Tim came to the club buzzing with these a few weeks ago. [Skip intro] A Zugzwang (German: forced move) is a chess position where, if it's your turn to move, you lose, and if your opponent has the move, you might be OK. Here's an example from one of my own games: anything White does loses. We say, White is in Zugzwang.

"Happy is the man who can make a living by his hobby!", said GBS, but typically there's not a lot of overlap between my day job in health and education and my pastime of chess.

Then two come along at once :)

My colleague David McGeorge called to my attention to some research about going second, which looked at penalty shoot-outs and the game of chess.

Winning Chess for Computers, Super-humans and Mortals...

Charlie Keen emerged triumphant from doing battle in Torbay, equal first with 4½/5, and came home to show his last round game to Fritz... who thought he should have done better!  It's enough to make you despair... Do you really have to analyse as well as Fritz?  Or play as well as Capablanca and Alekhin?  I think the answer is 'None of the Above'... but if you can get a bit better at either tactics or manoeuvring, then that would help!