A porcelain Henry VIII set – which of you pawns wants to be the next Queen?

Nigel Short and Anatoly Karpov have been trying to play a London v Moscow match using giant pieces made of ice, reports the BBC.

But its very warm in both capitals, and the pieces are melting! The games were being attempted in London’s Trafalgar Square and in Moscow's Pushkinskaya Square.

"Europe's unseasonably warm winter has almost put paid to a chess match between London and Moscow, using huge pieces carved from ice” reports BBC, and although Karpov and Short were the stars the news organisation reported that "It seemed to be the eight-year-old chess prodigies making the decisions."

But the pieces started to melt and were almost indistinguishable from each other at the end, London’s ‘Big Ben’ piece was the last standing, therefore the games ended in Check Melt!

Photographic Credits: Associated Press and the BBC.

Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804) first chess champion of Nevis

I tried to access the interview in 64-review which asks Moro why he is not at Linares? But the online magazine was off-line, and I became increasingly lost goofing around on the web, until… I found an interesting site with ray-traced chess pictures, including this one: Which is a position from the chess novel "The Flanders Panel" where the intrigue turns on a retrograde analysis which reveals who killed the knight.

Question: a USCF board member once told me that the retrograde analysis has a flaw… Does anyone know more?

See http://www.chessgraphics.net/ for other cool chess pictures, including some unusual ones from around the world, which as well as cool modern stuff also has one of the best collections of historical images I have found on the web.
 

Here is an illustration of the range of images from this site, including the famous Bauhaus set, 1924 (above, left); a beautiful Polish set from the C19th (above, right); and ‘a ladies chess club in Sweden at the turn of the century’ – that will be the turn of the previous century.   ;)

To honor the new Ruy Lopez tournament in Spain here is a page from his own 1561 work. Readers may note recent examinations here in the Parrot of the seemingly inehaustable variations that bear his name – which is still going strong 450 years later; and we looked at the Marshall variation, and Quigley’s Idea, and assorted contributions by Milner-Barry, CHO’D Alexander, and Boris Spassky.

It is highly unlikely you will see this for sale on e-Bay!  If so, buyer-beware!  To honor the player, here is a brief essay in his own language:

Ruy López de Segura, natural de Zafra, nació en 1540, y desde muy joven su Fe le llevó a ejercer el espiritual del sacerdocio.  Con motivo de una peregrinación, en Italia, en la ciudad de Roma, ganó a los mejores ajedrecistas italianos; sólo tenía 20 años.  Esto le impulsó a escribir una obra en prosa didáctica en el año 1561: Libro de la invención liberal y el arte del juego del ajedrez.  Esta obra le dio la fama definitiva, en el ámbito europeo, y ya en el 1573, había derrotado a los mejores jugadores de la época, como Equivel, Cerón, Pedrosa y otros.

Read more at http://ruylopez.juntaextremadura.net/modules/news/.

How rare is this picture?

Captioned are Harriet Hunt playing Jon Levitt at the 4NCL.  Next to her Scottish star Jon Rowson plays Paul Littlewood while prodigy Luke McShane tackles Alex Baburin.  John Emms watches. Source: http://www.jlevitt.dircon.co.uk/revealed.htm

Once aspect of the forthcoming Scottish conference on chess and education is gender differentiation in the game.  Recently in chess newsgroups a side-issue emerged; can you tell male from female play?  In fact, can you tell anything about the player from a game-score – age, gender, culture?

If society says that aggressiveness and bold attacking qualities are ‘male’ attributes, what do we make of the games of J. Polgar compared with, for example, Smyslov or Karpov?

A more serious issue on gender the conference would like to address is why women are much less represented in chess than men, and what inhibiting factors there are?  It might also be asked if the drop-out rate for females in chess is the same as is typical as the math drop-out rate?

One set of statistics shows very different national gender participation in chess, with countries like the US with only 7%, to Eastern Europe in the lower 40th percentile range, and with China at the top with near male : female parity.  Obviously these factors may also reflect on other aspects of gender roles in the culture, and overall prospects for women.  Conference information

“Second to no man, living or dead” – Steinitz

De Vere, Cecil (1845?-75)

Is this character ‘the English Morphy?’
[Some say, Born Valentine’s Day, March 14^th 1845]

...and Cecil de Vere was the pseudonym of Valentine Brown, winner of the first official British championship tournament, organized by the British Chess Association in 1866.  He learned the game in London before 1858 and practiced with Boden and the Irish player Francsi Burden (1830-82).  In the first recorded mention of De Vere, The Era, 20 Dec. 1861, a report of a simultaneous display by Paulsen on December 16, Lowenthal was impressed by the precocious skill of the '13-year-old' De Vere, implying that he was born in 1848.

De Vere played with unusual ease and rapidity, never bothering to study the books.  His features were handsome (an Adonis says Macdonnell), his manner pleasant, his conduct polite.  He 'handled the pieces gracefully, never "hovered" over them, nor fiercely stamped them down upon the board...nor exulted when he gained a victory...in short, he was a highly chivalrous player.'  So wrote Steinitz, who conceded odds in a match against De Vere and was soundly beaten.  De Vere's charm brought him many friends.

At about the time that he won the national championship his mother died, a loss he felt deeply, 'the only person who ever cared for me'.  Receiving a small legacy he gave up the job at Lloyds the underwriters which Burden had obtained for him, and never took another.

He entered some strong tournaments but always trailed just behind the greatest half-dozen players of his time.  His exceptional talent was accompanied by idleness and lack of enthusiasm for a hard task.  On the occasion of the Dundee tournament of 1867 he took long walks in the Scottish countryside with G.A. MacDonnell, who writes that a 'black cloud' descended on De Vere.  It may have been the discovery that he had tuberculosis; more probably he revealed to the older man a deep-rooted despair, the cause perhaps of his later addiction to alcohol.

In 1872 Boden handed over the chess column of The Field to provide him with a small income; but in 1873 the column was given to Steinitz on account of De Vere's indolence and drunkenness.  At the end of November 1874 his illness took a turn for the worse, he could hardly walk and ate little.  His friends paid to send him to Torquay for the sea air, and there he died ten weeks later.  He had failed to nourish a natural genius, in respect of which, according to Steinitz, De Vere was 'second to no man, living or dead'."

I don’t really know why I chose a picture this week of Mikhail Tal [original Latvian name Mihais Tahls, born Riga, 1936] and perhaps it is something to do with contemplating on draws, and on players not at all content to do that?

Anyway, the spirit of the following piece, in Tal’s own words, is something of great note.

To appreciate the scale of the player, he was a strong challenger to Botvinnik – and, who knows, in a fair competition may have… ?  But that is a complex issue of Challenging the Champion not yet entirely unresolved or admitted on the Russian chess scene.

And to set that scene properly in terms of chess interactions with the West, in the 1959 tournament Tal scored 4-0 against the young, but brilliant future World Champion, Bobby Fischer.  Whitewashed Fischer?  That was Tal’s strength, and emblematic of the seemingly impossible task that Fischer himself would face during his chess career.

Tal suffered his whole life from chronic back pain, was a chain smoker and also a heavy vodka drinker [to offset his pains?]  What benefit or inhibition these actions had on his chess play are debatable, but not his effect on the attacking game nor on his opponents.  In a real sense he seems to have been the artistic model for Fischer himself.

But how does such a player operate in his own terms?  There is nothing better than to quote his own words about his attitude:

Yes.  For example, I will never forget my game with GM Vasiukov on a USSR Championship.  We reached a very complicated position where I was intending to sacrifice a knight.  The sacrifice was not obvious; there was a large number of possible variations; but when I began to study hard and work through them, I found to my horror that nothing would come of it.  Ideas piled up one after another.  I would transport a subtle reply by my opponent, which worked in one case, to another situation where it would naturally prove to be quite useless.  As a result my head became filled with a completely chaotic pile of all sorts of moves, and the infamous "tree of variations", from which the chess trainers recommend that you cut off the small branches, in this case spread with unbelievable rapidity.  And then suddenly, for some reason, I remembered the classic couplet by Korney Ivanovic Chukovsky:

Tal won in 58 moves by calculating the result of his ‘audacious’ sacrifice.  I don’t know what anyone who ever encountered Tal would say about him, but here again are his own words:

"Later, ... I began to succeed in decisive games.  Perhaps because I realized a very simple truth: not only was I worried, but also my opponent."

And now for something completely different.

Caissa, how old are you,
where were you born?

A stimulating and indeed, intellectually provocative article on the origins of the game appears at Goddesschess being an exploration of the origins of chess, at least to the extent that it examines ‘how we know, what we know,’ and challenges the verity of received versions of chess origins by examining who tells the story.

Caption: “This is the Butrint piece discovered in 2002. Some experts say "it's not chess" - or, at least, not proven. H: approx. 1.5 inches.”

The goddesschess article cites The Times, and an article by Jeremy Page in Delhi, March 12, 2007, followed by a commentary in 3 parts which calls into question received knowledge, citing Murray’s famous study, by looking at the illustrated piece from the perspectives of  archaeology, anthropology, and also if the ‘piece’ is a actually a chess piece.

            ENTER THE DRAGON

Some years ago I had the privilege of introducing Dr. David Li to famous Russian historian Linder, and they exchanged books.  Li’s was a claim to Chinese origins, and in discussions with these gentlemen, the hoary old problem emerged as above, and as with some Egyptian artifacts.  Are these pieces, chess pieces?

This second caption raises the same issue, and asks; “Is this a chess piece?  From Dr. Louis Cazaux's website, identified as:  Elephant, around Kanauj. H: 4.6 cm 4th c. AD  4.6 cm is about 1.8 inches.”

The Goddesschess site article is titled “Chessquest” and is a good example of collaborative chess research and reporting, and of not being content with easy answers, and instead illustrates the worth of proposing a difficult question.  Worth a serious read.

Meanwhile, back in the past, David Li’s title on Wester chess origins is: The genealogy of chess (Paperback - 1998).  The author has written 3 titles on the Chinese version, Xiangqi.

One editorial review says, “The author's brief is to put China fair and square as the birthplace of chess.  To this end he has gone through, almost without exception, all authorities that have ever published material about the origin of chess.  He is scathing in his criticism of those who have advocated India as origin, exposing the seemingly threadbare and misleading evidence on which this view has been based (Murray in particular is much criticised).”

As a source text for modern oriental discussion David Li’s book draws lots of flak [!] especially since he removes Chess origins from India, and sets them 600 years earlier in China.

While ‘the jury must still be out’ on the question, I did engage David Li on yet another possibility, which would even pre-date Chinese origins: that is the high culture of North Vietnam, from which much ‘Chinese’ material emerged.

We parted company peaceably, both agreeing that a multi-disciplinary approach would work best to establish determinations of Chinese, and all other claims to Chess origins.

Shall we make this one a Quiz?

• the players,

• the painter,

• the country,

• the date

??

Nurse and her patient playing chess.

Artist monogram B. W. World War I