David R. Sands

SANDS: Power moves in politics and on the chessboard

For you last few undecided voters still out there, here’s one more data point to consider before the polls close Tuesday. President Obama, according to his autobiography, is a chess player, like eight of the last nine Democrats to occupy the Oval Office. (Lyndon Johnson was the exception.) GOP challenger Mitt Romney, to judge from the public record, doesn’t play the Royal Game, a trait he shares with the last four Republican presidents — Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and the two George Bushes.

November 6, 2012

SANDS: Making the club scene: Strong Euro Cup chess lineups

With so many hired guns in the competition, it's little wonder the annual European Club Cup team championship features some of the strongest firepower of any club tournament in the world.

October 30, 2012

SANDS: ‘The Yerminator’ enters U.S. Chess Hall of Fame

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.

October 23, 2012

SANDS: Magnus Carlsen is a chess champ with a taste for slow torture

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.

October 16, 2012

Longtime Times executive Joo resigns, takes job in Korea

Douglas D.M. Joo, who has served The Washington Times and its affiliated publications as a senior executive, president, chairman and the company's board chairman for more than two decades, is stepping down, the newspaper's executives announced Sunday.

October 14, 2012

SANDS: The game’s great runners-up  make for a mighty lineup

Though they fell short of the summit, you could make a pretty formidable team from what might be called the Also-Rans Club.

October 8, 2012

Rumsfeld blasts Obama at TWT anniversary gala

Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld offered a sharp and at times biting critique of the Obama administration's defense and national security record, saying the president's policies in the Middle East, Europe and East Asia have cost the country prestige and influence and put America on a path to decline.

October 2, 2012

SANDS: Exchange rate in chess fluctuates for rooks, minor pieces

Through centuries of theoretical investigation and practical results, the relative value of the pieces on the board has been pretty firmly established. If the pawn has a value of one, then the minor pieces (knights and bishops) are worth a little more than three pawns, the rook five, and the queen somewhere between 9.5 and 10. In many games with players of even moderate strength, a material edge of plus-one — a single pawn — is enough to produce a winning advantage.

October 2, 2012

The Washington Times: A ‘miracle’ that has endured for 30 years

Starting a newspaper "is worth doing, and we make our first public appearance with a heady sense that we can do it. Our confidence rests in part on the zest and skills of the staff we have recruited. Just as importantly, it rests on the need we find expressed all over Washington for a new perspective on local, national and world events."

October 1, 2012

SANDS: Olympian efforts abound on Istanbul’s lower boards

Just as in the five-ring Olympics where athletes compete in track events and on the ski slopes, many of the competitors and countries that show up at the biennial chess Olympiad arrive knowing they have little hope of earning a medal. Men’s and women’s teams from more than 150 countries took part in the recent 40th Olympiad in Istanbul, which once again was dominated by the globe’s long-standing chess powerhouses: Russia, China, Armenia, Ukraine and the U.S.

September 25, 2012

Funeral for Rev. Moon a time of reflection for church

Hak Ja Han Moon, widow of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, told 15,000 Unificationists on Monday that she will "be faithful" to his life and tradition and that the worldwide movement should "march forward without pausing" to build God's ideal world.

September 16, 2012

Unification Church faithful gather in South Korea to mourn Rev. Moon

Tens of thousands of mourners descended on this remote rural retreat to pay their final respects to Unification Church founder Rev. Sun Myung Moon in a solemn two-and-a-half hour ceremony Saturday.

September 14, 2012

Rev. Moon lauded for efforts to reunify Koreas

It's just one floral tribute among hundreds here, but the stand of white paper chrysanthemums draped by a ribbon of Korean characters bears some unique political and diplomatic weight. The wreath expresses the condolences of new young North Korean leader Kim Jong-un for the death of Unification Church founder and spiritual guide the Rev. Sun Myung Moon.

September 13, 2012

Milingo: Rev. Moon’s legacy is in religious unity

Unification Church founder Rev. Sun Myung Moon's work on behalf of harmony among the world's great faiths will be among his most lasting achievements, Emmanuel Milingo, the onetime Zambian Catholic archbishop defrocked for taking a wife in a ceremony presided over by Rev. Moon in 2001, said in an interview Thursday.

September 13, 2012

Unification Church is poised for new era, officials say

The Unification Church is strongly positioned to preserve and expand both its global spiritual outreach and its commercial holdings as tens of thousands of believers gather to say a final goodbye to founder Rev. Sun Myung Moon, two top church officials said this week.

September 12, 2012

SANDS: Armenia edges Russian to claim Olympiad gold in chess

The Little Country That Could did it again as tiny Armenia on Sunday won its third gold medal in the past four years, nipping mighty Russia on tiebreaks after the two chess powerhouses finished 9-1-1 at the 40th biennial Olympiad in Istanbul.

September 11, 2012

Democrats’ rhetoric driven by auto bailout

Democrats here clearly think they have a political winner in President Obama's decision to bail out the American auto industry, but numbers on the bailout's cost released this week suggest that the move could pose some political potholes for both presidential campaigns this fall.

September 6, 2012

Obama scrubs stadium speech over weather concerns

There will be no replay of Denver 2008 as organizers of the Democratic National Convention announced Wednesday that President Obama's planned outdoor acceptance speech at the Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, N.C., has been moved indoors because of threatening rain in the forecast.

September 5, 2012

SANDS: Young Hua schools his elders on way to chess victory

He’s an excellent student, has played a piano recital at Carnegie Hall and just scored an unexpected triumph in one of Washington’s signature chess tournaments. It will be interesting to see what David Hua will achieve when he’s old enough to drive.

September 4, 2012