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

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Annual Survey 2007

31 December is the day for looking back and we’re going to do the same over here, because it’s kind of a tradition already. It was a fine one, this first ChessVibes year. Yes, first, because the first thing we did in 2007 was throwing the old name Doggers-schaak in the bin and replace it for the now familiar and trusted ChessVibes. Back then, we couldn’t expect what 2007 would bring… full story »

Wii Chess

How do we make chess more popular for a wide audience? A very logical method is to start with kids. And what is occupation no. 1 among today’s youngsters? Of course, gaming. So it could have been great news that Nintendo’s latest Wii game is called “Chess”, potentially one big worldwide advertisement for the royal game. But alas, we have to agree with Wired: it’s just ugly! full story »

“Let’s go interview Kasparov”

“What the heck, let’s just go. If you don’t try…” This was all I needed to convince co-editor Arne, yesterday around five in the afternoon, to join. Join my foolish, naive but also bold, and, above all, fun plan to travel to Lint, Belgium, to interview Gary Kasparov. If we would explain that we had immediately jumped into the car when we heard about the simul, that we came all the way from Amsterdam and after several detours we had found that television studio in that little Belgium town right in time, who on earth would refuse a small interview? full story »

Bottom chess

Once in a while people send us links to chess videos on the internet. This week someone drawed our attention to an episode of the comedy series Bottom, written by Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson. (Older visitors might know these two as Rik and Vyvyan from The Young Ones.) In this episode Eddie (Edmondson) tries to teach Richie (Rik) chess. A good one for a Friday afternoon. full story »

How to make a chess board?

Always wanted to know how chess boards are made? Well, you collect some wood, saw some squares, take some glue and… Nopes. Today you can find out how a professional carpenter does the job. In this case, the Wood Guy. (I came across this video at blip.tv, one of the many YouTube-like video sites.) full story »

Underprivileged Peruvian children like chess too

The city of Cusco in Peru is mainly known as a backpacker resort, very close to the Inca town Machu Picchu. Like many cities in South-America, Cusco (about 300.000 inhabitants) has many slums where mostly immigrants live, coming from the surrounding countryside. In the Cusco slums thousands of children live and work on the streets without any form of protection by adults. They try their luck as vendors in the streets, but they are more likely to find themselves in trouble. Child labour, abuse, violence, malnourishment and for some also drug abuse (glue snorting) are the daily facts of their life. The Inti Huahuacuna Foundation ensure daytime-shelter for these underprivileged children, e.g. by organizing chess training sessions. full story »

The grandmaster is to move

The attentive daily newspaper readers won’t have missed it: a citizens riot in Russia, and all this led by ex-chess player Garry Kasparov. Chessvibes brings you – in cooperation with Olaf Koens of the Dutch quality blog Sargasso – a piece of background. Who is Garry Kasparov, and what does he want?

In December I (Olaf) wrote before about the opposition in Russia, a richly coloured collection of all, left-wing and right-wing, who are against Putin. The march in Moscow was clearly not a success, and even in Saint Petersburg – a city that has seen a revolution before – nobody had great expectations. Luckily, the opposite appeared to be true. More than 5,000 people stood up against the broadly shouldered power. Read here the stories of the printed Dutch press that perched down in ‘Piter’ by train.

How strong was Garry Kasparov as a chess player? The answer is quite simple: the best, ever. Because that’s what the experts agree on. Here a short biography, followed by an analysis of his recent speech in New York. full story »

The Navara Fanclub

One of the most remarkable participants in the Corus Chess tournament was the Czech top talent David Navara. Navara (22, rating 2719) is a special boy. Extremely modest, polite, apologizing all the time, he makes an unworldly as well as a heart-warming impression, enhanced by his monotonous manner of speaking and his habit of looking at the floor while he talks. In the pressroom people soon started calling him ‘cutie’ and ‘honey’ - words normally reserved for certain player’s wifes, female journalists and press employees. full story »

Matten: new Dutch literary magazine

There will be a new Dutch literary chess magazine. MATTEN, Schaakverhalen, will be published twice a year. The magazine, which is almost a book by itself, will be about chess and chess culture. MATTEN will focuss on (semi)literary non-fiction, not on chess games or chess technique. full story »

Profundity at the MEC during Corus

Soon it will start again, the greatest chess tournament in the world. Wonderful to participate in and an excellent opportunity to meet old chess friends again. Nowhere else you’ll find so many (top) chess players together as in Wijk aan Zee. For those who like to have some explanation about the games, there’s even a special commentary tent where professional commentary is given. full story »

Annual Survey

For a while I wasn’t sure if I wanted to join in the well-known end-of-the-year navel staring: the annual surveys. But simply too many great things were going on in the first year of Chessvibes (formerly Doggers-schaak), so looking back is actually a good idea. full story »

Another Kasparov commercial

Tonigh I ran into another Kasparov commercial on YouTube. It’s about Kasparov and his fighting against the Machine; the company is Pepsi. The plot (as far as one can speak about a plot in a commercial) isn’t that strong in my opinion, but the styling is nice. Watch the reference to HAL-2000 (the eye of which an image was used in an article by rapanui the other day). full story »

J’adoubies nominations opened

In the world of motion pictures, not only the well-known Academy Awards (a.k.a. Oscars) exist, but also the Golden Raspberries (’razzies’): the awards for worst film, worst actress, et cetera. This always leads to hilarious news articles like: “Madonna’s movie Swept Away has stolen the show at Hollywood’s Golden Raspberry awards, or Razzies, for the worst films of the year. The desert island romance, starring Madonna and directed by her husband Guy Ritchie, took five Razzies on Saturday, including worst picture, worst actress and worst director.” For ages the chess world has its own Oscar, which is awarded yearly by the Russian magazine 64, and since recently there are also Razzies for chess players: the J’adoubies. full story »

The game of chess as the universe

Every chess player knows the comparisons between the game of chess and war, between the game of chess and ‘life’. But computers show that the game of chess should actually not be compared to real life combat or life itself, but rather to… the universe. full story »

They play chess at the Asian Games

Yesterday the Asian Games were officially opened in Doha, Quatar. The what? Well, we’re talking about one of the biggest sport events of the world, which is organised for the 15th time already. The name suspects a kind of Olympic Games for Asian countries and that’s what it is: it includes about 40 sports and more than 45 disciplines, among them athletics, archery, golf, wrestling and rugby. And for the first time at the Asian Games they will also play chess. full story »

Toiletgate good for corporate sponsorship?

It’s a well-known dilemma. A young author makes his debut with a novel. The book reviewer has to plough through a huge pile of books every week, and he chooses this debut novel for his next review. The book is crap, so in his article he burns it to the ground. Should the author be happy to see his book being reviewed or not? full story »

Sympathetic and slightly naive

Every Dutchman has heard of Roel van Duijn, and every Dutch chess player has heard of the Roel van Duijn Gambit, which starts after 1.e4 c5 2.a3!? It’s not the first time someone has written about his gambit; Schaaknieuws wrote about it and early this year, Gert Ligterink wrote an article about the gambit on his chess blog. In Holland, there are a number of strong players who frequently play the gambit: GM Yge Visser is the most well-known (see Ligterink’s article) and I also know that Eelco Kuijpers and Gertjan van der Hoeven sometimes move their a-pawn on move 2. Actually Van der Hoeven played the gambit against me last week. full story »

Kasparov, managers en de media

Of course you replayed Kasparov’s pretty games from the Credit Suisse blitz tournament, but did you also read the Kasparov interview on the Credit Suisse website? The first question was: “What do chess players and managers have in common?”

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Prijsvraag!

Tussen 3 en 26 augustus zit ik in de Verenigde Staten. In deze periode dus even geen dagelijkse berichtgeving van toernooien en ander interessant schaaknieuws, hoewel mijn gastredacteuren wellicht het nodige zullen schrijven. Wel hebben we vanaf morgen een echte prijsvraag!! full story »

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