Chess on BBC1 prime time

[Neill Cooper]

The villain in 'Husstle' last night was a (ficticious) strong GM who collected "love diamonds". Chess was in the plot to illustrate how he thought logically, and the 'team' outwitetd him with a trap where he thought he had trapped them. There were a couple of scenes of him playing chess, one giving checkmate. The positions were genuine chess, but not the sort one would expecty to see a grandmaster looking at.

[Ian Kingston]

The position shown in the programme was this:

rn1qnk1r/pp4pp/5b2/3Bp2Q/8/8/PPPP1PPP/R1B1K2R

with White to move.

Slightly later, there was another scene with a different position. It was only partly visible, but unfortunately the board was the wrong way round (white square at a1, K on d1, Q on e1). Close-up shots before and after actually focus on a1 and a8.

Anyone with too much time on their hands and access to BBC iPlayer can find these scenes at about 19:30 and 21:45.

[Richard James]

There was also chess on BBC2 last night.

The Victorian Farm featured a chess problem from the Boys' Own Paper of, I think, 1897. The days when chess was considered appropriate for older, rather than younger children.