Maybe I'm jealous

Updated 26 March 2012 to correct the name of this variation from Pietrowsky to Pöhlmann. (Thanks, Jack) More later.

I try not to be, but maybe I am a little jealous. I'm talking about all those Jerome Gambiteers over at Rick Kennedy's blog. All those quick little knockouts. Sure some of them are Black wins, but still...
Worse yet, the BDG looks to be on its way to losing its title as the most disrespected opening in chess. But all we can do is fight on.

You made me do it...

Actually, I was kinda hoping for a good old-fashioned Evans Gambit, but you forced me into a Blackmar-Diemer.

You call it a Caro Kann...

Yeah, you call it a Caro Kann, but I call it a BDG. Fresh from yesterday’s TWIC, for your dining pleasure:


Sorry, I almost forgot the dinner music:

I don't worry about a thing

Long ago and far away I sat one day in an architectural history class, anticipating another dull lecture from another dull professor. Was I in for a surprise. This new prof walks in, flips off the lights, cranks up a slide show of historic buildings, and starts the music. "Sit back and soak it up," says he.


I did. It was my introduction to Mose Allison. I was, as they used to say, gobsmacked. In the more than five decades since that intro I can no longer remember what that album was, but I believe it must have been his first, Back Country Suite, released in 1957.


Later, when I began to play a little chess, I considered adopting this number as my theme song.

I believe it was this game that convinced me...  

Meine Schülerin

In Vom ersten Zug an auf Matt Diemer refers to “meine Schülerin, Frau Oesterle.” The noun would normally translate as the feminine form of student, or pupil, but in Diemer’s case I would imagine that he intended it more in the sense of “my disciple.” Still, he was not too proud to include this miniature in his book:

 

Decades later, not long before her death, Elisabeth Oesterle spoke of Diemer as he was in those days:

Her husband operated a little cheese dairy in Biesenberg. Diemer often visited her. He was very poor and she gave him to eat and to drink. Once she presented him with a coat (I believe a winter coat). Some days later she heard that he had sold it--probably to finance his worldwide correspondence. She was deeply saddened by this.

Related post: You don't bring me flowers...

You don’t bring me flowers...

Happy St. Valentine's Day to all, and in special memory of this lady who is no longer with us. Many thanks to Günter Brunold for the photograph (but blame me for the pink border).

A related post is here.

What happened to 2011?

Seems like it was here just yesterday. And suddenly you look around and it’s February 2012.

The last thing I remember is standing on a mountaintop overlooking my hometown in Tennessee. The next morning I awoke in the intensive care unit in a Chattanooga hospital. Turns out I had the good luck to collapse with an EMT standing nearby. He, my sister, and some visiting cousins got me into an ambulance and then in a helicopter airlift to the hospital.

I’m not sure what happened, but I’m recovering nicely (but slowly), thanks. Unfortunately we’ve had other family emergencies over the past couple of months. Things like that happen to all of us, but they seem to gang up on old folks. (My hat’s off to Korchnoi, still ticking at 80, to make 81 next month.)

But I’m back now and hope to get in a few posts each month. And I apologize to readers—if any of you are still out there—for not getting some sort of notice up before this.

I’ll start back with an easy game. It appeared in a recent TWIC. Shades of Milner-Barry and George Thomas.

And yet another rook sac on the knight at f6 brings a quick knockout. The patent on this expired years ago.