Chess Notes Archives

January 23, 2012 7:54 PM

Chess Notes Archives
posted by Trurl (15 comments total)

Chess overload... Reminds me of this: Chess Fever by Pudovkin.
posted by pmcp at 8:12 PM on January 23, 2012 [2 favorites]

Fun

'Morphy died ‘according to some accounts, in his bath, surrounded by women’s shoes’.'

'In the 12th round Frydman started his shenennigans [sic]! During his game with Miguel Najdorf, Frydman ran to the phone after every move, placing long-distance calls collect, ordering such important articles as a bicycle from Germany, a flute from Hungary, etc. The next day he had to be locked up in his room ... he insisted in walking around in the lobby in his Adam’s suit. Gideon Stahlberg, who had the misfortune of having the room next to Frydman, couldn’t sleep at night. His (opponent) next-door neighbor was calling out check and check-mate all night long in a very loud voice.'

‘During the Second World War Dr Alexander Alekhine, then Champion of the World, participated in a number of tournaments. In 1942 he played in Prague, under the sponsorship of Germany’s Nazi Youth Association. There he met 18-year-old Klaus Junge of Leipzig, who was acclaimed as a future world champion by the German press, and who was stabbed to death in a chess club fight in 1942!’

Wonderful!
posted by unliteral at 8:27 PM on January 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

Fischer's description of Tal here, scroll down, recalls a hero of my youth.
posted by StickyCarpet at 8:38 PM on January 23, 2012

I just watched Bobby Fischer Against the World on Netflix - an excellent documentary. It's nice to see some stuff from Fischer's best days.
posted by not_that_epiphanius at 10:40 PM on January 23, 2012

More Michail Tal.
posted by StickyCarpet at 12:08 AM on January 24, 2012

If any Hungarians are reading this FPP, could they please MeMail me? I want to find something out.
posted by Joe in Australia at 12:52 AM on January 24, 2012

My Rosetta Stone for Chess correspondence has always been The Gossage-Varbedian Papers.
posted by ShutterBun at 2:52 AM on January 24, 2012

(My earlier post on Tal is here.)
posted by Trurl at 5:22 AM on January 24, 2012

I'm off to try the Swiss Gambit. Never heard of it. Sounds ridiculous.
posted by MtDewd at 6:26 AM on January 24, 2012

Love it!
posted by Renoroc at 9:10 AM on January 24, 2012

Edward Winter is pretty crazy. He seems to devote most of his waking hours to finding dozens of nitpicky historical errors whenever a new chess book is published. I've never seen any evidence that he enjoys actually playing the game (which doesn't mean that he doesn't, of course).
posted by dfan at 12:25 PM on January 24, 2012

Is there a web app where I can paste the game notation ("1 f4 e5 2 fxe5 d6 3 exd6 Bxd6 4 g3 Qg5 5 Nf3 Qxg3+ 6 hxg3 Bxg3 mate.") and play back the game?
posted by event at 5:35 PM on January 24, 2012

Is there a web app where I can paste the game notation ("1 f4 e5 2 fxe5 d6 3 exd6 Bxd6 4 g3 Qg5 5 Nf3 Qxg3+ 6 hxg3 Bxg3 mate.") and play back the game?


If you search for "paste pgn" you'll find some web pages that let you paste in chess games in PGN (Portable Game Notation, which is the standard format). Unfortunately, the above isn't quite PGN (there should be a period after the move number, for one thing, and "Bxg3 mate" should probably be "Bxg3#"). It's possible that one of the pages might be more forgiving about input format.
posted by dfan at 5:43 PM on January 24, 2012

Try this place and in the Enter PGN text box, paste in :
1. f4 e5 2. fxe5 d6 3. exd6 Bxd6 4. g3 Qg5 5. Nf3 Qxg3+ 6. hxg3 Bxg3#
Then click the Load PGN button. Then you can step through it or click the Play button.
posted by MtDewd at 5:10 AM on January 25, 2012

I never got more than grade-schooler good at chess and, all the actual positions and notation leave me absolutely cold, but I am loving all the historical and characterological stuff and the odd bits of chess clippings and such. Treasure trove.

Tom Webster's 1922 "CHAMPIONS OF CHESS" cartoons are great; there's no anchor for the actual spot on the page, but scroll up from this Boden's Mate entry and there they are. I didn't expect to be laughing out loud at 90 year old editorial cartoons from the Daily Mail, but here we are.
posted by cortex at 3:50 PM on January 25, 2012