Ask Bruce

Bruce Pandolfini's latest ChessCafe column is now online and he answers a number of interesting questions:

• "I remember reading somewhere that you advocated taking one’s time if one’s opponent were in time trouble. That doesn’t seem right to me. Shouldn’t you be moving quickly, hoping to make the opponent forfeit?"
  
• "I would like to begin tutoring students in chess when I move to the USA...My question is – once I arrive, what steps do I need to take?"
  
• "My coach is 2220 (FIDE) and in our last meetings he asked me to play (without clocks) against him in positions in which one side had a great advantage (positional and or material). He played the weaker side, but I always lost. Is this kind of training necessary for someone to improve? Or is he trying to show me that I’ll never beat him? Do you play out positions against your students?"
  
• "Why do you think someone who starts later in their study of chess cannot become a grandmaster? Is it because older players may not have the time to study seriously or is it because the mind becomes set in its reasoning?"
  
• "The position from the end of the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer has now become famous. It is also imperfect. Larry Evans and others have shown there is an error and Poe (Sarwer) could have drawn. Don’t you think the game, which is supposedly a championship game, should have been chosen more carefully?"

You can read the entire column, including Pandolfini's answers, here.