English Chess Forum

I enjoy Danny King's Powerplaychess Youtube channel. In a recent video, regarding a position he said: 'If you chuck this into the gob of Stockfish' (suggesting computer evaluation and playability for a human can be very different). I hadn't heard this before, though the 'Gob of Stockfish' might describe several online analysts.

In the BBC Chess Masters: The Endgame in the last episode David Howell described accumulating pawns rather than playing optimal moves as playing 'like a chess accountant'. Also new to me.

The standard mate K+Qv K on the edge of the board with the queen adjacent to the mated king, protected by it's king, he described as 'the kiss of death'. Probably too routine to deserve it's own name.

Any other new sayings people have heard recently? They are all new if you haven't heard them before. (No-one says 'blind pigs' for rooks doubled on the seventh rank [Nimzovitsch] any more, most coinages disappear without trace).

I recall the late Mike O'Hara used to talk about 'twitching' a piece meaning blundering. He was the only person I ever heard use the term.

A Redhill colleague did refer to the (chess) queen as the "hag".

Nick Ivell wrote: ↑

Fri Apr 18, 2025 1:19 pm

I recall the late Mike O'Hara used to talk about 'twitching' a piece meaning blundering. He was the only person I ever heard use the term.

Was he also a birdwatcher?

"the king and the pawn go back in the same box at the end of the game"

Irish proverb apparently.

Theres a ton of new sayings if you want to delve into the murky waters of online streaming - Simon Williams was a bit of a pioneer of catchphrases like his "harry" instead of the h pawn and more recently chess.com affiliate streamers tend to make their shows very child focused so do lots of cartoony silliness and catchphrases.

MJMcCready wrote: ↑

Fri Apr 18, 2025 11:06 pm

"the king and the pawn go back in the same box at the end of the game"

Irish proverb apparently.

Some very old similar quotes here: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/08/31/chess/

Omar Khayam's quote was similar:

’Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days
Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:
Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.

Joey Stewart wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 20, 2025 7:25 am

Theres a ton of new sayings if you want to delve into the murky waters of online streaming - Simon Williams was a bit of a pioneer of catchphrases like his "harry" instead of the h pawn and more recently chess.com affiliate streamers tend to make their shows very child focused so do lots of cartoony silliness and catchphrases.

Harry seems to have caught on

I wonder where the idea of name the a-h pawns first came from. I observed it in writings by Cambridge University Chess Club members in the 1990s, but I am sure it predates that. Was it in use in chess magazines earlier? Maybe Hartston was using those phrases as well in his books?

I think is goes as follows:

Alfie
Bertie(?)
Charlie
Derek
Eddie
Freddie
Gordon
Harry

https://www.chess.com/lessons/name-your ... -queenside

According to Simon, it is Arry and Barry and Gerry. Gerry sounds wrong. I am sure it was originally Gordon. And it was alway Alfie, not 'Arry for the a-pawn.

Anyway, maybe I am thinking of Thomas the Tank Engine names...

Christopher Kreuzer wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 20, 2025 11:20 am

I wonder where the idea of name the a-h pawns first came from. I observed it in writings by Cambridge University Chess Club members in the 1990s, but I am sure it predates that. Was it in use in chess magazines earlier? Maybe Hartston was using those phrases as well in his books?

I think is goes as follows:

Alfie
Bertie(?)
Charlie
Derek
Eddie
Freddie
Gordon
Harry

https://www.chess.com/lessons/name-your ... -queenside

According to Simon, it is Arry and Barry and Gerry. Gerry sounds wrong. I am sure it was originally Gordon. And it was alway Alfie, not 'Arry for the a-pawn.

Anyway, maybe I am thinking of Thomas the Tank Engine names...

My pawns are, generically, Alfie, Bertie, Charlie, Danny, Eddie, Freddie, Gerry and Harry, although, if I'm teaching pupils with names beginning with those letters I'll change them accordingly, so that Charlie, for example, would become Christopher. If they object, as they sometimes do, that Gerry/Jerry starts with a J I might change him to Garry.

My rooks are Ronnie and Reggie (for obvious reasons), my knights are Nobby and Norrie, my king and queen are Kenny and Queenie. My bishops used to be Billy and Bobby until the Church of England admitted woman bishops, when they became Betty (after my mother) and Beattie. They had to revert to Billy and Bobby, though, if I was teaching in a Catholic school.

Christopher Kreuzer wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 20, 2025 11:20 am

I wonder where the idea of name the a-h pawns first came from. I observed it in writings by Cambridge University Chess Club members in the 1990s, but I am sure it predates that. Was it in use in chess magazines earlier? Maybe Hartston was using those phrases as well in his books?

I suspect it was "Dan the d pawn" published in 1983.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Amazing-Advent ... 0671461931

That would be about the right era for undergraduates of the 1990s to have read as children.

Earlier generations might have had "Chess for Children" first published in 1960
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Chess-Children ... 0001061100

Otherwise it may have been the Golombek Penguin first published in 1957, although that was for new players regardless of age.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/game-chess-Pen ... B0007IXGGA

Chess for children were brilliant books. They first got me into chess, before Fischer v Spassky.

Stanley Morrison, co-author of those titles, also wrote Chess A Beginner's Guide - my first ever chess book.

(and one which i still possess)

Dunno about names, but the pawns had various occupations assigned to them as far back as the fourteenth century. That was when the Italian monk Jacopo da Cessole produced a work which was later translated into English by William Caxton as The Game And Playe Of The Chesse, and published by him in 1474.

Those occupations, rendered where possible into modern English, were:
a - Labourers (agricultural and other)
b - Metal-workers
c - Merchants, weavers and notaries
d - Bankers
e - Physicians, surgeons and apothecaries
f - Innkeepers
g - City guards and tax-collectors
h - "Ribalds, dice-players and couriers" (an odd collection indeed - I've left it unmodernised apart from the spelling)