Archive for Columns
Sunday, February 15, 2009 22:23
One of the strangest news items concerning the upcoming World Chess Challenge match Topalov-Kamsky was published not on some obscure chess blog, but on the main page of the FIDE.com site. Its headline runs 'The chances of Topalov and Kamsky are fifty fifty'. I was instantly curious, since it seemed clear to me that Topalov was the absolute...
Thursday, February 12, 2009 15:00
Why do we play chess at all? Why bother? Today is an exceptionally good day to ask yourself that question. You'll probably answer: ' Because I like it!' Well, yes, but that was not the kind of 'why' I meant. Why do people have sex? Because they like it - doh! But why do they like it? This is the question Charles Darwin, who was born exactly 200...
Wednesday, February 04, 2009 5:23
All successful chess players are alike; every unsuccesful chess player is unsuccessful in his own way. I was eight years old and I was excited as any eight-year-old can be. My excitement was caused not by chess, but by the arrival of a book I had ordered, titled How to be a Spy. It was full of thrilling tips which could be used by our 'group' in...
Wednesday, January 07, 2009 22:22
In the first week of 2009, both Henrik Carlsen (representing his son Magnus) and Vladimir Kramnik (since December 28 the proud father of a baby girl) have expressed their thoughts on the current world championship cycle as well as their ideas for a future set-up. It's interesting to see that Kramnik's opinion is diametrically opposed to Carlsen's...
Tuesday, December 23, 2008 18:08
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.
Actually, the reason I clicked on the above...
Tuesday, November 11, 2008 23:18
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 ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äú it reminded...
Monday, October 06, 2008 2:08
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.
By Arne Moll
The fact that you could actually find out what 'theory', an...
Saturday, September 20, 2008 17:24
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.
By Arne Moll
There was practically no audience for the games. It was one of the last years of the nineties. I had put my books and chess sets on display on two tables and was reading a study book on the...
Sunday, July 20, 2008 7:06
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'.
By Arne Moll
In fact, the reason I did so badly in high school math was probably ......
Monday, July 14, 2008 6:29
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...
