Rick Spleen on Chess

[JustinHorton]

Sehwag appears to be in a blitz game.

[Paul McKeown]

"Can you imagine anything sadder than a bunch of online chessplayers getting together in a hotel in Hastings?"

I recall being infuriated once when I saw that show-offy Stephen Fry character pontificated on "QI" that chess had been invented in China. Sad thing is that he probably convinced a load of chess players too. Mind you its not the only garbage that gets dragged forth as "fact" on that programme. Perhaps we should set Edward Winter on the case?

[Tim Spanton]

"Can you imagine anything sadder than a bunch of online chessplayers getting together in a hotel in Hastings?"

I recall being infuriated once when I saw that show-offy Stephen Fry character pontificated on "QI" that chess had been invented in China. Sad thing is that he probably convinced a load of chess players too. Mind you its not the only garbage that gets dragged forth as "fact" on that programme. Perhaps we should set Edward Winter on the case?

The naming of America was a particularly flagrant case and was a major reason for me stopping watching the show. If you can't trust QI's basic facts, the show loses much of its meaning

[JustinHorton]

Sun Journalist In "Factual Inaccuracy" Complaint

[John Saunders]

My reason for resurrecting this ancient thread is that there was another chess reference in Jack Dee's Lead Balloon tonight. His Rick Spleen character is taken hostage at knife-point by a prison inmate played by Robbie Coltrane. And the reason Coltrane's character takes this drastic action is because he is not allowed to keep a chess set in his cell. There are a couple of amusing riffs on why this should be the case, e.g. "a bishop could be used to gouge someone's eye out". I won't say any more for fear of spoiling anyone's enjoyment of the show.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... s_4_Blade/

Fairly conclusive evidence that Jack Dee is "one of us". Who knows, maybe he even lurks on this forum, avidly reads about suggested amendments to the grading system and has a deep, well-informed understanding of the arguments regarding ECF game fee versus membership...

[Kevin Thurlow]

"Fairly conclusive evidence that Jack Dee is "one of us". Who knows, maybe he even lurks on this forum, avidly reads about suggested amendments to the grading system and has a deep, well-informed understanding of the arguments regarding ECF game fee versus membership..."

It might explain his fairly glum demeanour.

[Ian Kingston]

An addendum: in this week's episode, as a result of Rick's 'heroism', he received an invitation to Chess: The Musical.

[Geoff Chandler]

Stephen Fry has been 'Wintered'.

http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/winter21.html

Fry writes:

"‘The sight of a pasty-faced creature in bottle-end spectacles pushing
little wooden men around a board hardly qualifies as throbbing pageant.

Knowing the rules isn’t enough either. You can sit in a hall and try to follow a game
of grandmaster chess and be certain that the only people in the world who
have the faintest grasp of the position on the board are the two players playing."

Are the opening shots.

On QI recently reference was made to Kasparov and Deep Blue.
One of the contestants was remarkably well informed about the match.
Much more so than your average punter.

Apparently Deep Blue (well part of it) is now taking booking
reservations for a well known airline company.
The outer case is on display in some museum.

Fry then added and explained the Smyslov Twist.

I'm sure there is a good Doc just waiting to be made about
Internet Chess. Some of the detective work I've seen in
catching cheats would put Miss Marple out of business.

Explain what is going on and the method in place to catch them.

Then a a closer they could get a non-player armed with Fritz to join 3-4
of the top web sites. Fritz must make every move.
The interest would be to see how long it would take before
he was rumbled and which site caught him first.

[AustinElliott]

Fry wrote:

Knowing the rules isn’t enough either. You can sit in a hall and try to follow a game
of grandmaster chess and be certain that the only people in the world who
have the faintest grasp of the position on the board are the two players playing."

That's a bit daft. I reckon that when we were virtual kibitzing the Grischuk-Gelfand games a while back (somewhere on this monster thread) we got at least some way towards grasping bits of the players' strategies and tactics.

In fact, one of the more enjoyable things about knowing chess a bit lies precisely in being able to appreciate SOME of what far better players are doing. I would suggest that's part of the reason us kibitzing patzers play...