The Center Square

Just a couple of quick notes. First, this past Sunday (November 11th) the Star-Ledger ran an interesting profile of the Verona, New Jersey author Kurt Landsberger (William Steinitz, Chess Champion. A Biography of the Bohemian Caesar.) The piece focused mainly on his new work about his experiences as a translator in the United States Army stationed at the German prisoner of war camp in Trinidad, Colorado, and only mentions his Steinitz work in passing. (It turns out that Steinitz is Landsberger's great-great uncle.) Like many men and women of his generation (he is 86 years old), having survived the Holocaust, ending up here in America, Landsberger has lead a rich and colorful life, and this piece gives the reader an intersting glimpse into his world.

A few observations on using the MonRoi Personal Chess Manager. I am not sure that purchasing this device was a very wise idea - especially given that it has little or no means of really improving my game (except, perhaps, that uploading my games to the computer is easier, so I have no excuse now for not cataloging these games for quick and easy study). But, I don't play golf and I don't have a penchant for fancy cars, so I purchased a personal chess manager. (I did manage to get a reasonable discount on site at the U.S. Open as an end-of-tournament incentive.) Anyway...the device is quite simple to use. With the stylus the user can simply touch the piece he or she wants to move and then simply touches the destination square to complete the transaction. Quite simple. It is a little unwieldy when it comes to entering the setup information at the beginning of each game using the stylus (it doesn't have a keyboard), but this is not a major drawback. I was a bit disappointed too that the device doesn't cable directly to the computer for uploading. You first upload the games to the tiny chiplike SunDisk - the type used in digital cameras - then remove this disk and read from it in order to upload to your computer. You'll need a reader for the SunDisk if your computer doesn't have one (about $20), which connects to your computer through a standard USB cable. Once you get used to the device it is quite easy to use. Beware, those of you who simply must record your moves before making them over-the-board. It is against the current USCF rules for the use of this device to do so, for the obvious reason that it would allow you to visualize the board position (albeit one ply!) before you commit it on the board. Finally, if you do use the device remember to keep it charged! It was a bit of a problem when my device ran out of power when I was playing in the final round of the recent New Jersey Open and - struggling as I generally do with the clock - I had the distraction of having to scramble to find a scoresheet and a writing utensil! If anyone is interested in a demonstration please let me know.

I want to thank Mike for helping me revive this blog. When I first agreed to begin the weblog last year I thought that I was at a point where I could really contribute some interesting writings and that I might actually have something interesting to say. This may still be the case! However, shortly after my dubious blog beginnings work called me on an extended trip up and down the Pacific coast, starting in Los Angeles (about six months), then Seattle (three months), and finally working outside of San Francisco, near Palo Alto, CA, for about four months.

I was in the Los Angeles area, staying in Westlake Village and working in Thousand Oaks (minutes from Agoura Hills where there is a sizable Western States tournament held each year - I can track down the details for anyone that might be interested), and had decided that I should try to find some outlets where I might exercise my meager chess abilities. I called Fred Wilson in New York and asked him if he would be kind enough to send a quick e-mail to Los Angeles Times chess correspondent Jack Peters to ask his advice on places to play chess in the greater Los Angeles area. He was gracious enough to help me compile the following list, which could be useful for those of you who might find yourselves in the Los Angeles area looking for a game. Alas, with the project responsibilities and limitations on my free time, I never got to any of these places to play. (I did get by the chess tables on the beach in Santa Monica, which is a quite pleasant west coast version of the Washington Square Park chess scene. There were ongoing, quite compatibly I might add, in a very peaceful cooexistence - a rated chess tournament, a heated discussion of Texas Hold'em strategy, several blitz and skittles games, several curious onlookers - including myself, a couple of on-line fantasy stalwarts carrying on a lively conversation, as well as other board games playing out simultaneously on the 24 or so boards there on the beach just south of the main pier! I really enjoyed the experience.)

AAA Chess - look at the aaachessclub.com website

westernchess.com

Pasadena Chess Club (no further information)

Santa Monica Bay Chess Club - Mondays at Joslyn Park, 633 Kensington Road, Santa Monica

Costa Mesa (Octos Chess); I have the contact takashi@cox.net; contact Takashi Iwamoto at 949.689.3511

La Habra Community Center 101 W. La Habra Blvd., La Habra; contact Jerry Schein at 562.691.2393

Exposition Park Chess Club, Public Library, 3665 S. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA chess.expoparkla.com

Joshua Tree Chess Club (Friday Evenings), Faith Lutheran Church, 6336 Hallee Rd., Joshua Tree, CA

This information should be fresh. Good luck if you find yourself in Los Angeles!

Oh, and by the way, I did happen to get the famous Mechanics Chess Club on several occasions located at the wonderful Mechanics Institute Library in San Francisco (look for their website), where I attended several wonderful lectures given by Grandmaster-in-Residence Alex Yermolinsky, who allowed me to sit in as a guest when I told him that I was visiting from out of town on business. (I also ran into one of the few avid women chess players that I am acquainted with, who had recently relocated from the east coast for her Federal government career post!) Finally, I just wanted to mention too that I had looked briefly into tracking down the location for the Microsoft Chess Club near Seattle, which apparently meets on Friday nights at or near the Microsoft site in Redmond, WA, which a member had briefly described for me when we crossed paths in Minnesota at the big HB Classic in 2005.)

Glen is returning to blogging, after over a year off, but during that time his blog has gone dead. To revive it, we decided to simply set it up again from scratch. So what follows was originally posted by Glen in July 2006:

I want to thank Mike Goeller for providing me with this opportunity and for convincing me that I might actually have something of value to post through this new blog (see note below) hosted by the Kenilworth Chess Club website!

As a weak Class B player there is probably nothing of value that I can add to a serious chess website, I thought. Especially a site with a blog as rich and well done as Mike's Kenilworthian. I do enjoy writing, however, and after several discussions about chess libraries, chess culture, memorabilia and the like, Mike managed to convince me that there may be some subjects that I can add to or expound upon, and that there may even be an audience interested in reading. Beyond this, I thought that, given a forum to present chess material, I might get more serious about analyzing some of my own efforts before commiting them to world (blogosphere?!) for inspection. Yes, the blog might actually compel me to work harder at improving my game and make me a better player! (We'll see about that!)

Let's not get that serious yet. Another of my interests that I try to find the time to indulge is reading. I don't ususally go in for the typical summer beach book fare, but on a recent trip to Barnes & Noble looking for some reading materials, and thinking about what I might do in this space, I happened across a mystery novel entitled "Grandmaster," by the husband and wife writing team of Warren Murphy and Molly Cochran. (They were engaged to be married while writing "Grandmaster," were married shortly after the book was published in 1984, and have since gone their separate ways.) The edition that I bought is a 2005 re-release with an introduction by Otto Penzler, the founder of Mysterious Press and the proprietor of New York City's Mysterious Bookshop (129 West 56th Street, New York, NY 10019). I was immediately intrigued because I have read many novels where chess is used as a theme or as the driving force in the book (including works by Walter Tevis, Paolo Maurensig, Vladimir Nabokov, Stefan Zweig, Glyn, et. al.), yet I did not recall ever seeing or hearing of this work before, and the book had won an Edgar Allan Poe Award for best paperback original in the year after it was published in 1985. Wonderful!, I thought, I will read this and provide a review for the new blog. (Look for this soon!)

There are some other chess related topics I'd like to explore in this space. Chess in advertising and chess as metaphor in business and life is an area I will explore. (Indeed my own employer - a large construction and engineering firm - uses a chess based opening, middlegame and endgame theme as its major sales approach in engaging new clients.) I am interested in chess memorabilia too, and I will share some of this in both words and pictures, when I figure out how to publish those here.

There are of course my over-the-board antics as well. And if I am going to share any of these gems I had better get the board out and start analyzing......Until next time, thanks very much for navigating over, and please leave comments.

Best regards,The Center Square

Note: In naming the blog the reference to the center squares of the chessboard is obvious. What is not obvious is that this is my handle at both the ICC and the Playchess.com servers, though admittedly I don't play very much at either site, prefering to use my accounts to observe tournaments in progress, which I find quite enjoyable. The team that I organize and captain each year in the United States Amateur Team championship East (USATE) has been known in some years as "The Center Squares" (but in recent years we have simply taken the name "Checkmate Hairstyling").