It's not surprising that Betsy Dynako is the wonderwoman of American Chess photography. She has a clear, concise, and yet completely absorbing way of communicating with a reader.

Take for example her recent article on her blog about the armwrestling match between Sam Shankland and Dean Ippolito.

Check out this great action shot Betsy took:



Also, as a quick note, I'd like to mention that Dean Ippolito is planning on breaking a World Record check out the details at ChessWorldRecord.com

I listened to Nigel Davies opinion recently on a chessplayer that had become notorious in the news as a thief ... see my brief google search here. It seems that in the news this man, who by my understanding is only of average strength maybe a bit above, has suddenly taken on the character of a grandmaster at the game.

To those who pay attention this is nothing new. In local newspapers the best player in elementary school is referred to as "Chess Champion" and similar stories abound. I don't mind the local embellishments when it comes to school kids but I think the chess community needs to educate the lay-journalists that over-characterize pseudo-patzer thieves, murderers, and con-men. What do you think?

This video is the first in a series (I won't post the whole series). As chessplayers we should be willing to explore all methods of developing good health in order to play better chess

okayyy ... I was reading this article from The Independent and in an interview FIDE President Kirsan Illyumzhinov is descibed as saying:

"You do realise ... that chess is a 'cosmic game'? Excavations have shown that chess was played with similar rules, in various continents, centuries ago ... There was no internet before, so how did it get across the world? It means that it was brought from somewhere."

I am tempted to think that chess was brought here by aliens just to mess with our puny human brains but I think when I finally decide to run fro FIDE president I'm not going to admit it ... it just seems smarter.