English Chess Forum

Just read on twitter that the presenters of BBC Breakfast are playing chess against some primary school children tomorrow.

Not quite chess we know, but the Japanese form, shogi, has been taken by storm by a 14 year old, just turned pro, who has won a record no. of victories in a row -

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... rd-breaker

From a (very good) Guardian piece:

In 1981, a Guardian report that chess champion Anatoly Karpov and his handlers had successfully protested at his challenger Viktor Korchnoi’s constant cross-board talk ran under the unlikely headline: “Chess banter banned”.

There's quite a difference between lads bantering and the media fantasizing.

Just as there's a difference between sledging (denigrating) in cricket - in which diving, for a catch, is applauded - and diving in football - where sledging is a only a low-level background accompaniment to playing the man.

Korchoi, being a Russian turned Swiss, was always a sledger.
Petrosian, being a Georgian-born Armenian, was ever a clogger.

As might be expected, there's mainstream reporting of Kasparov's reappearance.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... tournament
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/07 ... etirement/

Roger de Coverly wrote:As might be expected, there's mainstream reporting of Kasparov's reappearance.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... tournament
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/07 ... etirement/

Wonder if this has anything to do with boosting sales of his latest (not very good) book? Or even not wishing to be upstaged by Nigel Davies at the South Lakes Congress?

Kasparov joins the ranks of science writers - to the surprise of all science writers; and the despair of Mig Greengard

Heh

"Kasparov joins the ranks of science writers - to the surprise of all science writers"

Yes - I'm surprised.

The book by Andrew Hodges on Turing is rather good. I'm told Sarah Turing's book suffered from the fact it was written by his mother... (but I haven't read it).

Just looked at Sunday Telegraph for 09/07/17 (which I get free) and spotted an article on games with the author claiming to be called "Sophia Money-Coutts". First we are told the truly appalling news that Monopoly have teamed up with Nintendo to produce a nintendized version of Monopoly. Mario and Donkey Kong replace the traditional boot, ship etc. She bemoans this and says people should play proper games like the real monopoly, Scrabble, chess, backgammon etc. Fair enough. The article says,

"Chess. Quite boring if you ask me but chess club is the sort of thing you should belong to aged 8 if you're going to graduate to the Bullingdon Club and then become a Tory MP."

How bizarre. I think it's the left wing MPs that tend to be better players!

Kevin Thurlow wrote: The article says...
"chess club is the sort of thing you should belong to aged 8 if you're going to graduate to the Bullingdon Club"

Chess as training for smashing up restaurants? Don't see it.

Deuce again and game Rybarikova with a good serve at the body which Muguruza can only return into the net.
They've just cut to Dame Shirley Bassey picking some food item out of what looked like a policeman's helmet.
And there's a shot of musical queen Elaine Paige.
This is far from a game of chess (that's an Elaine Paige joke).

BBC Text Commentary on 1st womens semi-final. 6-1 6-1 to Muguruza in 65 minutes. Seems like rapid play to me!

This week's "New European" newspaper has an article from Garry Kasparov critical of President Putin interfering in European affairs. The cover picture of the newspaper shows Putin as a Red King, with Red and White pawns scattered around a chess board in the background. I haven't read the article yet.

El País cartoon