Media comments on chess

[Andy Stoker]

The Week in Westminster, Radio 4, 30 March - refers to Mrs May offering a queen sacrifice which was declined

[JustinHorton]

The Guardian obituary for Agnès Varda discusses Les Créatures:

The characters are all pawns in a fascinating chess game played on an outsize board.

I don't know the film (or Varda's other work) and I've only been able to track down this still.

[Kevin Thurlow]

Perhaps a bit oblique, but the latest Private Eye (1493) refers to the legal battle between Post Office and several hundred sub-postmasters who say they were falsely accused of losing or stealing money, because of computer errors.

"But in the high court two weeks ago, with the game continuing to go against it, the taxpayer-owned company dramatically up-ended the board and sent the pieces flying."

(Basically the post office claimed the judge was biased because he didn't favour the post office.)

[Stewart Reuben]

Ad in the Dily Telegraph - and possibly elsewhere - Opening gambit The community feel of Inspired Villages developmen can really be experienced in the clubhuse.
The photo above features a man and a woman, both of mature year, playing chess.
They bothhave a hand poised above the board, ready to move.

Pub in Islewrth called 'The Castle'. The pub sign features a rook on cheuered sqauares with another couple of pieces on the board.

[Geoff Chandler]

Hi Stewart,

'Pub in Isleworth called 'The Castle...'

Often when I needed a space to fill I invented chess pubs in and around Edinburgh.







and of course when I featured a genuine pub...



...which is in Alexandria near Loch Lomond nobody believed me.

It is still there, look at it now.

[John McKenna]

That's not all Geoff's been keeping under his hat -

http://chessscotland.com/

The Queens Head and Castle Arms are there about -

https://edinburgh.cylex-uk.co.uk/str-la ... /pubs.html

Chess in the Park -

http://www.chessedinburgh.co.uk/gardens.php

Chess in the media -

https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/ ... -1-4515988

[JustinHorton]

Guardian piece on Peniche, "the most notorious political prison of the Portuguese dictatorship":

Chess was banned. One day, a guard came across a board drawn on the floor in chalk, and confiscated the stones the prisoners had been using as pieces. The inmate who called the guard a thief was punished with 17 days in solitary confinement.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Similar prison-related tale of chess from Gary Powers who was imprisoned during the U2 spy plane incident. He played chess with a fellow prisoner, Zigurd Kruminsh (Zigurds Krūmiņš), a Latvian political prisoner, see here.

And a chess-in-schools National Geographic feature from 2006, no longer online but can be partially seen here. Also mentioned here (the school is in Lindsborg, Kansas, USA, and it is the Anatoly Karpov International School of Chess).

Not sure if this has featured here yet, but: see: My Brilliant Brain (National Geographic documentary featuring Susan Polgar). There have been a number of documentaries featuring the Polgars. I think this one is just Susan and she features in episode 1 ('Make Me a Genius'). It was broadcast in 2007.

[JustinHorton]

Not sure if this has featured here yet, but: see: My Brilliant Brain (National Geographic documentary featuring Susan Polgar). There have been a number of documentaries featuring the Polgars. I think this one is just Susan and she features in episode 1 ('Make Me a Genius'). It was broadcast in 2007.

Ah yes

[Stewart Reuben]

I was in Torquay the British Championshkhips in my office. I was talking to a journalist about pattern recognition and in walked 7 year old Luke McShane. i had a board and set and asked Luke to turn around. I then set up the basic smothred mate starting with Nf7+ and ending with Nf7#. I then asked Luke to turn around and see whther he could solve the mate in 4.
He did so and immediately said, Nf7+ Kg8, Nh6+ Kh8, Qg8+ Rxg8, Nf7#. I would have been astonisshed had he not done that.
Of course Luke was a very clever little boy. Of course the journalist was impressed. But I never suggested that Luke was a genius.
I set a very high bar for the word genius. Indeed, I am by no means sure that chess provides a big enugh canvas to demonstrate genius. Bu I realise others attach a lower meaning to the term.

[David Sedgwick]

I was in Torquay the British Championships in my office. I was talking to a journalist about pattern recognition and in walked 7 year old Luke McShane.

Eastbourne 1991, I suspect.

[Stewart Reuben]

You are right. My offices in both were similar. Luke was not!

[LawrenceCooper]

"A bit of a chess match" is the damning assessment of the FA cup semi-final today after almost thirty minutes of play by the disgruntled BT Sport commentator.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

"A bit of a chess match" is the damning assessment of the FA cup semi-final today after almost thirty minutes of play by the disgruntled BT Sport commentator.

Currently a score draw in extra-time and being lauded as "brilliant game goes to extra time". Presumably no more chess analogies being used.

[Roger de Coverly]

The current edition of the in house Wetherspoon mag has a picture from last year of Tim Spanton with Magnus at their Holborn pub. It's a old story of course.