Chess Under the Elements

True, and the folks playing it too.

Just adding a definition from Merriam-Webster:

a compulsive, chronic, physiological or psychological need for a habit-forming substance, behavior, or activity having harmful physical, psychological, or social effects and typically causing well-defined symptoms (such as anxiety, irritability, tremors, or nausea) upon withdrawal or abstinence : the state of being addicted

De nada, Maestro Nieves!

Ex-maestro!

Did you ever play internationally?

I'm just a naturschik. Played only once, some thirty-five years ago at Kaorle, near Venice, Italy.

The guy whom I'm playing right now a friendly game, @nnnvlj got a prize, he's a strong Serbian MC (he hasn't played competitively for decades now - my record with him, after having been playing since college, is ONE draw), while I was at the bottom in Kaorle

MC- Master Candidate?

Yes. MC or CM, an expert in terms of USCF. But a formidable one! He would be a NM here without doubt

I am a weak expert right now.....2165 FIDE.

Tonight Puerto Rico barely beat Uruguay in a blitz match (5/2). Pan-American Championship. We play the Final on Sunday against Mexico.

Weak? 35 points to the Master level?

Yes....I guess my confidence level is not high....last game I played was against a Polish GM, which happened to be the coach of the National Men's Polish Team!

The game was a very humbling experience, and made me realise that I do not understand chess as much as I thought I did!

Yes, I remember that game you played the Polish GM; you have posted it in a blog.

Here's a Polish cartoon (Pawel Kuczynski)

That is a brilliant work of art!

Here's a graffiti

More likely the position seems a bit frozen

Sutomore is fine. These days we have perfect conditions for playing chess anywhere. I hope many chess friends will come here this summer to catch some sunbathing and playing chess in a shadow of sunumbrellas or pinetrees. I hope at least, the guys, readers of your comment about the number of chessmasters, will be interested to see beauties of the second country on your list. Might be some of them will find out the reason of that numbers. At least, Iceland is too far away for inspecting their numbers and you can catch a cold over there.😊

Montenegro invites any man of good will to come and see what we have here. It is not only the chess on the list...😁

Momire, this guy Bak is a great artist. I 've never seen his paintings and to be sincere I heard about him, but don't know him enough to be his fan or at least casual visitor of his work. But this piece of the ocean is incredible and this  chess pawn who's breaking through the limits of the board of nature or let's say, this limited world insufficiently known to us. It looks like it was painted in the era of Giordano Brunno and his glorious  fight for the truth by stepping beyond the limitations of the Universe had been known at the time.And the picture says: It could be the CHESS that magic key for escaping out, accordingly to that little pawn's posture. And size of that pawn is not ordinary, especially is not a little...He is a really great and enough big and powerfull to fight with nature's forces themselves.

Technicaly, I believe that this picture can be made by 12 year old child but the message in it...brings the viewer's mind into a  deep thinking about egzistency or purpose or might be only puzzling him or at least,  can influence him in a certain individual way...

The last observation directed us that the real art is in front of us.

When you say frozen, King may well end up like this, brrr (Vladimír Brádler, V zajetí ledu/Trapped by Ice, 2016)

I know, it's hard to avoid this pearl of the Mediterranean.