In the very early 1990's I landed myself a job as an electronic games demonstrator in a well known London store for a company that held a concession there at the time. Both a chess and electronic gadget addict, I was in for a mild...
Here, two young amateurs were playing in a tournament creating the shortest game ever recorded! The players, who's identities have been lost, were familiar with chess rules and had Elo ratings of 1600 and 1700. PLEASE READ THE MOVE L...
(This story was written for the U3A Nepean web site. U3A is the “University of the Third Age”. If you don't know what that is, you can learn about it here: http://www.u3anepean.org ) We've all heard the old saw that t...
Thirty years ago a picture hung in the Sydney Chess Centre. It showed two chess players—one looking bored, the other indecisive. He had picked up a pawn to make his first move but had taken so long that a spider web extended from...
Marlon Brando (1924-2004) was born on April 23, 1924 in Omaha, Nebraska. He grew up (1930-1938) in Libertyville and Evanston, Illinois, a town northwest of Chicago. He learned chess as a teenager and tried to teach his friend, W...
I'm been wondering if this type of chess does exist. I don't know. I don't even know how would you play a three level chess. It would be to difficult. At first, how would you move the pieces up & down? You would have to change thei...
A couple of years ago I found myself on the receiving end of a surprise mate in a position I had expected to win. It was one of those odd-ball positions that crop up occasionally and after getting over the shock (and giving my opponent full ...
International/Professional Titles Grandmaster-(GM)Awarded by FIDE for three GM norms.International Master-(IM)Awarded by FIDE for three IM norms.FIDE Master-(FM)Minimum FIDE rating of 2300 after 24 gamesNational Senior Master-(SM)USCF Rating 2400+...
Serving at one time or another in three cabinet posts, Judah Benjamin of Louisiana, a former US Senator, was sometimes known as "the Brains of the Confederacy". Four years before the birth of Paul Morphy in 1837, Benjamin got married in ...
The Staunton chessmen is the standard pattern for chess pieces used in all world chess federation and United States Chess Federation events. On March 1, 1849 the pattern was first registered by Nathaniel Cook. Prior to that, the pieces most commo...
On July 6, 1919 the German city of Sorup-in-Angeln issued paper money with a chess motif. It had a chess table with a woman seated. Paper money replaced coins, which became rare in Germany since metal was being used for armaments. In mid-1921 St...
Searching for Bobby Fischer really begins in 1972 when Bobby Fischer defeated Boris Spassky in the World Chess Championship Match in Reyjavik, Iceland, then disappeared from chess. Many people got interested in chess and picked up the game, even b...
Chess was probably introduced in Russia in the 9th century AD through the Caspian-Volga trade route. At the time, there was a Volga trade route to Baghdad. In the 10th century, chess reached Russia from Byzantium and from the Vikings. Arou...
George Washington (1732-1799) may not have played chess, but there is the story of Washington crossing the Delaware to attack the British army. Earlier, a boy had given a spy report to the British commander that Washington was about to attack. The...
In 1974 Gerald Abrahams wrote an interesting book called Not Only Chess. He called it a selection of Chessays. Here are some interesting items from his book. On page 15 Abrahams conjectured that Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) and Karl Marx ...
I did a little survey of chess opening frequncies from several chess databases. After looking over a million games or so and keeping tabs of the first few moves, this is the result. 1.e4 was the most common opening, representing 70% of the samp...
n 1607, the first ballet with a chess theme was Ballet des Eschecs, performed for Louis XIV of France. Francois-Andre Danican Philidor (1726-1795) was a famous music composer. He was exposed to chess by the musicians in the French king's co...
In 1877 chess players met at the Cafe Logeling, 49 Bowery Street in lower Manhattan. Mr. Logeling was a chess enthusiast and eventuallu built a room in the back of the cafe for chess. On November 24, 1877, it was decided to form a chess clu...
In 1949 Fred Reinfeld and Irving Chernev published a book called The Fireside Book of Chess. Here are some interesting items from the book. On page 69 is the claim of the shortest master game. It is between Gibauld and Lazard and played in Pa...
he first world team competition took place in Paris in 1924 to coincide with the Olympic Games. There were 54 players from 18 countries. Czechoslovakia won the Gold Medal. The Silver went to Hungary and the Bronze went to Switzerland. The individu...
In 1945 Alan Turing (1912-1954) used chess-playing as an example of what a computer could do. Turing himself was a weak chess player. In 1946 Alan Turing made his first reference to machine intelligence in connection with chess-playing. In 1...
Compositions are chess positions other than which arises during a chess game, usually, but not necessarily, composed for solving. The chess problem and the composed chess ending are the true art forms of chess. Orthodox compositions co...
There once was a player from Maine,Who played chess on a fast train.He took a move backAnd was thrown off the track,And he never played chess again.There once was a chessplayer named Flo,Who liked to mate, you know;When you castled long,She helped...
What are Veselin Topalov and Vishy Anand saying to each other? No prizes! Just for fun!
