Back in Blogging Action

A quick news update: After a long hiatus, I am back in blogging action at Science on the Squares. In fact, I will be resuscitate all of my other blogs and social media accounts, after a long hiatus due to a career transition (I am now an Assistant Professor in the Biology Department of Kingsborough Community College.)

I have attempted to repair many aspects of this blog, fixing broken links and images. (If you find something I missed, please let me know). Due to my new position, I will be posting here probably only once or twice a month. However, I have setup a more static chess website at http://djcamenares.x10.mx/chess/; as of posting it is still under construction.

In the next few posts, I will finish posting a series of Chess Words puzzles that I had intended to upload. I will not continue the other puzzle series, for now. You can also look forward to some analysis on the Grivas Sicilian, which is already present at my static page. (In particular, a fun gambit line 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Qb6 5.Be3?!) Stay Tuned!

Adjournment: An indefinite hiatus for SOTS

It is with regret that I must inform my readers that this blog is going on indefinite hiatus.

Over the past few months (just about 16 weeks, to be more exact), I have found blogging on this site to be a very enjoyable experience. During this time some of these pages gained some recognition as well: through connections formed from this blog, I was offered to write a few book reviews for chesscafe.com. I owe a special thanks to Michael Goeller, a friend and author of the amazing Kenilworthian blog, for his help and occasional reposts.

Unfortunately, as foreshadowed in some recent posts, I simply do not have the time to make this blog all it could be. Rather than be reduced to posting (exclusively) biweekly the Freeze Chess, ChessWords, and Scrambled Chess problems (of which I have quite a few), I decided to simply put the entire operation on hold.

I am currently in a period of significant transition in my life. I am nearing the end of my doctoral studies in biochemistry. In fact, the end to this chapter might come rather quickly, in the order of few months. A great deal of effort might be required to ensure a quick and successful conclusion to some final experiments (not to mention polishing the writing of my manuscript and thesis).

On top of that, my impending graduation necessitates that I intensify my career search. I have been searching for gainful employment for several months. In fact, this blog is partly a piece on the board in that larger struggle, a way to showcase my writing (as well as didactic) abilities in advance of a scientific publication. For my readers that have some connections to science (or otherwise are / or know somebody looking to hire a newly minted PhD), I would be very interested in hearing from you! My resume can be viewed at my LinkedIn profile. 

Hopefully, after I am settled in the next phase of my life, I can return to this blog and resume posting interesting chess stories and analysis, as well as commentary on science. The transition period is bound to be an interesting one, and I look forward to recounting the experience (as well as relating experiences from my graduate career) on these pages.

While I will not be making any new posts for awhile, there is some other work that needs to be done to update some older entries. In particular, I will be fixing some broken links and images in the near future. Also, you should be on the lookout for my favorable review of Dan Heisman's excellent The Worlds Most Instructive Amateur Game Book I recently completed (but not yet featured) for chesscafe.com. When I return, you can expect that I will finish my inconceivable moves series. As a sneak peek, I think that 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e5!?* and 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Qb6 5.Be3! are both marginally playable. I actually have did some preliminary analysis for the latter line (which is essentially a gambit variation in the Grivas Sicilian) at my older blog at chess.com, which you should definitely check out if you haven't already :)

*Intending 3.Nxe5 Qe7 4.d4 Nc6!? (not 4…d6 5.Bb5+ ouch!) 5.Nxc6 Qxe4+

My Excel "FEN to Diagram" Tool

Every Chess blogger and publisher must at one time grapple with the same issue: how to create and display diagrams and games. I have explored and tried a few options, including the pgn4web and chessup.net tools (at time of writing chessup.net server is down). A more detailed list is provided by Michael Goeller's Kenilworthian, among others. Here, I will recount how I came to develop my own, offline solution, an Excel file that converts FEN to chess diagrams.

For a time, I thought I had settled upon using the Chessup.net server, in which I could simply put a FEN string into the URL for the image, and viola, I would have chess diagrams on my site. However, it was unsettling to realized that when their servers went down, so did all the diagrams on my site. I should have saved each image and uploaded them. Even if I had done this, however, the failure of their service would mean that I would need to change the style of diagrams on my blog.

I value consistency when it comes to the appearance of these blog posts. Thus, I began to search for a more reliable, offline solution. However, since I use a Mac. I was found wanting for programs to quickly turn FEN strings into diagrams. My solution: make my own tool to accomplish the same end. I'm a bit of an excel guru, if you might have guessed from my Mutual Information articles (part 1 and 2). Naturally, I chose this program to craft my solution.

Here, I will make available the excel workbook that I have setup to generate all the new diagrams on the site. In order for this tool to work, you must have the Chess Cases font. I will provide the workbook in two different Excel formats: .xlsx, and .xls

Feel free to use this tool as you see fit. I would appreciate a mention if you use it for your site. If you do use it, experience problems, or have suggestions for improvement, I'd love to hear from you. Just drop a comment below!

Read on for more detailed instructions on how to use the Excel Chess Diagram tool. If you are trying to accomplish something special, or need some additional help, I may be able to give you a hand; simply post your inquiry as a comment.

Shake up at SOTS!

Warning! Grab a hard hat, because I am doing some renovation! 

OK, thats an exaggeration no safety equipment is necessary. But I am making a few changes to how I post games, as well as to the style of the site.

To my regular readers, I thank you for your audience; I hope you enjoy the new site design. I have to apologize, however, for some redundancy that will result.

Not only are the colors different, but I am doing away with the java replay applet. It was cool and stylish (thanks pgn4web!) but ultimately I felt that the annotations were presented in a clumsy format. I decided, therefore, to go to an more throw-back style and present annotations in text with scattered diagrams. Now, if you'd like, you can print out these posts and read them on the train/bus/plane/etc.

To those itching to replay the games, I will still provide PGN files. If you don't know what PGN is, or how to read it, you can view my primer on PGN (portable game notation) from an earlier post. There are a bunch of free viewers on the web and for download. Here are a select few:

• Chess Tempo
• ChessFlash
• Pgn4Web

Due to this change in format, the opening articles I had posted previous would become unwieldy. Therefore, I decided to break these up into a number of smaller posts.

This, I think, affords several advantages. For starters, different lines can be linked together, and you can explore different variations without wearing out the scrollbar. Secondly, it will allow me to post the analysis of individual lines, instead of entire systems at once. I'll be able to make each post more detailed, and you won't have to wait so long for an update.

So, in what will seem like a flurry of posts, I will be reposting the analysis of the lines starting 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 and 1.e4 c5 2.Bc4. There will be some updates, and the analysis will be more in depth in some lines. Soon to follow will be my long-promised work on 1.e4 c5 2.Nc3 e5

It's a shake up at SOTS! (Science on the Squares; I think the acronym has a nice ring to it). I welcome any an all reader suggestions on the site's format.

Square One: An Introduction

Chess is everything: art, science, and sport.  -  Anatoly Karpov

For me, chess is at the same time a game, a sport, a science and an art. And perhaps even more than that,. There is someting hard to explain to those who do not know the game well. One must first learn to play it correctly in order to savor its richness.  -  Bent Larsen

Chess is a unique cognitive nexus, a place where art and science come together in the human mind and are refined and improved by experience.  -  Garry Kasparov

Welcome to Science on the Squares, a blog about Chess and Science, and everything in between.

I've heard on occasion the cliche "Write what you know". In some ways, it is through this phrase I arrive at this blog. I am an avid chess player (although not particularly strong, only USCF 1666 at time of writing), and I am also currently drawing my doctoral studies in molecular biology to a close. Thus, I am in position to comment on both worlds. As the quotes above (grabbed from http://www.chessquotes.com/topic-chess) suggests, these worlds may intersect in some ways.