90 Days: Thursday, November 7 (Day No. 33)

(This is the time of year when the horse racing season for the Ivory Pine Syndicate is winding down, but the soccer season for the Rosevelt Soccer Club is gearing up. Here's a 90-day glimpse of the day in the life of a horse racing managing partner and soccer club administrator.)

Awoke, 5:18a

Played chess, 5:45a-6a

My dad couldn't play many over-the-board chess tournaments while we were growing up, so he often juggled dozens of correspondence games at any given time. 

Postcards sent from all around the country would arrive in our mailbox pretty much every day, usually with just a single chess move transcribed on the card. And my dad would use the stockpile of postcards he received every Christmas to send out his own postcards with corresponding moves.

Thanks to the Internet, it's now possible to play against opponents all over the world, either in real-time or in games that require a new move by each player over a period of time. My preference is playing three games at a time, with a 72-hour window for each player to make their own move. 

My most recent games are in the endgame stage, and my Rd2+ move against an opponent based in the U.S. prompted them to resign. They have no choice but to play RxR, which I follow with PxR, and there's no way for them to prevent me from promoting my "smart-ass pawn" to a queen.

Worked at Westbrook High School, 7:30a-6p

We hosted parent-teacher conferences today after abbreviated classes, which meant I had some time between classes and conferences to stream a UEFA Conference game being played in Iceland.

The UEFA Conference League is the third-tier continental competition in Europe, and it mostly features the strongest clubs from Europe's smaller countries. Vikingur Reykjavik, a club that has hosted our club in our three visits to Iceland, played in the stadium of a Kópavogur-based club that has also hosted our club in our Iceland trips, and they won their second consecutive Conference League game by defeating a club from Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Paramount+ has the streaming rights for all three European competitions (Champions League, Europa League, and the Conference League), and there's no greater value in soccer streaming.

Ivory Pine Syndicate admin, 7:15p-7:30p

Past performance sheets, or PPs, were just posted for Sixby Hanover's race at First Tracks Cumberland, so I sent out a quick reminder about his race on Saturday to our partners.

Sixby's recent form has been solid, his post position is okay, and the field appears to be soft enough on paper to make us cautiously optimistic about a positive result this weekend.

Asleep, 10:04p