In The Arena: Ruminations About Competition

What sports talk should be: No fluff, no rumors, no nonsense--just the best sports analysis and commentary

Friday, October 9, 2026

Remembering Super Bowl Champion Coach and Hall of Fame Tight End Mike Ditka

Mike Ditka, who passed away today just nine days before his 87th birthday, is perhaps best known as the coach of the dominant 1985 Chicago B...

Friday, October 2, 2026

Journey to the National Master Title, Part 19

I scored 3/4 in the July 25, 2026 Cincinnati Tornado, gaining 12 rating points to lift my rating to 1944 while tying for first-third U2000. ...

Tuesday, June 30, 2026

Journey to the National Master Title, Part 18

I scored 2/3 in the Columbus Easter G/60 Swiss, gaining nine rating points to lift my rating to 2072, my highest rating since I had a 2080 r...

Monday, March 30, 2026

Journey to the National Master Title, Part 17

I scored 1.5/4 in the January 10, 2026 Columbus Winter Open, losing 14 rating points to drop my rating to 1966. The key game happened in the...

Saturday, January 3, 2026

Journey to the National Master Title, Part 16

I started the fourth quarter of 2025 the same way that I started the fourth quarter of 2024 , playing in a four round tournament on both Sat...

Monday, October 6, 2025

Journey to the National Master Title, Part 15

On July 17, 2025, my daughter Rachel and I played in the Cincinnati Chess Club's G/24 Swiss. This event only affected our USCF Quick r...

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David Friedman: United States; "A work of art contains its verification in itself: artificial, strained concepts do not withstand the test of being turned into images; they fall to pieces, turn out to be sickly and pale, convince no one. Works which draw on truth and present it to us in live and concentrated form grip us, compellingly involve us, and no one ever, not even ages hence, will come forth to refute them."--Alexander Solzhenitsyn (Nobel Lecture)

"The most 'popular,' the most 'successful' writers among us (for a brief period, at least) are, 99 times out of a hundred, persons of mere effrontery--in a word, busy-bodies, toadies, quacks."--Edgar Allan Poe

"In chess what counts is what you know, not whom you know. It's the way life is supposed to be, democratic and just."--Grandmaster Larry Evans

"It's not nuclear physics. You always remember that. But if you write about sports long enough, you're constantly coming back to the point that something buoys people; something makes you feel better for having been there. Something of value is at work there...Something is hallowed here. I think that something is excellence."--Tom Callahan

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