The Missing Column

  I wrote a chess blogging column for The Chess Journalists of America’s magazine ‘The Chess Journalist’ (you can see the archived issues here) from the 2011 fall issue to 2013 triple spring/summer/fall issue. For all I know I may still be writing a column for the magazine but there hasn't been an issue published since that 2013 triple issue. I started out getting two columns ahead and got in the habit of submitting a new column when I got an issue in the mail so the editor always had a column and I had plenty of time to prepare for my next column. I didn't receive an issue from late in 2012 until early in 2014 and was definitely out of the quarterly publishing habit. A burst of CJA activity in early 2014 led to two issues being published in short order and I was left without a column in the hand. I submitted a column on March 6th, 2014 and 14 months later it still is waiting for an issue of ‘The Chess Journalist’ to be published for it to appear in. Since I have doubts whether this column will ever see the light of day I thought I’d use the occasion of my 500th blog post to display another side of my writing.

  I tried to alternate my columns between the technical aspects of blogging with a more refined version of my chess blogging. The best part about writing a column for a national magazine was being able to get many local chess personalities' names and pictures in front of a national audience. The weekend chess playing crowd at Zanzibar's Coffee Adventure or Iowa State Fair chess legend David Skaar didn't need to be in 'The Chess Journalist' but having them made my columns (and the magazine in my opinion) far more entertaining.

  My limited dealings with chess journalists have found them to be a finicky type that I felt wouldn't appreciate my semi-lowbrow writing style so in my column I attempted to use journalistic sounding words like ‘embellish’, ’rife’, and ‘metaphorical’. I hope you'll remember that this column was written for an audience of ‘chess journalists’ and not my regular blog readers. So without further ado (notice the transition to the journalistic word ‘ado’)…

Boots on the Ground

No sooner had I made my affinity for boxing as a metaphor for chess known in this column two issues ago I was made aware of another frequent metaphor for chess: the military.

It’s only natural that a game with origins as a military training tool would have many military expressions associated with it. The brutish attempt to mate opponent on the f2 or f7 square is frequently called the ‘Blitzkrieg’ attack in addition to the more popular term ‘Scholar’s Mate’ and it may well be an optimal strategy in a game of ‘Blitz’ or ‘Bullet’ chess. Seemingly equal middle and endgames are often decided by which side can successfully execute a ‘flanking’ maneuver on their opponent.

Chess literature and chess journalism is rife with military references from the ’64-square battleground’ to calling pawns ‘foot-soldiers’ and rooks and queens ‘heavy artillery’ to Victor Moskaleno’s description of a knight sacrifice on d4 in a completely locked pawn structure as the ‘Trojan Horse’ sacrifice in his book 'Revolutionize Your Chess'.And any discussion of military metaphors for chess must contain a salute to the commander-in-chief of military metaphors in chess: Franklin K. Young, the prolific writer of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s who tried to boil chess down to a series of military principles (“As the salients repel adverse attacks along diagonals, so the supporting parallels oppose radii of offence directed along verticals” –The Minor Tactics of Chess: A Treatise on the Deployment of the Forces in Obedience to Strategic Principle).

My favorite military expression as it relates to chess blogging is ‘boots on the ground’. The military meaning is fairly clear: ground forces engaged in conflict as opposed to troops in reserve, personnel on clerical or KP duty, or programmed drones seeking out their targets in automaton fashion. How does this relate to blogging? When your ‘boots are on the ground’ as an active participant in the chess world you will receive a wealth of material and subjects to write about in return for your participation. In this column I want to provide examples of how my blogging has benefited from having ‘boots on the ground’ in the hope that they will provide inspiration and encouragement to the aspiring chess blogger that may be struggling to find subject matter.

One of the easiest ways to get ‘boots on the ground’ is to compete in a tournament. Any tournament game I notate gets into my blog no matter what the result (See my column in TCJ #142 for information on how to publish chess games in your blog). Some bloggers only show their victories and others just share their defeats but including everything will help connect with readers who will relate to your ups and downs and bumps in the road more than a straight line chronicle of triumphs or tragedies. You can retain interest among your non-chess playing readers by personalizing your opponents (a picture, occupation, mannerisms, etc…) and sharing some details of your trip when travelling to play. Few remember my posts last year about my pedestrian result at the Jackson Super Reserve or my Blue Ribbon performance at the 2013 Iowa State Fair Speed Chess Tournament but many readers took the time to send feedback when I wrote of my discovery that the advertised ‘Regional Breakfast Item’ at the Jackson Minnesota Super 8 Motel consisted of a tray of hard-boiled eggs! While tournaments, playing sites, and games can tend to be indistinguishable over time the amusing clerk at the convenience store, repairing a flat tire on the way to a tournament, or even a tray of hard-boiled eggs have the power to make your chess tournament adventure a unique and memorable article or post.

I also get ‘boots on the ground’ by organizing and directing chess events. In September of 2013, I was approached by Life Master Tim Mc Entee about helping put on a one day three round tournament open to anyone that had ever attained a USCF rating of 2000. Tim had obtained a sponsor to put up over $1000 in prize money so there would be no entry fee. I agreed to direct and my hometown Marshalltown Iowa Salvation Army volunteered to host the tournament at no charge. We named the tournament the $1150 Expert Open and set the date for February 8th. A month later I received permission from Tim to hold a reserve tournament for the non-experts with the idea of enticing the experts and masters to bring their friends along to play in the reserve tournament and share the drive. I decided to name the reserve tournament after my blog and called it the Broken Pawn Reserve.

Everything was proceeding normally when I got an email from my friend Ben Tessman who is also an admin for the ‘Team Iowa’ group on chess.com. Ben told me the group was looking to have a meet-up and if I knew anywhere they could have one. I suggested that the group have a meet-up tournament as a separate section to go along with the other two tournaments. The offer was accepted and now I had three tournaments scheduled. The day was already promising to be special and ten days before the tournament Tim and I received an email from Will Liang to let us know his son Awonder, the current world ten year old champion (You can see him on the cover of the March 2014 Chess Life) would be playing in the tournament. As a bonus Will was able to bring his other three children to play since we were having the reserve tournament.

A tournament for experts and above and a reserve tournament would be worth a blog post but hosting the chess.com group and a world chess champion family turned the day into a chess festival and provided a large amount of chess writing material. The week before the tournament I wrote a post detailing the twists and turns that changed a staid tournament into a much anticipated event. The week after the tournament I focused on 5 participants that had been playing in tournaments I directed for almost 10 years and showing pictures of them from then to now (one of the benefits of having ‘boots on the ground’ for over a decade!). The following week was devoted to a review of the tournament and what it was like for the participants, onlookers, and the tournament director to spend a day with a world champion and his family.

In addition to the blog posts, I submitted a tournament write-up to Chess Life Online that was published on the USCF web site and photographer Cliff Yates created a unique photo montage that can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkVHz9vbNbw. There was a lot of good fortune involved to find myself in the middle of a memorable tournament that provided so many writing subjects but much of the good fortune was made by being willing to be an active participant in the planning and staging of the event. Blogging about other people’s chess activities (software and book reviews or annotating games for example) is all well and good but by putting your ‘boots on the ground’ you will have a wealth of first person material for your chess blogging and other journalistic efforts.

Playing by the Rules

From the sights to the sounds to the smells,
outdoor chess (even under a covered shelter) is nothing like playing indoors.

  On May 18th I held my first outdoor tournament of the summer. The morning session only had 15 players in attendance (not helped by six no-shows) but everyone had a good time playing and with so few players I was able to talk with the parents and help show the unrated players how they could turn their stalemates into checkmates and develop their pieces towards the middle instead of the edges. If I had to pinpoint a reason for the poor attendance I’d have to say that having six weeks between tournaments gave enough people enough time to get out of the tournament habit but it could also have been a random occurrence.

  Once the morning tournament was over, it was time for my afternoon Time Odds Blitz tournament. I’ve wanted to have a tournament where everyone could play on a more or less equal footing for quite some time and when the outdoor shelter I use was only available until 3pm I decided to have a clock tournament where the higher rated player would have less time than their lower rated opponents and the greater the difference in rating, the less time the higher rated player would have.

  I’ve never held or played in a time odds tournament but having played all comers at the Marshalltown Mall at time odds of one minute to ten the past two years, I knew that one minute was not quite enough time to play a full game of chess against an experienced but lower rated player so I decided to set the minimum amount of time a player could have as two minutes. The tournament was set to take two hours and I wanted to try to get anywhere from five to eight games so I set the maximum amount of time a player could have as eight minutes so if two equally rated players met they would have eight minutes apiece and the longest a game could take would be 16 minutes.

  I had to have the time odds set when I announced the tournament but I didn’t decide on the other tournament rules until a couple of weeks before the actual date. My main considerations were 1) I was going to have a mixture of experienced and beginning players and I wanted them all to have a good time so they would play in future tournaments and 2) I wanted to play in the tournament so I wanted to minimize the number of times that I would be interrupted while playing. Since the tournament was not going to be USCF rated, I had the freedom to have any rules I wanted.

  The most common reason I am called over to resolve a dispute in my youth chess tournaments is when one player claims their opponent touched a piece and the opponent says they didn’t (in USCF tournaments a player must move the piece they touch or take the opponent’s piece they touch). Normally I resolve these problems by saying since I didn’t see the player touch the piece I won’t make them move or take it and closely observe the game from that point on. Since I wouldn’t be able to observe a game AND play I decided on doing away with the touch move rule and instead ending the move when the clock was pressed. This is called ‘clock-move’ and was the unwritten rule in force when I played speed chess for money in New York 30 years ago.

A tournament where everyone can play on equal terms.
Possibly a Quixotic quest but one well worth persuing.

  The most common reason I need to intervene in adult tournaments is when one player makes an illegal move. The penalty for making an illegal move in blitz tournaments is the loss of the game while in longer games the penalty is to add two minutes to the opponent’s time. Neither of these rules was suitable for my tournament. I didn’t want a beginning player (who would no doubt be nervous anyway) to lose a bunch of games because they made an illegal move in the opening. I also didn’t want two beginning players playing each other, making a lot of illegal moves, and then each having 30 minutes to play because of the added time while everyone else just watched. So my penalty for an illegal move was to subtract a minute from the offending player’s time and if they had a minute or less left they’d lose the game.

  There was one problem with this rule. Suppose I had a losing position with 3 minutes left while my opponent had a few seconds left. I could make two or three illegal moves in a row and press the clock. My opponent would lose precious seconds each time they stopped the clock to subtract a minute from my time and may lose the game because of it. If you think that is far-fetched you haven’t seen the depths some will sink to in order to win a chess game. This led me to make an addendum to the time rule that the penalty for an illegal move when the opponent had less than 30 seconds left to be the loss of the game.

  The only other non-standard rule I had was that a checkmate only ended the game if the player had pressed the clock with at least one second left. Normally checkmate ends the game, but I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t be called over after the fact to decide whether the checkmate came before the player’s time ran out or vice versa.

  I had a nice mix of 15 players for the tournament. There were some holdovers from the morning youth tournament, some parents, Mathew Jacob and Eddie Divanovic (who I played against in the Big Money Blitz tournament two years ago), me, and a few other assorted players. I had just paired the first round and was going to post them when I saw a group of people in cowboy hats heading over to the shelter. I immediately recognized them as the chess-playing Carson family including Bethany Carson, the five time Iowa Girls champion and fellow blogger who helps at my chess camp (you can read her account of the tournament here). Also along were Daniel and Sarah Faith who I hadn’t seen in almost three years (and were both taller than me now), Charity (who has beat me in two of our last three encounters in Marshalltown), father Tim (who beat me for the first time ever at our last chess meeting in September of 2012), and mother Betty (who wasn’t going to play). The family was on a day trip to museums in Des Moines and decided to spend a couple of hours playing chess. I repaired the first round, made a quick announcement to make sure everyone understood the rules and we were underway just a few minutes late.

  I had written the time odds on the pairing sheets and had all my clocks set at 8 minutes to 8 minutes, but I still had to set the clocks for each game individually. It only took a few minutes before the first round and even less when one of the players helped me set the clocks before each round. I got interrupted a couple of times when I had to take away a minute from a player who made an illegal move but other than that I was able to concentrate on my games. I played really well in my first two games and torched my opponents (chess parent Jason and Charity Carson) despite having two minutes vs. their eight. In round three it was my turn to have eight minutes against Eddie’s seven. Eddie won a pawn, I gave him another pawn for threats that made him use up some time, and the game boiled down to an opposite colored bishop ending where Eddie had three pawns to my two, but I had three minutes to his 90 seconds. I could have aimlessly moved my bishop around to win on time but instead offered Eddie a draw which he accepted. In the fourth round I played Daniel Carson at six vs. eight minutes. I won a pawn and boiled the game down to a double rook ending, but I remained two minutes behind and couldn’t make any progress. I tried to conjure up some checkmate threats, but Daniel managed a quicker attack and checkmated my king for my first loss of the day. Next I played my third two vs. eight game vs. Justin, an adult first time tournament player. I again won another pawn but got down to less than a minute. I launched a desperate attack which Justin repulsed with a nice tactic and was going to either win a piece or my queen. I went for a cheapo and made a move that threatened checkmate but allowed Justin to take my bishop and remove the mate threat or take my queen. Justin took the Queen and I got the lucky checkmate.

Why didn't I notice that Mathew Jacob and Daniel Carson had played (like in the picture on the left) before the final round? Because I was three feet away concentrating on my battle with top seed Eddie (right). One more example of why directing and playing at the same time is so hard to do. It is impossible to concentrate on my own game AND everything (or anything) else.

  In the last round Daniel Carson and Mathew Jacob were the co-leaders with 4.5 out of 5, but the computer had Daniel playing his dad Tim and Mathew playing me. I changed the pairings to let the co-leaders play each other, BUT since I was so busy playing I didn’t realize that they had already played and drew each other. Having them play each other again for the championship seems logical but it wouldn’t have been fair to the loser of the match since he would have lost out on second place money primarily because of having to play the champion twice. I let the original pairings stand. I played really well against Mathew and had a Knight and three pawns to his Bishop and one pawn when with a 1:17 on the clock I made an illegal move! I had to play by the rules I made, so I took a minute off my clock and just like that I only had 17 seconds left. I didn’t panic and quickly traded off Mathew’s bishop and pawn and stalemated his king with just a few seconds left on my clock for the draw. It was a lucky draw because Mathew could have kept his bishop or pawn to run me out of time and win the game. Because of my draw with Mathew, Daniel won first place and $42 and Mathew second place and $21. Eddie finished third and I was tied for fourth with a couple of other players.

  I had an awesome time playing and everyone seemed to have a lot of fun with the tournament format. There weren’t nearly as many upsets as I thought there would be and almost all of those were scored by tournament winner (Daniel Carson), a rapidly improving scholastic player whose rating hasn’t caught up with her ability (Ana Denison), and a first time tournament player who I gave too low of a rating to (Justin). The younger players generally had trouble giving time odds but also did not take their time when they were getting the odds. The result say the time odds could use a little tweaking, but I disagree. I don’t believe giving the lower rated players more time will help if they don’t use their time and while a higher rated player could conduct a game in 90 seconds, it would make setting the clocks more difficult and two minutes seemed about right since I saw more than a few games where the higher rated players beat their opponent with only a few seconds on their clock.

  If the lower rated players will learn to make use of their time there will be many more upsets in future tournaments. Regardless of how the attendance goes at the future time odds tournaments (I don’t expect the Carson family driving 100 miles for two hours of chess every month!), I think a tournament where the winning chances are somewhat equalized turned out to be a keeper of an idea and one that was well worth trying.

  Speaking of playing by the rules, on May 24th, the Chess Journalists of America posted on their website that the entries for the annual CJA awards are due by June 15th and referred the readers of the post to p.41 of the May 2013 Chess Life Magazine. The magazine gave information on what awards entries are being accepted for, how much the entries cost and the email address of the Awards Chairman in case of any questions. There was also a link to the 2012 awards announcement on the CJA website.

  Aside from the oddity of not having the awards announcement posted on the CJA's own website for nearly a month after being announced in the Chess Life magazine, for the second year in a row there are no guidelines on what should be included with an entry (except that six copies of the Best Book is required) or where they should be sent. Last year I submitted 3 links from Broken Pawn for the best blog award because with no guidelines to follow I went by the 2011 guidelines only to be told four days (and only then after I asked if my entry was received because I had gotten no acknowledgement) before the deadline that the judges were only going to consider one post for the best blog award.

  I would like to submit either of my four part Jackson Open or Okoboji Open posts for the best blog award, but with no guidelines for the submission, I have no idea if blogs will be judged on the submitted posts, the blog as a whole, or last year’s silliness of judging a year-long body of work by a single blog post (I wonder if the entries for the Best Book award will bave only a single chapter or page considered?).

  I’ve submitted entries for the last three CJA awards and was rewarded with the material for many blog posts about the process. My favorite part of the process was to see how my posts compared against the other entries in the voting but last year’s committee did not see fit to release the results of the voting. Last year the awards chairman resigned suddenly in April so it would be marginally understandable not to have any printed guidelines in 2012. With a whole year to prepare there should be no reason to not having the entry rules set before the awards announcement. There isn’t even any address listed for where to send an entry. In my Time Odds Blitz tournament I had the rules listed before the tournament started so everyone could play by them, but the CJA makes it impossible to play by the rules since the rules are unknown.

  When I pointed out the inconsistencies in the awards process last year, an awards committee ‘insider’ found the time to post an ‘anonymous’ comment on my blog to chastise me for criticizing the awards process while whining what a ‘onerous, time consuming, thankless and unpaid responsibility’ being on the committee was. It is telling that while time was found to complain about valid criticisms, there was no time available (with an entire year to prepare) to provide a set of guidelines for the awards submissions, release the results of the prior year’s voting, or even provide an address where the entries should be sent to. Maybe when time is found for these responsibilities to be fulfilled, I will find time to submit an award entry.

What's mine is mine and what's yours is....

“The freedom of the city is not negotiable. We cannot negotiate with those who say, "What's mine is mine and what's yours is negotiable."” John F. Kennedy

  I was listening to the radio on my commute home last week when I heard the old Joan Jett song ‘I Love Rock ‘n Roll’. When I got home, I decided I wanted to hear it again so I used my Rhapsody application on my amazing iPod to bring up a Joan Jett song sampler. Joan Jett was an early 1980’s punk rock singer who was a favorite of my listeners when I had a punk rock/ new wave college radio show and a part time DJ business. I listened to a quite a few of her old songs in the last few days and don’t think her first big hit ‘Bad Reputation’ has stood the test of time but many of the others like ‘Do You Want To Touch Me (Oh Yeah)’ and ‘I Can’t Stand Myself For Loving You’ sound as primal and hard driving as they did 30 years ago.

  I hadn’t listened to the song ‘I Can’t Stand Myself For Loving You’ for many years and as I was listening to it I was struck by how much the song sounded like the Sunday Night Football Song that is currently being sung by an underdressed Faith Hill just before game time, presumably to make the men of America feel better about the fact that they are about watch three hours of sweaty oversized men in tight pants shove and grab on each other. In any event, I went trolling on the Internet to see if I was the only one who had noticed the similarity between the two songs and I found plenty of posts (like here and here) also noting the similarities and NBC and Jett's web site acknowledge as much so I assume that the rights to copy the song was purchased at some point.

  A big part of pop music’s popularity is being able to follow a beat or sing along so it isn’t very surprising that many artists are accused of stealing a melody for their own songs. The most famous lawsuit I remember was when George Harrison was accused of copying the Chiffon’s song ‘He’s So Fine’ for his number one single ‘My Sweet Lord’. Harrison was assessed a judgment of $587,000 and found guilty of ‘subconscious plagiarism’.

  As a programmer (or 'software developer' as the young people call themselves), I am especially sensitive to unauthorized use issues. I’ve had customers give copies of software I’ve written to their friends and then call me to help with their friend’s support issues (pretending that the problems were their own). I don't put copies of games or songs on my computer and I don’t give them out either. In fact, my most recent article for the Chess Journalists of America (CJA) magazine, The Chess Journalist, (you can see it here) was about the whys and hows of putting pictures in blog posts. In the article, I included the following:

“I want to close this discussion of pictures with a note of caution. It is easy and tempting to grab a picture off the internet and place it in your blog. Please remember that even if an Internet picture has no copyright notice you have no way of knowing if it was copied from another site where a notice was posted. Every picture is owned by someone who has copyright protection whether explicitly stated or not.”

  These are nice words and I was hoping they would be read and taken to heart by the members of the CJA who get the magazine, but I know at least one who paid no attention to it. The editor of En Passant, the IASCA’s (Iowa State Chess Association) quarterly magazine is named Mark Capron. Mark is an officer of the IASCA and a member of the Chess Journalists of America. The En Passant has won numerous CJA awards under Mark's stewardship and he is the most professional tournament director in the state. I received the most recent En Passant and there on the cover was a picture of 2012 Iowa Correspondence Champion George Eichhorn. You can imagine my surprise when I immediately recognized the picture as one I took at the 2011 Iowa State Fair speed chess tournament and posted on my blog over a year and a half ago.

  You might say it’s just one picture and what’s the big deal and normally I’d agree, but the IASCA board has lately shown a marked propensity for doing what they please without regard for anyone or anything. Jodene Kruse has run the Okoboji Open for the last 5 years in April. The tournament has been the first tournament of the IASCA qualifying cycle and this year’s date was set last October for April 19-21 of this year after Jodene got permission from the state clearing house director (an IASCA board member). The IASCA has scheduled their year ending state championships for the week after the Okoboji tournament just like last year. The last tournament of the IASCA cycle was on February 2nd and advertised as the “final Iowa State Chess Association Closed Championship Qualifier for the 2012-2013 year”. So with most of February and all of March and some of April to choose from, the IASCA has chosen to have their year ending tournament and the only other IASCA sactioned tournament from February 3rd to June 30th the week after Okoboji just like last year instead of giving the tournament (held on the date approved by the IASCA in the first place) a couple of weeks to have the state’s spotlight.

  There was 24 emails (YES!! 24) this past weekend regarding the advertisement on the IASCA web site of a blitz tournament in Iowa City on the Sunday night of the Okoboji tournament to honor the visit of chess writer J.C. Hallman to Iowa City. In the very first one of these dozens of emails I was asked whether I was OK with the website announcement. Why me? I don't know, maybe to see if I was going to express the same outrage that came my way when I posted announcements of my youth tournaments on the same day as IASCA events in days gone by. I pointed out that the Okoboji tournament was Jodene Kruse's and I just helped by directing and this might be an opportunity to open a dialog between the IASCA and the Northwest Iowa organizers (Jodene, John Flores, and Sam Smith). After eight more emails that all dodged the point about the state championships being so close to Okoboji that I wrote email #11 and asked why this was the case. One of the responses from a board member (whom I know is a great guy) was “It may not seem like it, but we do try to be very accommodating with Okoboji.“ I couldn’t stop laughing and might have had to go to the hospital with a laughing fit if it wasn’t such a condescending comment considering the only way they could be LESS accommodating was if they were to have their state championships on the same weekend as the Okoboji Open. I was overtaken by a sudden bout of impishness. I knew I shouldn't and I tried to hide my mouse, but in the end I couldn't resist and I hit the little ‘Reply All’ button to send my observation which was quite possibly the best one-liner ever written in a chain of chess emails. This prompted a reply that the original comment was the 'honest truth' and I know that it was which to me is a sad commentary on the current state of said organization.

  As I was looking through the En Passant magazine with the unauthorized photograph from my blog on the front cover, I noticed that the inside back cover had an absentee ballot for the upcoming IASCA elections that would be held during the state championship tournament. I haven’t voted in an IASCA election since the time my absentee ballot (among others) was disallowed because I gave it to a board member instead of mailing it to the IASCA secretary (I would note that this had been an accepted although illegal practice for many years). I did notice that the only people who were running for election were people who already held an IASCA office. This made me curious and I searched the IASCA websites and the previous state magazines for any call for nominations. There were none that I could find and while I’m sure there is no rule requiring a call for nominations not calling for them is certainly a way to promote a ‘lack of discourse’, although sometimes it is as easy to be elected to the board as showing up at the annual meeting and raising your hand. In any event, only a policy wonk would have been able to figure out how to get on the IASCA ballot that was printed in the magazine and it's hard enough to get volunteers without making it as easy as possible to get involved.

  I have a lot of respect for and enjoy the company of all but one of the IASCA board members and I understand that volunteer work is oftentimes a thankless task, but there is something about their decision making process that makes everyone who isn’t part of the ‘crowd’ get the short end of the stick. I've served on the board and I’m sure they feel like they are being unfairly criticized for being willing to serve and I regret that my comments might sting a bit but I also see a group whose idea of working together is having their own way and letting everyone else work around them. In the next half-dozen or so emails there was a serious discussion about cutting a little space out for Jodene's (IASCA sanctioned) tournament and the IASCA president made a sizable donation to her so maybe my time at the 'email firing range' was well spent.

  Last week (before all the emails hit the fan) I wrote to the three officers of the IASCA (including the editor of the En Passant) to let them know that the cover photo of the latest issue of their magazine was taken from my blog without permission or credit and I asked how we could resolve this situation of unauthorized use. I got an email the next day from the editor telling me that he was sorry but he didn’t get the picture from my blog and didn’t know the picture was from my blog. He did offer to give me credit for the picture in the next edition of the magazine. That sounded OK except credit is not the same as permission. The information of where the picture came from was not volunteered or asked for but George Eichhorn is a former state representative and a statewide figure. If you Google him you can get a lot of pictures (here are the pictures with the one that was used highlighted) including 2 from my blog and they all say ‘Images may be subject to copyright’ when you click on them.

  I didn't need a pound of flesh, but I felt I needed something for the use of my picture. When I made the decision last May to not advertise my youth tournaments on the IASCA website, the president of the organization wrote to me to ask that I put them back on so people in the Des Moines area who looked on the IASCA website would find my tournaments. I suggested that he put a link to my chess website on the IASCA site and my tournaments could be found that way. The President said he would take care of it as soon as he got access to the site. It never happened. Did the President forget about it, make a halfhearted effort, or was he just talking? Probably a little of all three and I'll never know for sure but this past week I told the IASCA officers that if they would put a link to my blog and chess website on the IASCA site, I’d consider the matter closed. The links were up the next day and I sent along an email giving my ‘permission’ to use my picture on the cover of the magazine. And to me the matter is closed except for my writing about it since it has a surrealness that makes for good storytelling in the cautionary vein of the shoe store customer of mine who always bragged that he was an IT professional because he worked for IBM while I was a small-company programming hack -- but he never backed up his data and lost his entire mailing list when his computer crashed.

  I mentioned how I handled the picture situation at the Marshalltown Chess Club. They were a great group of men and women to ask because their lack of dealings with the IASCA give them an an unbiased perspective. One person said I handled it just right, another said I should have sued or gotten money, and another said it was no big deal and I shouldn’t have wasted my time. Someone else said that my links would probably be taken off the website in a short time and everyone thought that the magazine editor grabbed the picture from my blog and never thought I would recognize a picture from over a year and a half ago. I admit that that feat is pretty impressive and am wondering if massive coconut juice consumption leads to enhanced memory capabilities. I’m pretty comfortable with how I handled the situation and if time shows that I was hoodwinked I’m sure time will also provide another opportunity and if nothing else I have a great topic for my next CJA column on blogging.

Coincidentally

  ‘The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.’
– Groucho Marx

  I believe in divine providence. I also believe in coincidence, but not as much as divine providence. I’ve seen many more coincidences than acts of divine providence, but most of the coincidences I’ve seen are man-made. In 2008, I got my oil changed at the Jiffy Lube in Marshalltown and the manager told me my fan belt was worn and I needed a new one. I asked him to order it for me and he said it would take a week to get and he would call me when it came in (I didn’t have to pay for it until installation). I waited 2 months and then called the Jiffy Lube and got the manager on the phone. I asked him if my fan belt had arrived and he told me that it ‘actually’ arrived just an hour ago. What a coincidence! I told him I’d be right over to get it replaced. I haven’t been to the Jiffy Lube since, but if the manager ever calls me about the belt, I’ll tell him ‘What a coincidence! I was just going to call you to see if you still had it.’ That Jiffy Lube is still in business and I consider that to be an act of divine providence.

  In January of 2010, I was leaving my contracting job to take a more ‘permanent’ position and at 6:30 in the morning I sent an email to my handler at the contracting company letting him know I was leaving when my contract finished later that month. I got a call later that morning from my handler letting me know he had been working for months on my new contract, was just finishing it up, and it contained a ‘substantial’ raise. What a coincidence! He had been planning on calling me that afternoon to give me the details but offered to discuss it at that moment. This was quite a shock to me since I hadn’t heard from him in 6 months (when we all were forced to take pay cuts and he told me he was going to be sure to ‘over communicate’ with me about my contract renewal). I suppressed the fleeting thought that I had the worst timing ever and told him that I had to honor my commitment to my new employer and wasn’t interested in the details, but I was sorry that he had worked so hard on my behalf. I still shake my head at the thought of my handler slavishly working on my raise only to have me give my notice moments before my new deal was complete.

  2 Sundays ago, I wrote about my disappointment at the 2012 Chess Journalists of America (CJA) awards committee not having posted posting the list of entrants a month after the submission deadline. Early Wednesday morning, I received a comment on my blog saying I seemed ‘rude’ and that ‘complaining’ was ‘not at all in my best interests’ to make such comments about an organization I hoped to win an award from. The anonymous commenter further suggested that perhaps I should take on the ‘onerous, time consuming, thankless and unpaid responsibility’ of being on the committee. I don’t know whether the comment came from a member of the CJA awards committee, but the idea of refraining from touching on certain topics to further my ‘best interests’ is unthinkable for a curmudgeon/gadfly wannabe like me. The desire to win the award last year gave me no pause to pull my punches or pander to anyone (I was quite critical of a few aspects of the process last year) and the reason I’ve entered the competition the past 3 years is to write about the process, not to win an award. When I see kids enter my youth chess tournaments with the sole expectation of winning a prize instead of playing for the fun of it, I know I won’t see them very long. Winning is a bonus and hopefully the side effect of a little luck and the effort invested. One of the benefits of volunteering is having a feeling of ownership and it would be reasonable to expect that Broken Pawn be judged extra harshly for pointing out what some would rather be left untouched and that’s all well and fine with me. There are so many people I’ve ticked off over the years that I’d advise anyone who wants to get in that line to pack a lunch and possibly dinner as well.

  I enjoyed my anonymous commenter characterizing my observations about the month long delay in listing the award entries as ‘complaining’ and in the next paragraph describing the awards committee’s work as ‘onerous’ and ‘thankless’. I could have used this line of thinking when I forgot what time my June youth chess tournament was scheduled to start and showed up only 15 minutes before Round 1. In my naiveté, I owned up to my screw up, apologized, and ran the best tournament I could. But now that I've been enlightened to this new way of thinking, I could have pointed out that I wasn’t being thanked enough for putting on the tournament in the first place and possibly thrown in a comment or two about how putting on tournaments are so ‘onerous’.

  I did reply to my anonymous commenter and after thanking him or her for the comment, I pointed out that the job alluded to as ‘thankless’ cannot be completely thankless because I thanked the awards committee chairman the past 2 years whether I won an award or got the lowest ever score for an entry (and I have done both). I did not thank the awards committee in 2006 when I asked the judge in person what he thought about my submission only to find out he had never heard of it. It’s like my flat tire incident last week: I thanked Freedom Tire for staying late for replacing my donut with a new tire, but there’ll be no thanks for AAA not sending someone to change my tire for me when I lost my tire iron and had no way to take the donut off my car. I paid Freedom Tire for the new tire the same as I paid for an AAA membership the same as I paid for my CJA entries. If the awards committee had said they weren’t making the entries public this year that would be one matter, but they said the listing of entries were to be proof of receipt. I’m not sure how pointing out when people don’t do the things they say they will is ‘complaining’, but it’s not my world – I’m just living in it.

  In any event, it was a welcome comment and I hope to see more comments from Mr. or Ms. Anonymous. It’s been quite a while since I got this fired up to write a post AND coincidentally, the list of award entries were posted 2 days later at the CJA website (with a short note mentioning how challenging the committees work is) AND even more coincidentally was dated June 20th, right around when they could have been expected to be posted in the first place. This was noticed by Mark Weeks in his Chess for All Ages Blog AND coincidentally less than 24 hours after Mark’s mention, the post date was changed to July 20th. I’m sure it was just a coincidence and the entries were going to be posted this past week whether I had written about it or not and the date was going to be changed whether Mark had written about it or not, but all the same I’m happy to get a peek at the other entries for the best chess blog.

  Broken Pawn’s competition is much stiffer than last year. There are 2 other entries and both are top-notch. Tim Brennan’s www.tacticstime.com blog is one that I read on a regular basis and enjoy very much. I bought Tim’s Tactics Time database and use the puzzles as part of my daily chess exercises. Tim’s content is 100% chess-related (little or no mention of beagles, Cheetos, Yankees, politics, or movies). It is excellently written and slickly produced, even containing audio podcasts in addition to the inspirational articles aimed at chess improvement through tactical acumen. The other entry is www.chessqueen.com, written by none other than former Women’s world chess champion, former CJA President, and 2009 Chess Journalist of the Year Alexandra Kosteniuk. The Chess Queen Blog is another 100% chess blog and contains lots of chess tidbits from all over the globe. I couldn’t be upset about not winning a competition with these 2 blogging heavyweights but I also think my blog is a worthy contender in its own right. As I’ve written before, I am happy to have won the award last year in what I can only call a stroke of divine providence.

It’s just a coincidence that the house next to the Liquor Depot in beautiful Marshalltown, Iowa
has an outdoor garbage collection that would make most city dumps jealous, isn't it?

Taking care of business….

  It’s been over a month since I submitted this Broken Pawn blog to the CJA (Chess Journalists of America) for the 2012 Best Blog award. In addition to hoping to win an award, I found that last year the awards submission process provided me with the source of some entertaining blog posts and had no reason to think this year would be any different.

  On June 9th, the CJA website posted a notice from the awards chairman reminding the potential entrants about the upcoming deadline. The notice said that the list of entries received ‘should’ be available on the CJA website in the near future to allow for confirmation of the entries. 5 weeks later, there is no mention of what entries have been submitted and I’m very happy that I verified that my entry was received when I saw the original web site post (my entry fee check still hasn’t been cashed).

  I know that everyone involved with the CJA is a volunteer and maybe I was spoiled by the stellar work of the awards committee the past 2 years, but it’s disappointing to me that with less than a month to go before the actual awards I don’t know who submitted awards entries, who the competition is, and I don’t have a lot of hopes for seeing the voting results after the awards have been announced. I’ll just have to wait until next month to see if I happen to win or not and that will be the end of it.

  This isn’t a case of me being part of the problem by not being part of the solution. I’ve contributed 3 columns to date to the CJA magazine ‘The Chess Journalist’. I received the latest issue (the winter 2012 issue!?) 2 weeks ago and the column about my blog exchanges last year with Bob Long and Andres Hortillosa looks great in print. You can see the issue with my first column here. I take great pains to get things I’ve committed myself to done when I say I’ll have them done and I wish others would do likewise.

  This type of stuff is common in volunteer organizations and would hardly be tolerated in the workplace. Salespeople who don’t return calls or programmers who consistently fail to meet deadlines generally end up having to find new employment. But most volunteer organizations don’t have replacement personnel at the ready and are reduced to a position of hoping that the well-meaning volunteers can eventually find the time to meet their commitments.

  I’ve been keeping to my normal chess study routine until last week when instead of clicking on the picture of a ‘3’ for a 3 minute game on the Internet Chess Club, I accidentally clicked on the picture of a ‘1’ less than an a half inch away. I lost the game and fell from my peak 1 minute rating of 1575 that I hit last July 16th. Once I hit my new high, I stopped playing 1 minute chess and worked on trying to hit an all-time high in 3 minute chess. I came close to a personal best a few times but I’m still chasing my all time of 1751 that I set in June of 2010.

  Now that I’ve fallen off my one minute high rating, I’ve broken training and have been spending almost all my time playing 1 minute chess. I forgot how much fun it is even though I’ve watched my 1 minute rating plummet from my peak of 1575 to between 1000 and 1300 depending on how I’m playing. Here’s a couple of my favorite games from the past week:

pgn4web chessboard courtesy of pgn4web.casaschi.net

  With a month to go until my next tournament (The Jackson Open in Jackson, Minnesota), I’m going to have to stop my 1 minute escapades and get back to business. I’m exactly one point away from matching my all-time peak USCF rating and I’d hate to backslide 50% like I just did in a week of playing one minute chess. When I play 3 minute games, I always go over the games afterwards to see what kind of tactics I’m missing and see if I’ve stumbled on a new opening idea. One-minute chess is tremendous fun, but I get in the habit of playing 20 or 30 games in a row and never getting around to studying them afterwards. I’ve never thought that playing chess is ever harmful no matter the time limit, but when trying to specifically improve results, some training methods are better than others and in this case I can take care of it now and not wait a month.

15 Minutes of Fame

  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.

Rolling the Dice

I created this mash-up to celebrate my blog's award. It could be a T-shirt, a bumper sticker, or even a tatto, but I think I'll just stick it in the corner of the broken pawn picture for a year or so.

  I got an email Saturday night informing me the results of the 2011 Chess Journalist Awards were posted. I felt like ‘Waiting for Godot’ would have been quicker, but it was only 12 days after the originally promised release date. 4 days were lost due to the rescheduling of the deadlines and judging for the awards and then 8 more days were lost when the Chief Judge was in the hospital. I opened the document containing the results and immediately saw that there were only 3 judges as opposed to 8 from last year. As I scrolled through the spreadsheet, I saw numerous entries with only one point, ruining the uniqueness of my submission last year which only got 1 out of 16 possible points (Scoring is 0=terrible or no merit, 1=acceptable, 2=outstanding or best). Since none of the submissions received zero points, I’m still hopeful that my entry from last year will remain the lowest regarded contribution of all time based on percentage.

  The first category I noticed was Best Tournament Report, which had Matt’s articles about his experiences in the 2010 Denker Tournament of High School Champions that the Iowa State Chess Association submitted on his behalf. It was a great article that stretched over 2 issues of the IASCA chess magazine, chronicling Matt’s journey from having to take 3 planes to get to the California playing site 90 minutes before the opening ceremonies to being in a 4 way tie for the lead at the halfway point of the tournament, drawing the strongest player in the field (and the eventual champion), and a heartbreaking loss in the next to last round to take him out of the running. Matt’s entry in the section was lumped in with 13 entries from the United States Chess Federation (USCF) and ended up getting 3 points and a tie for fifth place.

  The next category that got my attention was Best Features, for which I submitted my posts about the 2011 Okoboji Open and my April visit to Zanzibar’s Coffee Adventure. This section had 12 entries. My Zanzibar post was not well received and only got 1 point from 1 judge to finish last (and tie my own record), but my Okoboji post got 2 points from 2 of the 3 judges. Unbelievably, the third judge gave this post zero points. I think it is a great idea to see the judges scores, but I think this is the best thing I’ve ever written and I’m not sure how a judge could read this article and say it was terrible or without merit. In any event, the 4 points left me in a tie for 4th place behind 3 of the 7 Chess Life articles, although I did manage to beat out the other 3 non USCF entries.

  Finally, after weeding through all the other categories (Best Art, Best Review, Best Interview, Best Analysis (won by Iowa State Champion Bob Keating!), etc...), the very last entry was for the Best Chess Blog, pitting this Broken Pawn blog against the semi-inactive chessvine.com. 2 judges gave me 2 points and the third judge gave me 1 point for a total of 5 out of 6. Chessvine.com did not match my total and so a certificate will be on its way to me in a few months for having the best chess blog of 2011.

  I am very happy to have won the award, even though I’m embarrassed by how much time I spent thinking about winning and fretting about the delays in getting the results. It’s just like when I run chess tournaments for kids or any volunteer effort. Thanks and acknowledgements are always welcome and appreciated, but if you aren’t doing it because you enjoy it or are filling a need in your own life, you’re probably doing it for the wrong reasons. I run chess tournaments because I have a need to give back and it is a good use of the talents I’ve been given. I write my blog because I enjoy it, it relaxes me, and allows me to get things off my chest. I’m uncomfortable sometimes by having my thoughts out in the open, but I’m very gratified to have made the friends I have through the blog, the amount of readers I get (100+ a week), and the amount of ad clicks I get, but there are also times I’ll spend an hour looking back at the blog and getting a kick or a laugh or just recapturing a memory from something I’ve written a month or a year ago. Yogi Berra wrote in his autobiography that if everyone wrote one they’d feel better about their life and this blog is sort of my autobiography. There are dozens of chess blogs that are better written and more topical and more informative than mine, but only 2 were willing to risk the rejection that comes with submitting their work to a judge’s scrutiny. I’m lucky I won this year because I bet that after the word gets out to the ‘chess literati’ that a quirky blog about a 50 year old chess player/director/organizer’s experiences in the Iowa Chess scene (along with other semi-humorous and potentially offensive musings) won the CJA award, there will be a serious uptick in entries for this category. I just happened to roll the dice with the Chess Journalists of America and came up with a 7 by picking this year to enter my blog for their awards.

  I’m rolling the dice with a lot more on the line with my upcoming school year of chess tournaments at St. Francis of Assisi in West Des Moines. Jim Mona won’t be coaching chess at St. Francis this year and I’ve been asked to be the head coach at the chess club at his recommendation. I’ve agreed to do so without a fee in return for being able to hold monthly tournaments in the St. Francis Cafeteria. I’ve had a reasonable turnout with my outdoor tournament series in the covered shelter in Des Moines and think that I’ve stumbled on the fairly obvious idea (obvious to non chess addicts like myself, that is) that the kids who play chess in Des Moines are so busy that having 5 round all-day tournaments keeps them from playing chess when they have a sports activity or other family obligation in the morning or afternoon. I don’t have a mission statement, but my mantra for my youth chess tournaments is ‘fun and family friendly’, so I’ve decided to have morning and afternoon 3 round tournaments. I’ve even cut the entry fee in half, but that means I won’t be able to offer every player a trophy. I will have medals for all and trophies for the top 5 players. I made this decision after talking to a number of parents whose opinions I greatly respect, but it remains a huge gamble and I’m running the risk of turning off kids who won’t be happy with medals now when they were winning trophies before. If I roll snake-eyes, I can always back off, but this seems like the best way to get more kids playing tournament chess than making the tournaments an all-day affair.

  As big a risk as that sounds, I’m working on an even bigger throw of the dice. I’ve been in contact with the Salvation Army in Des Moines about setting up a chess program with the possibility of holding chess tournaments. The Salvation Army has a lot of youth programs, but the number and background of the kids I’d be working with is completely unknown. The idea of starting a chess program from scratch seems overwhelming to me at times (even though I’ve done it before), but I know from my experience in Marshalltown that when you have the backing of the Salvation Army, you have it 100% and the welfare of the people who come to them for assistance is first and foremost on their minds. There is no risk involved in this attempt to provide the benefits of chess to a potentially large audience, but the payoff of rolling a 7 could lead to the accomplishment of a lifetime.

Second best

Nothing second best about these kids. They are top shelf all the way.

  I held an outdoor chess tournament in Des Moines yesterday at the same covered shelter I had rented in Pioneer Park for last months tournament. Unlike last month, all the picnic tables were in place and rendered unavailable to any roving bands of trailer park refugees. It rained till eleven o’clock even though the taped weather forecast on WHO kept saying the rain would be ending early in the morning. The weather reporter also said the temperature would hit 96 degrees with something called the heat index making it feel like 110.

  I had prepared by bringing plenty of fruit to eat along with Powerade and juice. I even bought some ice and duct tape at the convenience store. I wasn’t going to eat the duct tape, but I had brought some tarps to protect the shelter from sideways rain and the duct tape was for taping the tarps to the shelter posts.

A battle for first place that would have the Roman gladiators jealous.

  I didn’t think it was all that hot, but it’s good to be prepared. I wasn’t ready for the mosquitoes that were hanging around the chess players, but enough of the parents had bug spray and were willing to share so it was a non-issue. As soon as first round started, the power went out to the one outlet that was attached to the shelter. My computer only had a 2 hour battery, so I turned it off and started to fill out the manual pairing cards that were used in the pre-computer days. I haven’t had to use the cards since 2003, but I still had them at the ready. I had all the cards filled out and was ready to pair the second round by hand when I heard the happy sound of my printer coming to life. I turned my computer back on and was back to the modern age for the rest of the day. I would have been able to struggle along with the pairing cards, but it takes a lot of time and would have been the second best way for me to run a tournament. Next month, I'll have a one of those devices that give you an electric outlet from your car's lighter.

  The 21 kids and parents that played had a good time and then it was time for the afternoon cash tournament. I had 7 players including myself. I managed to win the first 2 games and was paired against 2004 state champion Dan Vasto in the third round. Unlike our previous 3 meetings where I had Black and was quickly a pawn down (managing to win one of these games), in this game I was Black and was a pawn up in the middle game. My king was trapped in the center for the pawn and I ended up giving the pawn back. I got down to 10 seconds left in and butchered a difficult ending to lose to Dan yet again. I wasn’t displeased with the game since I felt like I’d given Dan my best shot, but having come out second best in our encounter I decided to take the last round off and pack up while the other 6 players finished. If I had been playing in the last round, I could have used the duct tape for my ears when a band replete with a tuba player started practicing in the next shelter over. Amplified music is prohibited in the park, but there is no regulation against an old-school tuba and drum set.

A tuba player at a chess tournament doesn't seem like the second best option to silence...
until his drummer buddy decided to join in.

  In other second best news, I received an email from the Chess Journalists of America with a link to the list of entries for the 2011 awards. While my entries for the best feature article must contend with 10 other entries, it appears there are only 2 entries for the best chess blog, ChessVine.com and this blog. I reviewed the competition and see that there have been only 13 posts on their site all year (and most of those posts are merely links to other chess sites - no original content) and just 3 of those since May 1st (It was much more active last year). It’s inconceivable to me that I could finish second to this particular blog, but I’ve seen stranger things happen. Once I tried out for a play in a community theatre and there was no one else auditioning for the lead role. I would always audition for the lead role and be offered the comic relief part (if I was offered any part at all), but it looked like I’d have a chance to have a leading part this time. Another audition was hastily arranged and there was no lead for me. I also remember an Abbott and Costello routine where the boys go to the racetrack. Lou bets on the races and loses every race until there is a 2-horse race between Lollipop and Jellybean. Lou bets on both horses and still manages to lose his money but the next race has only one horse (Peanut Butter). Lou bets all his money on Peanut Butter, but Lollipop finishes from the last race and Lou’s horse loses yet again (You can listen to it here at the 24 minute mark).

If I'm not at least second best in this contest,
I'll be the Lou Costello of chess journalism.

Fool me once…

  In May, I wrote about how I spent $31 to nominate my blog for the Chess Journalists of America Awards despite having my submission last year voted the worst entry ever. The deadline on the entry form I received was June 15th so I sent in my nomination form the first week in June. I never heard from the chairman of the awards committee, who was supposed to acknowledge my entry, so I emailed a reminder and a week later I received an acknowledgement email. On the 16th, I looked on the CJA website to see which entries had been received since the nomination form said that they'd be posted when entries were closed. No entries were posted. Then on the 20th, I received an email from Mark Capron. Mark is the editor of the Iowa State Chess Association magazine ‘En Passant’. Matt had written the story of his 5th place finish at the National High School championships for that magazine last year and Capron wanted to know if I had submitted it for a CJA award, because if I hadn’t he would submit it on behalf of the magazine. I hadn’t submitted it but I was confused since I thought the entries were closed for a week. I took another look on the website and lo and behold, the deadline had been extended to July 6th.

  There was no mention of the extension on the web page, just a link to Alexandra Kosteniuk’s June 16th chess blog posting announcing the CJA awards and the July 6th deadline as if there was no previous deadline. Kosteniuk mentions in her blog that ‘it's FOR YOU that the CJA is running its annual Awards program, and I want YOU to participate and to WIN AWARDS!’ (Her capitalizations)

  I don’t mean to seem rude to the CJA president and former Woman’s World Chess Champion, but c’mon Alexandra!! If you really wanted ME to ‘WIN AWARDS’, you could have left the deadline as it was and I’d have a better chance to ‘WIN AWARDS’. The least the CJA could have done was to mention a reason for extending the instead of just breezily pretending that there was no extension at all.

  How can groups that pull this kind of stunt have any integrity? How can anyone ever take their deadlines seriously? What kind of message does this send to people like me that sent in their entries on time? I suppose if there were enough people like me that respected deadlines, there wouldn’t have been a deadline extension. After the fiasco of my asking the judge (personally but anonymously) in 2006 what he thought of my submission and being told he never heard of it, I feel like I’ve gotten fooled twice. Well, shame on me but the CJA has seen its last penny from my pocket.

  I did manage not to get fooled twice on another more important front. I worked for Fisher Controls in Marshalltown from 2008 to 2010 as a contractor for Robert Half. As a contractor, I agreed to work for the company for 2 years for a set wage. I enjoyed working so close to home, but in the middle of 2009, Fisher decided to cut all the contractors pay. They weren’t losing money, just not making enough. It was described to us as a ‘win-win’ since by agreeing to a lower wage we all got to keep our jobs. I saw how it was a ‘win’, but missed the part about how it was a ‘win-win’ (I had the wrong perspective). Then Fischer ended up letting many of the contractors who took a pay cut go anyway (No, they did not give them back the pay they’d given up in order to keep their jobs a few months prior). I’m sure they saw that as a ‘win-win-win’. Once the company showed they felt no obligation to be truthful or live up to their own obligations, I started looking for a job and a few months later got one.

  Since then, Fisher Controls has been making more money and has hired a recruiting company out of their parent corporation Emerson’s hometown to do their IT recruiting and look for programmers. I got an email from the recruiter letting me know of an opportunity in Marshalltown. I wrote back asking if the opportunity was full time or a contract position and how much it paid. I was told it was a long term contract and the salary was open and they would ‘pay the right amount for the right person’. Sounds like the old phrase ‘Salary based on experience’, which means the company’s experience in paying the least amount of salary. I wrote back and asked if the job came with any benefits and if the right amount went up to an absurdly high number I picked out of the sky and was told I could get full benefits ‘which can include 3 weeks paid time off, Medical, and Dental’ and also asking me if I was looking for the absurdly high number in addition to the benefits. I thought the word ‘can’ was odd since if it CAN include those benefits it also CANNOT include these benefits. At this point I called off the game and told the recruiter I wasn’t interested since I’d heard of an employer in Marshalltown who gave all their contractor pay cuts so they could keep their jobs and then laid them off a couple of months later anyway. I’m surprised this guy didn’t even bother to read my resume to see if I’d worked at Fisher or maybe he did, but his job was just to get me in the door, get his commission, and then who cares about me.

  It is always gratifying to be pursued by those that have wronged you in the past, but in my experience it’s foolish to expect different results from the same people. If I did go back to work at Fisher, as soon as the economy hit a bump or they decided they just weren’t making enough money, I’d be in the same situation I was 2 years ago. I wish this recruiter had called 2 months ago for a refresher course before I let myself get fooled for the second time by the Chess Journalists of America.

Higher Education

My son Matt graduates from Marshalltown High School Sunday and my mother-in-law is coming from northern Iowa to see and my father-in-law is coming from South Carolina to see and my sister-in-law is coming from Missouri to see. For the most part, I enjoy my in-laws, but the prospect of having everyone come over has put Kathy into high gear doing yard work and housework and everything else that goes into having a lot of visitors. I’m doing my part by staying out of the way. My father-in-law, sister-in-law, and their families have not met Daisy and Baxter and I’m looking forward to showing them off. The in-laws always got along great with Queenie and Tuffy and should enjoy having some young, energetic pups around.

My brother Eddie (the only living relative from my side of the family – except for me, that is) is not coming from New Jersey to see the graduation. I don’t think he saw mine and I don’t think I saw his or my sister’s. My parents came to my high school graduation, but they were already gone by the time the ceremony was over and I never saw them there. I didn’t give it a second thought and visited a friend who didn’t graduate and instead of crying in our beer, we got wasted drinking it. I expected to graduate high school, although I made it a lot more interesting than it needed to be. In my senior year, I went to school the first day, got in a fight and got suspended for 3 days. I came back a month later, took all my tests, got in another fight and got suspended again. I showed up a month later on the last day of the marking period, took all my tests and passed everything, including a couple of honors classes. The problem was I had to make up all the gym classes I missed and had to show up at 7 in the morning 3 times a week for the rest of the school year to make them up. New Jersey education at its finest. The classes were so challenging that a hung over kid can show up twice in first 3 months, sleep through the classes the rest of the year, and not only pass all the classes but make the National Honor Society, but DON’T miss the obligatory 45 minutes of running once around a track or basketball court and spending the rest of the period pretending to lift weights or pretending to do anything or you can’t graduate. I made up the gym classes, got through the graduation, and spent a year flipping burgers, washing dishes, and doing factory and guard work until I felt like going to school again. I never got a yearbook, went to a reunion, or even thought fondly for a second about high school. I don’t even think that I wasted my time going there and not trying my hardest. I was just part of the crowd. I think everything happens for a reason and since I have a great wife and kids (and beagles) and enjoy life, who’s to say that I’d be any happier if I’d went all out in the name of academic achievement.

Graduation or not, I’m proud of Matt and always have been. He is as smart as anyone who ever went through the Marshalltown school system, but unlike the fellow in the prior paragraph, he has pushed himself to excel instead of taking shortcuts. He wrote a game that was voted the best in the state at the IT Olympics, led the school math club to a top 5 state finish to compete in the regionals in Missouri, won 4 high school state chess championships and came within a whisker of winning the chess championship of the entire state this year. And aside from all that, he has his own mind and makes good decisions. He’s avoided all the mistakes I made and if his brother doesn’t beat him to it will be the first Anzis to graduate from a 4-year school.

As one of 8,000 National Merit Scholarship Finalists, Matt was pursued by a lot of colleges. He is going to Iowa State on what is going to work out to be no tuition but having to pay for room and board. A lot of other schools offered staggering sums of money in scholarships, but since these schools have staggering squared tuition rates, he would have to pay much more to attend these schools than Iowa State. No one ever tells you how much everything costs; they just talk about how much they can save you if you choose their school. I think a lot of these college recruiters just got off the used car lot, but in my opinion Matt used good judgment by going to a top shelf school where he should be able to get a 4-year degree debt-free. Daisy and Baxter will be delighted when he comes to visit and we will all feel better knowing he is just a car ride away in case of a problem.

When I was in junior college, I ran for student government president as a project for my government class and somehow won. Shortly afterwards, I received a letter in the mail that informed me I had been selected to be in the prestigious book “Who’s Who in American Junior Colleges”. I was told the book would be in all the Junior College libraries and I could have my own copy for $99.95. This is 1982 dollars I’m talking about. I didn’t buy the book and never even looked in the library to see my name in print. Matt also received a similar letter for ‘Who’s Who in High School” or a similar title. I forget how much money they wanted for the book, but was glad to see no one wanted it.

Matt received an invitation to a dinner held by the Marshalltown Chamber of Commerce a couple of months ago. The dinner was to honor the top 5% of the students in each of the area high schools. It sounds great and the student’s dinner is free, but if a parent wants to attend, the price was $25. Kathy went and I passed to stay home with the beagles. They told me the principal of the high school came up and mumbled something about each student’s college plans instead of talking about their high school accomplishments. Matt told me later a friend asked him where I was and he said I was saving 25 dollars.

If experience is the best teacher, I’m a poor student since I’ve sent in yet another nomination to the Chess Journalists of America awards. I wrote last year how I finished with the lowest score of all nominees for my blog post on the 2010 Okoboji Open. This year I submitted my blog posts on my visit to Zanzibar Coffee Adventures and the 2011 Okoboji Open for the best feature award used those 2 for a nomination for the best chess blog along with my posts on my free chess tournament on National Chess Day, the Iowa State Fair speed chess tournament, and my first West Des Moines youth chess tournament of 2011. The entries cost me $31 for which I’ll receive in return a magazine next year letting me know that nominations for the 2012 awards are now open. So I saved $25, but spent $31 and didn’t even get a meal out of it. I can’t explain why I paid to submit these entries. Even though I feel I’m a much better writer this year than last, there is virtually no chance someone not in the ‘Chess Life’ elite can win an award. 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!