Chess on the BBC

[Mick Norris]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/danwalker/20 ... s_out.html

[Matthew Turner]

I think we should be paying football managers more if that is the best chess set Benitez can afford.

[Geoff Chandler]

Typical BBC attitude to chess.

"...we needed to speed things up for the purposes of TV and
removed six or seven pieces from each side."

One can just imagine them covering the Anand - Topolov match.
A cameraman appears and starts removing pieces at random.

"Hurry up, we have a cooking programme to show."

Thankfully Benitez refused.

[Michael Jones]

One can just imagine them covering the Anand - Topolov match.
A cameraman appears and starts removing pieces at random.

When running primary school chess clubs I've sometimes removed pieces as a penalty for misbehaviour. Perhaps they ought to introduce that practice at GM level - instead of someone forfeiting a game for being late/refusing to shake hands etc., let them play, but at knight odds.

[Sean Hewitt]

One can just imagine them covering the Anand - Topolov match.
A cameraman appears and starts removing pieces at random.

When running primary school chess clubs I've sometimes removed pieces as a penalty for misbehaviour. Perhaps they ought to introduce that practice at GM level - instead of someone forfeiting a game for being late/refusing to shake hands etc., let them play, but at knight odds.

How about sin-binning the piece for x moves, ala Rugby?

[Matt Mackenzie]

Is Rafa actually any good at our noble art??

It is just that "chess playing celebs" generally seem casual club standard at best (eg Steve Davis) and often a lot worse than that.....

(in the football world, though, Ossie Ardiles is undoubtedly an exception - as is boxing's Lennox Lewis)

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Is Rafa actually any good at our noble art??

You could ask in the blog comments section... (if you hurry, you could be the first to comment).

EDIT: No FIDE rating. Maybe try and find an online Spanish grading system here: http://www.feda.org/

[Jonathan Bryant]

Is Rafa actually any good at our noble art??

Who knows? He does talk about the importance of controlling the centre, though, which suggests he's at least a cut above the level of "I know the moves and enjoy playing but I aint much cop really"

[Michael Jones]

It is just that "chess playing celebs" generally seem casual club standard at best (eg Steve Davis) and often a lot worse than that.....

http://www.clicklancashire.com/sport/ot ... chess.html - although it's pretty hard to tell from the article precisely what "becoming an expert" really means. Playing for a county schools team could porentially mean 150+ ECF, but it could just as easily mean 50.

[Matt Mackenzie]

It has been claimed in the past that Flintoff played chess "at junior level" - whatever that means.

I vaguely recall reading something about this (maybe it was the Streatham/Brixton blog??) - actual hard evidence of Fred's chess exploits was rather elusive, IIRC.

[Jonathan Bryant]

I vaguely recall reading something about this (maybe it was the Streatham/Brixton blog??) - actual hard evidence of Fred's chess exploits was rather elusive, IIRC.

Yeah we had that a while back. Justin wrote it I think.


Essentially any claims of chess prowess in the media need to be taken with a pinch of salt. That's pretty logical if you think about it. The papers are writing for a general audience and we are freakishly interested in chess by comparison.

It's no different to what Nick Hornby wrote a while back about being told of a person he should meet because 'they're a big Arsenal fan too' and then finding out that means the fella watches games when they're on the telly.

Also, quite a lot of journos seem happy to puke up any old shite that they've been told regardless of whether there's any evidence to back it up ... and amazing as it may seem, some people do feel the need to claim some kind of chess back success for whatever reason.

[Michael Jones]

Also, quite a lot of journos seem happy to puke up any old shite that they've been told regardless of whether there's any evidence to back it up ...

Prime example: the Well to Hell.

I agree with your point - for the general public it may be interesting to know that so-and-so either sometimes plays chess or did so at one point, but they're not interested in which tournaments he may have won, what his FIDE rating is etc. Taking an example the other way round, Peter Svidler is known to take an interest in cricket (there was a report on Chessbase a couple of years ago with a video of him in the nets). That fact may be considered noteworthy by fans of cricket and/or chess, particularly since he comes from a country where cricket isn't particularly popular, but do we need to know his batting average and how many Test matches he's been to in order to make it any more so?

[Jonathan Bryant]

Also, quite a lot of journos seem happy to puke up any old shite that they've been told regardless of whether there's any evidence to back it up ...

Prime example: the Well to Hell

.

Not really exactly the sort of thing that I was thinking of. No newspaper would report that as fact.

I was thinking more of things along the lines of Gordon Ramsay claiming he once played for Rangers and despite it not being true and was easy to check that it wasn't true - it still got repeated in the media for a decade before anybody exposed the lie.

e.g.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... urate.html

[Matt Mackenzie]

A classic example of that kind of thing is the "Bob Holness played the sax on Baker Street" urban myth

[John Sargent]

I'm surprised good ol' CJ hasn't been mentioned yet!