Thinking Machine

Ok, this is pretty cool. In case you were wondering what it all means:

"When it is your (White's) turn to move, the chess board will gently pulse to show the influence of the various pieces. in the left image below, you can see waves over the squares around the king and (very lightly) over the squares where the pawns might capture. When the machine (Black) is thinking, a network of curves is overlaid on the board; see image at right. The curves show potential moves--often several turns in the future--considered by the computer. Orange curves are moves by black; green curves are ones by white. The brighter curves are thought by the program to be better for white."

More info here.

Dilemma

Chess is too serious for a game, but too much of a game to be taken seriously.

-Moses Mendelssohn

Rybka Wins World Championship

Hardly surprising, Rykba won the 16th World Computer Chess Championship. I watched some of the games live on the Playchess server, and most of them were spectacular. You can download the games in PGN format here. Check out the game against Hiarcs (2nd place winner) - awesome.

Simple But Beautiful

I love this position (number 165 in Alburt's Chess Training Pocket Book). It's white to move - what would you play?

Highlight between the brackets for the solution.
[ 1.Bg5! And black resigned. He can't take the bishop with the h pawn, as Qh5 will be mate. If black's queen takes the bishop, white wins with Qg8# ]