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Chess

Social chess

I was both honoured and enthusiastic to be selected for the Reform Chess Club in the Hamilton Russell trophy competed for by the ‘Gentlemen’s’  clubs. Honoured as I have only recently joined the club and enthused by playing chess across the board rather then on the internet. The main [...]

September 7, 2023 // 0 Comments

Sideways/Radio 4

Yesterday Matthew Syed presented a programme on the chess player Jonathan Nunn. He was something of a prodigy as a mathematician – he was the youngest person to gain admission to Oxford since Cardinal Wolsey. He switched to chess and, although excellent, he was never world grandmaster class. [...]

February 9, 2023 // 0 Comments

The Reunion

The Reunion on Radio 4 is a much admired programme on the Rust and last week it featured and reunited those primarily involved in the May 1997 chess encounter between World Champion Gary Kasparov and a IBM computor called Deep Blue. Kasparov, who won 2-1, was contemptuous of the computer – [...]

August 30, 2022 // 0 Comments

Putin – no grandmaster at chess

David Niven once gave an interview to Michael Parkinson in which he observed that in Russia the national game was chess and in England it was football, meaning to imply that Russians thought better strategically. If so, Vladimir Putin is a weak chess player. In the 3 most defining moments of a [...]

April 27, 2022 // 0 Comments

The invasion of Ukraine – the chess angle

Yesterday was spent in front of the television watching events in Ukraine unfurl. I opted for Sky News. The adverts were irritating – and the photo footage repeated – but they pulled in the important personalities, starting with Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, and were across the big [...]

February 26, 2022 // 0 Comments

The upsurge in chess

There has been an upsurge in chess for 2 reasons; the success of the Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit and more playing on chess sites like chess.com on the internet during the pandemic. A few years ago I played in the RAC chess club and on our board one courteous banker launched, as a whim and [...]

September 8, 2021 // 0 Comments

The fascination of chess

There are three distinct phases to a chess game: the opening, middle and end game. I say “distinct” as in separate: however, a weak opening positionally will set you back in the middle game and many an end game is already lost in the middle game. The Grandmasters will study the openings for [...]

December 29, 2020 // 0 Comments

The Queen’s Gambit/Netflix

I have previously and favourably reviewed Walter Tevis novel The Queen’s Gambit in the Rust.   It tells the story of the rise of Kentucky born Beth Norman from orphan to world chess champion. You cannot make chess a watchable game as it’s far too static and technical but this film of seven [...]

October 30, 2020 // 0 Comments

Chess in lockdown

We all have our pastimes to pass the lockdown time and mine is chess. An Austrian opponent Motzmarkus who has the beating of me invited me to join his 15 player tournament on the internet chess site. I duly accepted. You had to move every two days which is normally too frequent for me but in [...]

May 24, 2020 // 0 Comments

Chess and Casablanca

One of the features of chess is that it mirrors life. How long have we hung onto a relationship, job or even credo when it is hopeless?  Same in chess. In an internet game my opponent had a weak central pawn which I pressurised. He committed more and more pieces to its defence.  I saw an elegant [...]

April 2, 2020 // 0 Comments

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