By Mark Mix
Home day care providers would be forced into unions
After a long weekend, let's go with a couple of really short games. In an age of vast game databases, computer-aided study and 25 move-deep opening theory, it's remarkable how even the world's very best players can get themselves into trouble before the game has barely begun.
Doug Whaley was promoted to take over as Buffalo Bills general manager, making the team's near top-to-bottom offseason overhaul complete.
Like one of those busy Pieter Bruegel peasant harvest paintings that seem to be breaking out of the frame, the annual blowout Tata Steel Tournament at the Dutch coastal city of Wijk aan Zee features an almost overflowing bounty of chess. There's a huge nine-round Swiss event for amateurs, a seven-round rapid tournament and, of course, three -- count 'em, three -- 14-player invitational round-robin tournaments in which the weakest "C" tournament boasts six grandmasters and an average rating of over 2460.
Mike McCoy's interview with San Diego went so well that both sides felt he was a perfect fit to become the Chargers' new coach.
Ron Rivera will return as coach of the Carolina Panthers next season following his team's strong finish.
Before the ball dropped on a new year, the Browns said goodbye to another coach.
Before the ball dropped on a new year, the Browns said goodbye to another coach.
Mike Tannenbaum pulled out a letter as he stood in front of the New York Jets players for one last time.
The joke running through Jacksonville these days carries the same punch line as the one in Kansas City:
A federal grand jury in Tennessee has indicted 15 former FedEx workers, charging them with stealing from U.S. mail.
A better economy and extra demand after superstorm Sandy lifted U.S. auto sales last month.
Already claiming the king of chess, India won't be able to crown a queen.
Recently, I saw a big poster that proclaimed "Keep America Strong -- Vote Obama-Biden." I nearly choked. What am I not getting here?
The 2012 class for the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in St. Louis is small but select: Alex Yermolinsky, the St. Petersburg-born grandmaster now living in South Dakota, will become the 48th member of the Hall of Fame in a ceremony Tuesday, joining champions of the American game including Paul Morphy, Bobby Fischer and Benjamin Franklin.
Norway’s Magnus Carlsen presents something of a problem for a humble chess columnist. His best wins tend to be slow, sadistic positional squeezes, anacondalike asphyxiations in which Carlsen will happily nurse the tiniest of endgame advantages — or sometimes no advantage at all — before forcing his exhausted opponent to concede on Move 79. It gets the job done, but doesn’t leave much for the annotator to remark on or for the reader to enjoy.
