Chess can be described as the movement of pieces eating one another
Marcel Duchamp
Archive for the ‘Life beyond the chess board’ Category
I wonder what Duchamp would have made of this?
Posted in Life beyond the chess board, tagged Duchamp chess on June 6, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Something for the little ones
Posted in Life beyond the chess board on May 29, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Parents who click on the following link may be able to steal a few minutes here and there whilst their children enjoy the printable, on-line chess colouring page. Without sounding too old-fashioned or a big kid, colouring on-line isn’t half as much fun as the real thing.
http://www.oncoloring.com/chess-coloring-pages.html
Hungry for some chess?
Posted in Life beyond the chess board on May 14, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Across the Board Season 3
Posted in Life beyond the chess board on May 6, 2015| 3 Comments »
The BBC Radio 4 production Across the Board, which is arguably the most thoughtful and interesting example of journalism to grace our beautiful game recently returned with a third season. Dominic Lawson, current head of the ECF brings us six more games with yet another interesting mix of opponents and questions for them. If you have time to play through the games on line, I suggest you do so whilst listening to the show. By doing that you might notice that Dominic’s questions are as strategic as his play and perform their role in helping him across the board adequately. I have linked Series 3 below. If I may say so, the radio is far more suitable as a medium to study chess than TV/YouTube, as it demands that you must set up a board and physically play through the game yourself. This will enhance the experience of the game you are playing through considerably. Note, however, for this particular program the games must be viewed on line as only a selection of moves are offered during conversation. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04njsks/episodes/guide
What to watch?
Posted in Life beyond the chess board, tagged Kingcrusher on April 25, 2015| Leave a Comment »
“Care and quality are internal and external aspects of the same thing. A person who sees quality and feels it as he works is a person who cares. A person who cares about what he sees and does is a person who’s bound to have some characteristic of quality.”
Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
In this day and age we are spoilt for choice on what to watch. With so much content on-line and so many products to buy you could happily let the world pass you by if you wanted to.
Having just spent over twenty Euros on yet another glib Chessbase DVD, the best advice I can give is to watch someone who is passionate about presenting chess. With this in mind I recommend the youtube channel Kingcrusher. There are hundreds of games to watch both current and classic. The author is a strong player too and is, in my opinion, a considerably more talented presenter than the next depressed looking Chessbase presenter who’s only doing it to supplement his income, whoever that may be.
A forcing line
Posted in Life beyond the chess board on March 7, 2015| Leave a Comment »
I found the position below on a recent Chessbase post. It is from GM Khismatullin v GM Eljanov from round ten of the European Championship.
White plays 44 Kg1!! To which black plays 44…Qxd1+. What an amazing move Kg1 is. The purpose, of course, is to put the queen onto the worst square on the board, leaving black completely helpless to the numerous threats of mate that will come. Being a rook up, it is unsurprising that black thought he has at best a draw, which is not the case.
White has a 13 move forced win. It’s actually not as difficult to find as you might think owing to the poor position of the black king. It’s a pleasant way to spent 20 minutes by tuning up your skills of analysis. Can you find the winning line?
You can play through the whole game here if you cannot.
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1786318
Fritz & Chesster
Posted in Life beyond the chess board, tagged Fritz&chesster on February 10, 2015| 1 Comment »
The Chessbase package ‘Fritz & Chesster’ is now free for all http://fritzandchesster.chessbase.com/. Those who have used it can tell you how effective it is. An absolute must for any teacher or parent who wants to teach their pupil/child chess, I haven’t found anything that can come close to it. Just bear in mind that you will still need a board to put the content into practice. As great as the program is, it can’t do all the work for you I’m afraid. If you like the software and plan to use it extensively, it might be better to purchase it anyway to avoid dependency on secure internet connections.
Chess News 6: Unpaid chess loan lands player in court.
Posted in Life beyond the chess board on January 24, 2015| Leave a Comment »
After failing to return the grand total of 160 pounds, which is a lifetime of chess earnings for the average amateur player, an English chess player has found himself in court.
New Spassky Interview
Posted in Life beyond the chess board on January 8, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Courtesy of Colin McGourty, a great interview with Spassky can be found on chess24 here: https://chess24.com/en/read/news/spassky-i-still-look-at-chess-with-the-eyes-of-a-child.
As you may know, Spassky is one of the game’s great raconteurs and is always worth listening to. A well handled interview with much food for thought.
Surviving Living Chess (and the cold)!
Posted in Life beyond the chess board on January 7, 2015| Leave a Comment »
As I write from behind the former iron curtain it is past midnight. The streets below my window are bitterly cold and quiet now. The 50 kmh winds blowing across Baku bring the temperature down to below -20. Work has been closed. Twelve hours of snow are forecast, it will feel like -30 tomorrow they said on the radio. I do not have to wake up early the next day. My wife and daughter are fast asleep. There is time to write. Many candles are lit. Let us begin.
In my distant homelands there is momentum to bring chess into schools in the hope that, one day, every child in England will play chess at school. Should that ever become a reality, then its popularity might give rise to the many forms of our beautiful game now rapidly becoming obsolete. Living chess, where actual people participate as pieces/pawns could capture the imagination of the nation, and like in the army, a form of national conscription may one day exist, where all members of the public are commandeered, just like in the tv show linked below. Should you ever find yourself in such an unlikely situation, you might want to know which piece/pawn has the highest survival rate on the board. By that I mean which piece/pawn is least likely to be captured (Kings excluded of course). Even if you’re not a life-long day-dreamer like myself, you can rate your chances of survival more effectively by clicking on the following link: http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-chances-of-survival-of-individual-chess-pieces-in-average-games.
Do you know who the actor is in the centre of the shot?
If you’ve ever been lucky enough to watch a game of living chess ‘live’ as it were, then you’ll know how great it can be. If you haven’t, then you could click on the link below to see a dramatized version of it. However, young readers should note that the show might be too retro for them, and lovers of mainstream media should note that the show is a cult classic. It is Patrick McGoohan’s ‘The Prisoner’ from the 60’s, episode 8 entitled ‘Checkmate’. It’s one that he wrote himself as he too was a chess lover. It’s very heavy on metaphor and a little difficult to follow if you aren’t familiar with the concept of the show, so my advice is look into it first if you haven’t watched it before. I did a photo shoot there once, the village is as beautiful now as it was then I can confirm. The iconography in the show is fascinating and the production crew were highly accomplished but its certainly not for everyone.
Anyway, its been a long day and its nearly one am now, I’d best get to bed and hope the heating doesn’t fail…enjoy.
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A side note on how to read old Tom Sweby's columns
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Not perhaps, but quintessentially, Old Tom Sweby is best thought of as a passionate devotee to the newspapers he wrote for. He was well read and knowledgeable of the Bedfordshire chess scene and well beyond, given that he was the president of the S.C.C.U. once upon a time. He was generally well-respected and rubbed shoulders with many, if not all, of those eminent within British chess circles. It would, however, be a critical mistake to see his column is primary source material entirely. That it is not. You will also find secondary source material quoted too, and the reliability of that is not quite as Tom hoped. Given that he wrote for decades, this is to some degree inevitable, and after all we are all prone to error whether we realize it or not. Thankfully, with regards to old Tom Sweby, they are infrequent and for the most part old Tom continued to document events and developments in the Bedfordshire league from the get go as best he could but, of course, everything lies open to interpretation. Despite this, and generally speaking. this does indeed make him informative and thus worth reading. Dare I say his columns constitute a narrative describing the latest developments, match reports and changing nature of the Beds league...he knew his audience and wrote according. This manifested itself over decades but brevity was always in play courtesy of the restictions imposed by writing a column. Should you wish to read a in instrumental figure of the Beds' league post WW2, you are quite welcome to peruse what has been posted here... . :-) I should, however, point out that as the decades wore on he gradually moved on away from narratives concerning the Bedfordshire league towards affairs both historical and international. The reasons for this are multifarous, old age was a predominante factor presumably, however, the bottom line is with regards to how the Bedfordshire chess scene developed post WW2: old Tom Sweby is your go to guy. He wrote more about chess in Bedforshire than anyone else did but given he was a Lutonian and writing for a Luton newspaper there is both bias and greater coverage of his hometown than the rest of the county.
Gallery
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- I’m either 10 or 11 here
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- 1982, myself versus Brian from Sunderland.
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- At the Thai Junior chess championships. My daughter of course.
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- Pattaya 2011
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- 2011
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- Thai Junior Championships
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- 2008
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- 2011
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- Around 2011
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- 2011
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- Pattaya 2009
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- 2011
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- Kuwait 2008
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- 2012
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- 2012
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- 2011 BKK Chess club
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- 2011
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- 2011 Thai Open
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- 2011 Thai Open
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- 2013 approx
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- Around 2014
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- 2010
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- 2012
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- Around 2011
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- 2011
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- 2011
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- 2013
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- Around 2011
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- Around 2011
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- 2020
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- 2011
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- 2008
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- 2011
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- 2013 or thereabouts
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- 2010
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- 2017
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- 2014?
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- 2010
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