Chess in Iraq

An American civilian working in Iraq gets to rekindle his love of chess. Read "The Chess Game" from Carpetbagger Iraq.

A seven step program

(reasonable-person?) shares his heart-warming story of overcoming an addiction to chess.

Resurrection

King's Gambit is back after several months of inactivity -- well worth a look.

Street Chess

Chessboxing and Poetry too!

Playing the Dozens is more than a game of fun--it is a battle for respect. It is an exhibition of emotional strength and verbal agility, a confrontation of wits instead of fists....

This verbal tradition combines elements of boxing, chess, and poetry....

Like chess, playing the dozens requires a strategy. To win a battle, you must stay two or three snaps ahead of your opponent. Even as you are being attacked, you should be setting up your counter-snaps. Should I say something about his Fayva shoes? Or perhaps attack his fat sister? I'll save my best shot for his K-Mart cologne. This is the type of strategic thinking that makes a master snapper.

Read "Playing the Dozens" from Almost Infamous.

Gangsta Chess Rap

Listen to Life in the Chess Lane (mp3).

....

I check out my uneven trade

I got a knight for a rook

Am I crazy ... Naw

It's called strategy

en passant and battery

Doesn't matter if I take it too far

This is war

with a mate in four

....

You want pain

Get inside my brain

I'll show you Life ... in the Chess Lane

A surprisingly good song! (Hat Tip: Ben Hammersley's Dangerous Precedent)

WARNING: Some R-rated language.

Chess Chips

Here is VARoadstter's final poker chip design. See also "Poker Knight."

Chess and Madness - yet again!

Back in the early days of this blog I covered the topic of chess and madness repeatedly (see here, here, here and here). Now, TIME Magazine's Charles Krauthammer (whose chess exploits have been previously mentioned) takes on the topic:

Why such proximity between genius and madness in chess? There are three possible explanations. One is that chess is a monomania. You study it intensively day and night from childhood if you are going to rise to the ranks of the greats, and that kind of singular focus constricts your reality and makes you more vulnerable to distortions of it. "A chess genius," wrote George Steiner, "is a human being who focuses vast, little understood mental gifts and labors on an ultimately trivial human enterprise. Almost inevitably, this focus produces pathological symptoms of nervous stress and unreality."

.... Chess is a particularly enclosed, self-referential activity. It's not just that it lacks the fresh air of sport, but that it lacks connections to the real world outside--a tether to reality enjoyed by the monomaniacal students of other things, say, volcanic ash or the mating habits of the tsetse fly. As Stefan Zweig put it in his classic novella The Royal Game, chess is "thought that leads nowhere, mathematics that add up to nothing, art without an end product, architecture without substance."

But chess has a third--and unique--characteristic that is particularly fatal. It is not just monomaniacal and abstract, but its arena is a playing field on which the other guy really is after you. The essence of the game is constant struggle against an adversary who, by whatever means of deception and disguise, is entirely, relentlessly, unfailingly dedicated to your destruction. It is only a board, but it is a field of dreams for paranoia.

Hat Tip: Neh.

Knight Notes

1. Fussy Lizard completed the 7 circles. Congrats.
   


2. Fatboy put his training on hold -- having to attend to real life can be such a bear. I'll list him as "on hiatus" along with General Kaia, but this is obviously not a satisfactory long-term solution.
   


3. Takchess and Viking Sword checked in after long absences. Each was at serious risk for being dropped from the list, but apparently both are continuing to pursue the program. Sancho has also come in from the cold with a few new posts.
   


4. That leaves Margriet and Salcido as the Knights who have been quiet the longest at this point (both since 4/11) -- not yet close to the 30-day rule, but not that far away. Of course, you can always glean bits of information about the princess from Tempo.
   


5. Finally, Harmless has requested entrance into the Knights and at least one has added him. Having read his blog, I would urge caution. For one thing he has yet to make any post about the program or even about chess in general for that matter. In addition, there are a few other suspicious things I noticed, e.g. his first post is from 2001 and then there is a 3-year gap to his next; he has ads prominently displayed at the top; etc. This may all be explainable, but I'm going to wait on this one.
   
   Update (4/29): It seems we had the wrong url for Harmless. With the correct one in hand, we can now offer him an official welcome and best wishes for success. A name? The Nasty Knight.

Beyond J'adoube

Last weekend at the club, Mike Griffin and I were having one of those typical conversations about the tactics some players try to use to annoy their opponents. He mentioned the case of a player who intentionally placed his pieces off-center to the square whenever he moved them. The appropriate response, of course, is to say "j'adoube" and adjust them on your own time. However, this opponent appealed to the tournament director citing an ambiguous phrase in an earlier edition of the USCF Rules of Chess that could be read to mean that a player did not have the right to adjust his opponent's pieces. Fortunately, the TD was not persuaded by his argument and informed him that he could be penalized for disturbing his opponent if he continued his off-center piece placement tactic.

An eminently reasonable outcome, but we then began to wonder about how this might apply to pieces which have already been captured and removed from the board. Some players have very specific preferences about where they place captured pieces and how they arrange them. Some organize them by type and value (left to right or right to left). Some like to line them up next to the equivalent pieces captured by their opponents. I suppose some people might like to stack them pyramid-style (though I've never actually seen someone do this during a game).

What if you do not like the way your opponent has arranged his captured pieces? Do you have the right to say "j'adoube" and adjust them more to your liking? I suspect not -- presumably captured pieces are "owned" by the capturer. However, if this is true, when my opponent (in time trouble) is about to queen a pawn can I put the previously captured queen in a place which is difficult for my opponent to reach? Maybe even in my pocket?

Catch-22

At The Thin Line, a blogger ponders whether stalemate is the best chess analogy for Catch-22.

I believe "Zugzwang" would be a better choice: Every possible move makes your position worse than it currently is. Yet, you must choose one, since inaction is a violation of the rules.

Who says there's no chess on television? III

At A Patzer's Tale, a rant inspired by the folks at CBS who displayed their ignorance of the game again -- this time in an episode of "Numbers" (see here for the previous incident).

A true story?

Capablanca was waiting in a train station in New York one day, with his coffee, danish, newspaper and chess set, when a man approached him. Gesturing at the chess set, he asked if Capa cared for a game. Always delighted to play, Capablanca immediately set up the board, then removed his queen from the board, to even up the game. Annoyed, the man blurted out, "Why did you do that? You don't know me, I might beat you!" Unruffled, Capablanca replied, "Sir, if you could beat me, I would know you."

Source

A chess life

From Not Another Word, a series of photographs of Marcel Duchamp playing chess.

Pre-Knight

Here's an early catch (although Nezha has already been there) -- let's see if Satish Talim becomes a candidate for the Errant clan.

Chess and Shopping

From a piece on new USCF Scholastic Director Jerry Nash:

Jerry has now relocated to the new USCF headquarters in Crossville, TN. His wife Ruth and daughters Sarah and Rebekah will join him after the end of the current school year. Does his family enjoy chess? "My wife hates strategy games! My daughters learned the rules of chess but do not play. Now, if I could figure a way to combine chess with shopping – well, then, I suspect both my daughters would soon become grandmasters!"

Chess and Baseball III

Apparently the consumer demand is so strong that a game company has decided to launch a new Red Sox-Yankees chess set to compete with the existing one on the market. Perhaps years from now catalogs of chess piece designs will list Baseball right after Staunton?!

Play Games! USAOPOLY, makers of the popular new MONOPOLY®: Red Sox(tm) World Series® Champions Collector's Edition, bring more head to head game play to Red Sox fans with the arrival of Red Sox vs. Yankees Chess. Packaged in a keepsake collector's tin, Red Sox vs. Yankees Chess takes the classic strategy game and transforms it into the historic Red Sox Yankees rivalry. Baseball players represent the familiar playing pieces, which are dressed in authentic MLB(tm) uniforms and poised for action. Officially licensed by Major League Baseball Properties, it's Chess with an historic MLB(tm) rivalry twist. Available at local specialty stores such as Barnes & Noble, Olympia Sports, as well as online at MLB.com and BoardGames.com. Makes a great gift for young Red Sox fans ages 7+.

It's interesting that they are not targeting "young Yankees fans ages 7+." The young New Yorkers, after thoroughly dominating the first half of the game, would probably throw away their advantage by hanging their queen.

Semper Fi

For this Marine, military training supports tournament success:

“At our level of chess, it’s not so much preparing for tournaments, it’s being able to recognize what must be done in key positions in order to overrun your opponent’s position,” said Farrell. “Your opponent’s formation is consistently changing. You must be able to adapt to their changes, identify and take advantage of their weaknesses, while covering your own, just like fire and maneuver in the Marine Corps.”

Read "Quantico chess player places in recent tournament on base" from Marine Corps News.

The game of life

Sobriety Girl is stuck in a chess game:

Today, life is like a chess game. Black and white squares make up the patterns of emotion. At times, I feel like the King (or Queen to be correct). Invincible. Strong. The last one standing. Other times, I feel like I am the pawn waiting to be overtaken. Jumping through hoops. Waiting for my fate. In one moment, I am reality checked.

Read more...

Does the Vatican have a chess club?

Now that the Cardinals have elected a new Pope it seems relatively safe to dive back into topics of Church and Chess. No, this is not another one of those "The Pope is a chess player" posts. Instead, I'm venturing into yet another incendiary religious debate which I'm wholly unqualified to participate in.

Rebecca Hartong argues that an all-male Catholic priesthood is no big deal:

If you want a religion that's pretty much like Catholicism but with women as priests become a Lutheran or an Episcopalian. Insisting that the Roman Catholic church ordain women is like...like joining the chess club and then insisting that everyone should play parcheesi.

For your reading pleasure

New Victorian offers his "best of the best" of chess literature.