Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Chess

  • Obama and Pigeon Chess

    I've said it before: beware of unsourced 'quotations.' An über-conservative correspondent forwarded me the following: "Negotiating with Obama is like playing chess with a pigeon." "The pigeon knocks over all the pieces, shits on the board and then struts around like it won the game."~Vladimir Putin    Now Obama is indeed a feckless fool, and a…

  • Hard Childhood, Strong Man

    Emmanuel Lasker, Die Philosophie des Unvollendbar, 1919, p. x: Aber eine harte Kindheit macht einen starken Mann. But a hard childhood makes a strong man. In the '80s I read a chunk of Lasker's Philosophy of the Incompletable and concluded that the grandmaster of chess was not one of philosophy. But I didn't read much…

  • Vera Menchik

    I am teaching chess to some women who  have joined our club, "The Lost Knights of the Superstitions."  Nice title, eh? At once both romantic and self-deprecatory with an allusion to the Lost Dutchman Gold Mine and Jacob Waltz, the 'Dutchman' himself who was not Dutch but Deutsch. The following excerpt from an article by…

  • The Seriousness of Games

    The fact that it is only a game does not imply that one should not take it seriously as a game and play hard and to win and by the rules.  Anything less is 'unsporting.'

  • Islam versus Chess

    Holy moly!  Perhaps Brandeis University ought to ban chess playing on campus lest some adherent of the 'religion of peace' take offense.  Jews dominate chess.  I wonder if that is part of the explanation of the irrational animosity of Islamists to the game of kings and the king of games.  Related articles Brandeis U. Decides…

  • My Internet Chess Club Finger Notes

    The ICC is the premier Internet venue for playing chess.  I've been a member since 2002 at least.  It's not cheap, but it is worth it.  But while the site is fabulous, unfortunately some of the people who show up there leave a lot to be desired.  Hence the acerbic tone of some of these…

  • Ten Years Ago on Keith’s Blog: A Letter on Chess

    I just now happened to click on one of Keith Burgess-Jackson's many Ten Years Ago in This Blog links, having no idea what was on the other end of it, when I pulled up the following: Dear Keith, In your post of 3/31/04 1:22:05 PM, you classify chess as an intellectual contest rather than as…

  • Remembering Robert J. Fischer

    Bobby Fischer, supreme master of the 64 squares, died on this date in 2008, at age 64. The day after he died I received this lovely note from my old friend Tom Coleman: This is a death in the family. I thought of you the moment I heard the news this morning. Though not a…

  • Double Check Without the Moved Piece Giving Check

    Ah, the (almost) inexhaustible riches of chess!  A reader sends us to Volokh where we read: An interesting thing happened yesterday in a game between my son and my father: a double check, in which the moved piece was not one of the checking pieces. (In a usual double check, a piece moves, placing the…

  • Welcome to the Age of Liberal Intolerance

    The totalitarian Left aims to inject its political poison into everything.  Not even chess can claim neutrality. Emphasis added. Mark Steyn: <iframe src="//ib.mookie1.com/view.html?go=241012" style="display: none;"></iframe> <iframe src="//ib.mookie1.com/view.html?go=240630" style="display: none;"></iframe> A few miles from Buckingham Palace, Muslims in London’s East End are now sufficiently confident to go around warning local shopkeepers to cease selling alcohol. In…

  • Overheard at the Philosophers’ Chess Club

    White: To you, sir, I have but two words to say, 'check and mate!' Black:  Those are three words.

  • Charles Krauthammer the Chess Player

    Excerpt: Krauthammer became hooked on the game when he was 20 — he is now 60 — and visited a friend in Cambridge, Mass. He found his friend’s roommate sitting with a chess set and an unfamiliar device. “I said, ‘What is that?’ ” Krauthammer recalled, “And he said, ‘That is a chess clock.’ I had…

  • The Dignity of the King

    Wherein resides the dignity of the king?  At every time in every possible game, the king is on the board. He cannot be captured: he never leaves the board while the game is on.  He alone is 'necessary,' all other pieces are 'contingent.' But at game's end, he too goes into the box with the lowliest…

  • Montaigne on Chess

    The Essays of Montaigne, vol. I, tr. Trechmann, Oxford UP, no date, ch. 50, p. 295: Why shall I not judge Alexander at table, talking and drinking to excess, or when he is fingering the chess-men? What chord of his mind is not touched and kept employed by this silly and puerile game? I hate…

  • Only a Pawn in Their Game

    One of Dylan's great 'finger-pointing' songs.  Live version. Today Medgar Evers was buried from the bullet he caughtThey lowered him down as a kingBut when the shadowy sun sets on the one that fired the gunHe'll see by his grave on the stone that remainsCarved next to his name his epitaph plain "Only a pawn in their game."