Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Those madcap Québécois, Part Deux

Well, I was just up in Canada, too, but for some reason I was unable to buy enough rating points to get over 2500. Where did you go shopping, Marc?
;-)

I did succeed in taking a tour of the Ice Hotel, currently celebrating its 10th anniversary in Québec.

Getting my opening theory down cold


Despite placing the improvised mini-board correctly, I was unable to scrape up an opponent


The interior temperature of the Ice Hotel is kept at -5° Celsius, so if you're burning up from Fire on Board, consider a trip up north. After visiting the Ice Hotel, you can always retire indoors with Chess Masterpiece Theatre:


My French language defense held up about as well as my French defense does. Hmm, not sure if that's good, given that I haven't answered 1 e4 with 1...e6 since the 1990's.

In any case, leaving Québec I had no trouble at all switching back to butchering things in English. I was once told that the stress is on the first syllable of the World Chess Champion's name, instead of on the second syllable, as I'd imagined. While driving, the classic 70's chess song, Anand On by Stephen Bishop, began playing over and over in my head.

Thank you, Ladies and GerMs, I'll be here all week, unless NBC changes my time slot.

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