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  • Great Chess Quotes

    June 26, 2020

    Oh, to be able to read Dutch!

    On the New in Chess website, there is a book on chess anecdotes advertised. In English the title is ‘Anecdote Guide for Chess Enthusiasts’:


    Anekdotengids voor Schaakliefhebbers
    By Rob Spaans

    An illustration of the cover shows identically dressed twin ladies in sunglasses watching Browne play Andersson.

    From the introduction:

    Greetings chess lover,

    The two ladies in the audience in this fascinating photo are a striking appearance. You see, the twins, because they have the same haircut, the same glasses and the same clothes. They have installed themselves to be able to follow the games of the chess tournament for a long time. The puzzle books are ready for when the chess players are busy for a long time hatching a move.

    Unfortunately, your guide was unable to find the answer to the obvious question of who the twin ladies are and where their interest in chess comes from, and you cannot read that in this book. What you can read in it are anecdotes about the chess players in the foreground who are engaged in a fierce battle on the 64 fields. You may have recognized them. It is the American Walter Browne with the white pieces and the Swede Ulf Andersson with the black pieces. It looks like they are not distracted by the remarkable duo in the audience and are completely absorbed in their duel.

    In addition to anecdotes about Browne and Andersson, you can also read a lot of other anecdotes in this Anecdotes guide for chess enthusiasts, such as about the mistress of Capablanca, about the cats of Aljechin, about the gun of Euwe, about Fischer who should not have been called Fischer, about the yogurt from Karpov, about a chessboard killer and about a chess piece that was traded for almost a million euros.

    https://www.newinchess.com/anekdoten...aakliefhebbers
    ____________-

    Browne and Andersson played twenty games against each other. The only two in the Netherlands where Browne had the white pieces were:

    Browne – Andersson, Hoogovens 1976 0.5-0.5
    Browne – Andersson, Amsterdam IBM 1978 0-1

    Comment


    • Great Chess Quotes

      June 29, 2020

      Oh, to be able to read Dutch! (continued)

      Anekdotengids voor Schaakliefhebbers


      By Rob Spaans

      The third paragraph of the introduction in Dutch reads:

      Behalve anekdotes over Browne en Andersson kunt u ook heel veel andere anekdotes lezen in deze Anekdotengids voor Schaakliefhebbers, zoals over de minnares van Capablanca, over de katers van Aljechin, over het pistool van Euwe, over Fischer die geen Fischer had moeten heten, over de yoghurt van Karpov, over een schaakbordmoordenaar en over een schaakstuk dat voor bijna een miljoen euro werd verhandeld.

      I translated “over de katers van Aljechin” as “about the cats of Alekhine” but had an inkling of the double meaning of “katers”. I wrote to Rob Spaans mentioning this and his reply:

      Concerning "the katers van Aljechin": this is a rather playful description because in Dutch 'katers' can mean male cats but also hangovers. Both were connected with Alekhine of course.
      ___________

      Rob has books, in Dutch, of chess anecdotes and of chess geography. I intend to add both to my collection.

      Anekdotengids voor Schaakhefhebbers (2020)

      and

      Reisgids voor Schaakliefhebbers (2018)

      A description of Reisgids

      Travel guide for chess lovers

      Rob Spaans has put together a Travel Guide for Chess Enthusiasts and invites you to take a journey through our chess cultural heritage.

      In his guide he has described more than a hundred places with many photos where chess and cultural history come together and where possible with a background story. It was a project of many years where many assisted him with advice and action. His book has more than 300 pages.

      One wants to make a distant European trip and the other a short trip in his own country. The guide provides both and takes you through chess villages, churches, museums, cemeteries, castles, restaurants, open-air places and much more.

      Comment


      • Great Chess Quotes

        July 3, 2020

        Cheating Online

        I am against profanity used online, so, this censored quote from Andrey Deviatkin:

        If you use this S*** - https://chess-bot.com/ - during your chess games, you should avoid any interactions with me. Just p*** off.

        https://twitter.com/AndreyDeviatkin?...ess-news.ru%2F

        and what does chess-bot offer?

        ChessBotX: Real-time next chess move calculator

        Chess bot is the program for chess, which helps you to play on websites like chess.com, lichess.org, flyordie.com and many others. ChessBotX can play in automatic mode by itself or just show you best moves on the chessboard directly in your game.

        You can use chess bot for game analysis, chess learning or just for fun!

        Chess calculator requires a chess engine to run. There are a lot of different engines such as Stockfish, Houdini, Rybka, Komodo and others. By default chess bot is provided with Stockfish – a strong open source chess engine.

        Q: Can I get banned for using this software?

        A: Yes, if you're using it for cheating, you will be banned sooner or later. You're using it at your own risk.

        Comment


        • Great Chess Quotes

          July 19, 2020


          First Chess Books

          Do you remember the first few chess books you read?

          This from Jonathan Speelman (born 1956) and appearing in ChessBase:

          https://en.chessbase.com/post/speelman-agony-126

          When I was little, I had a row of chess books on a shelf above my bed. Of course I can’t remember all of them, but several are very clear.

          After learning the moves of chess from my cousin on Boxing Day (December 26th) 1962, my first chess book was Chess for Children by Bott and Morrison, which gave me the basics.

          My first-ever serious chess book though was Bob Wade’s account of the 1963 World Championship match between Mikhail Botvinnik and Tigran Petrosian. My mum bought it for me in Edgware Road presumably — the match ran from March to May — in the summer of 1963. With a distinctive dark red cover once it lost its jacket (I can see it on a shelf now) I’ve enjoyed re-reading and dipping into it ever since. Some of the games — especially Petrosian's epic king march in game 5 — are truly memorable.

          Later, I got Euwe and Kramer’s two-volume work on the middlegame, Bent Larsen’s Selected Games 1948-69 and Peter Clarke’s book on Mikhail Tal (which annoyingly, although I can see at least five other books on Tal, I can’t at the moment bring to hand).

          And a couple of years later, I beat some 200ish ECF (2200ish) player in a simultaneous display at Foyles (the famous book shop on Tottenham Court Road) and won a whole selection of books from Pergamon Press, including Vladimir Vukovic’s wonderful The Art of Attack in Chess and a book on Petrosian by Alberic O’Kelly de Galway — the Belgian count who as an arbiter at some team competition in the 1970s once attempted to get the England team captain David Anderton to “order” myself and Jonathan Mestel to get our hair cut!

          The Pergamon Tranche also included A Complete Defence to 1.P-K4, a study of the then backwater, the Petroff, by Bernard Caffery and David Hooper. Though our main opening bible in the English speaking world at that time was Modern Chess Openings.

          I had the tenth edition (1965, completely revised by Larry Evans under the editorship of Walter Korn). Chess theory was then still very rudimentary compared to today, and there was a wonderfully whooly quote about the Yugoslav Attack against the Dragon which went, “Black must react promptly and vigorously — just how is not quite clear”. I also found the 8th, 11th and 13th editions on my shelves. By the 11th (Walter Korn, 1972), defences had been found against the Yugoslav.

          Comment


          • Great Chess Quotes

            July 24, 2020

            Memorizing Word Lists

            Being able to memorize a list of words and then repeat them back in the right order and after a period of time is much in the news lately. Donald Trump in an interview said that he was able to do that difficult task quite easily on a cognitive assessment test recently.

            Edward Winter has an article on the Memory Feats of Chess Masters

            https://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/memory.html

            This about Harry Nelson Pillsbury in 1896:

            (After a simultaneous exhibition at the Northampton Club in Pennsylvania) he offered to memorize thirty words, no matter how hard they might be, the selections to be read to him only once. Professor Merriman of Lehigh University and Dr. Trelkeld-Edwards of Bethlehem picked out most of the following words: Antiphlogistian, pereosteum, takadiastase, plasmin, ambrosia, Threikeld, streptococcus, staphylococcus, micrococcus, plasmodium, Mississippi, Freiheit, Philadelphia, Cincinnati athletics, no war, Eichenberg, American, Russia, philosophy, Piet-Potgleter’s-Rost, Salamagundi, Oomisillecootsi, Bangmamvato, Schlechter’s Nek, Manziuyama, theosophy, catechism and Madjesoomalopa.

            Pillsbury memorized these words and repeated them in the order given and in the reverse order, and he did not have any difficulty in repeating them the next day.

            (For the spelling of the words, their meaning and their number, please see):

            https://userpages.monmouth.com/~colo...pillsbury.html
            _________

            From the Fox News interview of July 19, 2020, President Donald Trump with Chris Wallace:

            “The first questions are very easy,” Trump told Fox News. “The last questions are much more difficult. Like a memory question. It’s, like, you’ll go: Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV. So they say, ‘Could you repeat that?’ So I said, ‘Yeah. It’s: Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.’”

            He then recalled that, at the end of the test, the doctor asked him to recite it again.

            “And you go: ‘Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.’ If you get it in order, you get extra points,” Trump said. “They said nobody gets it in order. It’s actually not that easy, but for me, it was easy.”

            Trump boasted that he dazzled the doctors because he has “a good memory, because I’m cognitively there”.

            Comment


            • Originally posted by Wayne Komer View Post
              Great Chess Quotes

              July 24, 2020

              Memorizing Word Lists

              Being able to memorize a list of words and then repeat them back in the right order and after a period of time is much in the news lately. Donald Trump in an interview said that he was able to do that difficult task quite easily on a cognitive assessment test recently.

              Edward Winter has an article on the Memory Feats of Chess Masters

              https://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/memory.html

              This about Harry Nelson Pillsbury in 1896:

              (After a simultaneous exhibition at the Northampton Club in Pennsylvania) he offered to memorize thirty words, no matter how hard they might be, the selections to be read to him only once. Professor Merriman of Lehigh University and Dr. Trelkeld-Edwards of Bethlehem picked out most of the following words: Antiphlogistian, pereosteum, takadiastase, plasmin, ambrosia, Threikeld, streptococcus, staphylococcus, micrococcus, plasmodium, Mississippi, Freiheit, Philadelphia, Cincinnati athletics, no war, Eichenberg, American, Russia, philosophy, Piet-Potgleter’s-Rost, Salamagundi, Oomisillecootsi, Bangmamvato, Schlechter’s Nek, Manziuyama, theosophy, catechism and Madjesoomalopa.

              Pillsbury memorized these words and repeated them in the order given and in the reverse order, and he did not have any difficulty in repeating them the next day.

              (For the spelling of the words, their meaning and their number, please see):

              https://userpages.monmouth.com/~colo...pillsbury.html
              _________

              From the Fox News interview of July 19, 2020, President Donald Trump with Chris Wallace:

              “The first questions are very easy,” Trump told Fox News. “The last questions are much more difficult. Like a memory question. It’s, like, you’ll go: Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV. So they say, ‘Could you repeat that?’ So I said, ‘Yeah. It’s: Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.’”

              He then recalled that, at the end of the test, the doctor asked him to recite it again.

              “And you go: ‘Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.’ If you get it in order, you get extra points,” Trump said. “They said nobody gets it in order. It’s actually not that easy, but for me, it was easy.”

              Trump boasted that he dazzled the doctors because he has “a good memory, because8217;Im cognitively there”.
              When later Trump was asked to repeat the first sentence of the last book he had read, he astounded the doctors with his genius by replying, "See Spot run".

              Comment


              • Great Chess Quotes

                August 17, 2020

                From 20 to 5

                When a lady marries and takes her husband’s family name, it is often quite a change.

                This:

                From FIDE Newsletter #012
                August 17, 2020


                The MOKATE 2020 Polish Women's Chess Championship was a 10-player round-robin taking place in Ostrów Wielkopolski, from 4-12 August. And like the Irish Championship, the event crowned someone who had never won the title before: the International Master Karina Cyfka, previously known as Karina Szczepkowska- Horowska.

                Comment


                • Great Chess Quotes

                  August 30, 2020

                  From the Online Olympiad

                  In the FIDE Online Olympiad 2020, in the first match Armenia-India, there was a disconnect and so Armenia lost the match. They appealed, lost the appeal and resigned the second match without playing.

                  The team captain Levon Aronian tweeted this:

                  In our match against India, Haik Martirosyan lost on time due to disconnection from http://chess.com We proved that our connection was stable and the access problem was with chess.com, not on our side. All we asked for was to continue that game from the same position and same time. Is that too much to ask?

                  Two days later, in the Final, India was playing Russia and there were two disconnects in the second match (for India).

                  The FIDE President decided that the two countries should share the Gold Medal.

                  Levon Aronian on this decision:

                  I guess like always, some are less disconnected than others.
                  ________

                  In the matches Russia-USA in the semi-finals, Sam Shankland had good positions but lost. These were critical mistakes and even his opponent, Ian Nepomniachtchi, had sympathy with him but Sam had none for himself:

                  (Tweet) - If you miss mate in 2 moves, blunder your passed pawn on the seventh rank, and lose control in a strategically dominant position, you don't deserve to win the tournament. Sorry to all US Chess fans, this one was on me. Best wishes to India and Russia for a great final tomorrow.

                  Comment


                  • When our junior hockey teams play in Russia, military jets swoop down over their hotel in the middle of the night causing our players to fail to get a proper night's sleep.

                    Comment


                    • Great Chess Quotes

                      August 31, 2020

                      The decision to declare India and Russia as joint winners of the gold medal after a connection issue in the FIDE Online Olympiad 2020 has met with some criticism. Three players tweeted their opinions: Ian Nepomniachtchi, Alexandra Kosteniuk and Levon Aronian.

                      There is also a general feeling that the rules were made up as the committee went along with their decision. This tweet from Peter Heine Nielsen:

                      A friend once spoke to Georgios Makropoulos who, with Sutovsky, were on the rules-commission for major FIDE events.

                      He asked Makro why are there not specified rules.

                      "There are," he replied.

                      Why are they not public?

                      "Because that is inconvenient when we want to do something else!"

                      Comment


                      • David Morgan: A chess optimist is someone who thinks he will never do anything as stupid again.

                        Comment


                        • Great Chess Quotes

                          September 9, 2020

                          From SpraggettonChess

                          http://www.spraggettonchess.com/round-and-round-we-go/

                          I was born in Montreal, Canada in 1954 and can’t remember exactly when I fell in love with the game. When I was 15 I played in my first nationally rated tournament…and I lost the very first game! My Irish genes made me a talented fighter by nature, so I quickly bounced back. At 17 I was a Master level player; at 18 I qualified for the National Team; at 20 I was an IM.

                          Then there was a long lull. In Montreal in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s there were no opportunities to get a GM-norm. (The world and the rules have changed since.) I feel that I was GM-strength at age 22, but had to wait until 30 to officially be awarded the GM title. In between, I won virtually every major North American Open tournament (except the US Open, where I only finished 2nd), and twice the CommonWealth Championship.

                          In the summer of 1985 I qualified for the Candidates Tournament , at the time only the 5th North American to do so, after Fischer, Reshevsky, Benko and Robert Byrne. (Yasser Seirawan qualified a week after at the Biel Interzonal –becoming number 6–and we both played in the Montpellier Candidates Tournament later that year.)

                          A few years later (1988) I was back in the Candidates Matches, defeating Andrei Sokolov but then losing to Artur Yussupov. Soon afterwards I moved to Portugal (married!) and have been resident there ever since.

                          I have won the Canadian Zonal as well as the Canadian Open on numerous occasions (too many to care to remember) and I have played on the Canadian National Team eight times. I continue to play with the Canadian flag even today.

                          I play a lot less now a days, but I am still a pretty strong practical player. I have also earned an excellent reputation as a world-class coach/trainer over the past twenty-odd years or so, and I have worked (and continue to work) with some of the world’s best.

                          Besides writing this blog, I have written dozens of chess articles reproduced in numerous languages. I will publish four (4!) e-books sometime in the next 6 months. As well, I have served on the FIDE Journalist Commission for the past 2 years (2014-2016)
                          ________

                          Will the ebooks to be published have his best games?

                          Comment


                          • Great Chess Quotes

                            September 27, 2020

                            Auction Troubles

                            You want to put some chess books up for auction, so you list them on one of the sites and wait for the bids to come in. No problem.

                            However, the collector, Victoriano Gallego Jimenez, had some prime items for the Lund auction for this weekend and then..nothing.

                            His explanation:

                            Hello dear chess friends!

                            Finally I had to suspend the auction, because I had a problem with the computer. After sending the auction email, and before being able to work with the new items, the computer updated Windows 10 to version 2004 (it is the latest) and also automatically updated the BIOS (on the motherboard), and the computer was frozen for almost 40 hours, until finally yesterday I was able to fix the problem with the help of a computer friend.

                            What a bad time I have! It has been hell and I thought there was no immediate solution, that I would have to send the computer to Technical Service! Luckily everything has been a great scare. Sorry for all the inconvenience caused. From today, I will start adding items.

                            Comment


                            • "All is good that is well forgotten." (Russian chess proverb)

                              Comment


                              • Originally posted by Frank Dixon View Post
                                "All is good that is well forgotten." (Russian chess proverb)
                                Thanks for that one Frank, I had never heard of it before. It seems to also be translated as:

                                Everything new is well-forgotten old.

                                Comment

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