Did you know... random chess facts!

I strongly doubt the report about Dave Chess. I mean, putting the Bishop next to a king. That's totally unamerican, and Dave is an average Joe. Or maybe it's the work of a secret cabal?

BTW, is there such thing as public cabal?

 Why? The vast majority of the matter in the universe is hydrogen. Hydrogen has one electron per atom.

i read once that joe blackburne was a raging drunk and one of his opponents had a glass of whiskey sitting on the table beside the board. joe drank his opponents liquor and said something like "he left his whiskey en prise and i drank it en passant"

corn

My understanding of "tabiya" is an initial formation a player strives to reach with his opening moves. In the old days of "slow chess," when pawns only moved a single square and queens only moved two, a player would often set up a preferred formation with their opening moves practically in disregard of what his opponent was doing, who would have his own "tabiya," or battle formation, to deploy into. I believe that players would sometimes skip over the opening moves entirely and just accept each other's preferred "tabiyas."

I still use the tabiya principle sometimes, as it simplifies opening preparation. In the Leningrad Dutch for instance, Black chooses a set up in which move order doesn't matter much and in which his opponent's responses don't matter much: it is a set hedge-hog type position Black aims for. This can often carry Black through the first ten moves while hardly having to think. That makes this a preferred opening for me against lower-rated players, who also are probably unfamiliar with the system.

There are other opening that readily lend themselves to the tabiya approach.

No, there's only one grain one the first square, so it's 2^63 grains on the last square and 2^64 - 1 on the whole chessboard.

I think tabiya, in modern chess, refers to some standard positions that are arrived at out of the opening and are common. It includes the position arrived at with *both* sides moving their pieces, not just one player doing a Colle or a Reti for example.

On 15 you are wrong. That number is just the amount of wheat on the last 64th square the total is actually 2x 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 -1 or 18,446,744,073,709,551,615. Poetic justice, I as the ruler would have had the inventor count each and every grain of wheat out, one grain at a time. I would have locked him in a room with an advisor with tons of wheat for him to count.

 dude have you seen fischer's body?  that dude was ripped to the max!

The restaraunt that burned in Colfax was 'Miller's'.  Tal and Al Gore engaged in a long and bloody fight over the effect of global warming on the advisability of castling long, or kingside.  Tal won and later the restaraunt was destroyed in a great conflaguration.

Coincidence??  Gore left town early the next morning.  Tal refused to castle for the next 3 years. 

 Which round shapeless thing is Fischer? 

What is the chess game in Lewis Caroll or whatever's story?

The 1st one may be incorrect because we don't know the actual size of the Universe and, therefore, we don't know how much electrons are present.

ADK

I think it's supposed to be based on our current best estimates, but you're correct -- it might benefit from explicitly stating that qualification.

Can something really be both round and shapeless?

is shapeless mass more correcter? 

did paul morphy like wearing womens shoes? 

che guevera once said if he could do anything he would either start a communist revolution in argentina or play chess like migeul najdorf. 

erik from chess.com once beat garry kasparov in a blind-fold simul match...but erik was the one wearing the blind-fold!

 "then, in order to complete the pattern you will need to put nine trillion two hundred and twenty three thousand three hundred and seventy two billion thirty six thousand eight hundred and fifty four million seven hundred and seventy five thousand eight hundred and eight (9,223372,036854,775808) grains of wheat on the sixty fourth square"

I thought the Chinese invented chess...

I know something random about chess, Roget who compiled the well known Roget's Thesaurus also came up with the Economic Chessboard or pocket chess set. This is what you discover when you're bored enough to read the introduction to your thesaurus...

the round mass on the left was Benko after Fischer destroyed him! you're compelled to drink every time i post this pic :D