Save the rainforest – buy a sustainable chess set
March 5, 2010 by Arne Moll · 22 Comments
Chess players love wooden chess sets for their massive, easy-playing pieces, their obvious superiority over cheap plastic stuff and their distinguished classical look. But what about their sustainability? Read more
The endgame technique of a 99-year-old
March 3, 2010 by Peter Doggers · 33 Comments
He watched Max Euwe become World Champion. He chatted with Emanuel Lasker, and saved dozens of Jewish babies during the Second World War. Last night I had the privilege to play a club game against 99-year-old Professor Dr Johan van Hulst. I couldn’t beat him. Read more
What Your Body’s Thinking About
February 4, 2010 by Arne Moll · 34 Comments
There’s a picture of Mikhail Tal that has always seemed to me the ultimate chess player’s pose: Tal’s looking at the board, chin on his thumb, his other arm folded under his fist, utter determination in his eyes. But what was Tal actually thinking at the time the picture was taken? Read more
Why Wijk?
January 31, 2010 by Arne Moll · 18 Comments
Chess players, perhaps insisting on their world-wide status as ’smart people’, have always seemed to me more formalistic and pedantic than your average customer at the grocery’s. But sometimes being ‘wrong’ is much more fun. Read more
Time travel in chess
January 15, 2010 by Arne Moll · 32 Comments
How would you fare as a chessplayer being transported back in time? Would your contemporary theoretical opening knowledge pay off? Would your understanding of modern ideas in chess strategy trump older concepts about chess? Read more
Aronian, Agassi and the Project Triangle of Chess
January 5, 2010 by Arne Moll · 23 Comments
Every chess player, no matter how weak, has a high point in his career. Mine occurred in May 2007, during the last round of the Dutch Team Chess Championship. I was playing in the Master League, the highest level in Dutch chess, and I was surrounded by all the top players of The Netherlands. Moreover, I had prepared a spectacular line which was sure to make the headlines the next day. In reality, I was displaying typical amateur behaviour. Read more
Carlsen in TIME and the art of good journalism
December 26, 2009 by Arne Moll · 48 Comments
Yesterday TIME featured a short interview with the new world’s new number 1 Magnus Carlsen. Despite the fact that there were only ten questions with relatively short answers, I liked it so much that it got me thinking about chess journalism in general. Why can’t interviews with chess players always be this sharp? Read more
‘Anand to have Carlsen as a second’
December 24, 2009 by Peter Doggers · 30 Comments
Two interviews with World Champion Viswanathan Anand have appeared in Indian newspapers this week, and in one of them he makes a remarkable statement. To the question whether GM Ganguly will again be in his team of seconds for the match against Topalov, the World Champion answers he’s doesn’t know yet. “But one thing is for sure, Magnus Carlsen (the world No. 2) will be one of the seconds.” Ehm… say again? Read more
Computer skeptic no more
December 13, 2009 by Arne Moll · 40 Comments
With the first decade drawing to a close, many sites look back on the past ten years and publish their lists of ‘greatest’ movies and books, most influential people, most important historical events and most significant technological developments. In chess, it’s not difficult to establish the most important change, which is of course the rise of the now-indispensible engine as a tool for chess analysis. What’s more interesting is the change in attitude that it has inspired. Read more
Too late to leave?
December 2, 2009 by Editors · 174 Comments
“In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock,” said Harry Lime in Orson Welles’ The Third Man. In FIDE, for twenty years they lacked democracy and love for chess, and what did that produce? The zero-tolerance rule. Read more
