Category: Chess
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Benjamin Franklin, “The Morals of Chess”
This article, from Founders Online, should delight the chess aficionado, providing as it does the curious backstory to Franklin's didactic bagatelle. Here is a vignette that smacks of the apocryphal: Franklin played chess with a single-mindedness that threatened to exclude all else. The story has already been told in these volumes of Mme. Brillon’s being…
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The Calvin Blocker Story
My wife and I owned a house in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, on Euclid Heights Boulevard, from 1986-1991. That location put me within walking distance of the old Arabica coffee house on Coventry Road. The Coventry district was quite a Bohemian scene in those days and there I met numerous interesting characters of the sort one…
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Play the Current Position
In life as in chess. There's no use fretting how you got into it. If not even God can restore a virgin, then surely you cannot undo the mess you are in. You're in it, now play it. Fretting is of use only if it helps you avoid the pickle next time. And that reminds…
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A Gov’t Subsidy for Seniors’ USCF Dues
Ed Yetman reports: I don’t know if this is a new high or a new low, but it is something I’ve never seen before. Somehow, USCF has managed to find a way to get the U.S. government to pay membership fees for senior members. That’s right, Uncle Sam wants you to play chess so bad,…
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A Use for Bullet Chess
Bullet is faster than Blitz. I've been playing over at Lichess: two-minutes with a one second increment, sudden death. I die a lot, but like Phoenix rise from my ashes to play again. The fastest bullet games are one minute per side, no increment. What's the use of it? I count six uses. 1) It…
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The Dark Heart of Modern Chess
Hyperventilatory. Consume cum grano salis. Here is much better writing about chess by Grandmaster Raymond Keene.
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Why Do Men Dominate in Chess?
Here at Quillette.
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Another Useful Idiot Crosses My Path
I'm the chess guy hereabouts. A year and a half ago I got a call from an 86-year-old retired chemist with an interest in the game. A meeting was arranged, a game was played, and then the talk turned to politics. The old man told us that he had voted for Biden out of revulsion…
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My Angelic Wife
One indicator of her angelicity is her support of my chess activities — in stark contrast to the wives of two acquaintances both of whose 'better' halves destroyed their chess libraries in fits of rage at their time spent sporting with Caissa. "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," wrote old Will. I'm no…
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Chess is Racist!
Proved beyond a shadow of a doubt over at Substack.
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LiChess: A Free Chess Site to Rival the ICC
Chess is a beautiful thing, a gift of the gods, an oasis of sanity in an insane world. Thanks to Traitor Joe and the chucklephuckery of his supporters, we are teetering on the brink of WW3. It is an exciting time to be alive in part because it may prove to be an exiting time.…
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In Life as in Chess
Die Fehler sind alle schon da, sie warten nur darauf, gemacht zu werden. (Savielly Tartakower) The mistakes are already all out there just waiting to be made. (tr. BV)
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Another Useful Idiot Crosses My Path
I'm the chess guy hereabouts. A year ago I got a call from an 86-year-old retired chemist with an interest in the game. A meeting was arranged, a game was played, and then the talk turned to politics. The old man told us that he had voted for Biden out of revulsion at Trump. He…
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Newsflash!
I just beat a 1221 player in a 3-minute Internet Chess Club game. His handle: cosmiccondomrum. Cute, eh? My current 3-min rating is 1028. Of course, that is nothing to crow about.
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With Detachment from the Outcome
There are games and there is life, and life is not a game. But life is like a game, and sufficiently so to warrant application of the same principle: play hard, but with detachment from the outcome. In chess, and not just in chess, it is 'unsporting' not to try to defeat the opponent by…