Chiv Chat

• Here's a new reason why girls are bad at chess: coaches aren't hard enough on them. As crack coach Elizabeth Vicary explains, 'most people won't tell teenage girls (especially the together, articulate ones) that they are lazy and the quality of their work is unacceptable. and sometimes kids need to hear that, or they have no reason to step up.' And what kind of thing do they need to hear? 'I said some amazing things to kids, including "You can count to two, right? Then you should have seen that!!" and "If you are not going to pay more attention, you should quit chess, because you are wasting everyone's time."' And - it worked. Her team won the US nationals.
  
  
• Once you've cleared the nasty noisy advert, The Washington Post has some nice pictures of a chess/hip-hop event. My favourite:
  
  
• Chess and hip hop! Told you our old game was newly teaming up, didn't I? When I gave you four other reasons why chess is so darned good now? Still need more? Well Matthew Devereux has 1,001 reasons - and he's shared the first 101 here. (Via.) The rest are reserved for the book deal he's hoping to land. Of the many quotes, intrigues, amusements, pictures, I was particularly relieved to read Andy Soltis's view that "Mistakes are the key to chess success," because, well . . .
  
  
• . . . guess what move I played two Tuesdays ago in the diagram position? I am white here, against Alan Hayward, in the S&BCC Championship. I'll let you know in the next Chiv Chat, if I've not successfully self-lobotomized it from my memory by then.