Tag: chess and games

[chess and games] August 14, 2008 at 10:53:00 PM CEST

Morosewitsch hat es nicht gesehen, ich nach längerem Nachdenken auch nicht. Wie hätte er hier mit Weiß Aronjan matt setzen können? Eine schwer zu findende, wunderschöne Opferkombination. In diesem Mattangriff sind Figuren an vorderster Front, die eigentlich gar keine - jedenfalls im engeren Sinne - sind und die man dort auch nicht unbedingt - insbesondere die eine - erwarten würde. Die andere führt dann den finalen Schritt aus.

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[chess and games] October 23, 2007 at 9:09:00 PM CEST

Highlight des Tages war dieser Test, Zahlen sollte man nie trauen.

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[chess and games] October 19, 2007 at 10:30:00 PM CEST

Gute kurzfristige Investition

Läufer und Dame für Bauer und mehr.

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[chess and games] August 23, 2007 at 8:48:00 PM CEST

Don't fool with me

In short, How to Fool Fritz seems a better exercise in how to fool buyers of chess books than any real attempt at contributing a useful addition to the existing corpus of computer chess literature.

(Steve Lopez in ChessCafe.com on a book by Albert H. Alberts)

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[chess and games] May 6, 2007 at 6:16:00 PM CEST

The Orb at Top of the Pops

When we did The Blue Room [1992], they played the video in the background while we played chess. At first the producers asked if we could play with a keyboard next to the chess set, but we decided it was getting silly. We were trying to play properly, but Kris [Weston] started cheating and taking pieces off. My enduring memory of the day is that, while being intoxicated, we asked Take That if they wanted to play football in the corridors - they declined. ...

Alex Paterson

(from here)

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[chess and games] March 17, 2007 at 8:39:00 PM CET

gestern mal wieder etwas schach gespielt. fritz gegen fritz. hatte ihn auf freizeitspieler-niveau eingestellt. und nachdem ich ein oder zwei partien gewonnen hatte, fragte er mich doch glatt, ob ich anand oder kasparov wäre. war nett. ich glaube, ich spiele jetzt öfter mit ihm.

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[chess and games] February 17, 2007 at 6:07:00 PM CET

Power to the women ... but only on the chessboard

There's an interesting book by Marilyn Yalom, Birth of the Chess Queen, that is about the pre-modern history of chess. When chess came to Europe, via Byzantium, there was no queen. There was a vizier piece. But the European change was to make the vizier a queen. Still, the Queen, like the king, was not an aggressive piece: it could only move a space at a time. During this period, chess was a popular court game for both men and women. The change in the game came with giving the queen the power the piece has today. This made the game faster, and it also led to exhibits of chess mastery in which, gradually, women chess players were weeded out. Women turned to card games - except in Russia, which was the last nation to accept the new, powerful queen. Russia turned to European chess under Catherine the great.

From the comments to the seduction of chess, a post on chess and modernism

P.S. Another interesting bit further down in the comments:

... in the best chess country in the world and in history (Russia) the Queen is actually still called a ферзь (ferz). That means something like minister, counsellor, advisor - but anyway is, most definitely, male.

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[chess and games] November 12, 2006 at 8:59:00 PM CET

[Len] Chandler told me once, "You gotta learn how to bluff. You'll never make it in this game if you don't. Sometimes you even have to get caught bluffing. It helps later if you got a winning hand and want some other players to think you might be bluffing."

Bob Dylan - Chronicles Volume One, page 47

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[chess and games] October 20, 2006 at 12:30:00 AM CEST

Muss mal wieder Schach spielen. Kennt jemand eine Schachkneipe in Frankfurt? Kein Klub, Vereine sind nicht mein Ding. Ich bin völlig ohne Praxis, ganz schlecht aber auch nicht. Tim Upton wird sich kaum daran erinnern, aber ich werd es nie vergessen, wie ich ihn einmal ohne Uhr mit dem Wolga-Benkö Gambit geschlagen habe. Um 1996. Einen Winter lang habe ich keine Blitzpartie gegen ihn gewonnen. Habe allerdings mit Weiß auch immer Königsgambit gespielt. Er saß bei den Schacholympiaden oft an Brett 4 für Schottland. Mein ursprünglicher längerer Post über Schach in Luxemburg in den Neunzigern ist verlorengegangen, what a load of crap.

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[chess and games] April 26, 2006 at 9:05:00 PM CEST

Wie der vor ein paar Tagen verstorbene ewige Schachamateur Wolfgang Unzicker mal Bobby Fischer im Sizilianer sehr schön aufs Kreuz gelegt hat. Der Bauer war wohl vergiftet! Mit 17 ist man manchmal zu gierig. Von The Chess Mind gefunden.

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