Media comments on chess

[Kevin Thurlow]

"... that more than 41 million hours of online chess have been watched on Twitch during the COVID-19 pandemic?"

So that's roughly 4 minutes per chess player? Or do people now claim there are more than 600 million...

[Stewart Reuben]

PAWN SACRIFICE is being shown on BBC2 Saturday 23 January 23.30 to 01.15.
It is, of course based on the Fischer-Spassky match. I have often wondered why it took so long to make a film based on the match. It was made in 2014. Toby Maguire played the role of Bobby.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

PAWN SACRIFICE is being shown on BBC2 Saturday 23 January 23.30 to 01.15.
It is, of course based on the Fischer-Spassky match. I have often wondered why it took so long to make a film based on the match. It was made in 2014. Toby Maguire played the role of Bobby.

I failed to finish watching it last time, it was so bad. Should I try again? Or should I look into a Netflix subscription...?

[Paul Robert Jackson]

PAWN SACRIFICE is being shown on BBC2 Saturday 23 January 23.30 to 01.15.
It is, of course based on the Fischer-Spassky match. I have often wondered why it took so long to make a film based on the match. It was made in 2014. Toby Maguire played the role of Bobby.

I failed to finish watching it last time, it was so bad. Should I try again? Or should I look into a Netflix subscription...?

One has to remember it's only a bit of entertainment / drama
.....the film by Liz Garbus "Bobby Fischer Against The World" is more biographical.
It's the ranting unwell R J Fischer in Iceland, towards the end of his life, that most chess players want to forget.

[Matt Mackenzie]

Being "only a bit of entertainment" shouldn't excuse being sloppy and inaccurate in the way Pawn Sacrifice is widely regarded as being.

[Paul Robert Jackson]

Being "only a bit of entertainment" shouldn't excuse being sloppy and inaccurate in the way Pawn Sacrifice is widely regarded as being.

I don't think the film originally went for historical accuracy
....the book "A Psychobiography of Bobby Fischer" by Joseph G Ponterotto is worth a look.
Gardar Sverrisson's book covers his final years & some of the more sensitive topics.
....but I have not read the Helgi Olafsson book.

[Nick Grey]

I will watch it again. Instead of the nfl show. Toby Maguire was good in Spiderman. Too many repeats in 10 months.

[Chris Rice]

I will watch it again. Instead of the nfl show. Toby Maguire was good in Spiderman. Too many repeats in 10 months.

I thought Liev Schreiber was an excellent Spassky.

[JustinHorton]

The only thing that stood out for me was Peter Sarsgaard's Lombardy (even though it had precious little in common with the real-life Lombardy). Other than that, pretty desperate stuff.

[Geoff Chandler]

Watch or better still, do not watch 'Bobby Fischer Live' if per chance
you do then 'Pawn Sacrifice' (which is OK ) will seem like a masterpiece.

Here is the trailer for 'Bobby Fischer Live'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXPLVVTqCVg

[Paul Habershon]

Rod Liddle in today's Sunday Times:

Further dispatches from the front line of the deranged obsessives' war against everything. Two of the world's top chess players, Magnus Carlsen and Anish Giri, have played a game in which - contrary to 100 years or so of tradition - black moved first. This was, they explained, a symbolic gesture against racism. It raises the question as to whether white, with his inherent privilege, should be allowed to move at all during a game.

Notes
a)I hadn't heard about this game.
b)100 years or so? Where does that come from?
c)When proof reading my post, I discovered that predictive text had preferred Rod Piddle and Anish Guru

[JustinHorton]

It's a video from two years ago.

Liddle is a thoroughly unpleasant and unscrupulous man and is employed by peple who are very aware of what he is.

[Geoff Chandler]

This is an article on the same subject from July 2020.

https://theconversation.com/why-does-wh ... ess-141962

It mentions the Carlsen - Giri game.

Apparently it all stems from Lowenthal.

The first move colour had to be standardized else mistakes in reproduction can and did happen.

From Edward Winters site on the Immortal.



Mr Winter states: "...some books have inexplicably stated that Kieseritzky won. "
The reason maybe that it has filtered down that Adolf Anderssen was in fact Black in this game (but had the first move.)

https://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/immortal.html

[Kevin Thurlow]

"The first move colour had to be standardized else mistakes in reproduction can and did happen."

I was asked this when I was coaching at a local school. I said it was maybe because in tournaments, ideally you moved first every other game, and it was easier to just say "white moves first". I suspect the pupil had a reason for asking, so I added that in draughts black moves first, so it is just a convention. They seemed happy with that. But the quote works as well.

[Tim Spanton]

"The first move colour had to be standardized else mistakes in reproduction can and did happen."

I was asked this when I was coaching at a local school. I said it was maybe because in tournaments, ideally you moved first every other game, and it was easier to just say "white moves first". I suspect the pupil had a reason for asking, so I added that in draughts black moves first, so it is just a convention. They seemed happy with that. But the quote works as well.

Wikipedia has a lot to say on this:

As Howard Staunton observed, "In the earlier ages of chess, the board was simply divided into sixty-four squares, without any difference of colour".[3] The checkering of the squares was a European innovation, introduced in the thirteenth century.[4]

The convention of White having the first move is much more recent than that. François-André Danican Philidor in the original (1749) edition of his famous treatise Analyse du jeu des Échecs cited one game in which Black moved first.[5] Johann Horny, in a book published in Germany in 1824, wrote that Black moves first.[6] Phillip Sergeant wrote in his book A History of British Chess of the great Alexander McDonnell (1798–1835), remembered today for his series of matches with Labourdonnais:[7]

He preferred to have Black, as first player as well as second ... this was a common fad in his day, which persisted with a great number of players, as a study of the Chess Players' Chronicle and other magazines shows.

In the Immortal Game (Anderssen–Kieseritzky, offhand game, London 1851), one of the most famous games in history, Anderssen had the Black pieces but moved first.[8] He also took the Black pieces but moved first in the sixth, eighth, and tenth games of his famous 1858 match against Paul Morphy. Each of those games began 1.a3 e5 2.c4, when Anderssen was effectively playing the Sicilian Defense with an extra tempo.[9]

As late as the mid-to-late 19th century, the practice of White moving first had not yet become standard. George Walker in his popular treatise The Art of Chess-Play: A New Treatise on the Game of Chess (4th edition 1846), set forth the rules of London's St. George's Chess Club in June, 1841.[10] "Law III" provided that the player who moved first had the choice of color; if the players played more games at the same sitting, the first move would alternate, but each player would continue to use the same colored pieces as he had in the first game.[11] Staunton observed in 1871 that "many players still cultivate the foolish habit of playing exclusively with one colour."[12]

On October 19, 1857, Mr. Perrin, the Secretary of the New York Chess Club, informed those assembled at the First American Chess Congress that he had received a letter from Johann Löwenthal, a leading English master, "suggesting the advisableness of always giving the first move in public games, to the player of the white pieces".[13] Löwenthal also wrote that London's chess clubs had adopted a new rule that White always moves first.[14] The club evidently did not follow Löwenthal's advice, since in its match the following year against its Philadelphia counterpart, Philadelphia played White in both games, but moved first only in the second game.[15]

Chess historian Robert John McCrary writes that the earliest rule he has found requiring that White move first is Rule 9 given on page 126 of the New York, 1880 tournament book, which specified, "In each round the players shall have the first move alternately; in the first game it shall be determined by lot. The one having the move, in every case, is to play with the white pieces." McCrary observes:[16]

Prior to that, it had gradually become conventional, over a number of years, to have White move first in published analysis, and by about 1862 to have White move first in all published games. But it was evident that players could in many cases choose Black when they had the first move, even if the published game-score indicated that White had moved first.

Three years after the example cited by McCrary, the "Revised International Chess Code" issued at the London 1883 tournament (one of the strongest in history)[17] provided that the player who won by lot the right to move first had the choice of color.[18]

In 1889 Wilhelm Steinitz, the first World Champion, wrote that "In all international and public Chess matches and tournaments ... it is the rule for the first player to have the white men".[19] Emanuel Lasker, the second World Champion, stated in Lasker's Manual of Chess (first published in 1927)[20] that "White makes the first move".[21]