Chess in the White House

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Avatar of Prairie_Knight
[COMMENT DELETED]
Avatar of Spinatai

Arnold Schwarzeneger (or whatever his name is) plays chess... Not the president, but atleast a governor (or whatever, don't know for sure)

Avatar of drd

Jimmy Carter played, and his son was rated.

Most American presidents wouldn't play chess; an intellectual president is pretty much an oxymoron.

Avatar of Writch

Wow. Lookie what I found with a little help from our friend, Google:

Presidents who were involved with chess:

But does the current sitting U.S. President?

Does George W Bush play chess?

That link refers to a great non-fiction book about geopolitics and using the famous historical game as a metaphor.

BTW: I be the player opposite of Prairie_Knight in the aforementioned game. I often chat to distract my opponent - especially with intriguing topics.Wink

Avatar of drd

No... I probably "misremembered"...

Avatar of golem3
drd wrote:

Most American presidents wouldn't play chess; an intellectual president is pretty much an oxymoron.


 

Sadly true in recent years. It wasn't uncommon in the past to have intellectuals - Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, the Founding Fathers who were presidents, arguably Lincoln....

Hopefully on Nov. 4th we get to change that though, eh? Cool

Avatar of Being

I hear Bush plays chess, but is very bad at it.

I also hear that Obama plays chess and is very good.

It is a bit cold here today, but the sun is bright.

Avatar of richfeet

George W. Bush was too Dumb to play Chess he didnt have his Vice President to teach him!

Avatar of Avrilmai

Actually..and this could be apochryphal I know...but I have heard from a reasonably good source that Dubya does play chess, bridge and backgammon and he is quite good at them. But then again some people said Hitler was very kind to animals and children...as long as they weren't Jewish.

Avatar of Ziggyblitz

Heard Clinton has an IQ of 160+....George W Bush an IQ of 125.  Sounds about right.

Avatar of DColquhoun

You might find Bill Wall's blog post on this very topic interesting:

 

http://blog.chess.com/billwall/us-presidents-who-played-chess

Avatar of Crazychessplaya

According to http://www.chessgames.com/perl/bistro.pl?kpage=17 , the game below was played by Thomas Woodrow Wilson during his Princeton days. It would be great if someone could find the January 5th, 1953 issue of Chess Life & Review and post the appropriate page in the thread.

Avatar of kgwkyle

It would be interesting to know if any of the current candidates play chess, like
Romney. Does anyone know?

Avatar of Hugh_T_Patterson
drd wrote:

Jimmy Carter played, and his son was rated.

Most American presidents wouldn't play chess; an intellectual president is pretty much an oxymoron.


I'm with you on that one. Most politicians are merely talking heads and nothing else. However, I do like Obama.