body wasn’t properly prepared, but at least I have a great idea for a best-selling chess/nutrition book. There are chess books titled ‘Boost Your Chess’, ‘Perfect Your Chess’, ‘Reassess Your Chess’,’Sharpen Your Chess’, ‘Test Your Chess’, ‘Improve Your Chess’; but they’ll have to make way on the shelves for ‘Grease Your Chess: How to Lubricate Your Game!’

Hanging on The Telephone

2012-02-01T18:38:00.006-06:00

  When the National Do Not Call List was implemented , a lot of people I knew joined immediately as some sort of protest and a way to stop getting calls during their dinner, but I never did. Most of the unwanted calls I get come from people I know who call just as soon as I start to take a nap. I have no problem hanging up on a telemarketer if I don’t want to talk, but a friend or relative is a different story. I feel obligated to talk to them and even if I tell them I was taking a nap and they hang up, it’s problematic that I’ll get back to sleep anyway. I normally don’t mind calls from telemarketers because they provide me a constant source of amusement and now this blog post.

  When I was writing shoe store software for a small company, I got a lot of offers in the mail for free computer magazines and I’d put down ‘MIS Director’ as my title on the forms. This led to me getting a lot of calls for free subscriptions to other computer magazines. I’d patiently answer all the questions from the telemarketers and then right at the end of the call when all I needed to do to confirm my subscription was say YES, I’d ask for the braille version of the magazine. I could hear the jaw drop on the other end of the phone and then I’d casually mention that I was blind and needed the braille version of the magazine in order to be able to read it. When I was told that there was no braille version, I’d try my best to sound crestfallen and say I was sorry, but there was no way I could subscribe to the magazine. It probably wasn’t very nice, but it sure felt good at the time.

  I learned a long time ago that telemarketers and customer service reps of big companies are rarely allowed to hang up the phone unless the customer hangs up first. Once I took Matt (who was all of 2 or 3 at the time) to the supermarket and he wanted some Kraft Macaroni and Cheese where the macaroni was shaped like the characters from the X-Men cartoon show. When Kathy cooked it for us, there was barely any Macaroni and Cheese for us to eat. I looked at the box a lot closer than I did at the store and it was only 5.5 ounces (printed in hard to see white against the yellow mac & cheese on the box), while the same sized box of the regular Kraft variety was 7.5 ounces (printed in black in the same position on the box).

  Luckily for me, also on the box was a ‘Satisfaction Guaranteed or your money back’ pledge and a phone number to call. I called the number at work during my lunchtime one day and was greeted by a customer service rep who said he would be happy to help me. I explained my dissatisfaction with my 5.5 ounces of Mac & Cheese in a 7.5 ounce box and said I wanted my dollar back (I bought 2 boxes for 50 cents each) like the box guaranteed. The rep told me that he couldn’t give me my money back just because I was unhappy with the portion in the box. I read him the pledge on the box and noted that it did not say ‘Satisfaction Guaranteed unless you were dissatisfied with the small portion in the half-empty box’. This went on for a few minutes and the customer service rep finally told me there was nothing he could do for me and if there was nothing else he could help me with, I could hang up. That’s when I realized he couldn’t hang up on me! I said “I would like my dollar back, please.” and that’s all I said for the next 15 minutes of repeated attempts to get me to hang up and awkward silences until I was transferred to a lady who took my name and address and told me I would get my dollar in a few weeks. Luckily, I had a speaker phone! A few weeks later I received a check for a dollar in addition to a packet of coupons for fine Kraft products.

  I’ve used this technique of repeating a simple request over and over whenever I have a customer service complaint and I don’t think the rep is allowed to hang up on me. One time the GM card people deactivated my card when I tried to buy my two boys a membership to the Internet Chess Club. I didn’t know 2 online transactions for the same amount was such a red flag and didn’t pay much attention when I had to use a different card for the second membership. I didn’t find out about the deactivation until 2 weeks later when I tried to use my GM card in a GM dealership to pay for an oil change for my GM car. My GM card was rejected, the clerks treated me like a loser, and I had to use another card while the clerk called it in to make sure I wasn’t using a stolen card. When I got back to work, my wife called to tell me that the GM card people had just called to say they had put a hold on my card 2 weeks prior. I called the GM card company and read them the riot act for making me look like a GM deadbeat at a GM dealership. No one could give me a reasonable explanation as to why I wasn’t told my card had been put on hold and as soon as I realized the rep I was talking to didn’t have any answers, I’d say the magic words, “I’d like to speak to your supervisor, please.” The fourth supervisor put me on hold for 20 minutes, and then told me it was just a mistake and they were very sorry and then asked if there was anything else he could do for me. I told him “Yes, I’d like $50 for my trouble”. He told me over and over that they couldn’t give me $50, but at this point I knew he couldn’t hang up so I kept repeating myself. After 20 more minutes I got a $25 credit to my account because I was such a loyal customer (and I asked to be connected to the division where I could cancel my card). Of course, this was before GM went broke and couldn’t afford $25.

  My favorite telemarketing call came when my sister-in-law and her daughter were visiting from Missouri to see Matt graduate high school last May. The phone rang and I saw on the Caller Id that it was the National Rifle Association calling. I put the phone on speaker and when the telemarketer introduced himself and told me he was calling for the NRA, I said in my best ‘Borat’ voice “YES, I would like 2 rifles very much, thank you!!” The telemarketer told me he didn’t sell rifles and I asked him “And you are call for who?”, whereupon he said he was calling on behalf of the National Rifle Association and I would try to order the rifles again. This went on for about 5 minutes with me mixing in the occasional question about how many people I could shoot and how far away I had to be with NRA rifles until our guests started laughing too loudly and the telemarketer realized he was being pranked on and starting laughing along with us.

  A couple of weeks ago I got a call from Wells Fargo. It wasn’t really from Wells Fargo, just from a company they sold my number to. The representative was trying to sell me Accidental Death and Dismemberment insurance. I asked if I could get a special rate on the Dismemberment Insurance since both my legs had been amputated. The rep didn’t even have to think about it, but instead told me that the insurance was still a great deal and after all, I still had my arms, fingers, and toes that were eligible. I reminded her that my legs were amputated and that I had no toes, but there was still no discount. By this time, Kathy was giving me the evil eye and it was getting time to walk Daisy and Baxter so I played my final gambit to get a dismemberment discount from the rep. I told her I was scheduled to have surgery to have one of my arms removed and what kind of discount could I get then? There was still no discount so I sadly hung up and went for a walk with Kathy and the beagles.

  Someday the telemarketers will have their own ‘Do Not Call’ list and I’m sure I’ll be on it. I’ll probably never notice all the missed calls, but I’m sure I’ll miss the fun of getting even with the telemarketers and customer service reps of the world.

Super Thoughts

2012-01-29T13:38:00.004-06:00

  The Tata Steel chess tournament in Wijk ann Zee, Holland just ended with a resounding victory by Armenian Levon Aronian, who won 7 of his 13 games while losing only 2. Despite beating Aronian in their individual encounter, world ranked #1 Magnus Carlsen couldn’t keep up the pace and could win only 4 games against 1 loss enroute to tying for second place with the Azerbaijani Radjabov (the only undefeated player) and former American now Italian Fabiano Caruana. Defending champion Hikaru Nakamura of America shook off a slow start to go unbeaten after his round 2 loss to Aronian and finish tied for fifth. It was a super performance by Aronian, who will now play a match with former champion Kramnik in April as both prepare for the upcoming candidate matches of the next World Championship cycle.

  Now that the first super-GM chess tournament of the year is over, I can turn my attention to the Super Bowl, which is a rematch of the 2008 contest between the Giants and the Patriots. I ran into my friend Dennis at the Hy-Vee drug store yesterday. I hadn’t had a chance to talk to him in a couple of months. Dennis is a huge Packers fan and was still upset over their playoff loss at the hands of the Giants 2 weeks ago. I thought the Packers were going to repeat last year’s championship and even predicted it a few weeks ago, but they ran into a hot Giants team that was playing their 3rd playoff game in 3 weeks (including the season finale against the Cowboys in which the winner was in the playoffs as the NFC East champion).

  The Giants haven’t had much of a defense until the last few weeks, but the one thing they can do well is hurry the quarterback and even the best quarterbacks can look ordinary when they don’t have time to look over the field and make an unhurried throw. Packer QB Aaron Rodgers did not play up to his superhuman standards, but played well enough to win the game if the rest of the team had stepped up. Without an all-world performance from their all-world quarterback, the Packers weren’t able to overcome their receiver’s continual habit of dropping passes, and weren’t helped by their 4 turnovers (including a fumble and interception by Rodgers). Despite all their problems, the Packers were only losing 13-10 with 10 seconds left in the half, but their defense botched the Giant’s desperation pass on the last play of the first half and found themselves down 20-10 at halftime.

  I’m still not sure how the Giants managed to win the NFC championship game against the 49ers on Sunday. The 49er defense is of championship quality and their offense was top notch against the Saints, but except for allowing a couple of TD passes to All-Pro tight end Vernon Davis, the Giant Defense held the 49ers in check and were bailed out by 2 late game punt-return fumbles by Kyle Williams to escape with a 20-17 overtime victory.

  The Giants seem to be a team of destiny, replaying the same script as the Super Bowl champs of 4 years ago by barely slipping into the playoffs, beating Green Bay on the road, and winning the NFC Championship in overtime on the road. They are even playing the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl, albeit a 15-3 team and not the 18-0 version chasing immortality as last time. The Patriots looked quite pedestrian in barely getting past a Baltimore Ravens team that self-destructed in the final minute when Lee Evans failed to secure the winning touchdown pass (allowing it to be knocked out of his hands) and Iowa native Billy Cundiff missed a short game-tying field goal in the closing seconds.

  The odds makers are saying the Patriots are a 3 point favorite in the big game, but the sports experts I hear on the radio are split between the two teams. The Giants are the last team to have beaten the Patriots with a 24-20 win in New England in Week 8 of the regular season. The conventional wisdom favoring the Giants is not only are the Giants the team of destiny, the Patriots defense is suspect at best. I saw the Patriots get crushed by the Steelers and lose to the Giants in the last minute, but I also saw them beat Broncos and Ravens in the playoffs and I think that their defense is much improved from earlier in the season.

  Football games are often compared to chess matches. Most of the time I think it’s a stupid analogy. In chess, both players start with the same number and types of pieces and everything is out in the open, the winner being the one who ‘sees’ more than their opponent. In football, the teams have differing strengths and weaknesses and deception plays a huge role as both sides use personnel groupings and formations to disguise their plans and create mismatches. But in this case, the chess analogy seems to hold truer to me. New England coach Bill Belichick and Giants coach Tom Coughlin worked together when they were members of Bill Parcells' Giant staff of the late 80’s and they have a familiarity with each other’s styles. And since the teams have already played each other, I’m not sure either side will be able to spring too many surprises on each other, so like a chess game the winner will be who can best use the forces at their command.

  I’ve been wrong on almost every sports prediction I’ve ever made on this blog, but that won’t stop me from making a prediction. I think the Patriots are the slightly better team and that Belichick will be able to take away the Giants pass rush with quick passes, while on defense the Patriots massive tackles will stop the Giants running game without help and be able to load the defense with pass defenders. If the teams played 11 times, I’d expect the Patriots to win 6 times to the Giants 5, but since they will only play once, I'm picking the Patriots to not only win but cover the spread 28-24, but since I'm a lifelong Giants fan, I'd like nothing better than to be wrong.

The Numbers Game

2012-01-25T19:19:00.008-06:00

  In organized chess, players are given numerical ratings by whatever governing body is in charge of the rating system for said organization. Ratings are a gauge of relative strength of chess players. In America, the United States Chess Federation (USCF) is in charge of assigning ratings for all players in USCF tournaments, The British Chess Federation is in charge of England’s rating system, and FIDE assigns international ratings. I have 3 USCF ratings: a 1663 rating for quick chess play (game in under 60 minutes), a 1706 rating for long play (game over 30 minutes) and a 1591 rating for extremely slow play by email or postal mail. I also have 8 ratings from the Internet Chess Club for games in 1 minute, 2 minute, bullet, blitz, standard, 5-minute, and other chess variants. In addition to these ratings, I have a rating on chess.com, my Tactics trainer iPod app, and a host of other tactic servers. Ratings are a source of pride for some chess players, and embarrassment for others, and an obsession for most.

  At my Des Moines youth chess tournaments, I have a rated and an unrated section. The thought of getting a rating fascinates many of the unrated players and on Saturday one of them asked me what ratings meant. I explained a bit about the numbers, but I made sure to close my discussion by saying that a rating is where you’ve been, not where you’re going and except for 2 people everyone has a worse rating (not exactly true since plenty of people have the minimum USCF rating of 100) than some and a better rating than others. And at least 3 times every tournament, a rated player will ask me what I think their rating will be after the tournament. There's just something about having this little number next to your name that appeals to chess players.

  When I say ratings can be an obsession, I mean it. When I’m at a tournament and a player pulls of a big upset, they rarely say ‘I beat Sam’ or ‘I beat Johnny’, instead they say ‘I beat an 1800!’ and most players don’t talk about losing to Billy, rather bemoaning how they lost to a 1100. I used to get upset when I lost rating points, but after watching my blitz rating oscillate over the last couple of years I’ve come to the realization that when my rating is low I gain a few more points (or lose a few less) from tournaments than when my rating is high (and the inverse is true when my rating is high) so my rating at any given point is much less important than how I’m playing. Whenever anyone starts telling me about their latest rating swing, I mention this. It normally makes the player who has just lost a lot of points feel better (and sometimes enrages the player who has just gained a lot of points and now feels belittled). The math and logic is indisputable, but I wonder if it is just a coincidence that I’ve only played in one regular rated tournament since I cracked the 1700 rating mark in 2009?

  The USCF and FIDE ratings are based on the calculations of Arpad Elo, a Hungarian immigrant. The theory behind the ratings are used from everything from table tennis to role playing card games (you can find the math here). There are a few cracks in the USCF rating system that lead to rating inflation. To prevent players from artificially lowering their ratings in order to get cash prizes, the USCF instituted rating floors. With a rating floor, a players rating can never fall 200 points below their highest rating rounded down to the hundreds. For example, a player rated 1865 can never have their rating drop to below 1600 unless they petition the USCF for a lower rating. Rating floors are also assigned when a large cash prize is won for winning a prize for a certain rating. For example, when Iowa player Tim Crouse won a huge cash prize for the best score under an 1800 rating at a big tournament in Chicago, he was assigned a rating floor of 1800 by the USCF to prevent him from winning another big under 1800 prize in the future.

  While rating floors are useful to protect the integrity of cash prizes, they lead to rating inflation when a player’s strength doesn’t match his floor due to age or simply not playing at the floored rating obtained from winning a large cash prize. When a player at his or her rating floor is in a slump and not playing at their rating level, lower rated players who defeat thenm gain rating points while the losing player's rating stays at their floor. The net effect is an increase in the total pool of rating points, leading to the inflation. Another cause of rating inflation is the bonus afforded to players who get a perfect score in a tournament.

  It isn’t uncommon for a player at my Marshalltown Thursday Night blitz tournaments to have a big day and gain a hundred points or more in a day. For example, on the January 5th tournament, Jerry Mason (rated 1155), won all 3 of his games against players rated 1087, 1304, and 1732 respectively. It was a great performance and Jerry’s rating shot up to 1324, a gain of 169 points, but the rest of the playing field lost 24 points combined. This means 145 points of Jerry’s rating increase didn’t come at the expense of the other players, but was just added to the system. This made me curious and I added the before and after ratings of all Thursday Night Blitz tournaments and found an increase of 4,453 rating points in the 106 tournaments since September 2009. For my technically-inclined readers, I’ll note that I did not include provisional ratings (the USCF counts ratings as provisional until 25 games have been played and allows the ratings to increase and decrease at a higher rate than non-provisional ratings) in this total.

  I researched the tournaments that caused the most disparities and they were all like Jerry’s big January 5th tournament. One player had a great tournament and gained a hundred rating points or more, but not at the expense of the other players. And when these lucky players came back to earth and lost some of their rating points back, the points tend to go to the other Marshalltown players because our blitz tournaments include a lot of the same players week after week. This ‘closed-loop’ effect was seen most clearly in the case of chess player (and convicted murderer) Claude Bloodgood, who attained a 1996 rating of 2700 (second in the country at the time) while only playing in prison tournaments.

  The main use I have for ratings is to keep the top players at tournaments I run from playing each other in the early going. Win TD (the pairing software I use) does this automatically for rated tournaments, but I’ve been having problems with my unrated tournaments. Since the players don’t have ratings, Win TD pairs the players randomly and sometimes will pair the best two players in the first round or give the defending champion a first round bye in case of an odd number of players. Because I have all the results in a database, I was able to spend some time on Sunday noodling around with various rating formulas to try to solve this and I discarded all my attempts as flawed. But when I started looking to see if I could ape the USCF system, I found it was nearly as flawed as anything I was coming up with and hundreds of times harder to implement.

  I’ve settled on an ‘unrated’ rating system that will take the winning percentage of a player’s latest 5 tournaments within the past 12 months scaled to 100, give a 5 point bonus for each tournament win, and add a point for each game played. The ratings will top out at 140 to 150 for a player who wins their last 5 tournaments and the lowest a player can have is a rating of 1 (playing only one game and losing it). I’m not sure if I’m going to let the players see their ratings since they will look low compared to the USCF ratings which start at 100, but I’m inclined to not only let the players see the ratings, but publish them on the Internet. After all, who doesn’t want to see that little number next to their name.

Spread the Word

2012-01-22T16:08:00.027-06:00

On Thursday I got an email from the IASCA scholastic director asking me what my plans were for a summer chess camp and would I like him to include it in his broadcast email? The last time the IASCA sent out a broadcast email concerning my chess activities, it was to recommend that people not go to my November tournament, so I curtly declined the invitation to spread the word. This led to another email from the IASCA scholastic director telling me he was trying to do me a favor in November because a lot of chess parents and the IASCA board members were so upset by my having the tournament in Des Moines on the same day as the IASCA Cedar Rapids tournament in November that he felt he had to mention it to stop all the negative talk about me and my tournament, but that it was a mistake to mention my tournament that way.

I guess I can accept this explanation. After all, nobody’s perfect, especially me. And since one of my little imperfections is to hold onto my grudges like a kid holds on to their first chess trophy, I’ve had as little as possible to do with the IASCA over the last couple of months and that’s not going to change anytime soon. I can't control what other people say or do, but I can take care of the things I can take care of, like making sure I have my own means to spread the word about my chess tournaments and other chess activities. Because of my www.centraliowachess.com website, I have a place to post my news articles and upcoming tournaments and thanks to Ben Tessman’s advice, the site is already on the front page of the Google searches for Iowa chess. Sometimes I wish I was the type to just not tell the families who come to my tournaments about the scholastic tournaments the IASCA puts on, but that’s not one of my imperfections.

Even in this age of the Internet, Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc…, I think email is the best way to let people know about chess tournaments and that word of mouth remains the best way to grow attendance at chess tournaments, especially in Iowa. Maybe in a densely populated area like New Jersey it would pay to advertise in Chess Life, but not in Iowa where there are only a few hundred people who are USCF members and even get the magazine. I like to send out an email a few weeks before each of my tournaments to let the parents know about it and then I wait and see. It’s always kind of depressing the first couple of days after I send out the emails because I get more UNSUBSCRIBE emails than signups, but as the week goes on, I feel better as the signups start to come in.

Yesterday I had my 13th straight monthly family Des Moines chess tournament at St. Francis. I got the date set up last month and I found out during the first chess club of the year that the local Cub Scout troop was having their pinewood derby at St. Francis on the morning of the tournament. I knew that was going to depress attendance in the morning, but since this was my 5th straight month with the morning and afternoon tournaments, any chess players that participated in the morning pinewood’s derby (or the basketball games being played in the gym next door) were just a minute or two away from the afternoon chess tournament if they cared to play.

The morning tournament had 23 youth and 6 parents playing, about an average number if a bit on the smallish side. I was on target for another 30 players in the afternoon, but on Friday I picked up another 10 players and when the expected snowstorm didn’t dump the predicted 4 to 6 inches in Des Moines, another half dozen players showed up to play. After recruiting some siblings and parents to give me an even number of players for all the sections, I ended up with 52 players in the afternoon for a total of 81 players with 12 playing all day (including me, because I got to play a game in the parents section!).

It was a great day of chess and while I was busy, I still had more than enough time to meet a lot of parents who had recently signed up to help with the clubs at their schools. They were asking me about starting chess clubs, instructing beginning players, and how would they know when the kids were ready for unrated tournaments. Some of the parents of the successful players in the unrated tournaments asked me when they should get their players into the rated tournaments. I told them to leave it up to the child and offered my assessment of what their rating would be when they started playing in the rated tournaments. The only big problem I had was with my new additions of trophy prizes for the unrated players. I had been giving them first through fifth place labels to put on their participation medals, but since September I’ve had more unrated players than rated players so I decided to add trophies to the unrated players prizes. A very talented 7-year old from St. Francis had a great morning unrated tournament (winning 3 out of 5 games), but he finished tied for fourth place and missed out on the last trophy by tiebreak. He thought he was going to get the trophy and was really upset when he didn’t. I’ve seen this enough with my kids and plenty of others to know that the bad feelings won't last, but it didn’t make me feel any better to see it yesterday. I had debated whether I should lower the unrated entry fee rather than ramping up the pressure by introducing trophies, but in the end I think the trophies are modest enough that it won’t lead to too many hard feelings.

This was a unique tournament in that there were only 5 players that came from outside the Des Moines metro area. I had about a dozen new players, who were all told about the tournament by existing players or Jose Gatica, the professional chess teacher who works at all the other Catholic schools except St. Francis. One of the new players was Ronaldo Enamorado. The reason I mention Ronaldo is to illustrate the circuitous path by which he ended up playing chess in West Des Moines yesterday.

Twice a year I send an email to all the schools within 3 counties of Des Moines to let them know about my tournaments. I rarely get any responses, but last January I got an email from Kelly Haase, the chess club advisor at Carlisle Middle School asking about the tournaments. Kelly let her club know about the tournament and her top player, Mathew Hintz, came to play in the unrated tournament last January. In February, Matt brought Sean Urban from the Carlisle Chess Club to play in the tournament. By April, Matt and Sean had both purchased USCF memberships and were playing in the rated tournaments. When I was setting up the chess camp for July, I let the parents know that I needed a nurse at the camp and was offering a discounted camp fee for the child of a nurse who would monitor the camp. Sean’s mom knew the Carlisle school nurse, Julie Reed, whose son Alex liked to play chess. Alex and Sean came to the camp and Alex started playing in the rated tournaments. Alex’s parents told a friend of theirs, Dell Spence, about the chess tournaments and last month Dell brought his 2 sons Seylan and Kylan to play in the unrated section. And this month Dell brought Ronaldo to play in the unrated section. And that is how Ronaldo Enamorado came to play chess in West Des Moines on January 21st, 2012. All because I sent a letter to a school in late 2010 and 4 different players liked the tournaments enough to get a friend to play. Now that’s what I call word of mouth!!

And if I keep taking care of the things I can take care of, namely providing a positive fun family chess experience, it's only a matter of time before Ronaldo brings a friend, too!

Made in America

2012-01-18T06:10:00.009-06:00

  The first super GM chess tournament of 2012 started on Saturday in Wijk aan Zee, Holland. This tournament is sponsored by Tata Steel and has the unique format of 3 14 players groups (A, B, and C) playing in a 13 round tournament. The ‘A’ section features 12 of the 21 top ranked players in the world along with Dutch player Loek Van Wely and last year’s champion of the ‘B’ tournament, Czech David Navara.

  Going into the tournament, the favorites were world numbers 1 and 2 Magnus Carlsen and Levon Aronian, and the defending champion Hikaru Nakamura of the United States. Nakamura made a big splash by winning last year’s Tata Steel tournament. It was the biggest tournament victory from a homegrown US player in at least 20 years. While there have been plenty of victories by US chess players in recent years, they have all been by émigrés from the eastern bloc countries who were already world class chess players when they arrived in the US, while Nakamura has lived in the US since he was 2 years old after being born in Japan.

  Nakamura has gotten off to a rocky start in the defense of his title, with 3 draws (2 as White) and a loss as Black to Aronian in the first 4 rounds to share next to last place. Nakamura’s results have been very erratic lately (last place at the Tal Memorial in November and a clear second in the London Chess Classic in December), so a comeback is still possible. Since winning at Wijk aan Zee last year, Nakamura was expected by many to challenge Carlsen for the top spot in the world rankings, especially once word got out that his sponsor (billionaire chess benefactor Rex Sinquefeld) had arranged for training with Garry Kasparov (the highest rated player of all time) prior to his victory. Carlsen had trained with Kasparov in 2010 before gaining the world number one ranking. Nakamura’s training with Kasparov came to an end sometime last year and probably not very amicably, with Nakamura saying that Kasparov’s main strength was getting good positions out of the openings and that other players were better than him in middlegames and endings. Carlsen said much the same thing, only much more delicately, even though as the top rated player in the world he would have the authority to take a swipe at Kasparov. Even if it true, by pointing it out publicly Nakamura is showing off his immaturity, although at 24 he is almost middle aged when compared to the top 20 players in the world.

  When chess players from the Eastern Bloc emigrated to the US en masse in the late 70s and early 80’s, there was a concern that an entire generation of talented young American grandmasters was being shut out of the already meager prize funds. To a certain extent this has been the case, but given the opportunities available outside the chess world in America, most of the homegrown US chess talent has always found their way to other professions upon reaching college age. In any event, enough homegrown American players have become able to make their way as professional chess players to be competitive in the US Championships, winning around 40% of championships held since 1990. It doesn’t bother me when chess players from other countries come to the US and dominate the national chess scene, but I have to admit I have a lot more national pride when home grown players represent our country instead of imports.

  Many of the foreign players have also had a difficult time making a living by playing chess and turned to teaching chess as a way to make a living. I wondered if this would lead to an increase in elite homegrown chess players. After a generation progress has been noticeable but slow. The huge push for chess in schools has led to exposure for many children who would never have seen a chessboard in years past and this has led to a huge increase in higher rated youngsters. For example the 100th rated 10 year old in the US is rated 1496, but when Matt cracked the top 100 list as an 10 year old in 2003, his rating was 1319 and he was in the 50's, not at the tail end of the list. There has been an increase in the number of strong young players, but I wondered if this increase has filtered through to the top levels of chess. I grabbed a list of the top 200 players by FIDE (international chess) rating born after 1991 and there were 9 Americans on the list. This is tied for 5th with Hungary and Spain behind Russia (37), China (14), India(14), and Ukraine(13). FIDE records only are available since 2009 so I have no idea whether 9 is high or low, but I suspect the US is underrepresented on the list since the USCF has its own rating system and very few US tournaments are internationally rated.

  Immigration is a hot topic in Marshalltown, Iowa and whenever someone rails to me about the large number of Hispanics that come to town (perhaps illegally) to work in the meat packing plant, I mention that I’ll worry when people don’t want to come to this country, illegally or not. It may be time for me to worry. When I was researching this post, I noticed that the foreign players at the top of the US ratings lists are the same ones that have been on these lists for years and years except for Alejandro Ramirez, a recent arrival from Costa Rica. This means that not only are the top Russian players not coming to America any more, the US isn’t a place of destination for the top chess players from China, India, South America or anywhere else in the world. And it gets even worse for the USA. When I printed out the FIDE list of the top 200 born after 1991, the top name on the list is Fabiano Caruana. Caruana is playing in Wijk aan Zee under the Italian flag, but is a homegrown American player, learning chess in New York in the 1990s. Because his mother was an Italian citizen, Caruana has Italian citizenship. He moved with his family to Europe in 2004 and hasn’t played in the United States since 2008.

  Not only is America not attracting the chess players from other countries, we can’t even retain the best of our home grown players. If this is happening in chess, I’m sure it’s happening in all professions and a clear sign that our country has lost a lot of its attractiveness to the rest of the world.

Foot on the Gas

2012-01-15T11:54:00.008-06:00

Like most offers, this credit card that gives 5 cents per galllon back comes with strings attached.

  Iowa Republicans won control of the Governor’s mansion and House on a platform of lower taxes and less government along with the obligatory nod to social issues like abortion and gay marriage. Since the Iowa Democrats still controlled the Senate, core Democrat issues have been protected from even coming to a vote in the Senate. A bill to allow a vote to change the Iowa constitution to ban gay marriage has been blocked by the Democrats as well as a bill to block late-term abortions. A bill to make changes to the state’s collective bargaining law passed the Iowa House but was not able to come up for a vote in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

  I don’t have a problem with the Democrats blocking legislation they don’t like. After all, that’s their job. And I don’t have an issue with the Republicans vilifying the Democrats for blocking legislation. After all, that’s their job. But when these guys all start working together, it probably doesn’t mean anything good for me. This week, both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have predicted that the Legislature will pass an increase in the gas tax. The proposed tax increase will get $50 million in savings from the Department of Transportation this year and then raise $264 million dollars over the next 2 years (and $176 million a year thereafter) by raising the taxes on diesel fuel and gasoline by 4 cents a year over the next 2 years. This money is to be used to fund the increase in road construction costs. Even Governor Branstad, who said he would not approve an increase in the gas tax earlier this year has come to an about face on the issue by suggesting that he would be open to a future increase.

   As someone who drives 30 thousand miles a year to go to work, I understand the need to have well maintained roads as much as anyone, but raising the money to maintain the roads by taxing gasoline makes no sense to me. Governments never consider funding school improvements by taxing families with children because they consider education to be in the public interest. Aren’t well maintained roads in the public interest? Well maintained roads benefit the entire state, not just motorists. When people travel to Des Moines, Ames, Iowa City, etc. for sporting events, concerts, and shopping the benefits are felt by all the businesses, restaurants, and stores in the area but they don’t pay a dime for the roads these customers use to get to them.

  I don’t mind paying my fair share but this tax is an undue burden on me. Why should all the people who have electric cars get a free pass from paying for maintaining the roads? And what about all the pedestrians, bicyclists, skateboarders, etc… ? Aren’t they using the roads? A car that gets 25 miles a gallon will pay 1/3 of a cent per mile under this tax. Let’s start taxing shoes, skateboards, and bicycle tires for using our roads at that same rate.

  Aside from the prejudicial nature of the gas tax, how is it that the Republican who proclaim themselves to be against taxes are open to this particular tax increase? Because the increase won’t take effect until next year (after this year’s election). They are gambling that the people who voted them in power because of their low-tax stances won’t remember that it was these same Republicans that raised the gas tax over a year ago. I imagine the $50 million dollars in savings requested from the Department of Transportation will come in the nature of a low interest loan on the future gas tax revenues. I’m even suspicious of the timing of the announcement of the prediction. If this tax increase had come out a few weeks ago during the caucus, I’m sure the candidates would have noted their disapproval for new taxes, but now that the national attention is off the state, it is business as usual for the local politicians. I’d much rather see the Republicans follow through on their tax promises than their vows to put an end to gay marriage in the state. I’m no fan of gay marriage, but it has been almost 2 years since the courts imposed it and I haven’t noticed any great increase in the moral depravity of the state or seen any fire and brimstone raining down from the skies.

  Speaking of gasoline, when I went to the Jiffy yesterday to fill up all ticked off at the prospect of having to pay more for gas when the new taxes hit, there was a new sign on the pump letting me know that I could get 5 cents off a gallon by merely using my Phillips 66 credit card (which I’d have to apply for). I wasn’t interested in getting 5 cents off each gallon since my discover card gives me 5% cashback on gas (which works out to at least 15 cents a gallon), but since there was so much fine print I had to investigate the offer more closely. The first thing I noticed was that you had to buy 45 gallons a month to get 5 cents back on any gallon and that the offer was only good for the first 110 gallons bought any month, so the total savings in any month would be limited to $5.50. Not exactly Brewster’s Millions. I’m sure every little bit helps, but anyone who buys 45 gallons of gas a month should be getting a better deal.

  I’ve been stepping on the gas at the last 3 Marshalltown Thursday night blitz chess tournaments, winning 5 games with a loss and a draw. I’d dropped 30 points from my recent all time high rating with losses to Dave the Barefoot Chess Player and 2 losses to Joe from Waterloo in early December and was playing poorly while losing, but 2 weeks ago I got lucky and won a game off last year’s blitz champion in a comedy of errors. That piece of luck seemed to turn around my fortunes. Even though in the very next game I lost to my son Matt (who was home from college on winter break), I played a good tough game before losing a pawn to a trick set by the better player. Last week, I won my first 2 games (including a rare pasting of Jerry, last week’s tournament winner) and got to square off against Joe Meyer from Waterloo in the final round. I had White, played the Boris (1.d4, 2.f4) and we had a wild position with both sides attacking on opposite sides of the board. I managed to win a Rook for a Knight and Pawn and got to this position:
  Right here Joe offered me a draw and I immediately accepted. Why? I had 80 seconds compared to Joe’s 3 minutes and 2 moves before Joe had completely surprised me by forking my Queen and Rook with his Knight. Luckily I had an escape to keep both my pieces, but my confidence was a lot lower than it was before he surprised me. Once we agreed to the draw, Joe and Jaleb started showing me how I could have traded Queens with Qb3+ and won the game. I didn’t dispute their analysis, but was still satisfied with the result of the game. It looked like an easy win when they were going over it, but when I played it against the computer, I not only didn’t win, I was losing a lot. Maybe I could have outplayed Joe in the endgame with 80 seconds on my clock, but in this case I’m glad I took my foot off the gas.

Over his dead body

2012-01-10T20:27:00.018-06:00

  Last month, longtime Chicago Cub third baseman and broadcaster Ron Santo was elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame by the ‘Old-Timers’ committee, receiving 15 of the 16 committee votes (12 were needed for passage). I think Santo’s selection is well deserved. In his prime, he was the best third basemen in the National League. Santo’s statistics don’t measure up to today’s players despite playing in hitter-friendly Wrigley Field, but in the 60’s and early 70's his 25 to 30 home runs and 90+ RBI’s put him in the top 10 of the league and in the All-Star game every year.

  When a baseball player is retired for 5 years, they are eligible to be selected to the Hall of Fame by the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) if 75% of the membership votes for selection. From 1980 to 1998, Santo never got even 50% of the votes from the BBWAA, topping out at 43% in his last year of eligibility in 1998. Santo also was passed over by the ‘Old-Timers’ committee in 2002, 2005, and 2008 before this years’ induction. After all these years of rejection from the baseball writers and the old-timers committee, why did Ron Santo finally get into the Hall of Fame this year? Simple, He died in December, 2010.

  Aside from being a great ball player, Santo was an inspiration to many by being one of the first athletes to openly acknowledge he had diabetes, an entertaining radio broadcaster for the Cubs with his frequent groans of agony as the Cubs would lose yet another game while building on their current streak of 100+ years without a World Series title and 60+ years without even a World Series appearance, and was a beacon of courage as he continued to broadcast even after his legs were amputated in 2001 and 2002.

  Except for his death what exactly changed in the 30 years since Santo first became eligible? I almost think there was a grudge against him. Having denied Santo his lifelong dream of making the Hall of Fame while he was still alive, couldn’t the old-timers committee find any living people worthy of being in the Hall of Fame? The whole think seems kind of stupid to me. The old-timers committee could have waited another 30 years to vote Santo in and he’d have still been dead. It makes me glad that Phil Rizzuto got to enjoy being a Hall of Famer while he was alive. Of course, if Rizzuto had only lived to 70 like Santo (instead of 89), he would have been 10 years too late.

  One reason I’m happy about Santo’s election to the Hall of Fame is that it enhances the candidacy of one of the great Yankees my youth (the 1970's), Graig Nettles. Like Santo, Nettles played in the pre-steroids era when 30 home runs were considered the mark of a power hitter and not the sign of an incompetent pharmacist. Nettles didn’t have the career consistency of Santo, but he was a feared power hitter, leading the league in homers in 1976 and was easily the best fielding 3rd baseman of the 1970s even though Brooks Robinson‘s scrapbook won the Gold Glove awards.

  Santo played on the Cubs teams of the late 60’s and early 70’s which featured 4 Hall of Famers (Santo, Ernie Banks, Fergie Jenkins, and Billy Williams). With all this Hall of Fame talent, the Cubs never won the National League pennant or even a division of the National League. That group of players never played in a playoff game. Not one. By comparison, Nettles played on the 1976 Yankee World Series teams with only one Hall of Famer (Catfish Hunter) and 3 Yankee World Series teams with 2 Hall of Famers (Hunter (77) Goose Gossage (78,81) and Reggie Jackson). Just so you don’t think I’m pushing Nettles solely because of his Yankee heritage, in 1984 when Nettles was traded to the San Diego Padres at the age of 40, the Padres got to the World Series for the first time in their history with 2 Hall of Famers (Gossage and Tony Gwynn). Clearly these teams are short of Hall of Famers and I believe Nettles is the man who is missing. There’s a huge difference between being a great player on teams that win nothing and being a great player for teams that are expected to win it all. I don’t have to wonder how Santo would have performed in the crucible of a pennant race because in his only real pennant race (1969) his production shriveled in August and September as he led the Cubs to blowing a 9 game lead to the Mets over the last 2 months of the season. Compare that to Nettles 1978 season when he was at his best over the last 2 months of the year to help the Yankees erase the filthy Red Sox’s 14 game lead and win the division. Given the anti-Yankee bias in the Hall of Fame (Nettles never got even 10% of the votes from the BBWAA), I doubt Nettles will ever get his due as the best American League third baseman of the 1970’s, but if he does I hope he’s alive to enjoy it.

  What got me started on this Hall of Fame kick? The news that the old Giant coach Bill Parcells was selected as a finalist to the NFL Hall of Fame. Parcells won 2 Super Bowls with the Giants, went to another one with the Patriots, and got to the playoffs as the coach of the Jets and Cowboys, but I never thought of Parcells as Hall of Fame material. He was a great coach with the Giants, but I never considered him the equal of Redskins coach Joe Gibbs and 49er coach Bill Walsh, who both won 3 Super Bowls over a 10 year stretch encompassing Parcells 2 Super Bowl runs. I felt Parcells best coaching job was the 1990 Giants who gutted out playoff wins against the 49ers and Bills with backup quarterback Jeff Hostetler to win the Super Bowl, but he also had some underachieving teams and failed to win a single playoff game in the 4 years between Giant Super Bowls. Once he left the Giants, Parcells showed he knew how to build veteran laden teams that would be able to get into the playoffs and maybe even win a game or 2. Inevitably, Parcells would get into a fight with his owners and leave them with an old team that would have to be rebuilt with younger players.

  Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge Parcells fan. The Giants were a laughing stock until Parcells, GM George Young, Lawrence Taylor, and Phil Simms showed up and turned the team into winners and champions. I just never thought of Parcells as a Hall of Famer… That is, until I decided to go to the Hall of Fame website and see what coaches were enshrined as Hall of Famers. I saw many of the names I’d expect to see from my lifetime of watching football; names like Gibbs, Walsh, Vince Lombardi, Tom Landry, Chuck Noll, and Don Shula. Of all these coaches, only Shula and Landry won 2 championships like Parcells, but they also took their teams to the Super Bowl at least 5 times each. I don’t feel Parcells belongs in this top shelf of coaches, but he certainly belonged on the next shelf with coaches like Hank Stram and John Madden who won one Super Bowl each.

  This made Parcells a marginal Hall of Fame coach in my mind, but then I got down on my hands and knees to check out the bottom shelf of Hall of Fame coaches and found George Allen, Marv Levy, and Bud Grant. Between the 3 of them they were in the Super Bowl 9 times and lost 9 Super Bowls. I remember Allen from his coaching the Washington Redskins in the 70’s. He took over the team that was recovering from the death of Vince Lombardi , brought in a bunch of veteran players, proclaimed the catchy phrase ‘The Future is Now’ , made the playoffs almost every year, went to the Super Bowl in his second year and never won another playoff game. Levy was famous for losing 4 super bowls in a row in the early 90’s. I understand that getting to the Super Bowl is a great accomplishment, and to get a team to go back to the super bowl 3 times after being stopped one game short of the championship is the mark of a great coach, but a Hall of Famer? Grant was in the same boat as the coach of the Minnesota Vikings, having a team good enough to lose 4 lopsided Super Bowls.

  Levy, Allen, and Grant were fine coaches, but I’d like to think a Hall of Fame should be for the best of the best instead of candidates for ‘The Biggest Loser’. If these are Hall of Fame coaches, I can only wonder why Parcells wasn’t selected a long time ago and I hope he makes it this year so he can enjoy it while he’s alive.

  I don't have a 'Broken Pawn Hall of Fame', but if I start one I won't wait until I'm dead to induct the game I played yesterday.

Does anyone know where I can get a cheap plaque?

Escape to the Chessboard

2012-01-08T11:52:00.008-06:00

Mindi 2003-2012 RIP - a great friend.

My first week of the new year was in a word, trash. A project I’m working on progressed so poorly I had to work on it this weekend. I hurt my arm doing push-ups and had to stop for a few days. I wasn’t sleeping good because of the stress of the project, but the day I tried to catch a nap at work, a customer decided to stop over to talk about some future plans. On Tuesday night I went to bed after the caucuses, but Matt woke me up with a phone call to ask what they were like and then when he went to bed at 3 in the morning he woke the beagles up, who then proceeded to wake me up with their howling. And our neighbor’s Cairn Terrier, Mindi passed away after a sudden illness. Mindi’s owners (Bill and Marylin) are in their 90’s and are pretty devastated, as is their daughter Becky. I was there last year, but Mindi was only 8, half Queenie’s age.

Aaron Rees
One of my all-time favorites!!

When nothing is going right, I just want the world to go away and the best way I can get the world to go away is to play chess. The Marshalltown Thursday Night Chess club was off to a great start when Aaron Rees showed up for the first time in over a year. Aaron was a member of 2 high school championship chess teams I helped put together from 2005 to 2007. In 2007, our final round match with Iowa City was tied 2-2 and Aaron was playing in the last game of the match and the tournament. With the championship in the balance and a crowd of 50 kids gathered around his board, Aaron won the game, match, and championship. He got his AA degree and enlisted in the Navy, but when he gets back to Marshalltown to visit his family, he always stops by for a few games of chess.

Jerry (left) vs. Big John from Tama

The club got even better when Jerry showed up. Jerry is in his 50’s and works at night as a youth sports referee who’s been working every Thursday since September. Jerry and I are the same strength in long games, but I’m a little better in quick games. I beat Aaron in a game, beat Jerry in a longer game in what was an uncharacteristically weak effort from him, and beat Big John from Tama before the tournament. We had 8 players for the tournament and I was ready to play some chess. I beat Chandler, the high school kid in a smooth performance and was ready to take my bad week out on the rest of the players, but it was not to be because Dave the barefoot chess player came in late. That left us with an odd number of players and I sat out and watched Jerry win the tournament by beating Big John from Tama and then checkmating Dave the barefoot chess player with one second left on his clock. I split a couple of games with Dave after the tournament and then chess club was over and I was back to my stress-filled week.

Friday was much like the rest of my week, except I had the escape of teaching chess at St. Francis in the morning. There were only 40 players, but I had a great time working with them by playing some games and helping the kids earn their buttons by demonstrating their skill in simple endings. Once I got to work, it was more of the same tension without even the thought of a work-free weekend. I got home I decided to unwind by playing some 3 minute chess on the internet and was on the giving and receiving end of some of the stupidest moves ever seen on the chessboard. I used to joke about writing a book of my games called ‘When Bad Players Play Badly’, but after this weekend’s games I think I may have found some material for the first few chapters. Here is a sampler:

So bad I had to laugh…

...a caucus we will go...

2012-01-04T19:03:00.014-06:00

A view from the top!

  The last week of the Iowa Caucuses saw a flurry of TV commercials, phone calls, and town hall meetings as the candidates tried desperately to get the final few votes to keep their campaigns alive. Whenever I got an automated call asking me who my first choice was, I pressed a random number and when asked who my second choice was I pressed another random number. Like the guy on the Allstate commercial that causes all the accidents is called Mayhem, I started calling myself ‘Margin of Error’. I did get to talk to a live person from the Obama campaign and when I told the lady that I was voting for Ron Paul because of a chess-playing buddy, she quickly assured me that President Obama was very much in favor of chess. When a Rick Perry person called, I told them about how my neighbors had started a half-eaten lime collection in their front yard and was assured that Governor Perry hated yard waste and would issue an executive order banning it as soon as he put Congress on part-time pay and made English the official language of the US.

  I had pledged my support for Ron Paul to my friend Lee Gordon Seebach after meeting Lee at Paul’s town hall meeting in Marshalltown last month. I like Michelle Bachmann also and was very impressed with Rick Santorum after listening to him on the Travis Justice/Tim Miller sports talk radio program 3 times in the past 2 weeks. Santorum seemed personable with a sense of good humor as one would expect a Pittsburgh Pirate fan to need with their 20 straight losing seasons. All 3 are worthy candidates and seem real to me. About all I can ask of anyone is to be who you say you are and it’s no different for politicians.

  I didn’t care for the other Republican candidates. Rick Perry looks like he just says whatever he thinks will get him votes (Witness his sudden epiphany last week causing him to be against abortions in the case of rape or incest). Mitt Romney seems OK, but he also changes his positions to suit his audience. And after 2 thirds of a lifetime in New Jersey, I’m not voting for anybody named Newt (Sorry to all my readers named Newt or have relatives named Newt). Maybe if he was called ‘Snake Gingrich’, I’d consider it. I don’t know anything about Huntsman, but if his name was Newt Huntsman, he’d be tops with the Southern gun lobby and have more name recognition.

The Marshalltown High School Roundhouse (Gym), home of the 2012 Republican caucus.
The parking lot was full and I parked 2 blocks away.

Paul seems to have locked up the Republican chess player vote with myself, Lee, and multiple time Iowa Girls champion Bethany Carson in his corner (I’m far less hardcore than Lee and Bethany). I think there are more Democrat chess players in Iowa than Republican chess players but I’ve only met a few players who let politics get in the way of our love of chess by way of trying taunt players of the opposing parties after an election. Maybe since as chess players we need to be able to look a position from the White and Black point of view this carries over to being able to accept other people’s viewpoints even if we don’t agree with them.

I went to the caucus last night after coming home from work, walking Daisy and Baxter, and eating dinner. I made sure I was wearing my Ron Paul button and also had my ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ button. Since I started wearing the ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ button on my coat the hunters in the day-glo orange hats say 'Hi' to me when I see them at the convenience store. Maybe someday I’ll be invited to a militia meeting. The caucuses were held in the High School gym. I figured there would be a crowd, but as it turns out there was no room in any of the parking lots and I had to park 2 blocks away. I walked in and was greeted by 3 kids giving out literature for Paul, Perry, and Gingrich. I got in and sat way up high so I could get some good pictures.

Panning the crowd during fund-raising and hearing about the summer 'Pork-on-a-stick' fundraiser.

The caucus was run by the Marshall County Republicans who also used the occasion as a fundraiser and a promotion for their republican ‘Pork-on-a-Stick’ dinner in June. After the prayer, Pledge of Allegiance, and National Anthem, there were speeches by local party officials and people running for local offices while envelopes were passed around for $10 donations (You needed to give your name if you donated more than $10). I took some time out to scan the crowd. I saw a number of people I used to work with at Fischer, some people from the St. Mary Stewardship Committee I was on for a number of years, and a couple of working class people I knew. The crowd could be accurately described as 99% rich, old, and white.

La. Governor Bobby Jindal

After all the local pols got done with their speeches, each candidate had a speech given in their behalf by a surrogate. Romney and Paul had their speeches given by Marshalltown residents which showed a common touch, (surprising for rich man Romney). Santorum’s speech was given by local politico Jane Jech, Gingrich’s by a Texas congressman, Bachmann’s by a Chicago businessman, and Rick Perry’s was given by the Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana. That is a lot of pull by Perry and Gingrich, but pulling the star power out doesn’t seem to work in a state like Iowa. I’m wondering who showed up to talk for Perry in bigger towns like Cedar Rapids and Des Moines if the governor of Louisiana showed up in Marshalltown, Iowa? President Bush? President George W Bush? Both Bushes? Ronald Reagan’s ghost??

Jessie the Ron Paul operative from Orlando, dispenses valuable caucus advice.

We voted and when I was leaving, the young Ron Paul operative who gave me my literature earlier saw my Ron Paul button and asked me to stick around to help elect a Ron Paul delegate for my precinct. The operative’s name was Jessie and he had driven up to the caucuses from Orlando using his own money to help out. Almost everyone had gone, but I went back over to where my precinct was. There were 12 people there. 11 of the people were Marshalltown Republican lifers and 1 was me, a first-timer and more of a voyeur at that. We talked a few minutes and then elected the 3 delegates and an alternate to the county meeting in March. 4 people volunteered to go. I asked them who they were supporting. 2 were for Santorum, 1 for Paul and the alternate said he would vote for whoever won the precinct(Ron Paul easily carried our precint, although Santorum won the caucus). This was good enough for me since with all my work and chess stuff sometimes I feel guilty if I take time to breathe and just don’t have the time for too much political stuff. Besides, if the lifers didn’t get to go to the county meeting as delegates, they wouldn’t volunteer to run these things and then we’d all be out of luck, so I said my goodbyes and left.

Marshall County Republican lifers.

I work next to the Iowa Convention Center and the streets this week were lined with TV trucks from all over the US. They’re all gone today, but I can see why Iowa fights so hard to have the first caucuses in the country. All the attention brings in a fortune in advertising and publicity to the state as the politicians arrive here a year ahead of time to attempt to build organizations and collect the grass root supporters that every candidate needs. I don’t have an opinion as to whether it is good for the country to have Iowa be the first in the nation to make a presidential choice. After living here 17 years, I’d say that people in Iowa smile more than people in New Jersey, there are a few more nice people in Iowa, and if you buy a new car in either state you best watch your wallet. Since I’m living here now, I have to say the first in the nation caucuses are great for Iowa and great for the people in Iowa, including me. Because of them, I got to meet up with an old friend like Lee (who will get my vote for President if Ron Paul isn’t on the ballot and keep my streak alive of never voting for a major party political candidate), see Ron Paul at a town hall meeting, and hear Rick Santorum on the local radio station talking about hockey and baseball. Between that and the money it brings into the state, it’s no wonder all the other states try to jump ahead of Iowa to be first.

2012 - A Brand New Year

2012-01-01T14:13:00.001-06:00

  Just like Wednesday’s blog was my last of 2011, this blog is my first for 2012. I’m not a big new year’s resolution guy. In 2009 and 2010 I made resolutions involving thousands of perfect-pushups and stationary bicycle miles but after I broke my second stationary bicycle after I hit my goal in 2010, I decided to stop buying stationary bicycles and resolved to hit the speed bag every other day. It lasted about 2 weeks until Matt decided to start hitting the speed bag in between my breaks and twice knocked it off the mooring by hitting it so hard. That was the end of my physical fitness for the year, except for walking Daisy and Baxter. But it’s a new year and I have some resolutions for it.

  I’m resolving in 2012 not to watch one minute of any college football bowl games where either team has already fired their coaches. Yesterday I watched a large part of the ‘Fight Hunger Bowl’ from San Francisco. The UCLA Bruins lost to the Fighting Illini of Illinois in a real snooze fest. Illinois fired Ron Zook less than 2 years after a Rose Bowl appearance after his team began the season with 6 straight wins and ended the season with 6 straight losses. UCLA had fired coach Rick Neuheisel after winning his teams’division of the Pac-12 Conference with a 6-6 record (Actually UCLA finished second to USC but the Trojans were ineligible to win the division due to NCAA rule infractions). Neuheisel was allowed to coach UCLA to a loss in the Pac-12 championship game but was not permitted to coach the bowl game. With the loss, UCLA set a record as the only team to compete in a bowl game with 7 losses and the only 8 loss team to play in a bowl. There are way too many bowl games in college football when teams that are so disappointing that they fire their coaches are allowed to play in bowl game. I don’t understand why a college like Texas A&M couldn’t have waited until after their bowl game until firing coach Mike Sherman. My time would be better spent going to the tattoo parlor and getting a giant ‘LOSER’ tattoo than watching these loser teams play.

  Now that Matt is off to college, I am goig to spend 5 to 10 minutes hitting the speed bag at least every other day. I’ve been very stressed out lately and hitting something will de-stress me and make me feel better. My other physical resolution is to do 60 pushups a day with a goal of being able to do 54 pushups in 2 minutes. We’re planning a trip to the Jersey Shore and in case I get the chance to take the National Guard Fitness Challenge like I did 2 years ago, I want to win the National Guard T-shirt instead of the National Guard hand towel I got last time when I hit the wall after doing 34 pushups in 40 seconds. Being 2 years older won’t help my chances, but 2 more years of experience will help.

This guy looks pretty rusty on the speed bag after 50 weeks off. In a month or two, he'll be machine-like. Better keep that right hand up, though!

I have 2 chess resolutions. One is to play in 6 non-blitz tournaments. Due to work, an ill-timed cold, and flat-out laziness, I didn’t play in a single weekend tournament in 2011 that had a time limit more than Game in 15 minutes. No matter how busy I get running my monthly youth tournaments, it’s important for me to find the time to play in some tournaments myself. Not only is it a lot of fun, but I get to meet up with old friends, make new ones, and I also get a week’s worth of blogs out of every tournament I go to where I write down the moves. I expect to have a lot of rust to shake off initially, but that’s the price for a long period of relative inactivity. My other goal is to spend 10 minutes a day on my iPod’s ‘Tactics trainer’ app. I’ve done this for the last 2 months and it’s helping me spot more tactics in my games. This will dovetail nicely with my other chess resolution since tactics are the number 1 reason I lose games and spending 10 minutes quietly thinking chess will help me to get in a tournament frame of mind.

My last resolution for 2012 is to work harder at being more positive. For example, a new family has moved in next door to our house this week. I really liked having an empty house as my next door neighbor but those days are over for now. The new family seems quiet enough but again, they just moved in. Ever since Betty the little old lady moved out of the house in 2003 almost every family that has lived there seems to leave trash all over the front yard which then blows over into my yard. It’s not like Better Homes and Gardens is taking pictures of my house, but I don’t need any help decorating with left over garbage, thank you. In what had to have been the first attempt at taking their garbage to their trash can outside, the new neighbors have littered their yard with a bunch of bottle caps, sandwich wrappers, and limes. I’m going to be positive, but since I’m new at this I’m still thinking of just the right thing to say.

a) Great collection! Been at it long?
b) Those limes look really good against the leaves. Are you a decorator?
c) I was thinking of leaving half-eaten oranges in my yard. What do you think?
d) You must save a lot of money on trash pickup.

All half-kidding aside, I’m expecting a great and productive 2012. I intend on going with Kathy on lots of long walks to the Jiffy to get beef stick treats for Daisy and Baxter, having a great time playing chess and running youth tournaments, enjoying work without letting the fast pace get to me, writing some memorable blog posts, and improving my chess website.

In Search of Consistency

2011-12-28T19:25:00.000-06:00

2 x 52 = 104
...after today!

  This will be my last blog of 2011. I’ve written 2 posts a week every week this year except on Okoboji weekend in April when I wrote my Sunday post on Friday in order to be able to enjoy a great weekend directing the Okoboji Open and hanging out with my friends Jodene Kruse, John Flores, Sam Smith, Riaz Khan, and the rest of the crowd. Just like holding a youth tournament every month in Des Moines is something I am proud of, having kept to a blogging schedule of two posts a week for an entire year is also something I’m looking back on with pride since consistency is a virtue I prize very highly. If you click the little ‘next blog’ button on top of this page a dozen times, you will probably see 8 blogs without a post this month and 4 or those without a post in the last 6 months. If you’ve given your best effort and decided the results aren’t worth the work I see nothing wrong with walking away, but shouldn’t these people at least write a good bye post?

  One of my rewards for regularly writing my blog for an entire year is being able to go back and read an entire years’ worth of writing in a couple of hours like I did this past weekend. I think I got better at writing as the year progressed, but I'm not a good judge. I got a lot of blogging material from my monthly Des Moines family chess tournaments, but my visits to Zanzibar’s Coffee Adventures and my quest to win an award from the Chess Journalists of America also provided many blogging miles. I found time to write a little about sports and politics, but Daisy, Baxter, and Cheetos dominated my non-chess postings.

  Another reward a long running blog provides is to use the Google Analytics tool to see which of my 103 posts this year have proven the most popular. Even though my blog is primarily about chess, the most looked at posts this year were my March review of the Joe Namath biography, the January posting about Daisy and Baxter titled ‘Beagle Puppy Update’, my first visit to Zanzibar’s Coffee Adventure titled ‘Coffeehouse Chess’, and my May story about my in-laws dentures (‘A Tooth for A Tooth’). These rankings are skewed towards older posts since they have been available for ‘googling’ for many months, but it is undeniable that Joe Namath is still a football rock star and Beagles are one of the most popular pets in the world. I’m not surprised that my Cheetos posts aren’t looked at more, after all why would anyone read about Cheetos when they could be eating them instead!?!

  On the inconsistent side, for the third straight year I’m ending the year at a different job than I started the year in. I think I’ve finally found a place to settle in for a long stretch, but I thought the same about the last 3 jobs. After having my job sold out from under me 5 years ago, I’m happy to have gotten my skills upgraded to the point that I don’t get calls from recruiters looking for fossils to work on legacy systems. Now I get calls from recruiters that are looking for people with modern skills. Taking a new job was a huge gamble on my being able to hold my own in a super-fast paced environment and so far it’s paid off. The job market looks good for programmers in the coming year, but all it takes is one clown crossing out names with a red pen and no job is safe so I still looking to keep my skills as current as I can.

  My new skills have come in handy in developing my chess website www.centraliowachess.com. Because I have a better understanding how to build these things from the ground up, I was able to put it together in around a week and now I’ve started to add the types of features that dovetail with my series of blitz and family tournaments. Players in my Thursday Night Blitz and Youth Chess tournaments can see seasonal and all-time won-loss records and view their playing history. The USCF website does the same thing (only better), but my site also shows statistics for unrated and parents tournaments. I have a good amount of work remaining for a first class web site, but since I’m committed for the long haul I can afford to be patient and let the content build up as I continue writing about my chess tournaments. In a year or two my reward will be a website that is a central part of my work and chess resume and a selling point for independent website development.

When the year started, we had just gotten Daisy and Baxter, and seeing them grow up has been a year-long treat. I took a few pictures and posted them on Facebook when they were little pups, but then when I missed a week, Kathy’s family wanted to see more pictures of Daisy and Baxter, so each week I assemble our pictures and post them on Facebook. It takes about 20 minutes a week (not counting the time spent taking the pictures) but to look at an entire year of pictures on Facebook makes it seem like time well spent indeed (Here is a bonus link to the Christmas album). I can look at the cover picture on all the beagle albums on one screen and it’s almost like watching them grow up in the blink of an eye. I’m very jealous of young parents who can take pictures of their children every day, post them on Facebook or some other social media site, and then be able to look back in a year or 2 and watch the growth of their kids. Matt graduated from high school and Ben went through confirmation this year, but we just have a few pictures a year of them. I don’t know if I’ll still be taking pictures of the beagles as they start to turn gray and age and decline, but I tend to think I will. I still look at pictures of Queenie and Tuffy. Kathy and others will look at the pictures and say how old they look, but I never see them as old, I just see all the enjoyment I got out of my friendship with them.

I don't take myself too seriously, but I take being consistent very seriously. I’ll leave the why to psychologists. I’ve always tried to be consistent and always valued consistency in others. I enjoy working with honest people and people who I can depend on to work hard and do the right thing, but that isn’t always an option. And when that option isn’t available and I can’t go it alone, I’ll take the people who are always looking out for themselves at the expense of everyone else and the people who you can tell are lying because their lips are moving every time over the people who make you guess whether they’re telling the truth or if today will bring a pat on the back or a kick in the rear. At least with the former I always know what to expect and will never be disappointed.

Playing My Drum

2011-12-25T07:57:00.000-06:00

I spent the week before Christmas transfixed by the song ‘The Little Drummer Boy’. My Rhapsody subscription ($15 a month for access to their entire catalog) combined with my amazing iPod allowed me to create a playlist of 30+ artist’s renditions which I found myself listening to over and over. I found the song inspirational all week long and especially liked the duet by Bing Crosby & David Bowie, with the versions by Ringo Starr, Smokey Robinson, and Stevie Wonder close behind. Like the drummer boy (and the wise men for that matter), none of our gifts are fit for the King but what little we have to offer is met with a smile as long as we offer our best. It is a tremendous thought for any time of the year and it’s important to recognize all the gifts that come our way, both big and small.

Top Left:New new guy Tony and I with our Christmas Cheetos. The rest of the pictures are of the Court Avenue Restaurant and Brewing Co. including the Salmon Sandwich lunch special.

I got my first present on Tuesday at work when new guy Tony brought me a big bag of Cheetos Puffs. Just having Tony around is a present to me in and of itself. Before he came on board, I was not only the new guy – I was the old guy, too. I remember when I was always the youngest person at work and now I’m older than my boss, my bosses’ boss and twice the age of some of my co-workers. There are some older network and marketing guys, but I’m the oldest programmer and I think it’s by a big margin. I pull my weight and no one calls me ‘pops’ or anything, but since Tony is older than me, he has relieved me of being the new guy and the old guy. Now I’m just the bald guy, but as the prophet Meat Loaf said “Don’t be sad, 2 out of 3 ain’t bad”.

My day got even better when I was taken out to lunch by the project manager of the company I work for. Last week the government agency we interact with had a systems changeover and the customer was very pleased that we were able to match their changes with a minimal amount of problems. Because the customer contracts my time through my company, they aren’t allowed to give me a bonus or presents, but a ‘working lunch’ was arranged. We walked to the ‘Court Avenue Restaurant and Brewing Company’ via the Skywalk. The restaurant is a business lunch spot and night time hangout in a bar, band, and restaurant district just off downtown Des Moines. I had the lunch special which was a grilled salmon sandwich with potato salad and the project manager had a giant burrito. The sandwich was good, the potato salad was awesome, and the price was excellent (for me, that is)! It was nice to be taken out to lunch and after the tense weeks leading up to the government changeover, and I enjoyed celebrating the success of a mostly problem free upgrade.

Jaleb Jay vs. Jon McCord

Roger & Cypher
in Cyclone gear.

On Thursday at chess club, I got more presents with the return of Jaleb Jay and a visit from Roger Gotschall, the legendary Ames chess coach and tournament director and his traveling companion, Cypher the Boston Terrier. Jaleb hadn’t been to the club since August due to school and other scheduling issues, but will be around for a couple of weeks with school off for winter break and Roger’s Cyclone Chess Club (which also meets on Thursday) is also off for a few weeks since they are a college chess club stationed on the Iowa State University campus. Except for Jaleb, I had no other school-age kids at club. Maybe they thought there’d be no club, but since Christmas wasn’t on a Thursday, it was business as usual at the Marshalltown Chess Club!

We had an odd number of players so I sat out of the tournament. Jaleb shook off 4 months of rust to win the tournament, but I managed to beat him 3 out of 3 in 5 minute games. I won one convincingly, and was even and lost in the other 2 when Jaleb ran out of time. When coming back after a long layoff, most players tend not to trust their calculation of tactics and use precious seconds double checking themselves. It used to be an upset when Jaleb beat me, but now I feel lucky when I win so I was thrilled to get 3 out of 3 any way I can.

Roger and Me,
Cypher & Italian Sausage!

I didn’t get to play Roger, but we got to talk about chess, dogs, and life for around an hour. Roger and I have had our share of differences about youth chess and the direction of Iowa Chess over the years, but we get each other and have a lot in common. We're both stong-willed and indefatigable! We both have weekly chess clubs on Thursdays and while I get myself out of the house early every Friday to go to Des Moines and teach chess at St. Francis, Roger has taught chess at a minimum of 3 schools in the Ames area for years. He has had some health problems this year and is in his 70s, yet he still gets to these schools every week to teach chess. His is an enduring legacy that will last generations, but Roger isn't interested in collecting accolades. When I asked him to see if he could find a way in his capacity as Iowa's representative to the USCF to get a discounted one day youth membership established so high schools could compete in the state team championships without having to buy expensive annual memberships for only one tournament, Roger got it passed. The USCF higher-ups took the credit for getting this innovative idea, but Roger was more interested in being of service to Iowa chess players than who got credit. We are also big baseball fans, with Roger getting the leg up on me this year with his favorite Cardinals thrill-a-minute World Series victory. Now that Roger has Cypher, we also share a love of dogs. Cypher had a Cyclone colored coat with his name embroidered in it. Daisy and Baxter are so yappy I could never have them at a chess tournament, but Cypher's quieter than most chess players. It was a pleasure to have Roger and Cypher come to visit and I was surprised and pleased when they gave me a beagle calendar for Christmas. We all received another present at chess club. The Salvation Army had just had their holiday food box distribution (300+ families fed) and had boxes and boxes of close dated frozen Italian sausages left over so we each received a frozen pack of sausage.

Saturday was my turn for some giving. The past 2 years, Matt had conducted a simultaneous chess exhibition where he would play 10 to 15 players at once. The idea was that all the participants would make a donation to the Salvation Army in order to play and that anyone who beat him would win a tournament chess set. No one ever beat Matt and except for the set I gave to Daniel Carson in 2009 for lasting the longest against Matt, I still have all the ones I bought 2 years ago. This year, when Major John asked about the chess exhibition, I didn’t have time to coordinate a simul with Matt (he’s is college and has his own plans for the holidays), so I volunteered to play speed chess against all comers on Christmas Eve. The last 2 years, we had very little participation in Matt’s simuls outside the chess club and I wanted to try to get new people in town to play some chess, so I decided to play all comers with 1 minute on my clock and 10 minutes for the challengers and give away chess sets to anyone who I couldn’t beat before I ran out of time. I cleared it with the mall, got a press release printed in the newspaper, and was off.

Johnny summed
it up in 2 words!

I’m OK at speed chess, but almost any tournament player could beat me at these time odds. I didn’t care since I had all the chess sets I bought for Matt’s simuls sitting in a box for over 2 years and they weren't doing anyone any good in a closet. I told the mall management that I wanted to do the exhibition by the entrance to the JC Penney store where the bell ringers always are with a 4x8 table or 2 off to the side where Matt held his simul. The mall manager said it was OK with him, but he didn’t want a big table by the entrance and didn’t have anything smaller than a 4x8 table. I told him I’d bring a card table and I arrived with it at 10:30 yesterday along with my box of chess sets, a couple of chess clocks, and a Salvation Army kettle and bell.

The JC Penney manager before
banishing us to the corner.

I was all set up by 10:50 and had the exhibition planned from 11 to 3. The first player was a kid named Rico. He didn’t want to play speed chess, so we played a couple of games until his dad told him he had to leave. Then a high schooler named Johnny came to play. He also didn’t want to try the speed chess challenge so we played some offhand games. I beat Johnny twice and he paid me my first compliment of the day when he said “You Suck”. Since he was smiling when he said it, I assume he meant it in a good way. We started a new game, but then Chandler and Dalton from the chess club came with their parents and 3 foster kids their folks are taking care of. Dalton paid his entry fee and we started playing time odds chess. Dalton is the newest tournament player at club and while he has won a few games, he was no match for me in the 3 speed games we played and never even made me use more than 20 seconds. During the second game, 2 managers from JC Penney (a man and a woman) came out and told me that I was 'impeding' their customer’s access to the store and could I move to one side or the other of the entrance. The entrance is 40 feet wide and I was 5 feet from one side so I moved the 5 feet over. Then after our third game, the lady manager came over and demanded I move to the other side of the entrance. While she was demanding, she pointed out the JC Penney was being quite gracious in allowing bell ringers to even be anywhere near their store entrance since no one else in the mall wanted the bell ringers anywhere near them. I moved the chess table and the red kettle to the other side of the entrance and proceeded to play Chandler.

Chandler's foster brothers
were donation magnets!

Chandler played a smart game, keeping his king protected and trading pieces. I only had 8 seconds left when I hung a rook in an even position and had given away my first chess set of the day, when Keith from the Salvation Army came over and told me the woman manager had called him to let him know that the bell ringers were ‘playing chess’. I imagine no one told her about the exhibition. We moved the chess table and the kettle far away from the entrance on a landing behind a ‘hurricane machine’. Since its Christmas I’m not going to say anything bad about the manager, but if I ever have a business where I need to drive away customers, I know where I'm going first. Chandler didn’t want to play after winning the first game, so I played Dalton for another hour until I finally ran out of time and gave away my second chess set. Except for one guy that watched for a bit, no one was interested in playing speed chess, so I did some bell ringing along with Dalton and 2 of his foster brothers until about 2:15. While bell-ringing, I learned the valuable lesson that little kids ringing the bell really bring in the money as an incredible number of people would see the cute 3 or 4 year old foster brothers ringing the bell and give the kids money to drop in the kettle, including one lady who emptied handfuls of change out of her purse to give the kids to put in the kettle.

While the youngsters were ringing the bell, the fellow who was watching me play Dalton came over and decided to play a game. His name was Gary and he really enjoyed playing even after I checkmated him using only 20 seconds. I gave him a flyer to the chess club and hope I’ll see him again. When Dalton and his family left, Major John showed up and we talked for a bit. I told him about the problems with the JC Penney manager and he said not to worry about it so I didn’t. Then a lady named Marsha and her husband Denny came over and said Marsha wanted to play a game. We started our game when Kathy came over to see how the exhibition was going. Marsha was a pretty good player and I just managed to win with 10 seconds left (Marsha used about 8 minutes). Marsha and Denny live 20 miles away in Gilman and I hope to see them again at the club someday since I think she could play even with Scott, Jon and the other regulars. I was about ready to pack up when 4 college kids came by, looked at the sign detailing the exhibition, talked amongst themselves, and started walking away when I pointed out they only had to last a minute with me over a chess board and it wasn’t like Spiderman trying to last a round with the professional wrestler. That convinced one of the kids to try his luck.

After a slow start, the speed chess exhibition picked up with 5 players in the last hour.

It turned out the kid who was playing was Corey McMillan, a high school classmate of Matt’s. I told him I remembered how they were on the same soccer team as youngsters and that I remember he was a real good soccer player. Corey said he was playing soccer at Alleghany College in Pennsylvania and was home for the holidays. I beat Corey with 26 seconds to spare and told his friends that I’d give any of them a chess set if they could last longer and if they couldn’t Corey would get the set. 2 of Corey’s friends, Ian and Jason played, but neither lasted more than 34 seconds so one of my chess sets will be heading to Alleghany College with Corey!

It was a slow start to the exhibition but a fantastic end with 4 games in the last half hour. I hadn’t given any money to any bell ringers once I knew I would be doing the exhibition, and put it in my kettle before I packed up and went home with Kathy to walk the dogs for another beef stick. I always like to do what I can for the Salvation Army. They host our chess club (and dozens of other groups), they get food for the hungry, and anyone who is in need of clothes or furniture can get a voucher from them to get what they need at their thrift store. In addition to all that, they have had a singularly transformative impact on my life. If I hadn’t been challenged to start a chess club by Major Joan in 2002 when I asked if the Salvation Army had one, I’d never have run a chess tournament, met many of the people that have enriched me so much, taught chess at St. Francis, or started my blog. And that’s just off the top of my head. When I get the chance to do something for the Salvation Army, I feel like the drummer boy whose gifts aren’t worthy of the recipient, but are accepted with a smile anyway because I’m giving my best effort.

Here's to Perfection

2011-12-21T18:25:00.000-06:00

  The Green Bay Packers lost their chance for an undefeated season when they lost 29-14 in Kansas City by the Chiefs on Sunday. The Chiefs chances of pulling off this upset were boosted considerably when Head Coach Todd Haley was fired less than a year after taking the team to the playoffs. With their coach fired, the only way for the players to prove that the reason for the teams’ disappointing 5-8 record was the coach and not the players was to give their very best effort. That, the calming stewardship of interim coach Romeo Crennel, and the return of recently acquired quarterback Kyle Orton from his broken finger proved to be just enough to stifle the Packers great QB Aaron Rodgers and take the victory.

   The Chief fans are elated by the victory and rightly so, but I wonder why a coach in only his third year is fired when he won the division in his second year? The Chiefs lost Pro Bowl running back Jamaal Charles, quarterback Matt Cassell, and budding superstar tight end Tony Moeaki to injury earlier this season. General Manager Scott Pioli managed to pick up a serviceable quarterback (Orton), who promptly broke his thumb in his first game, leaving the quarterback chores in the shaky hands of one Tyler Palko. I’m assuming Haley had some sort of problems getting along with the players or Pioli, but since Pioli was the one who hired Haley less than 3 years ago, how long will it be till the former New England boy wonder’s judgment comes under question?

   I was one of the many who thought the Packers would win all their regular season games, especially after their last second victory in the Meadowlands against the Giants. I was watching the Kansas City game and it appeared to me the defending Super Bowl champs were upended by injuries on the offensive line which played into the hands of a hungry team intent on pressuring quarterback Aaron Rodgers and an offense that found a couple of trick screen plays to tight end Leonard Pope that went for 35+ yards each.

   The pundits are now talking about how Green Bay’s weaknesses have been exposed and how vulnerable they will be in the playoffs, but I’m not buying it. I like how the Packers didn’t shirk from their quest to go undefeated, unlike the Colts of the last few years who went 13-0 AND 14-0, twice took it easy and played to lose in the final weeks, and twice failed to win the Super Bowl (I wrote about it here). The Patriots kept pushing for their undefeated season and were only stopped by a talented, desperate, and very lucky Giants team in the last 2 minutes of the Super Bowl.

  This year’s Packers remind me a lot of the 1998 Denver Broncos, who were also defending Super Bowl champions (both winning from the wild card spot), and also started 13-0 in defense of their super bowl. The Broncos lost their 14th game of the year to the Giants in the last 2 minutes and only after their undefeated season was over did they rest their starters for the last 2 games to get ready for the playoffs. The Broncos cruised to the Super Bowl and I expect the Packers to do the same, barring an injury to Rodgers. They have the talent and have shown they have the will to compete in every game and expect to win every game and that leads me to expect a Green Bay Super Bowl again this year.

  Lost in the Packers first loss is another year of the 1972 Miami Dolphin’s record as the only undefeated team in NFL history. The surviving members of that squad annually have a champagne toast when there are no undefeated teams left in the NFL and they tend to be derided for celebrating other team’s losses. Ever since the Patriots managed to go through the regular season unbeaten, I think there has been far less attention paid to the Dolphins and their perfect season of 40 years ago. But each season that goes by without an undefeated team underscores just how difficult it is for a team to go undefeated and how awesome the Dolphin’s accomplishment was.

   I saw (or heard on the radio) at least half the Dolphins games that year and they were a powerhouse, smashmouth team, belying their white uniforms with the fish on the helmet. The Dolphin’s would run inside with brusier Larry Czonka and Jim Kiick behind an all-pro offensive line. When the defense would eventually try to plug the middle, then the Dolphins would run a sweep with speedster Mercury Morris or a play-action pass to Hall of Famer Paul Warfield. The defense was led by a ball-hawking secondary and bend but don’t break defense that put a premium on making the opponents offense drive down the field in small chunks, knowing they would eventually be able to force a mistake. The Dolphins even lost their Hall of Fame quarterback Bob Griese to a broken leg for over half the season and still won all their games. Compare that with last year’s playoff teams like the Chiefs, Bears, and Colts who went into the tank this year as soon as they had to turn to their backup quarterback.

  The only game I thought the Dolphins were in danger of losing all year long was the AFC championship game in Pittsburgh against the then inexperienced Steeler squad who would win 4 Super Bowls later in the decade. The Dolphins were trailing in the second half, but Griese came off the bench and rallied his team to victory. Like all great teams, the Dolphins could win in any number of ways. They chose to keep the game under control and grind out wins by running and relying on their great defense, but they could out score their opponents if needed. Being behind by a touchdown to the Dolphins that year was like being behind 2 or 3 touchdowns to another team. The Jets played them twice and the Giants once. Once they fell behind, the game seemed over because it was next to impossible to get the ball back and once they did they could barely move the ball against the great Dolphin defense.

  The Dolphins perfect season is maligned by some, who say they had one of the weakest schedules of any Super Bowl winner and during the regular season only had to play 2 teams with winning records. They were so lightly thought of during their undefeated run that they were underdogs to the Washington Redskins in the Super Bowl. But they played every team on their schedule and won, which no team in the last 40 years have been able to do. If the 1972 Dolphins come off as arrogant in celebrating their perfection, it’s OK with me. Here’s to the Dolphins who are still the only undefeated team in NFL history and the Packers for not taking the easy way out in their (unsuccessful) pursuit of perfection.

With a little luck and a lot of help

2011-12-18T16:08:00.000-06:00

Left: I'm never too tired to pose for a picture with my fellow St. Francis chess coach Chris Hermes. Up front are Chris' nephew Ryan(l) and son Matt(r). Right: Many of professional chess teacher Jose Gatica's students were playing in the tournament, but he was willing to go over the games with anyone.

  The company I work for has a critical interface with a government agency’s computer system. This agency was going to update their systems in December and change that way we interact with them. I knew about this for a couple of months and had been making preparations. 2 weeks ago, the government agency set the changeover date this past Thursday night. I wrote to President Obama letting him know I had chess club that night, was teaching chess class the next morning at St. Francis, had a chess tournament to run on Saturday and could he please impose on the agency to postpone the changeover? I didn’t receive a reply. I would have written to Ron Paul, but he may have tried to abolish the agency and render my job moot. What people don’t realize about burdensome government regulations is that they employ a lot of people like me that help other companies navigate them. It’s the Democratic version of trickle-down economics.

  After stressing over the changeover all week Thursday finally came. I shut down our systems and went home where I would implement our changes when and if I got the signal from the government. The restart was scheduled to take place at 6am Friday and I was hoping it would be late so I could implement our changes after I got back from chess class. I went to chess club where there were an odd number of players for the tournament so I sat out and played 2 games against Joe Meyer after the tournament. I was sloppy and lost 2 games to Joe. Thinking about the changeover would be a convenient excuse, but facts are facts and the fact is Joe is better than me at the moment.

  I got home from the club, got the tournament rated, and saw that the government had finished their changeover in record time so I could get started. I put in my changes, testing each component. It was 12:30 by the time everything was done and I crawled into bed at 1, only to wake up at 4:30 and start all over again. I logged into my work computer, saw I had one process that was crashing, fixed it, walked Daisy and Baxter, and was on the road at 5:45 to teach chess at St. Francis 60 miles away. I haven’t missed a club meeting in the year and a half I’ve been teaching there, but I would have begged off this week except that my co-coach Chris had an appointment and couldn’t make it.

  Getting 3 hours sleep was no problem when I was 20 or 30, and not such a big deal when I was 40, but at 51 it is hard not to get sloppy and irritable on such little sleep. I got my exercise setting up the 30 boards and the crowd of 50 kids talking and playing chess kept me wide awake for the 45 minute club meeting, matching kids for games and teaching the younger kids how to win simple endings. After class, Kurt the maintenance guy helped me put away all the boards and tables and I got to work at 9. There were a couple of problems caused by the government not implementing a process correctly, but they had already fixed it by the time I alerted them. Everything went so well that I went home at 12 to get some sleep before a long tournament day on Saturday. I got home at 1 as planned but nothing else went the way I wanted. Every time I started to nod off, I got a phone call. There were 4 from work, 1 from St. Francis letting me know my next 2 tournament dates, and even a friend of Kathy’s calling to tell me to go outside. I was already awake so I went outside and her friend told me he could see me. He was flying a plane overhead! Pretty cool, but not what I was thinking at the moment. I finally gave up on getting a nap and went to sleep at the normal time.

  I got a reasonable night’s sleep and after a walk with Kathy, Daisy, and Baxter for some beef stick treats, was off to West Des Moines at 6:45 for this month's youth chess tournament with Matt and Chandler the high school kid who helps me set up in return for free entry and a ride. Matt had decided to head down to watch the tournament and meet with Tim McEntee (life master) , Jose Gatica (the candidate master we did the chess camp with last year), and many of the kids who attended the chess camp in July. This month’s tournament was held in a large meeting room instead of the cafeteria so we had to move all the round tables in the room to one side and drag out the long square tables and chairs before we could even get the boards set up. We were running a little behind when Dan Troxell stopped by. Dan had a student playing and was going to play in the parents and friends section. With Dan’s help, we got all caught up and had everything in place when the tournament players started arriving.

  The morning tournament went very smoothly with a nice crowd of 43 players. A lot of players arrived late because they went to the cafeteria on the other side of the facility. Everyone thought the Santa trophies and medals were very cool, if a little odd. I had a lot of time to talk to the players and parents. This is the 3rd month I’ve had the morning-afternoon tournament concept and the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. There must have been something special about this tournament because I had a large number of players stick around for the afternoon session after they had only committed to the morning tournament.

  I had another 37 players for the afternoon session, but then things started to go a little squirrelly. During the lunch break a parent who runs a school chess club told me he had big plans for a week-long summer chess camp and a big tournament in March and wanted me to tell ‘my people’. He wasn’t real happy when I told him that I don’t have any ‘people’ and I wasn’t going to be promoting any other tournaments but the ones I was personally involved with. Then when the afternoon tournament started I had the following 4 incidents happen within 5 minutes: 1) One player made a mistake to lose the game and started crying and SLAPPED HIS FACE!! HARD!! 2) Another player made a mistake to lose his queen and shouted ‘D**N’ very loudly…100 feet from a church 3) A player resigned and fired his pen 20 feet into a wall 4) A player got a nosebleed after horsing around. It looked like a disastrous afternoon, but we got the nosebleed stopped, I got the upset players to calm down, and the tournament returned to a fun time for the kids. I think that the Santa trophies were SO cool, the kids went mental when they lost their first game (making it all but impossible to finish in the top 5 and get the trophy).

  The tournament finished without incident. While Matt was going over games with the players, Tim and Jose were giving impromptu chess lessons to the parents, and I was keeping an eye on the games and answering questions the parents had about tie-breaks, pairings, and a host of other questions about organizing and running tournaments.

  Once the tournament was over, it was time to put away the sets and boards, 8 tables, and 64 chairs and then rearrange the round tables the way they were in the beginning. It would have taken forever, but with Matt, Tim, Jose, and Michael (the parent of one of Matt’s students) helping, everything was put away in 15 minutes and we were done by 4.

  I’d need some time to think about it, but it seemed like one of the most successful tournaments I’d ever held. Except for the bout of 'afternoon madness', everyone had a great time and I even made enough money on this tournament ($82) that I’ll be able to offer trophies to the unrated players for next month’s tournament. Jose had to go, but Tim, Matt, Chandler, and I went to the Perkins for a celebratory dinner. I tried to order the ‘Perkins Famous Chicken Noodle Soup’ but they didn’t have any so I had to settle for a grilled cheese sandwich and ‘Tomato Vegetable Soup’. I couldn’t find any vegetables and while the bowl was very wide, it turned out to only be a spoon full deep. I’m not complaining though. I hadn’t gotten to hang out with Tim in a long time and I was the ONLY person in our group to have any silverware.

  I started getting tired on the drive home, but I was smart enough to get a coffee for the trip. By the time I got home, I’d caught my second wind and had the tournament rated, pictures posted, my report written, and my website updated all by midnight, even though there was one last mini crisis with the government changeover that I had to deal with.

  I did last month’s tournament all by myself and had 63 players between the 2 sections (80 this month), but I had so many balls in the air this time I was happy for all the help I could get. I was lucky to have made it through the changeover at work unscathed but I only call that a little lucky because I was as prepared for it as I possibly could be. But to have had as much help setting up and tearing down the playing site was incredible. It's nice to think you can do everything by yourself, but only a fool wouldn't be grateful for all the help I got yesterday.

Give the kid a prize!

2011-12-14T18:36:00.001-06:00

Eleven months evolution of participation buttons and medals. What will December bring?

  I’m spending this week preparing for my first youth chess tournament in 6 weeks. I’d rather not have such a long gap between tournaments but the cafeteria at St. Francis is booked solid with other events and I was lucky to be able to get the large meeting room for this week’s tournament. I only have room for 24 boards on the supplied tables, but there are a few smaller long tables and I’ve adjusted to the new surroundings by using the profits from the last tournament that I was going to use for chess clocks to get some smaller tournaments boards and pieces instead in case I have over 50 players.

  Having a tournament so close to Christmas is a double edged sword. On the plus side, many of the competing sports activities will be shut down for the month, but the reason for that is because so many parents are traveling, attending Christmas functions, and holiday shopping. This will keep many kids from playing team sports, but I’m hopeful that there will be plenty of players and parents who want to spend a morning or afternoon playing chess.

  This will be the 12th month in a row that I’ve held an open youth tournament in the Des Moines area (14 if you count 2 parochial school only tournaments in 2010). I am a big believer in consistency and I consider this an accomplishment to be quite proud of. As the IASCA scholastic director, I wrote a website column for the chess parents each month for the 30 months I served except the first August (2006). It’s always bothered me that because I didn’t take the time to type out a few paragraphs I lost the ability to say I did something every month for 30 months.

  I’ve had over 250 different players at my chess tournaments over the first 11 months, with a high of 67 at the free tournament in October and a low of 14 at the August outdoor tournament. A lot of players come almost every month and I’ve struggled to come up with different looking trophies and medals. There are only a few trophy companies that have chess items and they have 4 or 5 different tops and a dozen or so different columns. I came up with the idea of giving out buttons with a different world chess champion as participation awards, but most of the kids have no idea who these champions of the past are and a few asked me if I put the old guy on the button because it was his birthday.

The graveyard of tournaments past,
a cousin of the 'Island of Misfit Toys'.

  I could make a different chess trophy every month for 5 years by combining the different tops and columns, but the medals posed a different challenge because there are only 7 or 8 different kinds of chess medals. When it came time to rehash the same medal design, I tried using different color ribbons (there are at least 40 different color combinations of ribbons), but the kids caught on immediately that they already had the same medal as before. And aside from all that, I kept on having left over medals and trophies after each tournament. I have trophies and medals that are 3 or 4 years old sitting in my basement. I tried to reuse the medals by putting some handmade labels on the backs so I wouldn’t have to pay an extra $1 a pop for new labels, but they looked unprofessional. I tried to order custom inserts on the medals, but the price and minimum print runs made it even more expensive and would guarantee that I’d have even more unusable medals left over.

  My medal problem was heightened when I decided to drastically reduce the number of trophies in order to halve the entry fee and give everyone a medal for participating. The new prize structure made it even more important than ever to not give out the same medals. I did a lot of research over the summer and came up with the idea of buying medals without any inserts and printing and applying the inserts myself. It worked great the first month, but by the second month I had a mostly black insert and the kids discovered they could easily scrape the ink off of them. This led me to find plastic medal covers I could stick over the inserts. It works great. I give out unique medals for every tournament I run, and the cost is less than I would pay for medals from a trophy store. I could lower the cost of the medals even more by buying thousands at a time from the Chinese wholesaler, but I’ll pass on laying out that kind of money for now.

  It is a lot of work to design a new medal insert every month, print the inserts, and assemble the medals, but it is worth it to me to be able to offer a low cost chess tournament where no one walks away empty handed and everyone has a unique memento of their chess tournament. I saw firsthand from watching the kids at my son’s chess tournaments that nothing will make a child quit playing in chess tournaments faster than watching other kids get prizes while they get nothing. I tried to forestall this day of reckoning in the larger tournaments I ran by giving out medals for first time players, prizes for lower rated players, and even custom participation ribbons. I hit on the ribbon idea when I noticed that Matt would put every ribbon he got from his Junior High cross-country meets on our refrigerator. I thought the chess participation ribbons were the best received of all the ideas, but I can’t print the ribbons myself and would lose a lot of the customization I get with the medals.

  I can’t say for sure, but I think giving out the participation medals helps to keep players coming to my tournaments. I thought by cutting down from 22 trophies to 5 trophies I’d be losing lower rated players who were missing out but instead it is the higher rated players that seem to stay away after winning a trophy or 2. Maybe it’s the risk of getting upset to hungry lower rated players or the younger players make it too noisy to play their best or maybe the trophies just aren’t big enough to justify spending a morning or afternoon playing chess. I know from my experiences and the talks I’ve had with many chess parents that after a while their children’s chess trophies all start looking alike, but I’m not about to start playing ‘Can You Top This?’ with myself and have bigger and bigger trophies.

  The absence of the higher rated players is probably due to a little of all the reasons I mentioned with a bigger dose of just being too busy. In the January and February tournaments this year, I had a pair of brothers playing in the unrated tournament that were quite talented. The younger 7 year old brother won half his games and the 11 year old won 75% of his games. And then I didn’t see them again until I got an email this week from their mom saying they were busy all year but finally had the morning of a chess tournament free to play. I am constantly tempted to write to the parents of players that seem to disappear to see if it was something about the tournaments that are driving them away, but so far I’ve resisted. Fretting about the people who don’t come to my tournaments will keep me from doing the best job I can for the people who do attend.

  While I was ordering the trophies for the December tournament and getting ready to put Boris Spassky on this month’s medal, I came across a unique trophy top. I’ve been staying away from the chess piece trophy tops and using victory figures as much as I can, but the top I saw filled me with a sense of whimsy and I decided to theme my trophies and medals with a decidedly un-chess theme. I don’t know how many more years I’ll be running monthly youth tournaments but I’ve got December trophy and medals set for every one of them.

If Santa Claus was a chess piece, would he be the king with his reindeer as the 8 pawns or perhaps a long range knight able to hop all across the chessboard?

Political Exercise

2011-12-11T10:48:00.000-06:00

Last week I received an invitation on Facebook from my friend Lee Gordon Seebach to come to a Ron Paul town meeting in Marshalltown yesterday at the Fisher Community Center. I’m not an especially political sort, but I hadn’t seen Lee in a couple of years and decided to head over to meet up with him and catch up on some old times.

I first met Lee in 2008 at a chess tournament in Cedar Rapids. He had just retired from his career as a professional artist and had relocated to his hometown of Dysart, Iowa where he had started a chess club at the brand new Dysart library. Lee and some of his club members would come to Marshalltown on occasion for our tournaments and I would get some of our members to head up to Dysart to play in Lee’s tournaments. Lee started working as a truck driver in 2009 in Dysart and his club went dormant when none of his club members parents could help with it on the weekends Lee was away. As a chess player, I found Lee a very solid player who could be counted on for a tough struggle. Lee has now resumed his career as an artist in nearby Traer (You can see his works here) and is a precinct captain for the Ron Paul campaign.

Left : An interview with a Ron Paul supporter held before the town hall meeting.
Right : An exerpt of Ron Paul's speech with his ever-present bodyguard in the background. I wanted to ask him his name, but I was afraid to.

I’ve been following the Republican nomination process this year and it appears the voters are not willing to anoint the semi-liberal Mitt Romney and are dissatisfied with all their alternative choices, leading to a ‘flavor-of-the-month’ of frontrunners. I registered as a Republican last year to vote for fellow chess player George Eichhorn’s attempt to be the nominee for the Secretary of State so I’ve been getting phone calls and mail from all the nominees. I hadn’t been planning on attending the caucuses but if I was, I’d probably support Bachmann since she seems to be the least phony of all the people running. I didn’t know much about Ron Paul except that he is the most libertarian of all the candidates and is just as anti-taxes as Bachmann.

Left: here I am with friend/artist/chess player/truck driver/Ron Paul precint captain Lee Gordon Seebach. Right: No iPod for the bodyguard!

  There were about 30 cars in the Community Center parking lot when I pulled up at 9:45 for the 10:00 meeting. As I was walking in, I saw a news reporter videotaping an interview with a Ron Paul supporter and I decide to tape the interview myself. The interviewee was spitting out so many sound bites I think he should try to run for president. I went into the Community Center and there was a lady selling political buttons and a Ron Paul supporter at a table giving away bumper stickers and literature. I went inside the art gallery and started looking for Lee when I ran into Jack McCord and his mom Kathy. Jack Is going to Marshalltown Community College and used to play chess at the Salvation Army on Thursday nights with his dad Jon (who still plays every week). Then I ran into Mike Donahey. Mike is a reporter for the Marshalltown newspaper and was covering the event. Mike started interviewing me, but I explained that I was looking for Lee when I heard my name being called from the front row and sure enough, it was Lee. I introduced Lee to Mike since a story about a professional artist/truck driver/ chess player/ political activist would be right up Mike’s alley. Mike interviewed Lee for a few minutes (here is Mike's article with a quote from Lee) and then a fellow came to the podium and introduced Ron Paul so we all sat down to listen. Paul had a small entourage with him including a massive fellow who never smiled, but just looked into the crowd. I looked back into the crowd and the gallery was packed with about a hundred people.

  Ron Paul started by talking about his main campaign themes: following the constitution, getting rid of the Federal Reserve, balancing the budget, drastically reducing income taxes, an isolationist foreign policy, not borrowing money, and having a small government protect the citizen’s liberties instead of taking them away, which he claims the Patriot Act does. One of his more interesting economic tenets was that rather than have the government and Federal Reserve continue to attempt to print money to get the country out of the recession, stop printing and borrowing money, let the banks and insolvent companies default, and the economy will rebound quicker than it would with government intervention.

  All these themes met with a lot of applause, which is to be expected since Paul was mostly preaching to the choir. I’m not too sure about the idea of letting the economy crash and relying on free market forces to revive the economy. After all, don’t free market forces drive companies to produce their goods where they can be made the cheapest? Of course, I don’t see the current system of borrowing $5,000 for every person in the country as a means to economic salvation either.

  When Paul started talking about how he was going to go about balancing the budget, he started making more sense to me. He said he wanted to cut a trillion dollars off the budget in his first year and he was going to start by slashing military spending because he thought he could build a left-center coalition to support the idea. I liked that he had practical plans to achieve his impractical-sounding objectives. I also liked that he was upfront that he was going to transition to some of his other big objectives like eliminating entitlement programs and not just eliminate them all at once.. I doubt if Paul could actually get enough congressional support to achieve his objectives if he were to become President, but it would be interesting to see him have the chance.

  I think that most economic plans would work in the absence of corruption and the support for politicians to undertake unpopular tasks. Paul talks about the failure of Keynesian economics and he is correct that in the USA it leads to unchecked spending, but that is because while the public and their elected politicians embrace the notion of stimulating economic demand during recessions by tax cuts and government spending, no one will go along with the flip side of Keynesian economics which advocates limiting demand during economic expansion by increasing taxes and reducing government spending in order to recoup the deficits incurred during recessions. The USA started running budget surpluses in the late 90’s, but instead of paying down decades of debt, the American public elected a government that promised to cut taxes. After 9-11, the public wanted to fight the terrorists but not at the expense of their tax cuts and was OK with the government borrowing trillions of dollars to allow for the financing of a war and the tax cuts. Everyone wants to balance the budget as long as other people are paying for it, but except for a few select billionaires, I don’t see anyone wanting higher taxes or fewer benefits.

  I partially agree with Paul that the government makes everything it touches worse. Paul talks about the health care reform being written by health care lobbyists, but when the free market runs the health care system, the insurance companies act in their own best interests by collecting as much in premiums as possible and attempting to deny coverage by rescission when a policyholder gets sick and it is time to for the insurance companies to pay out. That’s not to say there aren’t a lot of crazy things the government does. I’m not sure why we pay Pakistan billions of dollars in foreign aid each year, but when it’s time to go after the terrorists, we have to send drone planes to do the dirty work, while our ‘well-paid allies’ burn our flag in protest and the government cuts off our supply routes. Government waste hit a little closer to home when I went to the Walgreen’s this week and saw every snack food item accompanied by a little sticker reminding me how easy it is to pay for them with my Food Stamp Card. No wonder Cheetos are so expensive!

One side of the button lady's display board looked like a Ron Paul/Tea party shrine, but after the meeting, she turned the board over and showed she was ready for every eventuality!
A worthy choice for Secretary of Commerce, in my opinion.

I shot a few minutes of video of Paul’s speech, but I tried to catch the bodyguard and the other members of his entourage as much as possible. The bodyguard looked like he stepped right out of GoodFella’s or the Soprano’s. When the speech was over, Paul took 3 questions and was off to his next speech. His Iowa coordinator wanted to talk to the organizers privately so I had to leave the room while Lee and the other organizers talked over some top-secret organizer stuff. While I was waiting for Lee, I struck up a conversation with the lady selling the buttons. I used to sell buttons of rock bands in my youth and have been having buttons made up for my chess tournaments and chess class. I told her how in 1980 I tried to sell ‘Carter Sucks’ and ‘Reagan Sucks’ buttons, but I couldn’t find anyone willing to print them for me. She agreed that I wouldn’t have that problem today, but nowadays I can print the buttons myself. We were talking about printing issues and what the top sellers were. I was expecting that a Ron Paul button would be her top seller since her button board was full of Ron Paul and Tea Party buttons, but then she turned over the button board and there was a whole new batch of buttons for all the other candidates. She told me that her top seller was a button of a pizza and the slogan ‘Herman Cain Delivers’ and since he dropped out she was now stuck with a bunch of obsolete product. It turned out the button lady was an independent business person and not a Ron Paul groupie. In fact, 4 years ago she was selling Democrat buttons. I have political buttons going back to Nixon-McGovern and decided to and bought some of her buttons to add to my collection. One of the buttons was a Revolutionary War style ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ logo that I put on my coat. It’ll be interesting who will see it and spark up conversations when I walk around.

After the meeting, the organizers gathered by themselves to discuss top secret organizer stuff. I took this picture on my way out.

The button lady had to leave to get to the next campaign stop and the debate, but then Lee’s meeting was over. We went to Hardee’s for a cup of coffee and to catch up. Lee tried to convince me to come to the caucuses and support Ron Paul and I said that I would. I didn’t know a lot about him before listening to him, but I liked listening to him a lot, am convinced he’s not a phony, and as long as I’m a registered republican, why not?

When people ask me about politics, I normally say ‘I play chess’ and I mean it, so while Lee was trying to convince me to support Ron Paul, I was trying to convince him to come play chess in Marshalltown on Thursday nights. I even suggested he carpool with Joe from Waterloo. Lee played tournament chess in 2008 from February to September and has a rating of 1373 down a bit from his high of 1383. When I looked this up, I noticed that his rating would have hit 1400, but he lost his last competitive game in the final round of a CyChess on 9-28-2008 against…guess who?

A tough game, but I'm sure this isn't how Lee wants his chess career to be remembered, so I'm looking forward to his return to the board!

Rematch

2011-12-07T11:52:00.000-06:00

  On Sunday the powers that be of college football confirmed that the Louisiana State University Tigers and the Alabama Crimson Tide will play for the college football championship on January 9th. It seems like a reasonable decision since LSU was the only undefeated team in College Football this season and Alabama was the only team to give the Tigers a close game, losing at home in overtime by a 9-6 score. The teams were determined by the arcane Bowl Championship Series Formula that combines a coaches poll, a poll of media and former coaches and players, and an aggregate of 6 computer polls to assign numerical value to a team’s season with the top 2 teams battling in the championship game. Alabama was given a score of .942, ranking it barely ahead of the Oklahoma State Cowboys at .933.

  The Bowl Championship Series (BCS) also determines the teams that will play in the Rose, Sugar, Orange, and Fiesta Bowls in addition to the championship game that rotates between the 4 bowl sites. The 5 bowl games bring in $125 annually in television rights alone from ESPN before any tickets are bought,cars parked, or hot dogs are eaten, not to mention corporate sponsorships. There are 6 college conferences that run the BCS (Big 10, Big 12, Southeastern Conference, Big East, Atlantic Coast Conference, and the Pacific 12) and each conference is assured of a spot in one of the 5 BCS bowl games and the lucrative $22 million payout. If a conference gets a second team in a BCS game, they pocket an extra 6 million (You can follow the money here.)

  Since the 6 BCS conferences have a considerable monetary interest in making sure as many of their teams play in the BCS bowls as possible, lawmakers representing states with colleges outside the BCS conferences threaten from time to time to regulate the college football industry unless the process is opened up to non-BCS schools. This has led to the BCS allowing for non-BCS schools to crash the party by jumping through a rat’s nest of hoops to get in a BCS bowl. If Notre Dame is in the top 8 of the BCS rankings, they are guaranteed a BCS bowl bid. A team from a non BCS-conference is guaranteed a BCS bowl if they are in the top 12 of the BCS rankings or are in the top 16 and have a higher ranking than a BCS conference champion.

  This is the first year since 2005 that a team from a non BCS conference hasn’t received a BCS bowl bid. The non BCS schools have had reasonable success in their bowl contests against the ‘elite’ schools. Boise State beat mighty Oklahoma in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl, TCU defeated Big Ten champ Wisconsin in January’s Rose Bowl, and Utah defeated then #4 Alabama 31-17 in the 2009 Sugar Bowl to go along with Hawaii’s 41-10 loss to Georgia in the 2008 Sugar Bowl. 2 years ago, both TCU and Boise State received BCS bowl invitations, but had to play each other and were denied to chance to prove their worth against BCS conference winners.

  This year’s most ‘controversial’ BCS bowl selections were the Sugar Bowl choosing #13 Michigan and #11 Virgina Tech over higher ranked teams like Boise St (7) and Kansas State (8). Last week Michigan wasn’t eligible to be selected for a BCS bowl since they didn’t win their conference championship and weren’t ranked in the top 14, but they conveniently jumped 3 spots despite not even playing last week. TCU beat a poor UNLV team 56-9 but remained 2 spots short of BCS bowl at # 18. Virginia Tech lost 38-10 to # 20 Clemson, but only slid 6 spots from #5 to 11 and even managed to stay ahead of Clemson who moved to #17.

  Accusations of rigged voting by the pollsters are rampant, but who could blame a university or a loyal reporter for moving a few selected teams up or down a few spots with millions of dollars riding on the decision? Alabama coach Nick Saban has come under some criticism for placing the Oklahoma State team 4th on his ballot, but I’m really surprised he even included his closest rival for the championship game on his ballot. I would have expected all the BCS conference schools to do everything possible to keep TCU out of the top 16 and a $20+ million dollar payday going out of BCS conference pockets.

  I can understand the Sugar Bowl wanting Michigan, who has the largest living alumni group and haven’t been in a BCS bowl since 2007 or any bowl since 2008. There will no doubt be many Michigan fans watching the game on TV and many alumni celebrating their teams return to relevance by spending their cash in New Orleans to watch their Maize and Blue. The Virginia Tech fans are also expected to travel well. While the fans of Boise State and Kansas State are also rabid in their devotion, there just weren’t enough of them to entice the Sugar Bowl to choose their teams.

  I don’t mind the BCS protecting their revenue sources or the bowls picking teams based on how much money their fans will spend in the host cities. I just wish they’d admit it. Almost every team that manages to win half their games (70 in all) gets to go to a bowl anyway so it’s all just a matter of prestige of who goes to what bowl. College football may be the biggest money-making scam ever. The colleges rake in the dough from TV revenues, ticket sales, concessions, parking, wearing Nike or Reebok apparrel, and donations from their alumni among many other sources; they don't even pay the players, just provide room, board, books, and an empty seat in the classroom. If a player gets hurt or doesn't live up to their potential, the scholarship can be revoked (it's only year to year) and the college has no obligation to make sure the players graduate, only that their grades are good enough to be eligible to play.

  Many of the college football purists are offended at the prospect of a rematch, but it doesn’t bother me. The championship game is nothing more than a 2 team playoff and I think the chances are pretty good that these 2 teams would still be playing if there was an 8 or 16 game playoff. It is undeniable that of all the 12 1-loss teams in the country, Alabama’s loss was to the best team. If Oklahoma State wanted to be in the championship game, all they had to do was beat Iowa State just like the Oklahoma team they soundly defeated last weekend managed to do the week before last. I’ll reserve my sympathy for the years where there are 3 or more undefeated teams and teams are shut out of a chance at the championship despite winning all their games.

Continental Lunch

2011-12-04T11:38:00.000-06:00

The Continental on Des Moines' east side.
You can sit in the sunny front or the dark alleyway for privacy.

  I got to work an hour late on Friday like I do every Friday when I teach chess at St. Francis. This was cleared with my company when I took the job and I make up the hour by taking a half hour lunch and staying late or using any extra time I spent taking care of production related matters at night during the week to account for the lost hour. I had worked till 12:30 when my cell phone rang and my friend Dan Troxell was calling me. Dan normally works on the other side of Des Moines but had the day off and wanted to see if we could have lunch together since he was in a nearby neighborhood. Since the company moved to the new building 3 weeks ago, I’ve only gone out twice at lunch. Once I took a walk to get an ice cream bar at the marketplace and on Tuesday, my boss invited me to go to lunch with him and Tony the new guy. It’s a tradition to buy lunch for new guy when he joins our group and I was the only guy around (and the previous new guy), so I was invited along.

  I decided to join Dan for lunch, so I got in my car and drove about 10 blocks east to a section of Des Moines called the East Village, which is full of artisan shops, government buildings, and restaurants. I met up with Dan, put some coins in the parking meter, and on his recommendation, we walked 2 blocks to The Continental, a bar/jazz club/restaurant. I figured the place must be OK if Dan wanted to go there since Dan is quite the artisan himself and would probably know all about these places. In addition to his chess playing at Zanzibar’s, his Innocent Bystanders blog (rendered inactive lately due to writer’s block), and his comic book collecting, Dan is a poet who is invited to read his works at poetry readings all over Des Moines.

  We sat down at the bar and caught up on things while some 1930’s movie from Turner Classic Movies was playing on the 2 TV sets. The sound wasn’t on the TV’s, which led me to believe that normally sports are on these TV’s at the bar (You need sound for TV shows and moves, but not for sports). The bartender took our drink orders (coke for me and water for Dan) and gave us menus. Jazz music was playing in the background and while Dan and I were catching up, I showed him my 3-minute video of my wait on line at Staples on Black Friday. All I needed was a beret and I probably could have passed myself off as an independent film producer.

  When the waiter asked for our orders, I decided to have the ‘Fried Goat Cheese’. I made that choice because not only have I never had Fried Goat Cheese before, I’d never even heard of it so I thought it may be the only chance I’d ever have to eat some ‘Fried Goat Cheese’. This same logic has led me to eat the Quik Trip’s Jalapeño Bologna sandwich and coconut water (with pulp).

  I didn’t catch the bartender’s name, but he proved his worth by telling me when I ordered the Fried Goat Cheese that they were a ‘small plate’ item. I saw that on the menu, but I didn’t know that ‘Small Plate’ meant appetizer since the prices looked all the same to me. I changed my order from the Fried Goat Cheese to the ‘Italian Sandwich’, while Dan had the Blackened Chicken.

After being informed by my bartender/waiter that my preferred 'Fried Goat Cheese' was a 'small plate item', I switched to the 'Large Plate Italian Sandwich' complete with a tiny side of pasta salad.

We spend the few minutes until our food came talking and checking out the people in the place and then our sandwiches came. The Italian sandwich was capicola and mozzarella on a toasted roll. The plate was big but aside from the sandwich there was only this little tiny bowl of pasta salad. I wondered if that would have been the size of my plate if I had ordered the Fried Goat Cheese. I didn’t really mind because the pasta salad wasn’t that good. It seemed limp and bland, but I’m spoiled because Kathy makes me the best pasta salad in the world and it is always crisp and crunchy with lots of fresh vegetables. The sandwich was first class, which more than made up for the pasta salad.

Waiters for Dummies: When the customer gives you a $20 to pay a $9.90 bill, make sure to give the change in small enough bills to get a tip. I must not look like a big tipper because he didn't give me 2 Lincolns.

  When it was time to pay the bill, I happened to owe $9.90. The bartender didn’t see me hold a five dollar bill in my hand, just the 20 that I pulled out of my wallet to pay the bill with. The bartender smoothly gave me one 5 and 5 ones and I left him the 5 and a penny as a tip. Dan thought the penny was insulting but I maintain it is a sign of good service.

  After we left the Continental, we went to the nearby ‘Plain Talk’ book store, which Dan had never been to before. I get to this store every few months. It is a used book store with coffee and sandwiches. In the store was a big guy named Joelly sitting on a chair. He said Hi, but he had a speech defect so he couldn’t talk so good. Joelly was holding an empty bottle of pills so to be friendly-like, I asked what the pills were for. Joelly told me that it was his dad’s pill bottle and he kept his change in it. Joelly then showed me 75 cents in his hand and asked me if I had a dime, because it cost 85 cents for a cup of coffee. I gave Joelly the dime and he was my new friend. Then a scraggly guy came in and asked to use the bathroom. He complained that he tried to use the bathroom at the drug store next door but they said it was for employees only. I said that if I went into that drugstore, pulled down 5 of the most expensive items off the shelves, put them on the counter, reached for my wallet, paused, and then asked to use the bathroom, they would tell me to go right ahead. The owner of Plain Talk books said it wouldn’t work but I was adamant that it would. The owner told me to go right ahead and I said I would do it if he would video it. He declined and it was only then that I realized that I hadn’t taken pictures or video at the book store.

  I was crestfallen for about 5 minutes to have missed a chance at some great video that could have come straight out of ‘American Splendor’, but it was such fun to hang out with Dan for an ‘My Dinner With Andre’-esque lunch and play hooky from work for an extra hour that I didn’t mind making up the extra time over the weekend. I spent the entire drive home Friday thinking of ways I could trick the drug store into letting me use their restroom and have it recorded without tipping them off. It will be tough since I’ve never seen more than one person at a time in the store, but I think the video could go viral and would be well worth the effort.

Economic Indicators

2011-11-30T12:20:00.000-06:00

On my vacation last week, I hadn’t driven at all until Black Friday when I drove 2 miles to Staples so my son Ben could get a 23” monitor for his computer. If you happened to go to the Marshalltown,Iowa Staples on Black Friday, you'd have to think the economy was awful since the place was mostly empty and the only way they could even simulate a crowd was to make everyone wait in line forever to get out of there.

Not much of a crowd at 6:15 am on Black Friday at the Marshalltown, Iowa Staples.
I got up early, but managed to catch up on my sleep waiting in the line.

On Saturday I drove 55 miles to play chess at Zanzibar’s in Des Moines. On my way back from Des Moines last Saturday, I saw that gas at the Git ‘n Go in Bondurant was 2.98 a gallon. I was not prepared to see a price under $3 a gallon and sped past the station, but recovered my senses to make a left turn at the next light to fill up at Casey’s for the same $2.98 a gallon. Both gas stations in Bondurant always charge a penny less than gas in Des Moines and gas was $3.15 in Marshalltown so it seemed like a bargain.

I think the economy must be pretty bad for gas to be less than $3 a gallon and even though the low gas prices will spur the economy, increased economic activity will cause more oil consumption, which will raise the price of gas, which will choke off economic recovery. A big part of the low gas prices is the economic problems in Europe where the governments of Greece, Italy, and Spain are having a hard time borrowing the money they need to pay for their deficit spending. This has made the dollar more valuable than the Euro and keeps the price of commodities that are controlled by third parties like gold and oil high low in dollars and high in euros.

Gasoline is $2.98 a gallon and milk $3.79.
Why doesn't anyone care how much a barrel of milk costs?
Are we running out of cows?

  Despite the low price of gas, the price of food continues to go up and up. After I filled up my car with $3 a gallon gas, I went into the Casey’s coffee refill. I paid 75 cents for 20 ounces of coffee which works out to 6 dollars a gallon. I also checked out the price of milk and it was $3.79 a gallon. Maybe instead of ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’, the republicans could chant ‘Moo, Baby, Moo’ or maybe even ‘Eat Mor Chikin’ if they can get the rights. It shouldn’t be too surprising to see the price of milk, hamburger, and meat so high when we are using the corn the cows would be eating as fuel.

  The stock market seems to be right in the middle of where it has been over the last year, making me think the economy is balanced like a see-saw that can’t decide which way to tip. Intel gained 30% between September and November to hit a multi-year high and just as quickly shed 10% in the last 2 weeks. The unemployment rate should be a good economic indicator, but it has become politicized so much as to be useless. When the unemployment rate goes down it is either good news because more people have jobs or it is bad news because people have given up on even trying to get a job and are not counted as unemployed. Likewise, when unemployment goes up it could be a bad sign because companies are laying off or really good news because the people who brought the rate down by stopping their job search are back looking for jobs. It reminds me of the George Orwell novel ‘1984’ where the chocolate ration is decreased from 30 to 20 grams a month and the ‘News Ministry’ busily changes all references to the 30 gram ration in order to praise Big Brother for increasing the ration to 20 grams.

  I’m trying to decide which way the economy is heading and since the standard indicators aren’t being very helpful, I’ve fallen back on the 3 best economic indicators I know of, all of which can be discerned with my eyes and ears. Here are my findings:

  My number one economic indicator is the LCI (Loose Change Index). This is the indicator my father taught me, which is how much loose change can be found lying around. 6 months ago, I found pennies laying on the ground during our walks with Daisy and Baxter on a regular basis, but over the last month finding loose change has been the exception rather than the rule. To me, this is a downward economic indicator since when times are good no one bothers to pick up any change that falls out of their pockets but when times are bad, not only do people have less change to spill, whatever coins do manage to hit the ground are quickly scooped up by the rest of us.

  My next indicator is the CI (Can Index), which has 2 separate measures. First is how many cans and bottles I see laying around on the street when we walk Daisy and Baxter and the second measure is how many people we see trolling for cans by surveying the streets and garbage cans on these walks. This indicator is giving me mixed signals. We’ve seen a normal amount of cans and bottles on the street waiting for their deposit to be claimed, but other than Shirley there hasn’t been anyone looking for the cans or bottles. I see Shirley picking through the garbage cans on Main Street almost every Sunday and haven’t seen her pull out a can in a month.

Loose change, cans, and bottles seem to be in short supply, but my crack researchers report that the supply of thrown away trash on the streets of Marshalltown is never ending. The rising Garbage Index indicates increasing disposable income to go along with the disposable merchandise.

My third and last indicator is the GI (Garbage Index). This is how much garbage I see on the street when I’m walking the dogs. Since Daisy and Baxter find plenty of fast food wrappers, Chinese takeout trays, and chicken and rib bones on the street, this indicator leads me to believe the economy is picking up. This week they even found a Walgreen’s cup on the corner and a tube of toothpaste by the house a block away that has a garage sale every weekend. When the pigs of the world not only able to afford fast food wrappers to litter the landscape, but they can also throw away household supplies, that is a sure sign of plenty.

My predictors are as mixed as the mainstream economic indicators with 1.5 up and 1.5 down, but I’m predicting an economic down turn based on a new store that has opened on Main Street called Valuables 4 Cash. It is ostensibly a coin shop, but will also be buying and selling gold and silver jewelry. The owner stated that he was drawn to the location by its close proximity to the ‘Purple Cherry’ yogurt shop. I can see all the little kids stealing grandma’s earrings, selling them at ‘Valuables 4 Cash’, and then getting a yogurt with M & M’s or Reese’s Pieces across the street.

Vacation at Zanzibar’s

2011-11-27T13:55:00.000-06:00

  I was home all week on vacation and as I wrote last week, I had 9 days off, some books I wanted to read, a website I wanted to write, some beagles I wanted to walk, and some chess I wanted to play.

  I spent about 3 hours a day for 5 days working on my website. I bought a domain on Monday, uploaded the site on Wednesday, debugged some issues on Thursday and Friday, and www.centraliowachess.com is a reality. It’ll be nice to have my own piece of the internet to publicize tournaments and post reports and articles. I’ve been using the IASCA website for this, but it seems hypocritical of me to use their site for publicity at the same time as not liking how they portray my efforts in their broadcast emails. I designed the site to be data driven, but with only a few focused pages I’ll be able to keep the site updated in a timely manner without spending too much time maintaining it. Of course, a project like this tends to take on a life of its own. In the future, I want to add a photo page instead of using chess.com and I have an idea to allow users to upload chess games that can only be viewed by people they designate, but these types of improvements can wait. Now that the site has been up for a bit and I’ve been able to look at it a little more critically, I’ve identified a few enhancements for the next time I have a few hours on my hands.

  I followed the final rounds of the Tal Memorial super tournament from Moscow on the Internet Chess Club, where the World No. 1 Magnus Carlsen and No. 3 Lev Aronian shared first place. The top US player Hikaru Nakamura had a disastrous tournament, finishing last and dropping out of the World top 10. I hope the poor result is just the result of Nakamura’s adjusting to his new coach, former world champion Garry Kasparov. If Nakamura fails to emerge as a serious contender for the world championship, will his millionaire benefactor Rex Sinquefield feel as if his support of US Chess is just good money after bad? Time will tell.

  We got Daisy and Baxter out for walks 4 or 5 times every day, walking at least 3 miles every day, and more on Friday when we took 3 separate walks for beef stick treats. When I wasn’t walking the dogs or working on the web site, I was reading my chess books. I started with the Yuri Averbakh memoir, “Center-Stage and Behind the Scenes”. Yuri Averbakh was a Soviet Grandmaster, trainer, and arbiter (umpire) from the 1940’s to the 2000’s. His career spanned the Stalin purges, World War II, the rise of Soviet chess to world dominance, the decline of Botvinnik and the loss of the world title to Bobby Fisher, the rise of Karpov and the defection of Kortchnoi, the Karpov-Kasparov battles, the breakup of the Soviet Union, and the split between Kasparov and FIDE. There aren’t any games in the book, but once I started reading it, I couldn’t read anything else until I finished it on Wednesday. This isn’t a book for the non-chess player or a young chess player, but for someone like me who grew up reading about the great Soviet players (and is of Russian heritage, by the way), the book is a fascinating look at the chess world through the prism of the Soviet system where everything from being assigned to play in a foreign tournament, getting an a apartment bigger than 144 square feet for 4 people, and staying out of the purges of the 30’s and 40’s took political maneuvering and a lot of luck.

  As I expected, I didn’t get very far with "1001 Checkmate Combinations". It is a dense book, but it does look like a lot of fun and focuses on checkmates with a piece or a combination of specific pieces per chapter. I’m about a third of the way through "Lessons with a Grandmaster" by Boris Gulko, but I don’t think it’s doing me very much good. It is a collection of 24 of former US and USSR champion Gulko’s games as explained to ‘A’ player and psychologist Joel Sneed. The games themselves are interesting enough, but when Gulko explains a move with comments like ’29…Na4? Will be met by 30.Rd4 and Black loses his advantage’, it doesn’t help me too much because I’m not sure why one side even has the advantage, much less why said advantage is lost. I don’t think the problem is the book, I’m just not good enough of a player to understand it.

  I had been playing a chess game on chess.com against Ben Tessman. Ben is from the Des Moines area and I’ve met him at a couple of tournaments over the years. Ben is an improving player who also blogs on chess.com under his handle of ‘SirBenjamin’. Our game finished this week when Ben missed a tactic that lost a piece, which happens when someone who plays only one game at a time (me) plays someone like Ben who has at least a dozen games going on at once. I’ve played Ben 3 times on chess.com and I’ve seen considerable improvement every time. I was planning on heading to Zanzibar’s Coffee Adventures yesterday for some coffee and chess so I invited Ben to come on down. I also wrote to Zanzibar regulars Dan and Mike letting them know Ben and I would be heading over.

  After our 5am walk with Daisy and Baxter to get some coffee and beef stick treats, I left for Zanzibar’s at 7:30 and arrived at 8:30. No chess players were around, so I got a Tanzania Teaberry coffee, a bagel and cream cheese, and a newspaper and sat down to read and wait. Ben came over at 8:45 and got some sort of cappuccino drink. We talked about Ben’s chess student, our different techniques for teaching, and Ben (an IT professional) gave me the useful advice that to get my chess website up on the search rankings I need to get people to click on links pointing to the website (LIKE THIS ONE – PLEASE CLICK). Then we sat down to play a couple of games. We drew for colors and I was Black.

The game took around 45 minutes. We went over the game and talked about some of the ways Ben could have developed his pieces and then it was time for another game.

This game was a lot tougher and took about an hour. In games between players at our level, tactics most always decides. At that point it was time to go so we said our goodbyes and went on our separate ways. I felt bad that Ben missed meeting the Zanzibar regulars (any of whom he would be competitive with), but I was happy that he came down and we had a chance to talk and play. When I got home, I helped Kathy put up the Christmas Tree and started the thankless task of moving my data to my new computer (After 5 years, my trusty Dell has gotten very persnickety about booting up). I knew this day was coming and had a new HP laptop at the ready for over a year in preparation, but moving the data is still a labor-intensive process. Even so, I did find some time to play some 3 minute chess on the Internet Chess Club. I’ve been trying to get my 3-minute rating to its all-time high and making good progess. Here is one of my better efforts from this morning:

Book Review - Every Day a Friday

2011-11-23T20:43:00.000-06:00

  I got this book for my birthday, not because somebody thought to give it to me, but because I thought to ask Kathy for it. I’ve seen Joel Osteen’s grinning face on his books at the Marshalltown Wal-Mart and other book stores for years and never gave any thought to buying or even looking at one. Then one day while tuning into the USA Network early on a Sunday Morning years ago hoping to catch an episode of Law & Order : SVU I’d maybe seen only a couple of hundred times, there was Joel Osteen on my TV. I had no idea he was even on TV and I watched it and I liked it and now I look forward to it. Osteen’s weekly messages are very upbeat and positive, kind of like a 21st century Norman Vincent Peale (best known for ‘The Power of Positive Thinking’).

  Osteen’s shows and books focus on the premise that God created us, loves us, and wants what’s best for us. This doesn’t seem to be a far-fetched premise to me, so it is easy for me to accept the idea that I should accept that God is working in my favor and if I just take care of the things I can take care of, I can let God take care of the things I can’t handle and not worry about it. People I discuss this with tend to find this to be a very simplistic viewpoint, but that simplicity is what attracts me to this message. Since all these books end up being New York Times best sellers, I’m probably not alone in my attraction.

  The book title comes from noting that people are happier on Fridays because they are looking forward to the weekend, so why not choose to be happy as if every day was Friday? ‘Every Day a Friday’ is themed like Osteen’s other books (‘Be a Better You’, ’Your Best Life Now’, It’s Your Time’). There are 7 main parts, with each part broken into chapters. The parts are titled ‘Don’t Give Away Your Power’, ’Know What to Ignore’, ‘Live Without Crutches’, Travel Light’, ‘Laugh Often’, ‘Be a Dream Releaser’, and ‘Celebrate Yourself’.

  There are plenty of self-help books that could have these same chapters without the religious bent, but when an author is trying to drive home a point about being grateful for what you have or not letting negative people steal your happiness or seeing a setback as a stepping stone to greater accomplishments, I think these types of points come across clearer when approached from a more ‘Godly’ perspective. I especially like how Osteen can talk about being happy with what you have without getting into an ‘it could be worse’ type of mentality and that it’s OK to want even more than what you have as long as you go about getting it the right way.

  One of my favorite Osteen themes is how a setback is only a setback if you look at it that way. That theme always gets me thinking about how I worked at a company for 13 years and when my boss wanted to sell the company, I got lied to about my future with the company so I would outline all the functions of the software I spend a quarter of my life writing when they knew I was going to be out of a job since their programmers in Indianapolis could write it. There were a lot of bumps in the road, but now I can see that I needed to be forced out so I could learn new skills and now 4 years later, I have an even better job. Another theme is how what looks like a setback may be so you can be a blessing for someone else. I was very sad when my dogs both passed away last year, but because of that we were in the right place at the right time to get Baxter, who had a bad foot and needed a good home. Even when I’m having a chess tournament that looks like it’s going to have a thin crowd, I get to thinking about how my late friend Ed at the Salvation Army told me that he thought my chess activities is going to keep some kid away from the wrong place at the wrong time because they were playing chess. Books like ‘Every Day a Friday’ get me thinking about times where everything looked to be running against me but in retrospect couldn’t have been planned better FOR me and people who were trying to stick it to me ended up doing me favors by making me more self-reliant and inventive. Just like chess players forget about the times we are handed victories and focus on the times we did the ‘giving’, it is easy to lose perspective when in the heat of contentious situations and books like this help me to regain that sense of perspective.

  Of course, people who don’t believe in God or think of God as some collective power and not a single being or are still waiting to be convinced there is a God aren’t likely to enjoy this book, but I enjoyed it and think I got a lot out of it. Having read 4 of Osteen’s books, the illustrative anecdotes start to repeat themselves, but as a person who will watch the same episode of Law & Order over and over that’s not such a big issue to me. One thing I noticed in this book was that Osteen mentions in at least 2 places how his critics call him the ‘smiling preacher’ and a practitioner of ‘Christianity Lite’. He points out (and rightly so) that he is going along the path he feels drawn to follow and there are plenty of other preachers that go the fire and brimstone route. I don’t know Joel Osteen, but I’m sure he has as many flaws as anyone else, including all the people I get inspiration from daily. I need all the inspiration and encouragement I can get and I get a lot of inspiration from his TV show and books and I think a lot of people would also if they gave Joel Osteen a look or read.

A Rocky Vacation

2011-11-20T14:27:00.000-06:00

After 8 months at my job, I’ve accumulated enough time off to take this week off. I took 2 days off in April to help with the Okoboji Open, another 2 days in July for my chess camp, and an hour here and there but I’m going to use 4 days of time off along with Thanksgiving for a vacation where I don’t go anywhere or do anything specific. And because it’s Thanksgiving week, I won’t even have a Thursday night chess tournament at the Salvation Army or Friday chess class at St. Francis This will give me 9 days to work on things I just haven’t had time for.

Notice how the driveway has magically curved away from my neighbor's styrofoam wall. It would take some real magic to curve it around my new giant rocks.

  Last Sunday, I got lucky and made some headway on a project I’d been dreaming about for a long time. I’ve written before how my neighbors had been running over the fence, gate, and bushes on my side of our shared driveway. I’d been on the lookout for some large rocks to put on my side of the driveway, but not only are rocks very expensive, I don’t have the kind of equipment needed to bring the rocks to my house. 2 weeks ago my friend Monica wrote to me saying her husband Eldon (who gave me the broken pawn you see at the top of my blog) had some rocks if I wanted them. They live on a farm but these rocks are from Eldon’s mom front yard. Her house is being sold and they don’t need the rocks. Eldon picked me up and drove me to his mom’s house in his pickup truck. We were able to pick up the rocks but couldn’t lift them all the way up to the truck bed so we had to go back to his farm to hitch up the truck to a horse wagon and get a hand truck. Using the hand truck, we got the rocks onto the low lying floor of the horse trailer, drove back to my house, and rolled the rocks onto the front yard. My next step is to get a surveyor in, find out the exact property line less the 4 feet access I’m required to give for the shared driveway, get the rocks right to the edge, and then get some more rocks.

  I got an early start on my vacation Friday night by watching the Iowa State Cyclones pull off a shocking upset of the undefeated #2 Oklahoma State Cowboys. Ever since I wrote on October 23rd how the Cyclones were getting worse and worse and a new coach was in order, the Cyclones have won 3 games in a row and secured a chance to go to a bowl game. I’m still not convinced the Cyclones are for real (both the Cyclones and Cowboys did everything they could to lose the game), but the biggest ever victory by a team I wrote off a month ago had me starting my vacation by serving up a public dish of humble pie.

  We take a family vacation to New Jersey shore every other summer. The shore is really relaxing, but there is a lot of driving, it’s kind of expensive, and the dogs have to get kenneled. In 2009, I took a week off work to accompany Matt to the national high school chess tournament in Indianapolis and play in the US Open. I played one chess game a day and it was a really nice and relaxing vacation. The only downside was missing the rest of the family. When I was a contractor at Fisher in 2008 and 2009, they had a plant shutdown between Christmas and New Years. Except for one drawback, it was the perfect vacation. I was home, the family was home, and since the company was shutdown there were absolutely no work concerns. BUT since I was a contractor, I didn’t accumulate vacation time or get paid for the shutdown so it was more like getting laid off for a week than having a vacation.

Vacation reading material...
and dog chewing material!

I have a few other projects to work on during my vacation. I’d been meaning to make a chess website to publicize my tournaments for quite some time and this could be the week to finally make it a reality. I also have a couple of small matters to take care of for work, but that should be trifling and I’ll even get paid for it. I’ll also take the chance to order the trophies, medals, and inserts for my next set of youth chess tournaments in an unhurried manner and I’m looking forward to catching up on some reading. I’m 10 pages from the end of the Joel Osteen book I got for my birthday and am hoping to finish and review it for my next blog before Daisy and Baxter get finished with it. They have already chewed off the paper cover, half of the back cover and some of the pages. I also got 3 books from Amazon.com, 1000 Checkmate Combinations, Boris Gulko’s ‘Lessons with a Grandmaster’, and Yuri Averbakh’s chess memoir. I won’t be able to get through the whole checkmate book, but the reviews comparing it to my favorite chess book of all time, ‘Tal’s Winning Chess Combinations’ and it looks to be just as good as advertised. The Gulko book is 24 of his games in a Socratic lesson format with a psychologist and the Averbakh book has no chess games, but covers his 70 year chess career from 1940’s to the present day and should be a fairly quick read.

My vacation will include a lot of dog walks for coffee and beef sticks and even though I’m determined to get everything I want done this week, I’ll still be playing a little chess. I’ll be following the Tal Memorial super tournament from Russia this week and I’ve even found some time for 3 minute chess the past 2 days. I’ve been playing a little better than normal the last few days. Here's a couple of my better efforts against openings that normally give me trouble:

Hey, Joe

2011-11-16T19:41:00.002-06:00

  I’ll be the first to admit that I like watching college football on Saturdays, but I’ll also be the first to admit that I don’t get the pride people take in their favorite college teams. Take the Iowa Hawkeyes, for example. I see their logo on cars, apparel, notebooks, and even tattoos. State pride is wonderful, but if you look at their roster, you would see that over half of their players come from other states. It is the same with the Iowa State Cyclones football team. The basketball teams are in a similar situation with just 7 of 16 Hawkeyes and 2 of 15 Cyclones hailing from Iowa. I ask Hawkeye and Cyclone fans about this and they tell me that Iowa simply doesn’t produce enough big time college level athletes to compete with schools from Florida, Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, California, etc..... and must import players from other states to be competitive. I can accept this argument as long as we can agree that the premise of the Iowa and Iowa State athletic programs are not to provide athletic opportunities for Iowans, but rather to compete with other schools for victories, glory, bowl money, etc...

  This attitude of victory by import is also found at small time college athletics. The Iowa Community College Athletic Conference is group of Iowan 2 year colleges who compete in all different sports. Looking at the soccer rosters, you will get a major case of eye strain looking for players from Iowa. The Marshalltown Community College soccer team is much better than most in terms of Iowans on the roster but even they only have 2 players from Marshall County. Most of these teams have a majority of players from outside the country, much less the state. It’s even worse in Men’s basketball. The Marshalltown Community College basketball team has exactly zero players from Marshalltown, Marshall County, or even Iowa on their team. Zero! That is the same number of Iowans as the Indian Hills team and 1 behind the Iowa Western team. The women’s basketball situation is much better with 2 Iowans in the roster (both from Waterloo) to go along with the 6 players from Wisconsin. Sports like cross country and volleyball are more representative of the local population, but I’m mystified at why community colleges have so many out of state and out of country participants in so many sports. Is it so important to be competitive even at the community college level? Where would an Iowa soccer player have to go to play at the community college level? Wyoming? Estonia? Western Estonia?

  It’s clear to me that the emphasis on college sports at all levels is on winning more than providing athletic opportunities for the local population and that made it hard for me to understand the firing last week of Joe Paterno, the winningest coach in college football history. It’s been all over the news how Paterno’s longtime assistant Jerry Sandusky has been accused of 40 counts of child molestation. Penn State graduate assistant Mike McQueary found Sandusky in the Penn State shower assaulting a 10 young boy in 2002, reporting it to Paterno on the advice of his father. Paterno then reported it to the athletic director and school vice president after waiting a day. McQueary and Paterno defended their actions by claiming they were merely reporting the incident to the people they were supposed to report it to.

  Even if Sandusky is not convicted of any crimes, any man who takes showers with young boys and looks for situations to be alone with them or wrestle with them or lather them up needs help badly. I don’t know what McQueary saw or what he told Paterno, but it seems that both men followed their department policies. The fact that Paterno is not being charged with any crimes while the men he reported the incident to are charged with perjury seems to make it clear to me that Paterno did what he was supposed to do. Now, did Paterno do ALL HE COULD DO? Of course not! Have I always done everything I could do to help people in every situation I’ve ever been in? No, and I can’t imagine many have. I probably haven’t done everything I could do to help people in ANY situation I’ve ever been involved in. We’re talking about a man who worked for Paterno for 3 decades and played a large part in his considerable success. I can see where it would be hard for Paterno to believe the allegations even as I find it hard to believe he wouldn’t have known about Sandusky’s proclivities. I’m in the distinct minority, but I don’t think Paterno should have lost his job for not turning his longtime assistant in to the police unless he saw the incident. He did what he needed to do, which was turn the incident over to the proscribed authorities. I think letting him retire at the end of the season as he attempted to do would have been appropriate. I have no problem with the President of the University being fired since he is the ultimate authority of the incident and had the responsibility to have Sandusky removed from the campus.

  I think the Penn State University trustees threw Paterno under the bus in the cause of damage control. It looks very much like Sandusky is a child molester but he hasn’t been found guilty of anything and no money for confidentiality agreements have turned up like Herman Cain’s alleged abuse victims have been found to have signed. Paterno was judged guilty by association and fired, and now even his former players can only defend him at the peril of their own jobs, like when Franco Harris lost his spokesperson role as an ‘ambassador’ for a racetrack/casino.

  Paterno had 4 losing seasons in 5 years from 2000-2004 when he was in his mid-70’s and he didn’t lose his job. Why didn’t the same goodwill that allowed him to keep his job then apply to this new situation even though his sin of omission occurred in the same time period? I think the big difference is that 10 years ago, the Penn State administration could look forward to Paterno setting his coaching records and bringing favorable publicity to Penn State and that he was also still actively coaching the team. Now he is a figurehead that sits in a press box during the games, mumbles half-incoherent platitudes during interviews, hasn’t recruited off campus in at least 4 years. He has already set all the records he is going to and his days of bringing favorable publicity to his university are now over. Paterno has learned the lesson that most working people have to learn at some point in their lives: Employees serve at the whim of their employer and when they have served their purpose can expect no more loyalty than a bug that gets splattered on the windshield while driving.

Simple Things

2011-11-13T11:46:00.000-06:00

Can anything be more fun than simply taking a nap or hanging outside with your beagles?

Tuesday was Daisy and Baxter’s birthday and I want to thank them for writing my blog post last week. When I put down my 2 great dogs Queenie and Tuffy within 3 weeks of each other last year, I was sad and depressed for a long time afterward. The things I missed the most were just the simple little things like taking them for a morning walk, catching a glimpse of them doing something goofy, or just sitting on the couch reading or watching TV and having one of them amble up to me and fall asleep. Daisy and Baxter have very different personalities than Queenie and Tuffy and my relationship I have with them is different, but they have restored a lot of my joy in life. I love taking them for walks and when the light catches them at the right angle for a funny looking shadow or one of them snatches up a wrapper, lollipop, or a chicken bone off the ground I have a good laugh (after I wrestle the morsel away from them). I think I appreciate these simple things more after not having them for a few months last year.

Baked Cheetos - top right!

After months of planning, the company I worked for finally moved into our new offices on Friday. I’m a creature of habit, so I don’t especially like moving but so far I’d have to say the changes are mostly good. At the old building, there was a wireless internet so I could use my amazing iPod and the equally amazing Rhapsody and iHeart radio apps to listen to music and the Miller and Deace show while I was working. 3 weeks ago, the wireless internet was turned off and I could only listen to music I preloaded onto my iPod. The wireless Internet has been restored at the new building and now I can have my music dished up to me and be surprised by a new song or 2. I’m going to enjoy walking less than one block to my car instead of taking 2 blocks and an elevator, but I am also 2 blocks further away from a lunchtime ice cream treat. The restrooms are smaller with only room for 2 as opposed to the 4 occupant restroom in the old building and it’s further away so there will probably be more waiting time. While there is now a lunchroom complete with a TV and vending machines, I have to head downstairs to use them. The vending machine has a row of Baked Cheetos, but no Crunchy Cheetos or Cheetos Puffs. Baked Cheetos are OK so for now my boycott is still off. The major drawback is simple but weighty. The new cubicles are a foot shorter than at the old building. That may not seem like a big problem, but now whenever someone walks past my cube, I see them out of the corner of my eye. This is pretty distracting and while I may get used to it, I’ll be wearing my hat indoors for awhile until then. These things seem small, but when you spend 40 hours a week staring at the same computer screen in the corner of the same cubicle, simple distractions can become big because there is nothing else to focus on.

The king of simple living!

I have 6 weeks between youth chess tournaments in Des Moines so I didn’t have to spend any time this weekend ordering prizes, printing medal inserts, sending emails, etc. Ben was at a Quiz Bowl competition and Matt spent the weekend at college. That left Kathy and I home alone. We walked the dogs 3 times (twice for beef sticks) and in the middle of the day, took a trip to the Salvation Army and Goodwill stores where Kathy looks for Christmas candles and I look for books and music. On the way back, we went to the HyVee Drug-Store. Kathy always gets a bag of popcorn from the Lions and a lottery ticket and we also look to see what food was on sale. I previously wrote about the time apple juice was on sale for 1.16 a half gallon. This day was a jackpot because a lot of our favorites were available. I got a 2 liter bottle of Canada Dry Ginger Ale for 99 cents. My favorite soft drink of all time is an ice-cold Ginger Ale with a half a lemon. I also got a 4-oz package of ham for 59 cents to have for lunch and a dollar Old Wisconsin Summer Sausage (Daisy and Baxter aren’t the only one who like beef stick treats!). Kathy got 2 Twix and 2 Snicker bars for a quarter apiece. There was also a wall of instant oatmeal boxes for a quarter apiece. I passed on that (I ate oatmeal every day for breakfast when I was a kid and I can’t stand the stuff), but I saw a guy rifling through the entire display and pulling out the boxes with the ‘Strawberries and Cream flavor’. He saw me looking and said. "You always have to look hard for the best flavors". He filled a cart with as many of the boxes as he could find and pulled it to the checkout. When we got to the checkout line, the guy was in front us and he had all these oatmeal boxes along with 4 or 5 12 packs of Milwaukee’s Best beer and 2 bags of pretzels. I can only think that this man was the king of simple living.

There was also a deceptively simple advertisement for Pearson’s Salted Nut Rolls at the Hy-Vee Drug Store. Everyone sells them at 2 for a dollar but for some reason the HyVee Drug store says I can save 2.78 by buying them there. That would mean these Salted Nut Rolls are really 1.89 each, which I don’t believe. I got one at the Bondurant Git’n’Go on my way home from work one day, lured by the yellow message in the corner telling me it was a good source of protein. I looked at the back of the wrapper and sure enough, I could get 16% of my daily protein needs from one bar for only 12% of my caloric intake. I also noticed that I could get 17% of my daily fat requirement from the same nut roll and the 20 grams of sugar provides 50% of the 40 gram maximum offered as a guide line by the US. I’d like to see the Pearson company change the wrapper to say ‘Good Source of Protein, Better Source of Fat, and a Great Source of Sugar, but it’s probably simpler to just mention the protein.

A year in the life

2011-11-08T05:59:00.000-06:00

After over 2 years of 'solo blogging', I am happy to introduce Broken Pawn's first guest bloggers. Today's blog was a collaboration written by Daisy and Baxter (Beagle) Anzis

We were born on a farm. I don’t remember much about being a little baby except all 3 of us lived in a cramped carrier crate with our mommy and hardly ever saw our Daddy. Mommy was all brown and almost red and Daddy was a champion show dog with a big wide nose. Mommy chewed the toes on my back foot. I don’t know why but I only have one toe on that foot and I had a hard time walking on it.

One day our crate got taken into the kitchen and when it got dark 3 people I never saw before came in the house. I got taken out of the crate and they started handling me and petting me. It looked like they were going to take me with them when the farmer lady showed them Baxter and said she couldn’t sell him so if they knew anyone that wanted him they could have him for free. They looked at me and the skinny one picked me up. I fit right in the palm of his hand. The next thing we knew, we were both in a strange car for a long trip. I think it was long but I don’t remember much because I went to sleep.

Here we are with Kathy. We love her.

We got taken into a house and there was a little pen for us to stay in and another person in the house that came over and started petting us. They called me Baxter and my sister Daisy. We missed the farm and our mommy a little but it was warm in this house and there were a lot of new smells. They had 4 cats all living in the house and even a giant rabbit. I’d never seen a rabbit before. He looks smaller now. The older people (Hank and Kathy) took us upstairs, covered us with some blankets and we went right to sleep except Baxter started crying and woke everyone up. Did Not!! You’re the one who would cry and wake everyone up!! Well anyway, someone (Baxter) would wake up 3 or 4 times a night until Hank or Kathy would get out of bed and settle us down. Now we sleep almost all night except when we hear a noise and start barking like crazy.

Every day, we got taken downstairs to the kitchen and Kathy would feed us. One time Kathy dropped me and I landed on my head and started crying because my head hurt. Kathy comforted me, but Hank started singing the song from the TV commercial “I have a structured settlement but I need cash now. Call JG Wentworth 877-Cash-NOW!!” Me and Kathy were mad at Hank at first, but I felt better after a little bit and we all laugh about it now. We would lay on Kathy, and then she would leave for a while and Hank would play with us until we fell asleep on his lap. Then Kathy would come home and Hank would leave until it got dark. Matt and Ben would come to play with us and they’d leave too but they’d get back before dark. We’d sleep a lot and when everyone came home, we’d play with them.

We went out a few times but it was always so cold we had to go back in. But once it got warm Hank took us out after we ate in the morning, Kathy took us out during the day, and Hank and Kathy both take us out when Hank comes home. Every night we walk a few blocks and see if Mindi the Cairn Terrier can come out to play. I like to hang out with Mindi and we play with each other. I like when we visit Becky. She rubs my tummy! Becky is the lady who lets Mindi out of Bill and Marilyn’s house. They’re Becky’s parents and are 90 years old and they come out and pet us whenever they can.

I can make Hank laugh just by looking at him and he hardly gets mad at us. What about the time we outsmarted him and ate his salad? Oh yeah, that time he got so mad, he locked us in the kitchen and wrote about us on his blog. Once we turned 6 months old, he started taking us for long morning walks when he doesn’t dress up and leave for the whole day. We go to a place called the Jiffy and he gets a coffee and we get beef sticks. We both love beef sticks and we find all kinds of stuff to eat on the street, sidewalk, and grass. Then Hank calls us scrounges. We have so much fun on our morning walks that Kathy gets up and walks with us for beef sticks and when it’s hot, we all go to the Kum and Go in the afternoon. Kathy and Hank get sodas and we get beef sticks. I love beef sticks. YUM!!!

Kathy gets mad at Daisy when she barks on our walks and she was mad at me on Monday when I jumped on her and broke her computer, and she gets mad at both of use when we tear up the potty pads or try to eat out of the cat box or chew up the remote, but I just look at her with my cutest face and she can’t stay mad. I just pretend to go to sleep and she forgets how nasty and snarly I get when I bark at anything that moves. If she’s a little more upset than normal, I open my eyes, look at her, give a big yawn that says ‘I’m tired’, and go back to sleep. It works every time. She never minds if I bark when we run into Shirley, though.

Daisy's faster, but I'm not slow.

When it was really warm, Matt and Ben would stay home all day and play outside with us, but now Matt has started staying away for a long time. Ben still plays with us a lot and when Matt comes home we give him extra attention because we miss him so much. He makes Hank and Kathy take us to a pond where there is a big field and lots of goose poop. YUM!!! Matt takes me for runs when we go to the pond. He can almost keep up with me, but Hank gets out of breath after a hundred yards. Sometimes Kathy leaves us alone in the house. She tries to lock us in the kitchen and bribes us with bones, but I climb over the cage and chew things up. I try to remember to bring Baxter something to chew up so I’m not the only one who gets in trouble. He can’t climb over the cage because of his foot.

Going to the pond is so much fun!

Today is our birthday. We each got a pig’s ear, a new toy, and some canned dog food. I didn’t know what a birthday was before, but I sure like them now. I love living here and because my brother lives here too I'm never alone and always have someone to play with. I like birthdays too. I didn’t know before why I had to have a foot with only one toe on it, but now I understand that is was so I could live in a great home with my sister and people who love me and take good care of us.

Happy Birthday, Daisy!
Happy Birthday, Baxter!

Attitude Adjustment

2011-11-06T16:33:00.000-06:00

“Living well is the best revenge” – Lenny Blumenthal

The intense concentration of the chess players made a good impression on the visiting teachers and parents who were visiting the basketball tournament next door.

It was a contentious week of time-wasting emails concerning my monthly youth chess tournament being scheduled in West Des Moines on the same day as the IASCA tournament 140 miles away in Cedar Rapids. The emails finally came to an end Thursday when I asked the 64 thousand dollar question: Would the IASCA prefer that children in the Des Moines metro area not play chess on Saturday at all unless they travelled to Cedar Rapids? The tone of the IASCA this past month would lead me to believe the answer to that question is an emphatic YES, but since a question like this cannot be answered that way, the emails have come to an end for now although I’m sure veiled threats of ‘backlashes’, accusations of ‘competition’, and being singled out for ‘special attention’ in broadcast emails will resurface as soon as another of my monthly tournaments is scheduled on the same date as an IASCA scholastic event. It is ironic to even have this sort of issue with the same people who had no problem running events (and even asked me to proofread their flyers on occasion) on the same dates as IASCA scholastic tournaments held under my stewardship. I don’t feel like I ‘won’ anything since I had a lot of my time wasted, but I limited my losses by not taking the bait and responding in kind to the email sent to all the chess parents trying to portray me and my tournament in a less than flattering light. It could be argued that writing about it in my blog is tantamount to the same thing and I would counter by saying that my efforts to energize youth chess in the Des Moines area has been a central theme of my blog for over a year, these sort of nonsensical incidents have interest to any youth chess organizer and give an inside view of the process to non-chess organizers, and even I can’t write about Cheetos ALL THE TIME!

The IASCA and I used to get along better (I served on their board for 2 years and was the 2006 member of the year), but these days I don’t get them and they don’t get me. On Monday, I typed the quote from my old friend and co-worker from 20 years ago at the top of this article, sent it to myself as an email, and looked at it as often as possible this week. Dealing with nonsense of this sort takes away a lot of my enjoyment of chess and I needed to remind myself to not let anyone steal my happiness or put me in a sour mood with pointless emails and minutiae all because somebody got upset that 2 or 3 people might not travel 140 miles to Cedar Rapids to play chess because I was having a chess tournament in Des Moines.

Final round action at last Thursday's Marshalltown Blitz.

  I was looking forward to blitz on Thursday night and when Joe Meyer of Waterloo came down to play I was hoping to exact revenge for my loss of 2 weeks ago. We played 4 offhand games before the tournament and I got pasted in each one, only managing to win the last 2 when Joe had cases of temporary blindness going in for the kill. Dan Troxell from Des Moines and Matt Kriegel from Tama also travelled for the tournament to join local players Scott, Jon, Zach, Dalton, and me in the 8 player field. I had just started the tournament when Dave the barefoot chess player raced into the room. That left us with 9 players so I sat out, but the tournament was so much fun to watch and the games so interesting that I agreed to hang around for an extra hour to let the out of town guys get some extra games in before a long drive back. I even managed to get some video of the final round action. The Thursday Night tournament restored my good mood because a we had great mix of adults and kids and everyone got along great.

  I had another great chess experience on Friday morning at the St. Francis Chess club where I teach and coach. After 9 weeks the club has coalesced to the serious players competing in a ladder tournament on one side of the large meeting room and the casual players (about a dozen) giggling, socializing, and maybe playing a little chess on the other side. In addition to the ladder tournament, the players write down the game results each week and for the next meeting, I make up a printout showing the players’ won-loss records. When most of the serious players arrive at the club, the first thing they do is to check their position on the ladder and their won-loss record. The club now requires very little supervision even though we have over 50 players every week, so I have time to start teaching chess. There’s enough time for a classroom session but these kids will be sitting in a class all day and I want the club to be fun, not work, which led me to couch the lessons as a set of challenges. The first 2 challenges are to checkmate with a queen and king against a king and to learn how to play both sides of a king and pawn vs. king ending (either making the pawn a queen or keeping the opponent from doing the same). The players have to demonstrate their skill by playing out the positions against me or the other coaches (Chris and Eduardo). Once a player demonstrates their knowledge, they receive a button to reward their accomplishment. I don’t know how Chris and Eduardo are handing it, but when I accept the challenge, I talk through the position for the other players that are watching while waiting for their turn to challenge me. This way I can have a semi-classroom setting with the students that want to learn and the others can play chess without worrying about a lesson. I had run the king and queen vs. king challenge last year and was expecting the older players to easily checkmate me with the queen this year. I was amazed by how many of the players forgot how to do the checkmate, but I’m sure they’ll get it back after a while. It was great seeing 50 plus kids enjoying chess before school and getting to hang out with the other coaches and share our enthusiasm for the kids learning and enjoying chess put me in an even better mood.

  On Saturday, I was ready for the tournament. Because of a high school math meet, Chandler wasn’t available to help me set up so I took the trip to Des Moines at 6:30 by myself and listened to some music on the trip down. There was a basketball tournament in the adjoining gym and one of the kids whose dad was setting up concessions for the tournament asked me if he could help me set up the chess sets. I was happy for the help and we had the hall all set up by 8:15. I got to talk to his dad and invited them to come to the club on Fridays and offered to allow him to play in the unrated tournament, but they had to leave for basketball practice and I never saw them in the afternoon. A number of the basketball parents and the lady who assigned the rooms for the chess tournaments also came by and were very impressed with the level of concentration of the children playing chess.

  I had about a dozen players in the rated section in the morning and afternoon sessions and only a few of those were staying all day. Most had soccer or cub scouts or other errands taking up half the day and I had a lot of parents come up me to tell me how much they appreciated their children being able to combine chess with their other activities. The unrated section had a lot of repeat customers from last month’s free tournament and I had about 20 players in each session, with a number of the morning players having such a good time they decided to stick around for the afternoon. I had almost a dozen kids from St. Francis playing in the tournaments. Many of them had excellent performances. One player signed up for a USCF membership and played in his first rated tournament on Saturday. He won one of the 3 games, but in his 2 losses went toe to toe with some players stronger than any he had ever played before and had the second-seed on the ropes in the final round. I was really happy to see him play well and even happier to see that his dad got the fact that even though his son didn’t win the game he played fantastic and was proud of the effort instead of being mad at the result. 3 of the other St. Francis players got in the top 5 of the 2 unrated tournaments and their parents got to see some fruits of our work with them on Fridays. With so many beginners, I had to a spend a lot of my time monitoring those games, but I still had plenty of time to hang out with the parents and when the morning unrated tournament ended at 11 instead of 12, I went to my parlor trick of playing the kids with 1 minute on my clock and 5 minutes on theirs. I played for almost an hour and only lost one game when one of the St. Francis parents beat me when I ran out of time. He then told me that in his home country of England, he was a county champion. This new rivalry will be continued another day....

  Almost everything went perfectly, ALMOST. I had a problem with the unrated kids playing so quickly in the morning that the tournament was over in less than 2 hours. I’ll address that by allowing for an unlimited number of rounds as long as they are started an hour before the scheduled end of the tournament. Kind of like a little league baseball game when an inning can’t start before 7:00. I want to make sure the parents get their money’s worth and not travel 10 or 15 miles for 90 minutes of chess. Another problem I had was of my own making. I mistook a late arriving unrated player for a rated player I was expecting and put him in the rated tournament. By the time I realized my error, the game was over and I had to get the unrated player a temporary membership. Normally I am awesome at remembering names and faces, but middle age has started taking some of that ability away. Those few problems were trifling. The kids had a great time, the parents were very vocal in telling me how great they thought the monthly tournaments were for their kids, and I solved the problem I had with the kids scratching the facings of my custom medal inserts off by designing an equally custom plastic insert cover. I even made around $50 dollars which I will put toward getting some chess clocks so I can have the top boards start with clocks instead of rationing my few clocks for the slower moving games.

  I even managed to hold a parents tournament in the afternoon. Last month I had exactly one parent wanting to play and when Christine Denison signed up for yesterday’s parents section, I enlisted Dan Troxell to help me out and head over so Christine would be sure to have some competition. They played a match in the morning, but 4 other parents, including my fellow St. Francis coach Chris, joined in the afternoon for a real tournament. Christine swept the tournament and Chris was thrilled after winning his final round game. He told me it ended up just like the challenges we are giving the kids. He had a King and a Pawn against a King, made his pawn a queen like we are teaching the kids in the one challenge, and then checkmated his opponent with the queen and king like he is teaching the kids in the other challenge. I told him I will present him with his buttons on Friday!

Putting a stamp on a situation

2011-11-02T19:27:00.000-05:00

The Post Office on the ground floor at the Capital Square building. The clerks offer fast, friendly service, but as this lunchtime picture shows, there just aren't enough customers to justify keeping it open.

  The post office on the ground floor in the Capital Square building where I work is scheduled to close this December. I had occasion to use this post office when I got my chess camp T-shirts well after the chess camp was completed due to a power failure in Marshalltown this past July. At 3 separate lunch times, I went to the first floor; got to the self-service counter, put the shirts in some envelopes, addressed the envelopes, and got to the counter. 2 times I had to wait behind a person or two, and two times another clerk came right up to help the next person in line. I was in and out all 3 times in less than 2 minutes at the counter, even though I was paying with a credit card and wanted delivery confirmation. What a difference between this post office station and the station at Urbandale, where I had to resort to trickery to get the line moving while the clerks were having a party in the back or the Post Office in Johnston where I got stuck in a 10 person line behind a person buying a single stamp while carrying on a 10 minute conversation with the clerk.

  I know the Post Office is losing money because people are sending email a lot more than letters, but a lot of their troubles are not of their own making. The US Postal Service is an independent agency of the government. This means that even though they don’t receive government money, they are regulated by the government and cannot raise prices without permission. It has to cost a lot more to send a letter or package from New Jersey to Alaska than it does from Marshalltown, Iowa to Des Moines, Iowa; but the Post Office is bound by law to charge the same amount for the shipment of any package.

  When you think about being able to send a letter anywhere in the country for less than 50 cents, it is pretty amazing and I can only remember 3 times where I mailed something that was never received and all 3 were checks to companies that probably misplaced or lost them. While I’ve had problems with some of the post office clerks I’ve encountered, I’ve never seen a lazy postal carrier and I’d like to offer some suggestions to help them keep their jobs.

  I have no problem with closing down as many postal stations as possible and just making them distribution centers. I know that in small towns many people use the post office as a meeting place as well as a post office, but most grocery stores already offer postal services and in smaller towns, somebody will be sure to start running a postal station out of their house if they can turn a buck so if the post office can cut costs by closing their offices, I’m all for it.

  Another way the Post Office is going around things the wrong way is by spending money sponsoring Tour de France teams and the like instead of being sponsored themselves. Instead of cutting Saturday deliveries, why not have ‘Saturday Mail Delivery presented by COKE’? Wouldn’t Pepsi then bid for Friday or Wednesday? Sponsors could pay premium for signage on the uniforms and trucks. If schools in Philadelphia can sell ad space, why can’t post office vehicles have TV’s mounted on them with paid advertisements.

A sampling of the collectible stamps for sale at the Post Office.
Does anyone under the age of 40 know any of the people on these stamps?
Selena (1971) is the only person depicted on any of these stamps born after 1930...
and she's been dead for 15 years!

I used to collect stamps and even buy sets of stamps at the Post Office, but I never hear any of the kids at chess club talking about stamps. Because of video games and other distractions from the classic pastime of stamp collecting, stamps need to be freshened up for the modern age. I went to the Post Office to research this post and all the people on stamps were dead. No wonder kids aren’t excited by stamps. The Post Office recently co-opted one of my suggestions by allowing living people to be on stamps and anyone can already put themselves on a stamp for a surcharge (you can see here). But instead of slowly deliberating over which living person will be on the stamp, the Postal Service needs to streamline their printing operations to be able to act fast and jump on any available bandwagon as soon as the opportunity presents itself. For example, as soon as the last out of the World Series was recorded last Friday Night, not only did the winning Cardinals have caps and shirts proclaiming their championship, I was able to buy the same gear the champions were wearing as well as other celebratory merchandise by calling the toll free number that flashed on my TV screen at the first commercial break. How much could the Post Office have made by having a 2011 World Series Champion Cardinals $5 stamp available only for items mailed the next Monday and only in St. Louis. There would be people lining up to have the $5 stamp put on letters mailed to themselves as souvenirs. Combined sales from the World Series, Super Bowl, NCAA football championship, NCAA Final Four, and the Daytona 500 would be a windfall for the Post Office. I'm not sure if the Post Office can use anyones picture without permission, but if not Congress should immediately pass a law mandating that the all American citizens and corporations are fair game for use by the Post Office for postage stamps. I'd be first in line for a Cheetos Puffs stamp!

I don’t know who will be put on the first stamps, but I’d suggest printing a stamp a week honoring the latest media cause célèbre. For instance, this past week Nicole Leszczynski and her husband were arrested in Hawaii and their child placed in state custody for the night when the pregnant Nicole wolfed down 2 chicken salad sandwiches at a Safeway supermarket and left the store without paying for the sandwiches along with the $50 in groceries that she did pay for (here is the story in case you don't believe it). I’m sure it was an honest mistake and the Safeway certainly overreacted, but I also don’t know how many people at the Honolulu Safeway are gobbling down sandwiches and playing the ‘Oh, I forgot and I’ll pay for them now that you caught me’ card in the rare event of being confronted by store personnel. Just pay for the sandwich and then continue shopping, Nicole! But in any event, the Post Office can capitalize on her 15 minutes of fame by putting her on a stamp and maybe even donating a couple of pennies per stamp to her lawsuit fund. I’m sure many people would pay a premium for the sympathy stamp in protest against Safeway stores. Another good stamp topic for collectors would be to put the latest teen heartthrob like Justin Bieber (who's probably been old news for awhile if I've heard of him) on a stamp so all the teen age girls can mail each other letters or just save the stamps.

Having a quick turnaround of stamp design, printing and distribution will inevitably lead to more errors, but this can be turned to the Postal Services favor and be the biggest money-making idea yet. One of the most valuable stamps is the 1918 ‘Inverted Jenny’, which was an air mail stamp that had one sheet of a hundred stamps escape the printing presses with the airplane upside down. My dad showed me his copy of this stamp and told me that if it was only upside down, he’d be rich. I would suggest that more ‘errors’ be allowed to escape the printing process along with a new practice of having all stamps be sealed so no one knows whether the stamps inside the package contain errors. Imagine if this year’s Ronald Reagan centennial stamp had been discovered to have had a few dozen stamps erroneously depicting the 40th president with a pair of devil horns. Liberals would be buying stamps like wildfire in order to display them, while conservatives would also be trying to get their hands on the errors so they could destroy them and preserve the image of their favorite president. And Reagan's not even alive! Once the sales for his stamp start to die down, it would be time to repeat the process by making a Clinton stamp.

Tactically Speaking

2011-10-30T15:21:00.000-05:00

Tactic - An expedient for achieving a goal; a maneuver (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/tactic)

I was hoping to be playing chess this weekend, but I got waylaid by a cold on Thursday. I felt so crummy that I stayed home from work sick for the first time in 5 years and decided to pass on the potential 25 hours of chess during the weekend-long tournament in order to get better and rest on the weeknd for a busy week of work ahead. I didn’t miss a day of work, instead using the miracle of modern technology to remotely take over my work computer 60 miles away in Des Moines. I took an hour sick time for a nap, but working from home was a useful tactic to convert 2 hours of driving time into some extra sleep. Maybe I should get sick more often, since after finishing 4th out of 6 players at last week’s blitz chess tournament thanks to poor efforts against Joe from Waterloo and Dave the Barefoot Chess Player, I managed to beat Dave and Dan Troxell to win this week’s 4 player tournament and now my quick chess rating is at it’s all time high. I didn’t win with dashing attacks, but I managed to keep from making any big mistakes and all 3 games my opponents lost a piece and I was able to push to victory after some various misadventures.

TacticsTrainer
A great iPod chess app!

  Almost all chess games among players at my level or below are won or lost by tactics. Being able to take advantage of a sudden opportunity to win a piece or a pawn is a key skill and once the skill is acquired, you can get your opponent go wrong by setting traps or complicating the game to rely on your superior tactical skill to win. Denying your opponent those opportunities is just as key. Players better than me beat me a lot by baiting me into leaving those opportunities while not leaving me any tactical shots. When I’m at a tournament, most players blame their losses on the openings. I’ve learned to nod sympathetically, but when the game is replayed most of these games are lost due to a tactical oversight in the opening and the player buys yet another opening book or spends some money on chess lessons from an expert in their opening of choice instead of the hard work of eliminating tactical blind spots and other deficiencies.

  I’d done some programming work for Andres Hortillosa’s SmartChess iPhone application last year, writing a program to convert some chess books in PDF chess formats into his iPhone app’s proprietary format. The arrangement was that I would get a percentage of the books sales, but then Andres wasn’t able to get the app certified by Apple. I never saw a penny for my efforts. I had even bought an iPod to test the program but was never given a working copy that would download the books my program created. After months of non-contact, I got a couple of emails from Andres over the summer to ask to set up users for my program and would get a quick email when the database server would prevent him from logging in. In late September, I got an email advertisement saying that Smart Chess had been approved by Apple and was now on sale, but I’ve had no other contact with the company since since August. I can only assume that he found someone to duplicate my program’s functionality or doesn’t need the program any more, but some explanation would have been nice (or maybe a complimentary copy of the app).

  I don't care for the the way my program and I were treated, but it's not the first time I've run into the tactic some people and businesses employ to not contact people unless you have a use for them. I should have known better since Andres had already demonstrated to me that he has a loose way with the facts. The techniques I learned from writing the program have already paid off in other projects and unwittingly Andres has helped me find a great way to improve my chess. 2 weeks ago, I saw an ad for Andres’s app on Facebook. I clicked on it out of curiosity, and saw similar applications. I took a look at one called TacticsTrainer, liked it, and decided to invest the $2.99 for it. It’s the first time I’ve ever paid for an app.

  I’ve used Ct-Art for tactic puzzles on my computer and enjoy it, but TacticsTrainer is awesome. Because it’s on the iPod, but doesn’t need to be connected to the Internet, I can use it while I’m walking to and from my car at work, during a coffee break, stuck in traffic, getting my oil changed, or any life’s many delays. While CT-Art has 1200 puzzles, Tactics Trainer has 20,000 puzzles so I’m not likely to run out or repeat them anytime soon.

  A couple of features I really like about this app might be something other players would not call ‘features’ at all. TacticsTrainer doesn’t show me how difficult the problems are or the theme of the problem. (CT-Art always shows the difficulty and shows the theme after you get to retry the puzzle). This makes the puzzles a lot more like the game situation. While playing a game, there's never a big red sign shouting. “TACTIC HERE! TACTIC HERE!”,and letting me know it’s an easy or hard puzzle and that I need to look for a pin or a knight fork is just a bit too much help. The only issues I have with TacticsTrainer are minor. I’d like to be able to review the puzzles I’ve already seen and while the rating and ranking among other players are nice, I’d be more interested in how many I got right. Time will tell if this app will help my chess, but I have to think it will be more useful than a book or software that keeps me tethered to my PC for as long as I use it.

  On his Sunday morning TV program at 7 on the Discover channel, Joel Osteen says God will take things that were meant to be done to you and turn them into things that will be done for you and sure enough, without my seemingly fruitless work with Hortillosa, I'd never have gotten my amazing iPod or this cool TacticsTrainer app and even though the next penny I see from the endeavor will be the first, I feel like I came out ahead.

  I’ve been the recipient of some other strange tactics lately that I hope will work out just as well. In early September, I was looking for a date for my November youth chess tournament at St. Francis when the IASCA pulled their tournament tentatively scheduled for Ankeny on November 5th and moved it to Cedar Rapids. The tournament hadn’t even been announced in early September despite the IASCA's own by-laws requiring the tournament announcements to be made 3 months in advance. Since November was already booked with tournaments in Des Moines for all the other weeks in November except for Thanksgiving, I arranged for my tournament to be held on the 5th. This has apparently caused some consternation in IASCA-land. The clearinghouse director wrote to say how ‘troubled’ he was by 2 scholastic tournaments on the same date and the scholastic director wrote to say he was getting inquiries as to why I was running a tournament in Des Moines the same day as one was taking place in Cedar Rapids (140 miles away). I wrote back asking that inquiries to be forwarded to me and received none. Yesterday, I got an email from the scholastic director saying there has been a ‘backlash’ towards me about my having a tournament and that he has had to tell the chess parents ‘not to worry, that I was a great guy’. Then the scholastic director wrote to all the parents to let them know about his tournament in Cedar Rapids next Saturday, but he wrote about my tournament almost as much as his. He wrote about my ‘motivations’ for holding my tournament on the same day (which were completely wrong) and made special mention that his tournament raised $250 for the IASCA to donate to the states’ scholastic champions to go to nationals last year (no mention that the organizers also pocketed $250 in profit last year from the tournament). I don't know why I'm coming in for all this special mention by name and as borderline rude and unprofessional as it is, I'm not concerned. Maybe the IASCA is setting up a tactic to create a no-lose situation. If the Cedar Rapids tournament gets an increase in attendance, they can say how they are having success despite my ‘interference’ and if they have a decrease they can blame me as the scapegoat. I’m too happy with my efforts to grow youth chess in Des Moines (an area that was abandoned by the IASCA), too confident in the correctness of how I’m going about it, and too pleased with the results so far to let all the chatter ruffle my feathers. In fact, I’m looking forward to seeing how all this will eventually work in my favor.

Let Freedom Ring

2011-10-26T18:44:00.000-05:00

"Freedom is an individual battle,
fought on many fronts."

  Last week former Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi met his end when he was flushed out of his last hiding place and killed. No one knows whether he was killed in battle or whether he was executed, but in the end it really doesn’t matter. President Obama and the NATO forces that bombed Gadhafi’s military have affected the regime change they sought and removed a long-time thorn in America’s side. It remains to be seen whether there will be freedom and democracy in Libya or whether mass graves filled with Gadhafi’s opponents will be replaced by mass graves filled with his former supporters and the Libyan version of government by Islamic law will mean the imprisonment and flogging of actresses who appear in movies without wearing traditional garb. Time will reveal all the answers and for now the world is celebrating the newfound freedom of the Libyan people.

  Luis Lebron and other welfare recipients of Florida have won freedom from taking drug tests to get their welfare payments. The ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of Lebron, a 35 year old Navy vet and college student at the University of Central Florida and the law requiring the drug test was halted by Federal Judge Mary Scriven. Another Florida Law that would have made new state employees take drug test was also suspended after the ACLU filed a different lawsuit. Lebron said he was “happy that the judge stood up for me and my rights and said the state can’t act without a reason or suspicion.” I’ve had to take drug tests in order to get a job and I didn’t feel like my rights were being violated, but I did insist on watching the keeper of the little yellow bottle put the label with my name on it so there wouldn’t be a mix up. I think drug testing for state employees should be a matter for collective bargaining, but I have no problem with minimizing the chances that people receiving public assistance won’t be selling their EBT cards for drugs or cashing their welfare check at the check cashing place closest to their preferred dealer, especially if there are children depending on the recipient to buy food for them with those funds. But the court has ruled that the recipients of entitlement programs are entitled to not have to be subjected to a drug test in order to be entitled. I wonder if President Obama’s new initiative to hire more veterans will come with a mandate that they won’t be subjected to a drug test if they are hired for a job. If not, Mr. Lebron may exercise his newfound freedom by declining all job offers and staying in school, at least until his public assistance runs out.

  Don’t get me wrong. I’m not upset by people on welfare going to court over having to take a drug test or our government borrowing billions of dollars from China in order to effect a regime change in a country half a world away. This is the system we live in and I can’t really hold it against anyone for trying to use the system in their favor. I like to think in our own small ways, we are trying to advance the cause of freedom as we see it as best we can.

A different kind of freedom...
from Jalapeno Cheetos!

I was a freedom fighter in my own way when in August, I vowed to boycott buying Cheetos from the vending machine at work until the vending machine powers that be stopped their predatory practice of slipping Jalapeno Cheetos into every other slot, making me either buy the Jalapeno Cheetos in order to get regular Crunchy Cheetos to the front of the machine or wait until a coworker bought the Jalapeno Cheetos, leaving the desired regular Cheese Cheetos to the next person.

I kept to my boycott even though it looked like the machine would never change its ways. I did occasionally buy a bag of pretzels or Lay’s potato chips, but when I wanted Cheetos, I either walked to the Marketplace 6 floors down and 2 blocks away or did without. There were plenty of times it would have been easy to quit, like the entire week that a bag of Crunchy Cheetos was front and center calling to me to put my 85 cents in so we could be together, but I could see the green tint of the Jalepeno Cheetos back just waiting behind it to have the last laugh and it gave me the strength to deny myself the Crunchy Cheetos.

Freedom always has enemies!
Lurking just behind the Baked
Cheetos are Baked Doritos,
just waiting to deprive snack
lovers their right to choose!

2 weeks ago I noticed that the Cheetos had been moved from the second row to the top row of the vending machine and that there was only plain Lays potato chips and not the sour cream Chips. Then a day or two later I saw that the plain Lays chips had been replaced by the sour cream chips and that in addition to the crunchy Cheetos, a slot on the top row has been filled by Baked Cheetos. I kept to my boycott and last week I noticed that the crunchy Cheetos slot didn’t contain Jalapeno Cheetos in any of the slots. Now I could get a bag if crunchy Cheetos whenever I wanted. Proclaiming victory, I fished a dollar out of my pocket and bought a bag of Cheetos. Sure enough, a new bag of crunchy Cheetos had made its way to the front of the line. As a bonus, I even got 20 cents in change back instead of the expected 15 cents. If I had a rifle handy, I would have fired shots through the ceiling (I work on the top floor) to note my triumph, but instead my victory celebration consisted of eating Crunchy Cheetos and victoriously washing all that orange Cheetos powder from my hands.

I don’t know if this was some sort of marketing experiment or the vending machine company finally ran out of Jalapeno Cheetos or they were willing to make concessions to regain my business, or some unrelated reason, but I’m chalking it up as a victory for freedom for snack food choice. I’m also aware that this may be a trick from the vending machine company to lure me back into the Cheetos habit and then the Jalapeno Cheetos will make their reappearance. I know I’ll have to remain vigilant to protect my boycott’s gains. Today I found out that the vending machine will be taken out of our office for ‘refurbishing’ before we move to the new office in a couple of weeks. I also noticed that the Baked Cheetos are alternating between Baked Cheetos and Baked Doritos. It’s a grim reminder that even though I’ve won the freedom to have crunchy Cheese Cheetos on demand from the vending machine, there is still work to be done.

A Sad Story

2011-10-23T12:07:00.001-05:00

  In July of 2005, Jamie Pollard was named Athletic Director at Iowa State University. The football team had been coached by Dan McCarney for the last 10 years. McCarney’s first 5 years on the job saw his team win less than a quarter of their games with a 13 and 32 record, but in the next 5 years his Cyclones went 32-30 with 4 bowl appearances and the first 2 bowl wins in school history. The school even had a chance to win their North division of the Big 12 conference in 2004, but lost their chance by losing an overtime game to Missouri on a missed field goal and an end zone interception.

  The 2005 season saw the Cyclones go 7-5 including another chance at a Big 12 North division crown lost by a missed field goal in an overtime game. The Cyclones had a poor 4-8 record in 2006, Pollard publicly said it was impossible to sell hope to the football fans and McCarney quit before he was fired. Pollard managed to replace McCarney with the hottest name in the assistant coaching ranks, Gene Chizik (defensive coordinator from Texas). Chizik’s hiring was lauded by all, he went 5-19 in his 2 years as the head coach and left for Auburn where we won a national championship in his second year on the job.

  To replace Chizik, Pollard turned to Paul Rhoads, a native of nearby Ankeny, Iowa who was the defensive coordinator for Auburn. Pollard was also lauded for this selection since instead of hiring a hot name who only had eyes on the Iowa State job as a steppingstone, had hired a local son who would consider Iowa State his dream job. Sort of like a Dan McCarney...

  In his first year as the Iowa State football coach, Rhoads’ team went 7-6 including a bowl game win against Minnesota. The highlight of the season was a huge upset of the mighty Nebraska Cornhuskers in Lincoln where Rhoads postgame speech made every national sports show as an example of the inspiration he gives his team. In his second year the Cyclones went 5-7 and no bowl game. The apparent step backwards drew very few complaints from the Iowa media because among the 5 wins was a huge upset against the mighty Texas Longhorns.

  The state’s pundits gave the Cyclones very little chance of the 6 wins needed to get to a bowl game this year because they had one of the toughest schedules in all of college football. Their new Big 12 conference schedule requires they play each of the other 9 teams in the conference this year instead of only playing 8 of the 11 teams as in years past. The Big 12 conference has 10 teams while the Big 10 conference has 12 teams. Luckily, neither conference competes in Math.

  The predictions of a losing record for the Cyclones looked to be on the money after they needed a 4th quarter comeback to beat the minor league Northern Iowa Panthers by a single point. But after comebacks to beat the Iowa Hawkeyes and the Connecticut Huskies found ISU with an unexpected 3-0 record, talk turned to bowl game possibilities and the possibility of beating the Longhorns in a rematch. With a week off to prepare, for the nationally televised game, the Cyclones had an awful game, finding themselves behind 13-0 after the first quarter and 34-0 at the half on the way to losing 37-14 in a mistake riddled performance which featured an interception, 2 fumbles, a missed field goal (when the game was still a relatively close 13-0), and a blocked punt. When the Cyclones traveled to play the Baylor Bears the next week, the team managed to stay close in the first half, only losing 21-14, before getting trampled in the second half en route to a 49-26 defeat. Last week the Cyclones travelled to Missouri to play the Tigers and were down by 14 points 6 minutes into the game and were never close in the 52-17 beatdown.

  With the 3-0 start a distant memory, the Cyclones played the Texas A&M Aggies on homecoming weekend yesterday. I hadn’t planned on watching this game and was reading with the Law & Order: Criminal Intent marathon on the TV when my mother-in-law called to ask me if Matt was at the game (he attends Iowa State and has gone to a couple of the games) and asked me if I was watching the game. I answered no and no, she hung up, and I figured that there must be a reason she was asking. So I turned on the game and sure enough the Cyclones were winning 7 to 3 late in the first quarter. I watched the rest of the first half and slowly but surely the Cyclones gave up a field goal, a touchdown, and another touchdown without scoring any points of their own to trail 20-7 at the half. At that point, we took Daisy and Baxter for a walk. When we got back, the Cyclones were trailing 33-17 and that was how the game ended.

  Everything I hear and read concerning Paul Rhoads says what a great coach he is and how inspirational he is to his team, but all I see is a team that is getting worse each year and is not competitive. I get all the talk about having a tough schedule, but when you’re the worst team around, that means the other teams are better than you, you are the only team that doesn't get to play you, and of course the schedule will be tough. I have no idea if Rhoads is a good coach or not, but I'm suspicious when a new coach wins a lot of games his first year and then goes downhill. It makes me think the old coach left a lot of players who needed to hear a different voice, but the voice is slowly getting tuned out. If Iowa State doesn’t win 5 games this year, I wonder if Pollard will ditch this football coach the same way he did McCarney or will he think he can still sell hope and give Rhoads more time.

  I think Pollard hasn’t found the right football coach for Iowa State yet. In 1989, the Kansas State Wildcats were an awful football team that hadn’t won a game in 2 seasons when they hired an assistant coach from Iowa named Bill Snyder. In 3 years, Snyder’s team had a winning record and was a perennial winner and sometimes national championship contender. After 2 straight losing seasons, Snyder retired in 2005, but was rehired in 2009 after a 2 more losing seasons. In his third season after being rehired, the Kansas state Wildcats are 7-0. The right coach is out there if Pollard will keep looking.

Why can't we NOT be friends?

2011-10-19T19:02:00.000-05:00

  Hank Williams Jr. lost his place as the intro singer to ESPN Monday Night Football 2 weeks ago when in an interview with Fox News, he compared President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner playing golf last week to “Hitler playing golf with (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu." When pressed, Williams said Obama was 'the enemy', making it clear that he was not comparing Boehner to Hitler in his comparison.

  I didn’t think there was a terrible outcry to remove Williams from Monday Night Football. ESPN probably decided to jettison the singer before there was one. The song had run its course, having followed Monday Night Football from its descent as one of the highest rated and longest running prime time shows on network television to featuring Dennis Miller, offloaded to cable television featuring Tony Kornheiser and now its current incarnation as a straight football show with no pretensions of trying to have any other audience beyond beer-drinking football fans and gamblers trying to break even for the weekend. The show didn’t need a 60+ year old country singer ‘rocking’ how his rowdy friends were getting ready for Monday Night and adding new lyrics each week with whatever can rhyme with ‘Night’.

  Lost in all the hype over Williams Jr. losing his night job is that he asks a good question. Why were Obama and Boehner playing golf together during the heat of a budget crisis or any other time? Obama has recently accused the Republican Congress of wanting to have‘dirtier air, dirtier water’ and called on his supporters to 'punish our enemies' during the last congressional election (he later backed off that comment) . Boehner wasn’t giving Obama a mulligan over the ‘enemies’ comment and in July compared working with the White House to ‘dealing with Jell-O’. And now they’re playing golf? I don’t mind Obama and Boehner insulting each other or golfing together, but I wish they’d either be friends or enemies so I’d know where they stand.

  Baseball’s not as popular as it used to be, but one thing I hardly ever see on a baseball field is the players from opposite teams hugging and congratulating each other after a game. The winners congratulate each other on the field and the losers head to their clubhouse. I don’t like watching 3 hours of a violent football game and seeing all the players shaking hands and patting each other’s rear ends afterwards. It was big news this Sunday when the coaches of the Lions and 49ers got in a big argument during their post game handshake, with both being accused of poor sportsmanship. If my team just got beat in the last minute like the Lions did on Sunday, I don’t want the coach of my team congratulating his conqueror.

  I wouldn’t want the star of the team I rooted for having a pre-game kiss with the star of the other team like Magic Johnson and Isiah Thomas did in the 1988 NBA finals. At least they were proved to be phony about their kisses after they got in a scrum over a loose ball and almost came to blows in Game 4 of the series. After that, the kissing stopped, at least in public. The hockey players have a tradition of shaking hands after the end of a playoff series. It seems stupid to do in the only sport where a fistfight comes at the price of a 5 minute penalty to both sides, but the players have to go through with it under the threat of a hefty fine. After a particularly violent series between the Detroit Red Wings and the Colorado Avalanche in 1996 where Claude Lemiuex’s dirty hit on Red Wing forward Kris Draper broke his jaw, nose, and cheekbone, Detroit forward Dino Ciccarelli said of Lemiuex "I can't believe I shook this guy's friggin' hand after the game. That pisses me right off".

  I always see golfers and tennis players shaking hands with each other after the matches and the tennis players even shake the umpire’s hand. I can give these sports a pass since there the golfers are both competing against the course and the tennis players don’t come in physical contact with each other, but I have to admit I enjoy watching the veneer occasionally peel off, like when Serena Williams got so upset at the umpire at the US Open over a call she disagreed with she wouldn’t shake the umpire’s hand. Race car drivers not only don’t shake each other’s hands after the races, sometimes they try to crash into each other before the race is over or have a fist fight after the race.

  When I play chess, I almost always shake my opponents hand before and after the game and I think that’s OK. Unlike professional sports, we are paying for the opportunity to play chess and the handshake is not only a sign of respect, it is a way to thank the opponent for giving me someone to play. And unlike politics, we aren’t calling each other unpatriotic or bowls of Jello (most of the time). That’s not to say that players always shake hands. When the Russian defector Victor Kortchnoi challenged Russian hero Anatoly Karpov for the world chess championship in 1978 and 1981, there were no handshakes. In a 2006 championship match, Vladimir Kramnik was accused by Veselin Topalov’s team of sneaking into the bathroom for computer assistance and found himself locked out of his bathroom before a crucial game. Topalov even threatened to not shake Kramnik’s hand the rest of the match. Kramnik forfeited the game but won the match and there are a number of examples of the two not shaking hands in subsequent matches. I haven’t had to play anyone I disliked in a long time. If I did, I’d probably be like Dino Cicarelli and shake the other players ‘friggin hand’ and be mad at myself about it later.

  25 years ago in the golden age of professional wrestling one of the most popular fueds featured the so-called Iron Sheik (from Iran), who would disparage the USA at every opportunity and ‘Hacksaw’ Jim Duggan would wave the American flag around the ring, get the crowd cheering USA-USA-USA, and then knock the Iron Sheik upside the head with his handy 2x4 at some point during the match to the delight of the sold-out crowds. We all knew wrestling was fake but when Duggan was arrested on the New Jersey Turnpike for drunk driving and the Iron Sheik was in the car with him, professional wrestling lost a lot of fans who weren’t willing to put up with the two actors being traveling companions even though no one ever questioned how the Iron Sheik could be whacked on the head with a 2x4 repeatedly night after night.

  Sportsmanship is all well and good, but when I see politicians insult each other repeatedly or sports figures trying to physically conquer each other, it makes me suspicious when they buddy up right afterwards. I hope Obama and Boehner are careful if they decide to take a drive on the New Jersey Turnpike, but if they were discussing how to amend the health care plan to help this guy (Warning - not for the squeamish) during their golf outing, then there are at least 2 Hanks that owe them an apology.

Back to Zanzibar's

2011-10-16T17:03:00.000-05:00

Early in the week, I arranged to meet my friend Dan Troxell and the gang at Zanzibar’s Coffee Adventure on Saturday morning to hang out and play some chess. I hadn’t been there since June and have been meaning to head over for quite some time, but as the prophet Willie Nelson said ‘Ain’t it funny how time slips away’.

When Zanzibar regular Dan Troxell (of the Innocent Bystander blog) came down to my outdoor chess tournament in July, I had introduced him to Robert Vance. Robert is a longtime volunteer Des Moines chess teacher and since that introduction has started giving lessons at Zanzibar’s. Dan's been over to Marshalltown to play blitz 4 times since then. In August and early September, he won 1 out of 6 games, but in 2 tournaments over the last 4 weeks he reversed that score, winning 5 out of 6 including a 3-0 mark this past Thursday to join the list of Marshalltown Thursday Night blitz Champions.

On the left is Robert Vance conducting a lesson in tactics. On the right is a $2.25 coffee, Mike's $3 orange juice (freshly squeezed), and a $2.60 bagel with cream cheese.

  I was looking forward to meeting up with the Zanzibar gang again, seeing how their chess was getting along, and I also wanted to gauge how my chess was doing. I’ve been playing very poorly lately, barely even looking to see what my opponents were planning and not bothering to check my calculations to see if there were holes in my logic. As a result, I’ve been getting a lot of lost games and even though I’ve managed to win most of these games by swindling my opponents, I’m planning on playing in a big tournament at the end of the month and need to correct my problems before then.

  Like I do every day, I woke up at 4:30 and since it was a weekend, Kathy and I walked the beagles to the Jiffy for a beef stick treat. When I got my coffee, the clerk told me the price had gone up to $1.29 for a 20 oz coffee. It was only $.99 for me since I had been bringing my refill cup since the last time Jiffy had raised the prices, but I was pretty annoyed at this sudden 25% increase in the price of my coffee. I’m sick of all these rich convenience store owners and coffee growers gouging me. I looked on the side of a soda cooler where everyone puts up their used car and used trailer park space ads to see if there was an ‘Occupy Jiffy’ protest going on that morning. Since there wasn’t, I was able to carry out my plan to head to Zanzibar's.

  I left the house at 7:30 and 55 miles later pulled up to Zanzibar’s at 8:30. Robert was there giving a lesson in endgames to Mike and Dan. I went to the counter to get a coffee and a bagel. They were out of everything bagels so I got a sesame seed bagel with cream cheese to go along with the coffee of the day, Peru Java. $4.75 later I was back working on the puzzles with Dan, Mike, and Robert. We talked about baseball , politics, and the high price of coffee (not to mention Mike’s $3 shot glass sized freshly squeezed orange juice) while we were solving puzzles and before I knew it, it was 10:00. I had told Kathy I’d be back by 12:30, so I suggested we play a game before I left. Robert squared off with Mike and I got another Peruvian coffee ($1.10 refill) and bagel with cream cheese before starting a game with the reigning Marshalltown Thursday Night Blitz champion, Dan Troxell.

It sure looks like Dan has gotten a lot better since we last played at Zanzibar's. I played good, still it was a long hard struggle even with the extra piece and I think it got me in a good groove of trying to anticipate my opponents plans and replies. Robert had beaten Mike a couple of times while Dan and I were playing and I suggested he try to play Mike without his queen since our game was going to be awhile. Normally this is not something I’d suggest in a friendly setting like Zanzibar’s but since Robert was in an instructive capacity, it seemed reasonable and they tried it. Mike lost the first game, but got to a pawn up ending in the second match and managed to win (I did offer some advice at one point about keeping all his pieces involved which I probably shouldn’t have done). I’d love to run an odds tournament in Des Moines someday. I doubt the players would go for it, but I know I’d enjoy trying to take on the top players in the state with an extra piece or pawn in my pocket and try to comeback from a piece or a pawn down against a lower rated player.

It was around 11:15 when we were finished. Dan and I were going over our game and then Paul walked in and started a game with Dan. We talked a little more and then it was time to go at a little before 12. I had another great time at Zanzibar’s and I’m looking forward to my next visit.

I left Zanzibar's just as I found it, with people playing chess and drinking fine coffee.

15 Minutes of Fame

2011-10-12T19:25:00.000-05:00

I didn’t know what to expect after the Broken Pawn won the 2011 Best Chess Blog Award from the Chess Journalists of America. I didn’t think I was going to get a swelled head about it and so far I don’t think I have. I am really happy to have won the award and I enjoyed writing about the nearly 3 month long process from my self-nomination on May 25th to the actual winning of the award over the only other self-nominated entry on August 14th. I told some people I knew about the award and they thought it was pretty cool unless I mentioned that you had to nominate yourself and there were only 2 nominations, in which case I got a few eye-rolls. But I regard it as a singularly rare honor and I will always consider myself an award winner. I am going to break my promise that the Chess Journalists of America have seen their last penny from me, since as the current winner (*sniff*), I’ll be submitting my blog for the award next year for sure.

Once I got the news, I scanned the United States Chess Federation website daily for their announcement of the award winners. And when I got home from work on the Friday after the CJA announcement, I saw it: ‘Annual Chess Journalists of America Awards, Winners are in’. I knew my category was the last one so I scrolled down the article and there it was:

CJA Best Chess Blog Award
Broken Pawn
By Robert Keating

  Robert Keating…Robert Keating? ROBERT KEATING?? Robert Keating, 2011 Iowa Chess Champion who lost to my son Matt in the championship tournament, but had a better score against the rest of the field to take the title? Robert Keating, the CJA winner of the 2011 Best Analysis Award? Robert Keating, a Cedar Rapids surgeon who is not a Marshalltown programmer named Hank Anzis? Yes, that Robert Keating. Bob Keating is a great guy who I've always enjoyed talking to but c’mon……that's MY 15 minutes of fame we're talking about here! I posted a comment noting that I had written the award winning blog and sent a note to the webmaster too. I received an incredibly gracious email from CJA chief judge Ramon Hernandez noting the error, alerting me to a message he placed in the USCF forums that day to let the readers know about the mistake, and also paying my blog some compliments. The error was corrected on the web site in 24 hours and all was well. I even got a congratulatory email from Jennifer Shahade, editor of the USCF web-site. 2 weeks ago I got my monthly Chess Life magazine from the USCF and all the CJA award winners were on page 52. I skipped the first 51 pages, scanned to the bottom of page 52, and there it was – ‘Broken Pawn by…Hank Anzis’ . As my brother Ed would say, ‘YAY’. I’ve never had my name in Chess Life and I think that is very cool.

  During the week after the announcement, I noticed a large number of hits on my blog from Belgium and lots of referrals from a website called Chess For All Ages. I went to that site and saw the post “The Last Shall Be Least” in which the blog author Mark Weeks opines about the vacant Chess Journalist of the Year award, compares the Best Chess Art Award winner to “art for your living room available ‘Buy It Now’ on eBay”, and then it was my turn:

  "As for the '2011 Best Chess Blog Award', what can I say? Listed last, in the 'New Media' categories after both 'Best [USCF] State Chapter Website Award' and 'Best General Chess Website Award', the best blog award went to Broken Pawn. Runner-up was Chessvine.com, the only other entry in the blog category. This was one of five categories with only two entries, but even these fared better than the '2011 CJA Best Regular Newspaper Local Interest Chess Column Award', with a single entry.

In the months leading up to the award announcement, Broken Pawn posted a series on the whole CJA submission process: ‘Higher Education’,’ A second second chance’,’ Fool me once..’.,’ Second best’, and ‘Birthday wishes for a lazy day’. The first post I've listed includes the following gem:-
‘Maybe I’ll get some publicity for my blog, but I’m thinking I’ve shortchanged the colleges, Who’s Who book publishers, and Chamber of Commerce dinner organizers. These are people who know there’s a lot of 'stupid' money out there and they are just trying to get in ahead of the Chess Journalists of America!’

... Whatever the reason, congratulations to all of the winners!"

  ‘the following gem’..’Whatever the reason’... Not a mention of any of my stories about chess in the heartland of America, my sage analogies comparing chess to other aspects of life, or even a nod to my chronicles of my efforts to start a scholastic chess program in Des Moines. In a fit of artistic rage, I exchanged some missives with Mr. Weeks, who seemed to me to only want to use quotes from my blog to insult the CJA. We came to an understanding and I apologized for my sarcastic comments. I even submitted a post to the Chess Carnival of Blogs he hosted on October 4th, which got a warm introduction as being by the 2011 CJA Best Chess Blog award winner (*sniff*). Weeks is a prolific chess blogger with at least 3 active blogs, who might have won the award if he had chosen to submit any of them.

  I also noticed this post on Chessvines.com (the other self-nominated entry) http://chessvine.com/archives/960-CJA-Awards-2011-Best-Chess-Blog-...Broken-Pawn.html. The blog author Anton Taylor called my blog ‘very good’, but then expressed his disappointment that I blogged about how his blog had only 13 posts in 2011 and just 3 posts since May and how most of those posts were links to other posts. Anton mentioned that he wished that my criticism was constructive and then noting “I have a personal issue with those who do write verbosely, “A fool is known in multitude of words” (sounds familiar). I thought I was offering observations rather than criticism, but I wanted to express my regrets for his disappointment and to show there were no hard feelings. I tried for a week to put a comment on his blog, but neither Ben nor I could figure out how to get the blog to accept the drawn out letters that it wanted us to type in as a quasi-password. I ended up sending my comment as an open letter, was slapped around by a couple of people who did manage to get their comments in and chessvine.com had 3 posts in the month of September and one this month.

  The only other mention of my CJA award was in the chess blog BaconLog, noting the USCF article showing Robert Keating as the author of my blog along with my comment. BaconLog promised to read my blog, and complained about having to nominate himself to be considered. And that was it – 4 website mentions, 2 congratulatory emails, and my name in Chess Life to go along with the very much appreciated congratulations from the people that count most, the people who read my blog. Don’t think I’m unhappy with the 7 mentions, I got fewer birthday cards than that.

  I did get a lot more visits to the blog once the article hit the USCF web site but that has dissipated. I didn’t get much extra ad revenue from the publicity and to boot, Google has determined that there has been suspicious click activity on my blog and stopped advertising on it. I’ll get a certificate from the CJA over the next month or 2 and when I do, I'll write a press release to send to the area newspapers and see if I can parlay my award into some other opportunities. I could do it without the certificate, but I think having the physical award will help my credibility. After all, the diploma did wonders for the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz, didn’t it? Other bloggers get TV talk shows and wider exposure and while I don’t see myself scaling those heights, perhaps I could get some speaking invitations at some Wine and Cheetos tastings. Who knows, maybe I’ll get the certificate before 60 Minutes comes up with a replacement for Andy Rooney.

  I haven’t submitted any of my postings for a wider distribution (except for the chess carnival), but did get some national publicity from Saturday’s National Chess Day tournament. I submitted an article to the USCF web site just like last year and it got published on-line (You can see it here) along with other chess events from around the country. There were 3 tournaments in Iowa on Saturday, but mine was the only one to get on the USCF web site. I’m not sure if the other organizers submitted an article, but since they haven’t mentioned the tournament on the state website or even put a link to the crosstable online, I doubt it.

  I was going to put a mention of the award on the Iowa State Chess Association web site, but I wanted to see if it got a mention in the quarterly IASCA chess magazine without any self-promotion on my part. I got the magazine in the mail on October 1st and it did receive a mention in the editor’s introduction right under the mention of the Ron Dieke’s 2nd place finish in Best Review and the award for Best Analysis by Robert Keating. Yes, that Robert Keating.

How I Spent My Birthday

2011-10-09T16:05:00.001-05:00

  My birthday was yesterday, but it really started on Thursday when I got home from work and was greeted by birthday cards from both sets of my parents-in-law. I went to chess club as usual and lost to Dave the barefoot chess player in a uniquely pathetic performance, but I did get a present in the return to the club of Scott after 6 months spent watching his son’s Thursday cross country meets and starting his own business. Scott is a mental health counselor and his business is called ‘In Perspective’ and it was great to see him back playing chess. I played him in the third round of the tournament and while I did beat him, I can tell he’s been studying and has made a lot of improvement.

  I went home after club, ate dinner, took care of a batch of emails, and checked on a project at work remotely all the while keeping an eye on the 5th and final game of the Yankees-Tigers series. Young gun Ivan Nova gave up 2 home runs in the first inning and that kept the Detroit pitcher Fister from feeling too much pressure and he cruised along till the 4th inning when the Yanks loaded the bases with one out. Fister proceeded to get Martin out on a popup and struck out Gardner to keep the 2-0 lead. Girardi kept switching pitchers like a drunken sailor, but except for CC Sabathia giving up a 5th inning run, the relievers kept the Tigers from scoring any more runs. Cano hit a homer to get the score to 3-1 and then the Yankees loaded the bases in the 7th inning with one out and big hitters Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira up. Rodriguez struck out, but Teixeira got a walk to force in a run, but Swisher struck out and the Yankees were still losing 3-2. They never mounted another challenge after that and lost the game 3 runs to 2 and the series 3 games to 2.

  There is a tendency to blame Rodriguez for striking out 3 times in such a big game, but there’s enough blame to go around. The Yankees outscored the Tigers 28 to 17 in the series, but the Tigers played better in the clutch and won all 3 games in the series that were close. I’m not saying the Yankees choked, but Soriano giving up the game winning home run in Game 3 and the bad at-bats with the bases loaded in Game 5 give that impression. Without his steroids, A-Rod is breaking down and better hitting replacements for Swisher and Martin are needed. Another top-line starting pitcher would be nice. The Yankees did accomplish some good things this year. Granderson has attained near-superstar status, Robertson has shown he may be able to replace the great Rivera, and if Nova doesn’t get hurt he will be a mainstay in the rotation for years to come. BUT, with the Yankees any year without a championship is a year wasted and a 200 million dollar payroll down the drain. As for the Tiger facing last year’s Yankee conquering Texas Rangers, I’ll be positive and say how glad I am that at least one of those teams will lose their next series.

Busy day at the
St. Francis Chess Club!

On Friday, I went to St. Francis in West Des Moines for my 5th chess class of the year. We have over 50 kids signed up and a high of 58 attending last week. The beginners are starting to play more or less complete games and 25 players are competing in a ladder tournament each week. I’ve got a couple of great parent helpers which allows me to go to each group and answer questions and give some quick instruction. I’ve had a few dropouts but many of the parents have written to me to tell me how their kids look forward to chess club on Fridays. This makes me feel great because my main goal is to instill a love of the game and show the kids how to have fun whether they win or lose.

Mmm..almond bars!

After the club was over I hustled across town to work, where there was an email saying it was my birthday tomorrow and Sarah had baked some almond bars for everyone to eat. It is a tradition at this job to have someone bring in treats to celebrate every birthday. The almond bars were great and a lot of people offered their condolences about the Yankees, although there seem to be a lot Cub fans who didn’t seem very sincere. I understand that since you would have to be 103 years old to say you were alive when the Cubs were world champions. I worked, went home, walked the dogs with Kathy, ate some of the special corned beef she cooked for me for my birthday, took care of another batch of emails, watched a little TV, and got a good night sleep to get ready for a busy birthday day.

Yesterday morning at 6:30, I headed to West Des Moines for my monthly youth chess tournament after walking Daisy and Baxter to the Jiffy for a beef stick treat with Kathy. Normally, I wouldn’t have had a tournament on my birthday, but October 8th had been designated as National Chess Day. Last year at this time, I held a free IASCA qualifying tournament in Marshalltown and got some nice publicity on the USCF website when I submitted my story about the tournament. I inquired with the IASCA clearinghouse about having the same tournament again this year without competition. One of the board members said he had already scheduled an event in Cedar Rapids on that weekend. Tournaments in Marshalltown don’t work very well against competing tournaments, so I stopped planning the Marshalltown tournament and instead scheduled my monthly tournament at St. Francis for National Chess Day.

I got the tournament date secured and then my friend David Coppedge from Marietta, GA had me do some computer work for him and paid me enough to allow me to offer a free tournament again like last year. I kept the same format I had last month; morning and afternoon tournaments for USCF members and non USCF members, very few trophies but medals for everyone. I started advertising a month ago, sent my emails out 2 weeks ago and was looking at 15 entries last Sunday. I was not too concerned since this happens every month. Most tournaments make the parents commit at least a few days in advance to receive a pre-registration discount, but I say anyone who sends me an email at least the day before is pre-registered. Making it so easy on the parents to sign up can make it hard on me if I choose to worry about how many players I have, but I’ve learned to stop worrying about how many people will come to my tournaments as long as I’ve done everything I can do to. As the week went on, I got a lot of signups from the tournament regulars, kids from the schools where Jose Gatica teaches, some of the Ames chess clubs, and some players from Lee Cole’s club. Add in 20 or so of the kids I’m working with at St. Francis and by Friday night I had over 70 signups.

I had some no shows, but there were 67 players at the chess board at some point during the day. I brought high school student Chandler from Marshalltown to help set up and one of the players from Stillwell Junior High came an hour early to help so we had 40 boards up and ready by 9. It was a good thing I had extra help, because I had made a mess of the trophies. I ordered them months ago and looked at them, but as I put them out today I saw that the labels all said WDM National Chess Day – October 8th, 1960. What a maroon! I entered my birthday instead of the actual date when I ordered the trophies. I 'Sharpied' out the 1960, printed 2011 on some clear labels, and found I had no scissors and my knife wasn’t sharp enough to cut the labels. Bondurant chess coach Craig Kinrade went out and got me a pair of scissors and a Mountain Dew and even put the new year on the trophies for me. The trophy winners got a big kick out of the stupid date on the trophies once they heard the story, so it wasn’t as big a deal as I originally thought.

The tournament was great. I was determined to have a good time and nothing was going to stop me from having one. A lot of kids were beginners playing in their first tournament. They needed a lot of help going over the rules, but there weren’t a lot of arguments either. I had at least 20 parents tell me that they were happy the tournament was only in the morning because the kids had another activity in the afternoon that would have prevented them from coming to an all day event. I got to spend some time with the parents but pretty much had to keep an eye on the beginner’s games.

I can't remember seeing
a happier face than Will's
after pulling off this
cool-looking checkmate.

  There were a lot more issues in the afternoon session. One player in particular kept accusing his opponent of cheating by moving the pieces around. Luckily, that player that had been accused was writing the moves down and I could use that to verify the position on the board was accurate. I talked to the upset player and the mother and suggested it would be a good idea if he wrote his moves down also to be able to prove any accusations. He won his last 2 games, but to my surprise did write down the moves, which is more than I was able to get the kids who had come to the summer chess camp to do during the tournament. My other big problem was with the medals. Having the inserts printed for me is very expensive and I have to order a minimum of 100 at a time, so to keep costs down I’ve been buying blank medals in bulk and printing and applying the insert label stickers myself. A couple of the kids discovered that they could just scrape the ink off the label and started destroying their medals and then some other started scratching their medals just to see if they could, stopping when they had put an ugly scrape through their medal. Kids! By the end of the afternoon tournament, a lot of the kids wanted new medals. I traded out the ones I could and put new inserts in some others, but I need to come up with a way to scratch proof the inserts.

  I hope I’ll see a lot of the new players continue tournament chess, but a lot of them expected to win all their games because they can beat their parents or uncle. These players had a good time and hopefully made some new friends, but now that they saw that there are plenty of other kids who are their equal or better at chess many of them will stay away from tournaments. I can’t control that, but I’m very happy that I was able to put on a free tournament and provide a few hours of chess for anyone who cared to play. The tournament wasn’t perfect (they rarely are), but it was a great tournament that got a lot of kids exposed to chess.

  After the tournament was over, my friend from work Shashi came to the site with a friend of his and his friend’s 2 daughters. Shashi’s birthday was also yesterday and he was spending it with his friends’ family since he has no family in the area. We spent an hour or so playing chess with the girls (they knew most of the rules) and a couple of the players from Ames who wandered back in after playing in the nearby playground. I left a little before 5, was walking the beagles by 6:15, and had the tournament rated, pictures uploaded, and all my articles written by 9pm. I got to unwrap my presents, but never found the time to eat my birthday cake.

The birthday haul: Cards, a Batman T-shirt, the new Joel Osteen book, the coveted Pen-Cam for better blogging, and a sampler of the BEST candy ever, ZOTZ!

I got up this morning at 4:30, Kathy and I walked the dogs to the Jiffy for a beef stick treat at 5, and we finally ate some of my birthday cake at 8 this morning. My Sister-in-law Megan made me a facebook pictorial of her visit to the Waffle House in honor of my birthday and I had a great time looking at that and remembering the taste of scattered smothered and covered Waffle House hash browns.

Except for our traditional celebratory meal where I get to pick where we go to, my 51st birthday is over. The first 51 years have been OK and I had a great start on the next 51 with my most attended tournament since I started my Des Moines metro scholastic program and a great birthday to boot. I’ve got a bagful of new ideas I’m itching to try out and if the coveted pocket pen camera I got for my birthday is half as good as it’s cracked up to be, I’ll have the potential for great blog material whenever I step outside.

Slapped Around (and Battles with Kushan Part 3)

2011-10-05T20:53:00.000-05:00

  Before you start reading this, look into my eyes……I'm feeling something…wait…wait…I’m sensing you are having a conflict with a friend or …possibly a relative. I was right, wasn’t I? I think I may have been born with psychic powers.

  I’m not looking very psychic this week about the Yankees. Rafael Soriano, the former Tampa Bay reliever I had been lusting over since last fall as a possible replacement for the great Rivera, gave up the losing home run in Monday’s game to put the Yankees down 2 games to 1 to the Tigers, just one game from elimination. Taking the hill for the Yankees last night was A.J. Burnett, who I pleaded with Yankee manager Joe Girardi to leave on the bench in my last post. Last night Burnett survived 3 walks in the first inning and held the Tigers off until the Yankees got the bats going to even the series at 2 games apiece and set the stage for tomorrow’s decisive game 5. I super happy the Yankees have lived to fight another day and I hope Nova can continue where he left off in game one of the series. Some person left a comment on my blog calling me ‘a idiot’ (sic). It’s hard to argue that point at the moment. Soriano doesn’t seem to have the right stuff for New York, then Burnett comes up huge in a big spot. I don’t like getting slapped around on my own blog, but it’s not the first slap I’ve taken lately.

  After having my offer of having a chess club at the Salvation Army in downtown Des Moines accepted, I was ready to get started 2 weeks ago. On the day of the first meeting, I emailed my contact to make sure of the time. A reply came back telling me that the Salvation Army didn’t think there was going to be much interest in a chess club, so thanks but no thanks, they were not going to have a club, and they were sorry they didn’t tell me sooner. I resisted the urge to ask when they had planned on telling me, instead saying maybe we could revisit it in a few months. This was a setback of my own making. I should have put up some flyers around the area to see if I could have sparked some interest, which at the least may have committed the Salvation Army to have had the club for a couple of months. When I first started up in Marshalltown, my kids and I spent more than a few evenings staring at each other, but eventually the club caught on. I hope I’ll get another chance at a Salvation Army club in Des Moines, but my experience in these matters is that saying no gets easier the more you do it.

  I had another self-inflicted setback last month. On June 29th, I wrote how I’ve been buying $2,000 of Intel stock when it went down a dollar and then would sell when I could get my money back while keeping 5 shares for myself. In the 3 months since that post, I executed 5 buys and 4 sells and even though the stock was 21.39 on June 29th and was 21.22 at the close yesterday, I’ve accumulated 18 shares of Intel with 2 buys on the table as opposed to 1 buy on the table on June 29th. If I keep 5 shares for each sell and made 4 sells why do I only have 18 shares instead of 20, you may ask? On August 9th, Intel hit 20 so my program buy executed and I added a sell of 21.24 but then Intel went up to 21 2 days later and I put in another program buy for 20. On the 18th the stock hit 20 again, so I now had 2 buys at 20. The sell point went from 21.24 to 21.15 because I would only pay 1 commission on the 2 sells and Intel spent the next month flirting with 19 a share. I had visions of the stock bouncing like a bungee jumper from 21 to 20, triggering more and more buys. I decided to stop the possibility of this vicious cycle by changing the sell point to 20.93, which left me 8 shares instead of 10. On September 14th, Intel hit 20.93, I sold, and Intel spent all day at 20.7. I felt very smart indeed but in the last hour when Intel shot up to 21.40, I felt a lot less smart since I cost myself 2 shares by not following my own system. Yes, small potatoes and it probably means I’ll be eating cat food a week earlier than planned in my old age, but I feel bad that I left something for free on the table.

  2 weeks ago, when I performed my daily task of checking my blogs hits and ad revenue, I received the unwelcome news that Google was not going to advertise on my site anymore because of ‘suspicious click activity’. No other details. I appealed and my appeal was denied. I know that asking my Facebook friends to click on my ads is ‘verbotten’ so I’m not doing that any more, but I’ve written about which ads were the best paying on my blog for quite some time (political and dental) so I don’t know why my number came up 2 weeks ago. For all I know, the increased hits from winning the best blog award triggered the siren alarm. I’ll appeal every month or so the same way Tim Robbins in ‘Shawshank Redemption’ kept asking libraries for donations to the prison, but in the meantime I’ll be auditioning advertisers.

  And I don’t even want to get into how I received a bill last Tuesday for an extra hundred dollars for the room I rented for my chess camp 2 months ago or how I forgot to log out of my computer and thanks to a co-worker came in the next morning to my find my second monitor not working and no icons on my screen and all my shortcuts gone and....wait – I did say I didn’t want to get into it.

  On the chess front, as long as I’m at it, I thought I’d share the worst beatdown I’ve received in a long time. In late July, I was playing chess on the Internet Chess Club and Kushan Tyagi challenged me to a game. Kushan is a chess expert from Ames and currently the 25th ranked 14 year old in the United States. He finished 3rd in this year’s Iowa Chess Championship. I’ve played Kushan 4 times on chess.com at the pace of a move every 3 days and won 2 and drew 2 because I was only playing one game while he was playing dozens and got a draw against him in an offhand game at the West Des Moines Chessathon 2 years ago which to my mind was a bigger accomplishment. I had just hit my all time high rating in one-minute chess and Kushan and I stated with a 3 minute game.

Pretty ugly, but I was happy to get the draw. Little did I know that would be the highlight of this day’s battles with Kushan.

After those 2 wonderful efforts, we switched to 1 minute chess but it was more of the same:

  I wish I could say it was just a bad day, but since I won 4 of the 5 other games I played on the Internet directly before and after my battles with Kushan, I have to admit I was just outclassed. I had meant to publish these games earlier, but got busy with other topics and since they fit in with my other recent events, I hope Kushan doesn't mind that I was much slower to print my losses than my wins.

  Last Wednesday I came to work all worried about my hundred dollar charge for the chess camp and as I walked from my car to my workplace via the Skywalk, this lady stopped me and asked if I had a spare dollar I could give her. It was the first time I’d been stopped for money in 17 years in Iowa. I reached in my wallet and had no singles. She looked old, scared, homeless, and hungry so I just gave her a five. Maybe she just got a six-pack instead of a 20 ounce Bud or maybe she bought some food. It was none of my business. Once I gave her the money, it wasn't my money anymore and what she did with it was none of my concern. For all I know, I was put into all these difficult situations just to be be in the right mood on this day to give that lady a five-dollar bill. I couldn’t say that was why for sure, but no one else can say that wasn’t why for sure, either. I do know that as soon as I got to the elevator, an email popped up on my amazing iPod (RIP, Steve Jobs) telling me the hundred dollar charge for the chess camp was an error.

  I’ll get more chances to start chess clubs in Des Moines, find advertisers for my blog, profit from Intel stock ups and downs, and if I keep making baseball predictions I’m sure to look like a real psychic one of these years. And as for Kushan, I’ll just wait till HE turns 50 and then sic a grandkid on him!

Say Goodbye

2011-10-02T08:54:00.000-05:00

  Terry Francona was dismissed as the manager of the Boston Red Sox this week. Francona is the only Red Sox manager in the last 90 years to have won a World Series and he won two of them, but when the Red Sox collapsed and not only lost the division to the Yankees but failed to get into the playoffs for the second year in a row, the world championships didn’t matter anymore and the Red Sox didn’t pick up Francona’s option and will look for another manager.

  I don’t know how the manager change will work out, but I think the Red Sox have made the right choice in letting their manager go. At the end of August, the Red Sox had a 1 game lead on the Yankees for the Eastern Division lead, but went 7-20 the rest of the way and finished 7 games behind the Yankees and a game behind the Rays for the playoff spot reserved for the ‘best loser’ that doesn’t win their division.

  The media is generally down on the Red Sox for making the move, but I think it should have been done even if the Red Sox had made the playoffs unless they managed to get to the World Series. This is a team that hasn’t won it’s division in 4 years or a playoff series in 3 and despite their home grown talent of Ellsbury, Predroria, Buchholtz and Papelbon, the Red Sox had a payroll this year of 161 MILLION DOLLARS, third in the majors behind the Phillies(172 Million) and you guessed it, the Yankees (202 Million). For that kind of money, the people running the Red Sox have a right to expect more than they have been getting. I thought the Yankees should have gotten rid of Torre after the 2004 collapse against the Red Sox instead of wasting 3 years hoping that Torre could recapture his old magic.

  Francona should have his pick of jobs and if nothing suits him, he can be a talking head on TV until a job opens up that he likes. In Boston, all eyes are now on boy wonder GM Theo Epstein. This year, Epstein won the right to pay top free agent Adrian Gonzalez and he had a very good if not great year, but his other big pick up (outfielder Carl Crawford was awful), there is no catcher, and the starting pitchers all were hurt at some point during the season except for last year’s free agent pickup John Lackey, who was so bad that the Sox fans were hoping he’d get hurt. If Epstein whiffs on his next managerial hire and batch of free agents, he could be the next to go.

  I wasn’t sad to see the Yankees game against the Tigers get rained out Friday since it meant saying good bye to facing Tiger stud pitcher Justin Verlander and his 100 mile and hour fastball and no-hitter potential twice in this series and if it does goes to 5 games the Yankees will only have to contend twice with 6’8” Doug Fister. Fister was very effective after being picked up from Seattle earlier this year, but he is no Justin Verlander and the Yankees finally got to him in the 6th inning of yesterday's game to take a 1-0 lead in the series behind the stellar pitching of young gun Ivan Nova, who is turning out to be the pitcher that Phil Hughes should have been. All in all, the rainout was a good deal for the Yanks, with the only downside that instead of Sabathia pitching twice, we may have to see A.J. Burnett pitching in the playoff series. I hope Yankee manager Girardi comes to his senses and leaves Burnett on the bench.

  Also saying goodbye is 92 year old Andy Rooney, who will be making his last regular appearance on 60 Minutes this weekend. I don’t watch 60 minutes very much, but I’ve caught Rooney’s 2 or 3 minute show-closing monologues on Yahoo or YouTube in bursts of 10 or 20 for years . Rooney has come in for a lot of ridicule and caricature for the style of his monologues, but I’ve always found them thought provoking and enjoyable. I’ve read most of his books of collected articles, and also enjoy reading his column in the Marshalltown Sunday paper. I like that he says what’s on his mind without a lot of fluff and by the end of his TV bit or article, I know exactly what he thinks and where he stands.

  I’m not an aspiring writer, but I write as a hobby and Rooney has been a big influence on whatever style I may possess. One thing I noticed is that Rooney very rarely uses adjectives or adverbs. (see for yourself). He makes the story so that he doesn’t have to waste words describing the words he does use. After I’m done writing my post, I read it over once again and end up stripping out almost all the adjectives and adverbs and I think I have better posts for it. I’ll miss Rooney and I hope he’s not retiring because he’s sick or dying. It’s pretty cool when a guy who is 92 can still make a living and I hope I’m still writing at that age. Here is another of Andy Rooney’s nutty monologues.

  Christopher Meloni said goodbye to his Elliot Stabler character in Law & Order :Special Victims Unit over the summer after 12 years. Based on a lot of the comments I read on the SVU facebook page, many viewers are going to give up on the show because they won’t get to see Stabler beat some suspect up and call him an a**-wipe. I’m also going to miss those scenes but I’m not going to give up on the show either. I like the show to see the detective work and the crackpot villains, not to see Detective Olivia Benson’s having an alcoholic mother, a rapist father, and no children with a biological clock stuck at 11:59 pm. And I’m pretty bored with Stabler’s problems with his kids and his marriage too. I get it. They have issues. OK? Enough already. Can we catch some rapists and predators, please?

  I’ve seen the first two post-Stabler episodes of SVU and I think the show still has a future. Danny Pino’s Detective Amaro and Kelli Giddish’s Detective Rollins roles are still undefined, but they seemed to fit right in with the rest of the team. The season debut was a knock-off of the IMF chief that got accused of rape in New York a couple of months ago and this week’s episode had the comeuppance of the dad from the Wonder Years after years of abusing young basketball players. Both episodes were long on Olivia’s emotional distress at losing her partner and having to get used to new ones and short on the evil predators and the dark side of the New York streets. Not a single gunshot was fired in the last 2 weeks and I only remember one scene shot at night. I hope NBC will take the money they are saving by not paying Meloni and put it towards some top quality scripts with memorable psychopathic predators and cast them with the best guest stars money can buy. It’s OK to spend a couple of minutes on the angst of the main characters, but the show has listed heavily in that direction over the last few years and I’d rather see the the cat and mouse war between the SVU detectives and the New York predators. When I think back of the great SVU episodes, I’m always drawn to ones like the RDK killer and the Robin Williams and Carol Burnett guest starring roles as opposed to the times where Stabler’s daughter got mad at him or Olivia found out something about her alcoholic mother and rapist father. Interesting cases are what make the Law & Order series and the quicker they get back to that formula and away from soap opera storylines, the better the show will be.

Payday

2011-09-28T18:47:00.000-05:00

  I didn’t get paid last week but I will this week. My company is not in trouble, I just get paid every other week. This is my second job in a row where I get paid every other week and it is by far my favorite way to get paid.

  I got paid by the week in all my jobs until 1990. On all except one job, my boss or supervisor would give us our check if we were working on payday. If you weren’t working that day, you’d either wait till you were working or just come in and pick up your check. When I worked as a computer operator at a Bank, the bank gave all of us an account and would deposit our money on payday. Since we were the computer operators, the payroll department would give us a tape with the deposits (no disks, internet, or flash drives way back when) and we would load it into the computer. You could always tell who was broke because they would keep asking you if the payroll had been loaded yet.

  When I was young and single, getting paid by the week was great. Get paid on Thursday or Friday, get wasted and broke on the weekend, barely eat the rest of the week, get paid on Thursday or Friday, repeat. As I got older and started getting monthly bills like utilities and rent, blowing my paycheck on the weekend didn’t cut it anymore. I started saving some of my check for the monthly expenses and used some for weekly expenses like gas, food, and laundry. The months with 5 paydays were my favorite, since I had a little extra cash, which is always fun.

  When I started working for Wyatt Data Services in 1990, I was just engaged to Kathy and I got paid only once a month. Luckily I was moonlighting for extra cash at the time. The people I was moonlighting for thought I was crazy for insisting on being paid every week, but I was pretty hard up for cash that first month. Once I got a month ahead, being paid once a month was manageable and I let my part-time boss pay me less than once a week. When I got paid once a month, instead of looking forward to the 5 week months, I was now dreading them because it meant another week of expenses but the same paycheck.

  I left Wyatt in 1993 and went back to work at an coat manufacturer called Amerex for more money so we could move to Iowa and I was back to getting paid once a week. There were a lot of warehouse workers at Amerex and the company would have payroll truck come to the warehouse on payday to cash everyone’s check. Except for the goons hanging around with guns protecting the money, I liked cashing my check before I went home for the weekend. One time I didn’t check my money until I left the window and I was $60 light. I went back to the window and the goons all put their hands on their guns so I put my hands over my head and asked extra nicely if they could give me my $60. They said they couldn’t since I left the window but I did get my $60 back when it turns out the cashier was that much over for the day. I just cashed my check at my bank after that. One time my friend Frank Brandi (the Finance V.P.) cut through the line to ask the clerk a question and one of the goons grabbed his gun. Frank got right in his face and started yelling “What are you going to do? Shoot me?” The goon backed down and was never seen again at the payroll truck.

  At my first job in Iowa, the owner gave us a personal check on the 15th and the end of the month and for 12 years it was back to dreading the 5 week months. When he sold the company, the new owners went to direct deposit and I’ve never gotten a paycheck I needed to cash since except once when my paperwork didn’t make the direct deposit in time for my first check on a new job. I miss not getting a paycheck. I don’t miss taking a trip to the bank to deposit my check, but going to the bank with my check put my job in perspective. Now that my pay is some ones and zeros streaming over the internet and magically appearing in my account, sometimes it feels like I don’t even get paid and I miss the disconnectedness between my work and getting paid.

  When I started working at SourceCorp in 2009, I got paid every 2 weeks for the first time in my life and that has continued in my current job. It’s a lot like getting paid twice a month except twice a year there are 3 checks in a month and an extra 2 week’s pay is like a real bonus. Even if the ‘bonus’ gets used for an unexpected expense like a car repair or just to get ahead on the car insurance or property taxes, I feel great when I get 6 weeks pay in a single month.

  I’ve noticed the mood of the whole company brightens up on the 3 payday months. Since the government is involved with everything else, maybe they can mandate bi-weekly pay and legislate 6 weeks in every month so we can all get 3 paychecks a month every month. Not only would it help lift the mood of the country, since the workers would have an extra paycheck every month, they could spend that money to boost the economy. I hope when they make this law, there is a ‘Buffet’ clause saying millionaires don’t get the extra paycheck, but if they did I wouldn’t mind too much. After all, have you seen the cost of getting a Cadillac or Mercedes tuned up lately? I can’t imagine a politician getting elected if they went against this proposal.

  One really cool thing about getting paid once a month was having a big fat paycheck (This was still in the day when I got paper checks instead of direct deposit). Once I went to the bank across the street from our Hillside, NJ apartment to deposit my check on a busy Saturday and waited patiently in line while the clerk made useless small talk with every customer (This clerk was the inspiration for the widespread use of ATM machines and direct deposit). Finally it was my turn. I didn’t know the teller and was ready to give a New Jersey grunt when the subject of the weather or any other subject came up when I gave her my check and deposit slip. She took a long look at my check and said at the top of her lungs, 'WOOOOOOO!THAT’S SURE A LOT OF MONEY. WHAT DO YOU DO FOR A LIVING?’ Lots of people stared at me and I was pretty embarrassed but I didn’t want to admit I only got paid once a month, so I said very softly, “I kill people for a living and it’s sure been busy lately.” I got my deposit slip back in record time along with a mumbled “Have a nice day”. I replied, “Thanks. I’d like to talk more, but I have to get back to work now.”

Fall Festival Redux

2011-09-25T13:05:00.000-05:00

Last Sunday was the Fall Festival at St. Mary. Unlike the past 3 years, this year I wasn’t on the committee to help plan and while I missed hanging out with the other people on the committee, I’m pretty busy with work and my chess endeavors so it was nice not to have all the meetings, responsibilities, and worries over the weather, etc... I had volunteered to take money on the day of the festival like I had the past 2 years, but instead I was asked to take pictures of the Festival. It sounded like a plum job and I quickly agreed.

Ben was finishing up his service hours for confirmation by working at the festival all day, so we drove the 6 blocks to the church at 9 in the morning to help set up. It was good to see people like Greg Konrad and Jack Kessler who helped set up for the Fall Festival each year when I was on the committee. Greg had succeeded me as a chairperson with my friend Peg Brown. Peg and I were original members of the Stewardship Committee and she was Matt’s confirmation sponsor. Peg also spent many years as the St. Mary business manager and is really good with a buck so I'm sure the festival made as much money as possible.

An empty gym at 9am turned into a packed house by 1pm.

Unlike the last 3 years, it was raining on this festival day and that required a lot of changing plans. The games were moved into the school gym from outside. All the Hispanic food was being prepared under a tent but the customers would buy their food and take it to the gym to eat when the rain was more than a drizzle. We moved tables around and set up games and occasionally I would sneak away to take pictures of the progress of the pork loin meal being prepared in the church basement as well as the Hispanic food being cooked in the street. Then Ben and I were assigned the task of setting up the PA system for the afternoon live auction. We managed to find the speaker wire hanging behind a curtain and hook it up to the PA system. The Ben and another fellow hooked up the PA system to the wireless microphones and everything was A-OK. I took another break to take some more pictures and head to the Jiffy for a cup of coffee and get Ben a Sierra Mist with ice. When I got back to the church, I didn’t have my 2009 Yankee World Series Championship hat. I looked all over and didn’t find it, drove back to the Jiffy and didn’t find it, and went back to the gym and still didn’t find it and gave it up for lost.

Around 11:30 the first wave of kids and parents started arriving to play the games and eat meals. I made my way around to the church basement for the pork meal, the street where the Hispanic food was being served, and the gym where the games were and took more pictures. It had stopped raining and I took a break and ate a fruit cup (watermelon, cantaloupe, and cucumber) while I hung out with my friend Dennis outside the Hispanic food stand while he was eating his lunch. Dennis’ wife Tammy was on the committee all 3 years I was and Dennis would hang out a lot and help on the day of the event. Dennis works at the scrap metal yard and last year I had a case of temporary insanity and challenged him to an arm-wrestling contest. We started and he yawned for about 30 seconds while I managed to move his arm 2 or 3 inches before slamming my hand almost through the table in less than a nanosecond. He doesn’t play chess, but I bet I could beat him in a Cheetos-eating contest. Dennis was missing his favorite team, the Super Bowl champion Packers play the Carolina Panthers to hang out at the festival today and we would check the score occasionally on my amazing iPod. The Packers were losing at the half 13-7 and I told Dennis it was his duty as a Packer fan to hustle home and root his team on to victory. He left and the Packers did win 30-23 so if they end up making the playoffs by a game I’m expecting to be voted a playoff share for my contribution.

Pork Loin, potatoes, vegetables, and pie on the inside; Fruit cups, tortas, tacos, and other Hispanic food outside. But not a Cheeto in sight...

I made another round of picture taking and helped put up a huge tent so the band could have a dry place to perform and then it was time for lunch. Last year, people would buy $1 food tickets and then pay for their food with them, but this year you bought a ticket saying what kind of food you wanted and then gave the ticket at the food stand. It was a great idea and I’m jealous I hadn’t thought of that. Not only does it keep the food preparers from having to add up food prices, but it also keeps the food line moving because everyone already knew what they wanted since they already had the tickets. I bought a $5 ticket for a torta which I can best describe as an Italian Hot Dog with steak instead of the hot dog part. I could watch people make food all day and had a full view of the cooks preparing my torta. When I lived in Florida, I used to eat at the Waffle House and I’d always sit at the counter and watch the people making eggs, waffles, and hash browns. I ’m so old I was a customer when the hash browns could only be scattered, smothered (with onions), and covered (with cheese); but now they can also be Chunked (Ham), Diced(Tomatoes), Peppered(Jalapeno), Capped(Mushrooms), Topped(Chilli), and Country(Sausage Gravy). You can see the menu here. I was born too soon!! My video was interrupted once when I had to stop and pay off a persistent raffle ticket salesman, but I did manage to get 2 minutes of Torta-making at its finest.

The only thing better than watching the torta being made was eating it!

I sat down by the band and ate my torta (which was 5-star quality) and then took some more pictures. I got a video of the band playing a song and made my way back to the gym to shoot some videos of kids playing games and the live auction and raffle prize announcements. 2 years ago I won some Long John Silver gift certificates and a car wash, but this year was another wipeout. Once the auction was over, it was time to clean up. I took apart the PA system and when I put it back in its big wooden box, there was my Yankee hat! I must have put it in there when I was fumbling around with all the wires. I helped put some tables and chairs away and it was time to go.

The third eye doesn't lie! At the 25 second mark, a kid is going to swipe an extra bottle of soda at a ring toss game until he sees the glare of the camera.

I’ve never gotten to walk around at the fall festival before. Every other year I was either taking money or hanging out with my kids at the games. I liked the freedom being the ‘official photographer’ afforded me and I hope the 4 CDs worth of pictures and video are useful. This year’s edition was a top-notch event despite the crummy weather and I hope all the planners are proud of their efforts.