Crossing pawns with Rod Stewart

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The Pawn was not impressed at all by Alexandra Kosteniuk’s decision to prostitute the royal game by her appearance in Penthouse. ChessBase helpfully provided a link to the Penthouse website, and as far as the Pawn could see there were plenty of perfectly nice-looking girls on there who were happy enough to prostitute themselves in [...]

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The Pawn likes nothing better than an undignified catfight, and the rumpus over the Krush-Zatonskih Armageddon game which decided the US women’s championship is one of the finest of recent years in that regard. For anyone who’s missed it, Zatonskih won on time in a lost position with less than one second remaining on her [...]

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There is this to be said for being a fan of Vladimir Kramnik – you do a get a better class of insult for your money. Reading Toilet War one is reminded, quite apart from the unmistakable whiff of madness arising from the pages, of nothing so much as monkeys pelting one another with droppings. [...]

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You read some strange things on the internet. Chesscafe carried a review of Glenn Flear’s Practical Chess Endings which asked the curious rhetorical question, ‘Is this the best book on endgames ever written?’.
I just paused there to let that sink in. Now Glenn’s a nice chap ‘n’ all, and his book’s nice enough too, but really [...]

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