Musings on chess, and lesser things
Humble apologies for my delayed posting. I have been running myself ragged doing practice questions for the GRE. While I am proud to report that I have indeed expanded my vocabulary by 500 new words (albeit archaic, useless ones that I will never utter), the quantitative side is driving me insane. Two months ago, I …
Many thanks for the messages people sent after my anti-Karma day, inquiring as to my heath/car/sanity (mainly the latter, unfortunately). Your concerns, however obtusely directed, were well appreciated. However, I can state that we are back to business as usual. Fi has kindly lent me her purple Holden Barina, which I drive with a masculinity-secured pride. Work …
Dear Karma, Hi. How are you? I must apologise for not writing more often, but, to be honest, for the most part, I don’t feel I have to. For the most part, you seem to do your job commendably well, and I have no real need to interfere, much less comment, on your existence. On …
First of all, let me equivocally thank the many of you who emailed me to brag about how many of the words you knew. Particular thanks to those chess players who wrote in to tell me they each knew all of them, thus negating the one viable excuse for my illiteracy. Phoey. On the plus …
Guaranteed to break the ice at parties. I don’t like being bad at things. Nobody does, of course, but in my case, I particularly loathe being the worst at something. It has come to my attention that, of my six work colleagues and I, I have by far the most limited vocabulary. I can, of …
A really unfortunately timed blog post just then, it turns out. Topalov just played, as my mate Tritty describes it, “a blunder not even my 1500-rated student would make”. I think that’s unnecessarily harsh. Towards 1500’s, that is. There’s playing ballsy, and then there’s just straight out blundering. I have to say, I’m surprised. Anand …
As I type this, the 12th and final regular game of the world chess championships match is about half-way in. To mind, it’s heading inevitably towards a draw, leaving us the prospect of quick-play tiebreak games on Thursday. I was expecting – fearing – a boring, conservative opening by both players. But, inconceivably, the players …
Possibly not equally important pieces of news for everyone, but those are the headlines in my life today. Probably still in that order. Of course, the flu is at least partially my fault. The grueling spectator schedule of working days and chess-watching nights was bound to catch up with me eventually. Still, I can’t help but feel …
Contrary to what you might expect, world chess championship matches are anything but boring affairs – in fact, the sagas that are played out both on and off the board often read something like an Ian Flemming novel. The infamous Fischer – Spassky match of the Cold War era, the scandalous Soviet-versus-defector Kortschnoi – Karpov …
There are many expressions and phrases peculiar to the chess world, which, when combined with opening names and the use of chess notation, often make overheard conversations between chess players completely unintelligible to the average member of society. Terms like “patzer”, “kibitzer”, “zugswang” and the oft-misinterpreted “prophylaxis” frequently adorn the chess enthusiast’s vocabulary, much to …