Chess has well-known links to mathematics and music, but what about believeing six impossible things before breakfast?
Just finished watching the Bobby Fischer film, and how sad it was to see him in the grip of paranoid deluisons. Ironically, this son of a Jewish mother and probably a Jewish father, and one of the most creative minds over the chessboard, came to be obsessed by the most dismal and commonplace fantasies of Jewish conspiracy.
Just been to see Bobby Fischer Against the World at the Exeter PictureHouse.
Lots to say about it (I'm a Fischer nut, but there were loads of stills I hadn't seen, and live footage) but I mentioned one error I thought I noticed:
The breakthrough Game 3 of Spassky-Fischer was indeed notable for its unusual opening play by Fischer, but it was a defence he had played before, contrary to what I think people were saying in the film.
The secret of Grandmaster play is to make use of the hidden 65th square on the chess board. I'm sure you've all had the experience of having a piece come at you, apparently out of nowhere, to take one of your army. That piece came from the 65th square.
I can't show you the square, because it's not on the usual 8x8 grid system, but I can show you that it is there. Watch...
Take a 8x8 chessboard (64 squares, right?), and divide it up in a special way:
We had a 4-board
match
this
week where
eight Division One chessplayers weren't clear enough about the rules to
give much
confidence in the knowledge of the rest of you...
Stewart Reuben
says in the latest Organiser's Handbook that this rule "...continues to
give arbiters problems. ... When I was in South Africa and held a
seminar, the local arbiters wanted to spend the whole time discussing
nothing else."
Half-term seems to have come upon us very suddenly! We normally shut the club for the summer at the May half-term, as attendance drops off so quickly when Summer arrives. So the last club night of this season will be Friday May 27th.
We might have a chat on Friday about what you might want to happen next season -- more matches? fewer matches? some more coaching?
The first club night of the new season will be on Friday 16th September 2011. I'll write to you all in September to confirm this.
I was at the WECU Easter Congress in Exmouth today for the final round (news at http://chessdevon.co.uk/), and heard from Bill Frost that Brian Gosling has written a book about the problems of Dorset composer John Brown. And I thought if I hadn't heard about it, then perhaps you haven't too.
"As one by one I mowed them down, my superiority soon became apparent."
CAPABLANCA, My Chess Career (You could look at that statement as astounding egotism or the simple truth, and either way I guess you'd probably be right. - Timothy Hanke)
