Great chess quotes

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Great chess quotes

Great Chess Quotes

December 30, 2015

Three chess quiz questions

These questions appeared as a bonus on the University Challenge Christmas Show on the BBC.

The show in its entirety can be seen at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLLXkFPinjY

and these questions start at about 14:00

The questions on checkmates in chess:

1. Scholar’s Mate is a checkmate that may often catch out a beginner, and always results in a win after how many moves?

2. Also known as Philidor’s Legacy, what term describes a checkmate by knight against a king that has all of its escape squares blocked by its own pieces? The term suggests being surrounded and unable to breathe.

3. And finally, Anastasia’s mate and Arabian mate most commonly involve which two pieces working in tandem to checkmate the opposing king?


Answers

1. Four. It’s also known as the four-move checkmate. Involving a queen with a bishop, checkmating the opposing king

2. A smothered mate

3. A knight and a rook

The four-man team from the London School of Economics got them all wrong

[Frank Dixon]

Re: Great chess quotes

"Petrosian likes to play cat-and-mouse, hoping his opponents will go wrong in the absence of a direct threat. The amazing thing is, they usually do!" :)

[GM Bobby Fischer, World Champion to be 1972-1975, commenting on the playing style of GM Tigran Petrosian, World Champion-to-be 1963-1969, in his notes to the game Petrosian vs. Fischer, Portoroz Interzonal 1958, from his great book "My 60 Memorable Games", Simon and Schuster 1969.]

[Frank Dixon]

Re: Great chess quotes

"Fischer's both strong and weak point is that he remains true to himself, and plays the same way regardless of his partners or any external factor." :)
[World champion GM Mikhail Botvinnik, commenting on the 16-year-old Bobby Fischer, immediately following the 1959 Candidates tournament in Yugoslavia.]

[Frank Dixon]

Re: Great chess quotes

"Fischer's both strong and weak point is that he remains true to himself, and plays the same way regardless of his partners or any external factor." :)
[World champion GM Mikhail Botvinnik, commenting on the 16-year-old Bobby Fischer, immediately following the 1959 Candidates tournament in Yugoslavia.]

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Great chess quotes

Great Chess Quotes

December 20, 2015

The Times of London has an obituary for Tim Jones.

Tim Jones, Times journalist, was born on October 14, 1943. He died of a heart attack on December 4, 2015, aged 72

As a newsman on The Times for 42 years, he covered the start of the Troubles in Northern Ireland; reported events in his native Wales; and, as a skilful chess player himself, he chronicled one of the greatest contests in the history of the game.

In 1972, after lobbying the news desk, Jones was given his dream assignment: to accompany the chess correspondent covering the world championship battle between the Russian Boris Spassky and the American Bobby Fischer in Reykjavik. Jones was among the first journalists to realise the news potential of the story, which took off when the unpredictable Fischer delayed his arrival. “The stage is set but the demon king is missing,” began Jones’s front-page report. When Fischer did arrive, Jones attempted to interview him only to be told, “Shove off, jerk”. Nonetheless, he eventually managed to get a signed programme from the American; he treasured it for the rest of his life.

Back in London, he took on the renowned Times columnist Bernard Levin in a chess game at Levin’s home as part of an annual inhouse competition. During the game — which Jones won — he broke the leg of a Chippendale chair, then a wine glass and finally one of the antique carved pieces. Afterwards, a furious Levin told him that perhaps he should bring an axe next time they played.

Despite ailing health, he continued playing chess with the Bourne End club in Berkshire. Always good company, he was the chief promoter of a regular gathering of Times staff past and present. The day before he died, he was in attendance at one such gathering, with his customary glass of red wine in hand, roaring with laughter as he regaled friends with an amusing story he had spotted in The Times diary that morning.

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Great chess quotes

Great Chess Quotes

December 15, 2015

From Daniel Naroditsky at:

http://schaken.chess.com/article/vie...-a-grandmaster

The Shkolya Method

When I was around seven years old, my first coach imbued me with an appreciation for the psychological side of chess. "Chess is played on and off the board," he would sagely proclaim, words that made little sense to me then, but that ring true many years later. To support his point, he told me the story of a Ukrainian master named Shkolya. Mr. Shkolya was a skilled player, but he supplemented his strength through a little psychological trick that was singlehandedly responsible for many of his victories.

The trick went like this. Whenever Shkolya set a trap or threatened his opponent's piece, he would intently focus his eyes on a square on the opposite flank. His surprised opponent would inevitably follow suit, and spend a long time trying to figure out what Shkolya was so concerned about. Having found nothing, he will forget all about checking for traps or threats, and will nonchalantly make the most natural move. Flushed with the success of his ploy, Shkolya would exploit his opponent's negligence and win the game.

See the article linked above for Naroditsky’s first test of the Shkolya Method.

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Great chess quotes

Great Chess Quotes

December 13, 2015

I have a fondness for Edgar Rice Burroughs’ science fiction. It is pure escapism.

From The Chessmen of Mars (1922):

Shea had just beaten me at chess as usual, and, also as usual, I had gleaned what questionable satisfaction I might by twitting him with this indication of failing mentality by calling his attention for the nth time to that theory propounded by certain scientists, which is based upon the assertion that phenomenal chess players are always found to be from the ranks of children under twelve, adults over seventy-two or the mentally defective – a theory that is lightly ignored upon those rare occasions that I win.

[Frank Dixon]

Re: Great chess quotes

"Mistrust is the most necessary characteristic for the chess player." :) [Dr. Siegbert Tarrasch, 1862-1934, one of the world's top players from the late 1890s into the 1920s.]

[Frank Dixon]

Re: Great chess quotes

"The art of a chess player consists in his ability to ignite a magical fire from the dull and senseless initial position." :)
[GM David Bronstein, 1924-2006. He was twice Soviet champion (1948, 1949), victor in two Interzonals (1948, 1955), drew the 1951 World Championship match with holder GM Mikhail Botvinnik, was four times a member of gold-medal winning Soviet Olympiad teams (1952, 1954, 1956, 1958), several times champion of Moscow, winner of the 1995 Hastings Challengers at age 70, and one of the greatest chess writers in history. The quote is from his final book "Secret Notes", with co-author Sergei Voronkov, which was published in 2007, just after Bronstein's death. In every facet of his chess, Bronstein lived up to the essence of this quote!]

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Great chess quotes

Great Chess Quotes

December 4, 2015

Anish Giri scored the only win in Round 1 of the London Chess Classic 2015, saying his unlikely victory over Veselin Topalov reminded him of when he was a kid, “surviving with cheap tricks and zero understanding”.

https://chess24.com/en/read/news/

[Frank Dixon]

Re: Great chess quotes

"I may yet be forced to admit that the Winawer is sound. But I doubt it! The defense is anti-positional and weakens the K-side." :)

(GM Robert J. Fischer, 1943-2008, World Champion 1972-75. The quote is from his book "My 60 Memorable Games", which ranks very highly among the greatest chess books of all time. Fischer struggled against the Winawer French (1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Bb4). He never played the Black side of it in a tournament game. A widely-published loss in the variation to the then obscure Yugoslav Master Vlado Kovacevic (who later became a GM) at Rovinj-Zagreb 1970 attracted worldwide attention. Fischer still won the tournament comfortably.

But his last serious published game against the line came in game 1 of his 1971 Candidates' semi-final match against GM Bent Larsen, in Denver. This was a spectacular, risky tactical game, won by Fischer, and that set the stage for a 6-0 sweep of Larsen!)

[Frank Dixon]

Re: Great chess quotes

"Just for you, Bryon, I'll offer a nickel off!" :) Organizer / Deputy Arbiter Frank Dixon, speaking to competitor IM Bryon Nickoloff, in advance of the 1992 Canadian Zonal Championship in Kingston. The entry fee for the event was $100 (fully refundable at the finish, for each competitor who completed the event), and I was offering Nick a bargain price of $99.95, or a 'Nickel Off' the regular rate! He didn't think my joke was that funny, having probably heard it before a few times!

[Frank Dixon]

Re: Great Chess Quotes

"Half the variations calculated in a tournament game turn out to be completely superfluous. Unfortunately, nobody knows in advance which half." :) [GM Jan Timman, 1951--. Timman is the strongest Dutch player since GM Max Euwe, who became World Champion 1935-37.]

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Great Chess Quotes

Great Chess Quotes

November 27, 2015

It is for real. See:

http://www.chessdom.com/fide-world-o...ionship-final/

To be fair, my impression is that they played online up to this point and now all the ladies are brought together to play on computers in the same room so the organizers can see there is no cheating.

If anyone has more information on this – let her step forward.

[Mathieu Cloutier]

Re: Great Chess Quotes

Great Chess Quotes

November 27, 2015

Curiouser and Curiouser

The final of the 1st FIDE World Online Women Blitz Championship is scheduled to take place on November 26th, in the club “Circolo Canottieri Aniene” in Rome, Italy. The players will be seated on a round table, with computer screens in front of them. No real chessboards will be used. The tournament is an 18 round, double round robin, with 3m+2s time control and starts at 16:00 CET.

Olimpiu Urcan comments on this:

If all the players have to fly to Rome, you can't call it an "online" event. It's like driving all the way to Macy's just to do e-shopping.

Is that for real? I have to think pretty hard in order to remember about a dumber plan for a chess event.