Brennan Price
@brennantprice
Technical Policy Director @eutelsat.bsky.social. Lawyer, chess player (ICCF IM), ham radio operator (N4QX), and more. Northern Virginia based, Tennessee raised, with stops in Atlanta and Hartford. Vanderbilt/MTSU/Georgia Tech/UConn. He/him.
This composition by two 13-year-old Brazilian chessplayers was recently published by the British Chess Problem Society. Good to see new faces in chess composition. Flora Sarmento and Arthur Reimberg, The Problemist Supplement, May 2026. Helpmate in two, two solutions. Helpmate => Black moves first.
This position from a 3/4 Final of the 13th ICCF World Championship appears in the 3rd edition of Chess Informant's Encyclopedia of Chess Combinations. Problem solvers will have a leg up in finding how Danish ICCM Niels Granberg finished off Ukrainian ICCM Semen Gubnitsky. White to play and win.
Kabe Moen (professionally a mathematics professor at the University of Alabama), Special Commendation, The Problemist, 2024. Mate in 2.
Black to play and mate in seven. What, you were expecting Western chess?
As I don't play over-the-board go at all, I have set out my goban as a snowboard (a solid surface against which snow measurements can be made). The sticks are driven into the ground for ease of location. This will be my first foray as a volunteer weather spotter. Wish me luck, and be safe.
Michael Pasman, Gold Medal (Endgame Studies), 12th FIDE World Cup in Chess Composition, 2025. White to play and draw.
Vassily Smyslov (yes, that one), 64 — Shahmatnoe Obozrenie, 2000. White to play and win.
Over the next few days, I will share problems from Category B of the 40th Swiss Solving Championships, held in Bern last month. If you can get these, you are (at least) at my level. Josef Vogler, Basler Zeitung, 1992. Mate in three.
Oswald von Krobshofer, Illustrirte Zeitung, 28 July 1904. Mate in four. Reprinted in last Friday's Leonard Barden on Chess column in The Guardian.
From Leonard Barden's current column in @theguardian.com. Kilmova-Spence, Gibraltar 2006. Black, who resigned here in the game, to move and draw.
R to D Election Day swing of 5.9% at George Mason University over Connolly -VanMeter 2024 (which Connolly won by 76 points and change).
Henri Rinck, Deutsche Schachzeitung, October 1905 (republished by the amazing Leonard Barden in @theguardian.com last week). White to play and win.
Joseph William Abbott, Counties Chess Association 1886. Mate in two.
John Bowden, The Problemist Supplement, January 2025. Selfmate in four. In a selfmate in n, White moves first and forces Black to deliver mate on the nth move. Black plays in such a manner as not to deliver mate if possible.
The Democratic Party of Virginia's Eleventh Congressional District in caucus unassembled. #VA11
Polls are closed in Eastern Australia. ABC and Anthony Green's swan song are the viewing of choice this Saturday afternoon in Shanghai.