Who’s Britney’s manager?

Do you know who Britney Spears’ manager is? Do you care? Okay, I admit having read a news item about the breakup between Britney Spears and her previous manager, but, of course, that was not because of the news itself, but because it involved Britney. And I have absolutely no idea who her new manager is.
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FIDE: a change we can believe in

FIDE is failing terribly in dealing with the Topalov-Kamsky match in a correct and transparent way. It’s also clear to virtually everyone that the FIDE President and his staff have generally ruined the whole system in the past ten years or more, despite their efforts to organize a lot of events. Things have gone horribly wrong – it reminded me of the the war in Iraq. In FIDE, too, we need change. But how can we make it a change we can believe in? Read more

A scientific standard for chess writing?

It’s well-known that chess is not only a game, not only art, but also science. I myself became fascinated by chess not because you could beat your granddad with it, or because you could play beautiful attacking games, but because you could look things up afterwards. Read more

Alexandra and I

I was selling books in the windy hallway of De Moriaan in Wijk aan Zee for Chess and Go Shop Het Paard. It was quiet, a regular week day. Read more

Chess and math: a happy couple?

Chess and math have always slept side by side. But are they a happy couple? I think every chess player has had the experience of someone asking you, in high school, if your math grades were as good as your chess results. Sadly, for me the answer was often ‘no’. Read more

Lewis Carroll’s chess problem

One of the strangest books I’ve ever read is Bach en het Getal (Bach and the Number) by the Dutch authors Kees van Houten en Marinus Kasbergen. The main thesis of the book is that within the music of the great composer J.S. Bach, various messages, numerological clues and strange links hide just behind the surface. A recent article on the chess problem of Lewis Carroll that appeared on Susan Polgar’s weblog reminded me of this curious book on Bach. Read more

In the spirit of the rules?

Yesterday, Peter wrote an interesting article about the Turkish club competition. I was especially fascinated by the team-setup. Read more

Short draws - I love ‘em!

Are draws, or even quick draws, a problem? You might think so if you read the endless strain of articles on ChessBase (creating their own hype, they’ve decided to call it ‘The Great Draw Debate‘) and elsewhere about the so-called ‘problem of short draws’. It sometimes feels like a real crusade. Read more

The primaries and Kasparov

For years, Kasparov has claimed that life imitates chess. Until now, I’ve had a difficult time believing this, if only because life was here before chess, and because chess is a model of life rather than the other way around. Read more

Supposedly extinct chess players

The game of chess attracts many different people. In Amsterdam chess cafes you will see artists, tramps, intellectuals and experienced hustlers. Many have written about them, usually in painful stereotypes, sometimes in amiable poetry.

By Arne Moll

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Order and chaos in chess

Is chess ultimately governed by fixed rules and logic, or is it just a ‘random’ game? A comparison with science.

by Arne Read more