Dollars at Zanzibar's

Zanzibar's Coffee Adventures in Des Moines, IA - Home of fine coffees including Saturday's special New Guinean blend!

  Instead of having youth chess tournaments this summer I offered private chess lessons and have four students I’ll be working with. Last Saturday I had lessons scheduled in the Des Moines suburbs in the afternoon so I took advantage of the fact that I had the morning free to head to my favorite coffeehouse chess site, Zanzibar’s Coffee Adventure in Des Moines.

  I hadn't been to Zanzibar’s since last December and was looking forward to meeting up with my friends Mike Jeter and Dan Troxell. I arrived at 9:30 and Mike and Dan were in the middle of a heated game. I knew it was a serious game because they were using a clock. Dan had an extra piece but Mike dragged the game out to the bitter end as if there was money on the line.

While Dan and Mike finished their game, I had some New Guinea coffee and an everything bagel.

  Zanzibar’s was pretty empty and if there were any celebrities getting their morning cup of coffee I didn't recognize them. I went up to the counter and ordered a big mug of New Guinea coffee to go along with an everything bagel and cream cheese. A few minutes and $5.25 later I was back at the chess table watching Dan finally beat Mike. When the game ended I noticed that both players had a dollar bill tucked under the corner of their side of the board. Dan took his dollar and put it back in his pocket and then took Mike’s dollar also! I asked what the dollar was all about. Dan and Mike told me they were playing for a dollar a game.

  I can always use a dollar so I asked if I could play for a dollar too. Dan and Mike changed the subject by asking me about my speed chess exhibition at the mall last December. On my last visit to Zanzibar’s I tried to get them to head to Marshalltown for the exhibition and played four games with Mike at ten minute to one minute time odds (we each won two games). We talked about playing at time odds and Mike said he'd play me for a dollar at that same handicap.

  35 years ago I used to play speed chess for money in New York City’s Washington Square Park on a regular basis and I have some of my best chess memories from those days. It's not so much winning the money I find so appealing - it's taking money from someone that wants to take mine. I readily agreed to play with the handicap even though almost any tournament player can beat me at 10-1 odds if they just take their time. We drew for colors and I had black. Mike arranged his knight and queen to checkmate my king but I had a knight guarding against his checkmate threat so I organized a counter attack. Things were heating up when I decided I needed to bring my knight into the attack and moved it to the center. BUT I FORGOT ABOUT THE CHECKMATE THREAT!!! Mike didn’t forget and checkmated me and what was MY dollar became MIKE’S dollar!

Mike was too busy showing off what used to be MY dollar to give me a rematch so I played Steve instead.

  Mike’s gotten better but I felt like I lost because I made a mistake and I wanted to get what was now HIS dollar back in MY pocket so I offered a rematch but Dan wanted to play me first. As we set up the pieces Dan said he didn't want to play a clock game so we played a longer game without clocks and not for a dollar either.

pgn4web chessboards courtesy of pgn4web.casaschi.net

  While Dan and I were playing Mike told me how I was never going to get what used to be MY dollar back and that he was going to frame HIS dollar and put it up on his wall. I returned the banter but Dan said he was getting distracted by all the chatter and that’s why he lost. At this point Steve showed up. Steve said he only had 20 minutes before he had to go and didn't have time for a game so we talked Steve into playing a 10-1 game against me and the game would only take 11 minutes. Steve didn't want to play for a dollar but we played anyway. Steve played good for about 25 moves but then he hung his queen and I crashed through to his king and won with about 15 seconds left on my clock.

Mr. Buffett, I presume?

  During my game with Steve I noticed a well-dressed older gentleman walking through Zanzibar’s. He went into the office a couple of times, sat at a counter for a bit, and wandered back to where the workers make the coffee and food. He looked pretty familiar and I assumed he was someone I've seen at Zanzibar’s until I realized it was Warren Buffett! I went over to Warren to see if he had perhaps read my blog post on options trading from earlier this month and wanted me to expound further on the topic. Warren pretended that I had mistaken him for someone else. It dawned on me that perhaps Warren Buffett was going to buy Zanzibar’s and add it to his portfolio of companies and that was why he was looking over the operation. Armed with this piece of insider information, I made a mental note to buy Zanzibar stock if they ever went public and went back to the chess table.

  Steve’s good showing convinced Dan to try his luck for a dollar so we went at it. Dan played white and pushed his pawn to e5 against my Center Counter defense which made the game one of siege warfare instead of a lightning attack. I tried every trick in the book except one to get Dan to give me a bishop fork that would win his queen but Dan kept on parrying my threats with his only issue being that he was spending minutes while I was spending seconds so I played my last trick which was to finally get ahead on the clock and win when Dan ran out of time and what was HIS dollar was now MY dollar. Dan wanted a rematch and I wanted another dollar so we went at it with me having the white pieces.

Dan showing off HIS dollar!

  I won a pawn quickly and then fell into an old bugaboo of mine and tried to grind out the win with the extra pawn. When you only have a minute this is not optimal strategy. Dan took less time than he did in the previous game and we went into a knight and queen ending with me having seven pawns to his six. I got down to 20 seconds and tried to make an attack out of nowhere but Dan saw my crude attempt and completely outplayed me. I ran out of time in a losing position. Dan had two minutes left but more importantly had reclaimed HIS dollar.

  I think Mike thought I might be a little tired and wanted to try to get another one of MY dollars. I had the white pieces and got a nice center against Mike’s defense. I broke open the center with 45 seconds left and then Mike hung his queen and I won the game and got MY dollar back with more than 30 seconds left.

  Dan had to go and wanted to try me one more time. He had the whites and I thought he would push his pawn like the last game. Instead he opened the game up quickly and started an attack. He sacrificed a piece but I was able to defend accurately and the game was soon over and I had HIS dollar back in MY pocket!

  Dan had to go and I had a half hour before I needed to head off to start giving lessons so Mike and I played two more games. Mike battled me to a drawn endgame in the first one but he ran out of time before I did. In the second game I had a great attack going when I fell asleep at the switch and used fifteen seconds on one move. I woke up in time and checkmated Mike with 1 second left on my clock. That gave me two dollars from Mike and one dollar from Dan for two and a half hours of chess which paid for a little more than half of my New Guinea coffee and everything bagel with cream cheese.

While the most interesting man in the world was holding court,
Jonny Lee Miller from 'Elementary' fame waited patiently in line for some coffee.

  I had a great time playing speed chess for dollars but it was time to get on with my lessons. It was a shame because Zanzibar’s had just started filling up with the a-list celebrities I'm used to seeing. In addition to Buffett (who made it a point to ignore me the rest of the morning), the most interesting man in the world from the Dos Equis commercials was holding court at a nearby table and I also spotted Jonny Lee Miller who plays Sherlock Holmes in the television show ‘Elementary’ waiting in line for his coffee. There were plenty of other celebrities but I didn't have time to take pictures of them all. Hopefully they'll be at Zanzibar’s the next time I visit.

This is a great song to get in a proper frame of mind to play chess for a dollar!

A Morning at Zanzibar's

Welcome to Zanzibar’s Coffee Adventure!!
Home to fine coffee, chess players, and the occasional celebrity sighting!

  For the third year in a row I combined three vacation days with the Thanksgiving holiday to have a week off from work. Or at least that was the plan. My main responsibility at work is a program that closely interfaces with a government agency program. On Sunday, the government’s program stopped working which caused my interface to stop working. I shut down our side of the interface and restarted it at 11 that night after the government agency performs a weekly reboot. All was well or so I thought until 8am on Monday when I got a call from a client to let me know that all the transactions we were sending to the government’s program were failing. It seems that the government agencies program lost all the permissions for their registered parties and no one had permission to do anything.

  After spending the morning sorting through that mess, I was able to resume my vacation and had a relaxing afternoon. On Tuesday there were no government agency problems and I had a relaxing start to the morning but just as Kathy and I got Daisy and Baxter ready for their 9am walk, the phone rang. It was Fred (not his real name), a customer of the retail store software company I worked for from 1994 to 2008 when it was sold to a company from Indianapolis that had their own programmers. The new company switched the software from a desktop version to the ‘cloud’ and discontinued support for the desktop version in 2011. Since then I’ve been helping the old desktop users with their problems for an hourly fee.

  Normally I can help these people via email. Fred had switched to the cloud version and wanted to go back to the desktop version. He didn’t want to work via email and had a setup where I could remote into his computer. Last month I spent 90 minutes one Sunday remoting into his computer and talking on the phone configuring his software (printers, screen preferences, etc…). Once we were done Fred realized that he had been logged into the software as the wrong user. And we had to do all the work all over again. The next day Fred restored a backup of his data and overwrote all the changes I had made and we spent another hour configuring his software. Three days later Fred accidentally restored his data and we spent another 45 minutes configuring his software. The good news was that we were getting faster at configuring the software; the bad news was that we had to keep on doing it.

  On Tuesday Fred called because he wanted to go over the procedures for getting the data from the registers to his desktop computer and vice versa. We spent some time going over that and while we were talking I got some emails from another retail store customer who had a problem with getting the data from one of her registers. All in all I spent two hours on Tuesday helping retail store customers and while I like helping these people and I like getting the extra money and most of all I like the satisfaction I get from knowing a software program I hadn’t changed in more than seven years is still working like a Swiss watch I wasn’t feeling like I was on vacation.

  On Wednesday I had a relaxing day with no work related issues and after a nice Thanksgiving and uneventful Friday I did have a fairly relaxing vacation after all. On Saturday my vacation could be said to be technically over since I wouldn’t be working on the weekend anyway but on Saturday I made the time to visit one of my favorite places and headed to Zanzibar’s Coffee Adventure for some coffee and coffeehouse chess with my friends Dan and Mike.

Dan Troxell and Mike Jeter, the Zanzibar's regulars!

  The last time I visited Zanzibar’s was the Saturday after Thanksgiving last year and I played poorly. Mike trapped by queen with a tricky tactic and I gave away a piece against Dan (luckily only after I had already won a piece). Between work and beagle walking I didn’t have much time for chess on my vacation but I did take breaks for bursts of one minute chess games on chess.com and the Internet Chess Club so I could be in good form for my visit to Zanzibar’s. I wanted to play well against Dan and Mike but there was also the chance that I could impress one of the many celebrities that frequent Zanzibar’s and get some extra Christmas money giving chess lessons or playing time odds blitz. Some people doubt I've really seen all the celebrities I claim to have seen at Zanzibar's but I have plenty of photographic evidence to back up my claims (you can see my past celebrity sightings here) so they can doubt all they want while I keep adding to my celebrity photo collection from Zanzibar's.

The $9.99 ‘Breakfast Eggstravaganza’ was
...well...Eggcellent!

  After taking Daisy and Baxter for their 4:30 am Saturday beef stick walk to the Jiffy, I hung around the house with the beagles and Harry the cockatiel until 7 when I started on the hour long drive to Zanzibar’s. I wanted to hit the ground running so I took along a can of AMP Focus Energy (my preferred energy beverage) and drank it on the way down.

  I arrived at Zanzibar’s at 8 but Mike and Dan weren’t there yet so I decided to have some breakfast. I ordered the top of the line ‘Breakfast Eggstravaganza’ which consists of two steamed eggs with cheese, two slices of toast, a small glass of orange juice, and a cup of coffee. My favorite Ethiopian coffee wasn’t available so I ‘settled’ for Kenyan Dark Roast which was strong but not nearly as strong as the Ethiopian brew.

  Between the time I ordered and the time my food was ready, Mike came in. He ordered the ‘Breakfast Eggpress’ and we sat down to chat while waiting for our food to arrive. Just as our breakfast arrived, so did Dan. Dan set up the board and Mike and I ate our breakfast. My breakfast was pricey but very good. The eggs and cheese were melted together expertly and the toast and juice were perfect. My only quibble is that for $9.99 I would have liked a bottomless cup of coffee. Mike and I decided to play first and I drew the black pieces for what was my first time playing a long game since the Jackson Open in August.

pgn4web chessboards courtesy of pgn4web.casaschi.net

  Except for losing his queen to a trap, Mike played pretty well and the game lasted almost an hour. I was happy with my play and the way I kept the game under control once I had the edge. During the game I recognized one of the diners that kept on walking back and forth checking out our game as Pat Boone. With the Iowa primaries less than 14 months away he was no doubt scouting the territory to determine which conservative candidate he was going to stump for. I told Pat that I got a number of his phone messages to urge me to vote for Joni Ernst for the Senate and asked him if he’d like to play a game of chess for a small wager. Like most of the celebrities that frequent Zanzibar’s, Pat values his anonymity and acted like I had him mistaken for someone else. He did say that that while he’d like to play chess, gambling was a sin and I should find someone else to gamble with. While we were talking I noticed that Pat had his gaze fixed at a table on the other side of the building and he muttered ‘What’s she doing here?’ I looked across the room and there was Hillary Clinton reading the paper! I was tempted to ask for an autograph but Dan wanted to play me so I settled for a picture, drew the Black pieces and started my second game of the day.

Pat Boone and Hillary Clinton were as far apart in Zanzibar's as their political views as they each try to scout out Iowa in advance of the upcoming primaries...

This game took around 45 minutes and except for Dan losing a rook at the end it could have gone on for another hour. Dan had to bring his daughter to work so Mike and I loaded up on another cup of Kenyan Dark Roast and had a rematch with me having the White pieces this time.

  This was another hour long game and I think I made it a lot harder on myself by using my queen too much. Pat and Hillary were long since gone and it seemed that the Hollywood crowd had taken over Zanzibar’s. I spotted Ben Affleck at a nearby table. I would like to have played the future Batman in a game of chess but Affleck is more of a poker player (as you can see from this article). Mike asked me if I had ever seen the ‘Hunger Games’ movies. I told him I hadn’t and he told me the star of the movies was Jennifer Lawrence and she was standing at the counter. I took a quick picture and wondered how many celebrities were at Zanzibar’s that I failed to recognize because I’m so out of touch with modern ‘culture’. Hoping to spark some chess interest among the breakfasting ‘Who’s Who’ I played Mike 4 games at the time odds of 1 minute to 10 minutes. We split the four games and the banging of the pieces and slamming of the clocks drew quite a bit of attention and some people even took pictures but we couldn’t entice anyone to join us. I can only assume they were too busy reading scripts for upcoming film and television projects.

Mike spotted Jennifer Lawrence while I was able to snap a close up picture of Ben Affleck (who looks much younger in person).
Meanwhile, Mike and I attracted a crowd of picture takers playing time odds blitz. Maybe they mistook us for celebrities...

  Once Mike and I were done playing speed chess it was time for me to get back home so I said good bye to Mike and Zanzibar’s until my next visit. Looking at all three long games I thought I could have been more aggressive but I never left myself open to any shots and never in danger of losing any of the games so I think I played pretty well in the chess department but before my next visit I’ll have to study the Weekly World News and Midnight Globe to brush up on my celebrity spotting.

Marathon at Zanzibar's

Zanzibar's Coffee Adventure was packed for the big shopping weekend.
Luckily there was enough room for a chessboard....

  Last week I used three days of vacation in combination with last week’s Thanksgiving holiday to have an entire week away from work. Except for an hour or so hosting a FiltroPur demonstration in a futile attempt to get a $100 gas card I had a relaxing time hanging out with family (Matt and Ben were both home from college), working on the software project I started in August, taking plenty of beef stick walks with Daisy and Baxter, and playing lots of one minute chess.

  Two weeks ago I ran into my friend Mike Jeter on the Des Moines Skywalk and arranged to head over to Zanzibar’s Coffee Adventure for some coffeehouse chess with Mike and Dan Troxell on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. The timing was extra perfect because when Ben needed to get to the airport in Des Moines on Saturday at 5am for his flight back to school I readily volunteered to get up at 2:30 to take him there because I would be in town to play chess anyway.

  After dropping Ben off at the airport it was still hours before Zanzibar’s even opened so I headed to my office in downtown Des Moines for a couple of hours and headed to Zanzibar’s at 7:30. No one was going to get there until 8:30 so I bought a giant mug of Ethiopian Coffee, an everything bagel with cream cheese, the Des Moines Register and $5.25 later was sitting at a table reading the paper, drinking my coffee, and eating my bagel. I brought along my camera to take some pictures for my blog. I was also hopeful of catching some of the many famous people that tend to stop in Zanzibar's for the fine coffee. In the past, I've captured pictures of Richard Gere, James Brolin, and Robin Williams (you can see them here). No one ever believes that these celebrities are actually who I say they are, but I maintain that they are experts at slightly disguising their looks and avoiding direct frontal photographs to keep the paparazzi at bay.

On the left is my friend Dan Troxell : poet, beer maker, comic collector and chess player. On the right is one of the many celebrities who happen into Zanzibar's Coffee Adventure. I believe that is World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen getting a cup of Ethiopian Coffee just like me. You can compare this pic with other images of the champ (at better angles of course) by clicking here.

  Around 8:30, Dan showed up. Dan is a renaissance man who moves from hobby to hobby. He was a mainstay at my monthly Parents and Friends tournaments until April of this year and placed well in my Time Odds Blitz tournaments over the summer but has devoted most of his attention lately to the art of making beer (You can follow his progress at his Beerhenge page on Facebook). We made a little small talk and then got down to playing.

pgn4web chessboards courtesy of pgn4web.casaschi.net

  Dan and I just started another game when Mike came in. He sat at the counter eating breakfast while Dan and I contested another 10 minute game.

After a healthy breakfast and some strong coffee, Mike was ready to play some chess!

  Dan wasn’t in top form and I was feeling pretty good about my play when Mike and I sat down to play our game. I topped off my cup of Ethiopian Coffee before sitting down to make the most mistakes I've made in some time and also one of the longest games I've ever played (so long that I had to break up the game into two parts!)

  What a struggle. The game took almost two hours and while we were playing Steve and Zack came in to watch and play. Steve is a beginning player who played in one of my Time Odds Blitz tournaments this summer and Zack is a former tournament player who meets up with Tim McEntee and Jose Gatica at Smokey Row on Friday nights. Zack was showing Mike and I where we had gone wrong in our game and had a lot of better ideas than we came up with but things look a lot different when you are playing as opposed to when you are watching. When I play in a chess tournament every move is super important because I'm normally investing time, effort, and money and want to have good results but at Zanzibar's I just want to sit down, drink some coffee, hang out with my friends, have a good time with my friends, and let winning and losing take a back seat. I enjoyed this game against Mike as much as any I've played in awhile even though I was thoroughly outplayed for the first 80 or so moves. I liked my dogged defense even if I wasn't so pleased with the passive opening and loss of the queen that made me have to defend.

Steve is on the left, Zack is in the center, and on the right is someone who looked suspiciously like former world chess champion Viswanathan Anand. You can click here to compare this picture with other images of the ex-champ (who may have been looking for some pointers).

  After playing for three hours straight, I was ready to take a nap but because I was the 'guest' player Steve and Dan both wanted to play me. So I loaded up with another giant cup of Ethiopian coffee and went back at it against Steve.



  By this point I was feeling a little punch drunk, but Dan wanted to play another game before he left:

  We all spent some time going over the titanic game with Mike before Dan and Zack left. It was about one in the afternoon and I played one more game against Steve before leaving.

As I was leaving, I managed to get these pics of actor Billy Bob Thorton. I would have gotten closer or asked for an autograph but having seen the movie 'Sling Blade' thought the better of it.

  I left Zanzibar’s at around 1:30 and as usual I had an awesome time. I expected to play a game or two and hang out with the gang all morning but instead played almost 5 straight hours of chess while drinking cup after cup of Ethiopian coffee. Even though I had gotten up at 2:30 in the morning, the Ethiopian coffee kept me going for hours and hours and I even got to see the amazing finish of the Alabama-Auburn game late on Saturday before finally taking a well-deserved nap. I appreciate the great hospitality the Zanzibar's crowd once again showed me and my celebrity snapshots will look great in the album with my other Zanzibar celebrities.

A Visit to Zanzibar's

 

  I ran into my friend Mike Jeter (no relation to Derek) 3 weeks ago while getting some copies made at the FedEx office. I know Mike through Dan Troxell and have played chess with him at Zanzibar’s Coffee Adventure. Mike works at Wells Fargo and we’ve seen each other at the Skywalk occasionally but I hadn’t seen him since last December. We had lunch at the Basil Prosperi restaurant in the Skywalk (an excellent Italian place) last week and I thought it would be a good time to head down to Zanzibar’s Coffee Adventure for a Saturday morning of coffeehouse chess.

  Playing some relaxed chess is a good way to ease myself back into the chess scene after 4 weeks with no tournaments to run or play in and the start of 5 straight weekends committed to chess activities. Next week I’ll be heading up to Okoboji to direct the Okoboji Open tournament, the 28th is my next youth tournament in Des Moines, the week after I’ll be heading to Des Moines to watch the St. Francis chess club play in a tournament, then I have a tournament to play in, and finally my first outdoor youth tournament of the summer on May 19th!

Michael with the coffees of the day and the $3.50 coffee refill with a sesame bagel!

  The last time I headed down to Zanzibar’s was on Thanksgiving weekend to meet Ben Tessman, but the Zanzibar crowd had taken the week off. I checked with Dan to make sure he would be there and after an early morning walk with Kathy to take Baxter and Daisy for some beef stick treats, it was off to Zanzibar’s’ Coffee Adventure for some coffeehouse chess. I arrived at Zanzibar’s at 8:30 just like I arranged with Dan. The rainy day had Zanzibar’s packed and Dan was setting up the board on one of the small round tables while I ordered an everything bagel and a big mug of New Guinea coffee. $4.50 later I was sitting down and ready to play Dan. Then Mike arrived and while Dan and I were playing were all talking about the Zanzibar and Marshalltown chess regulars. We had all lost touch with each other in the winter, but now that spring is here, hopefully we can all get back together for some more chess in the future. Here was my game with Dan:  These are the types of games that can happen when trying out new openings. We spent a little more time talking and then Paul showed up. Paul said he didn’t want to play, just watch. He had suffered a stroke last year and lost his memory for a time. It has taken him a long time to recover but he is back at work. That was a scary thing for me to hear. Last year I passed the age when my father had a heart attack and it is a sobering thought to realize that all the plans I have for my youth chess tournaments among many other plans and dreams can be waylaid by a stupid blood clot. But none of that mattered when I sat down to play Mike with the Black pieces:

  Mike is a strong player that has the habit of trying to get too complicated when simple solutions are called for. I have the exact opposite problem of trying to be too simple when complicated solutions are required. I wanted to be back at 12 to watch Ben play tennis for the high school team (I didn’t know that they tournament was cancelled when they couldn’t dry out the courts), so I took a break from playing and got a sesame bagel and a cup of Peruvian coffee and watched Dan and Mike play:

The battle of the breakfasts! Dan's Spartan choice of black coffee took the nod over Mike's eggs, toast, coffee, & juice this time. I take the middle road and have coffee along with a bagel and cream cheese.

  That was some real coffeehouse chess, although I think Mike got distracted by his large breakfast. Mike and Dan started another game while I took my leave of Zanzibar’s to head back home. It was fun morning of chess with friends. I was happy to have had a relaxing morning and am looking forward to when I’m living closer to Des Moines and able to visit Zanzibar’s more frequently!

You can never tell what celebrities you'll find at Zanzibar's Coffee Adventure. I captured a picture of James Brolin. He didn't seem very happy having his picture taken, probably because he shaved and got a perm to be inconspicuous. I also managed to get a side shot of Robin Williams getting his morning coffee.

Vacation at Zanzibar’s

  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:

Return to Zanzibar's

Back to Zanzibar's for good coffee, chess, and friends.

  I had a crummy, crummy, crummy week. While one customer kept changing their mind on what changes they wanted to a project seconds after I finished, another customer’s project kept having emergencies that got me so stressed out that I’ve been waking up at all hours of the morning checking my emails to see what’s happened now. On top of that, the Yankees got hammered by the Red Sox 3 straight nights to fall out of first place and now Joba Chamberlain is out for the year and probably next also. The Yankees have bounced back nicely to take 2 from the Indians, but without a bullpen, I can’t see them winning a championship, even if the hitting can carry them to the playoffs.

  Different people react to stress in different ways. Some people will drink or do drugs, some people will use their faith to carry them through, and a married Congressman from New York may send suggestive pictures of themselves over Facebook and Twitter to girls half his age that he’s never met in person.

  My faith carries me through many rough patches, but when the going gets tough, my main therapy is to play chess. So I decided to head to Des Moines yesterday morning to meet up with my friend Dan Troxell and his chess playing friends at Zanzibar’s Coffee Adventure on Ingersoll Avenue. Dan has just started his blog, which is called ‘Innocent Bystander’, and if you get a chance you should check it out. In my opinion, it is most excellently written. After getting up at my usual time of 4:30 and walking Daisy and Baxter to the Jiffy for their Saturday beef stick treat, my very understanding wife Kathy took over beagle-sitting duties for the day while I headed 55 miles southwest to Zanzibar’s.

Greg (left) contesting a game with Dan.

  I arrived around 7:15. Dan and Mike were there and so was Greg Underwood. Greg wasn’t here the last time I visited Zanzibar’s, but we knew each other when he played in my free tournament in Marshalltown last October, where he won 2 out of 4 games including a win over Tim Crouse, who is rated 100 points higher than me. I ordered a big mug of strong coffee, an everything bagel with cream cheese and $3.72 later, I was ready for action. Greg placed a pawn of each color behind his back and I picked the hand with the black pawn so I was defending.

  Except for almost missing the mate threat, I was happy with my play. I missed very little over the board, defended accurately, and struck hard when the opportunity presented itself. Greg and I went over the game and then I switched tables to play Mike. Mike thoroughly outplayed me the last time we played, but made a mistake in giving up a rook for a knight, which allowed me to win. The tension I’d felt from work and the Yankees had completely evaporated as I got another mug of coffee and sat down to play with the black pieces again, ready for a tough struggle.

Mike and I on the 64 square battleground.

  It was an unexpectedly quick game after managing to catch Mike’s queen all by herself in the crossfire of my bishops, so we decided to play again and this time I had the White pieces.

  Mike was off his game today. He told me that he had also been pretty busy with his job and hadn’t had the time to play chess on Tuesday’s like he normally does. I could relate. Then Dan came over and we all talked for a bit. Since Dan is a Red Sox fan, I thought the subject of this week’s sweep would come up, but we both understand that for teams like the Red Sox and Yankees what happens in June isn’t worth crowing about. Only October matters for winning teams. After a little chit-chat, I got another bagel with cream cheese and a refill of coffee, and Dan and I sat to play. Once again, I drew the black pieces.

Richard Gere (or an amazing lookalike) chatting with an admirer at Zanzibar's. I tried to get a picture for enquiring minds, but I failed just like the rest of the paparazzi.

  A little touch and go, but luckily I had the Qd4 move to keep me from getting checkmated. After this game, Greg left and Dan, Mike, and I just sat for another hour talking about chess, blogging, boxing, and trading stories from our pasts. I think I even spotted Richard Gere at Zanzibar’s. I tried to sneak around to get his picture, but he kept on turning away from me. I figured he was so experienced at avoiding the paparazzi that I had no chance of getting a snapshot, so I took the best picture I could and left it at that. No one else believed I had gotten Richard Gere’s picture, but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it! I left around 1, made my way to Half-Price Books across town. I picked up a couple of books and was back in Marshalltown ready for Daisy and Baxter’s afternoon walk for more beef stick treats by 3PM.

  When I checked my work emails to see what new crises had erupted, I was completely stress-free. I’m very grateful for people like Dan, Mike, and Greg who provide a day of respite for chess players like myself to get away from it all in the company of friends.