Maverick Philosopher

Rick Kennedy must be an indefatigable researcher into chess arcana to have uncovered, deep in the bowels of the Maverick's ComBox, a discussion of plans, yet inchoate, by me, Ed Yetman, and Peter Lupu to organize a USCF quick-rated Jerome Gambit tournament in the historic mining town of Jerome, Arizona in early August of this year. In any case, I am pleased to have received an e-mail from Mr Kennedy, and reproduce below his thoughts on the Jerome Gambit.

I also recommend Kennedy's My Chess Psychology Bookshelf. My own chess library sports most of Kennedy's titles, including the following out-of-the-way volumes: Ariel Mengarini's Predicament in 2 Dimensions; Gerald Abrahams, The Chess Mind; and Kenneth Colby's Secrets of a Grandpatzer. Here is Kennedy on the Jerome:

A wonderful tribute. Includes a video clip from 1971. (Double hat tip: F. C. Mason.)

This came as a surprise to me (via Tom Coleman):

Washington DC, Jan 23, 2008 / 04:39 pm (CNA).- Legendary chess player Bobby Fischer, who made history by dethroning the Soviet chess king Boris Spassky in 1972, asked to be buried as a Catholic, according to officials of the Catholic Church in Iceland, where he had been living since 1992.

The famous and eccentric chess player, who died last Thursday at the age of 64, was buried Tuesday in Iceland during a private Catholic ceremony.

Read the rest.

Fischer's last words, apparently, were, "Nothing eases suffering like a human touch." See here and scroll to the end. (Via Chess Mind)

This YouTube clip despite its errors may be worth a look.

Story here and here.

Fischer's sad story well illustrates the perils of monomania. Ayn Rand did not realize how right she was in her 1974 "An Open Letter to Boris Spassky," (Philosophy: Who Needs It, p. 56):

Bobby Fischer's behavior . . . is a clear example of the clash between a chess expert's mind, and reality. The confident, disciplined, obviously brilliant player falls to pieces when he has to deal with the real world. He throws tantrums like a child, breaks agreements, makes arbitrary demands, and indulges in the kind of whim worship one touch of which in the playing of chess would disqualify him from a high school tournament. Thus he brings to the real world the very evil that made him escape it: irrationality.

May peace finally be upon him.

Here.

I just played over a wonderful little Evan's Gambit I found in Bill Wall's 500 Italian Miniatures. A search on 'Kaldegg-Zeissel' turned up the game here at the Kenilworth Chess Club. Scrolling down I found a game mislabelled 'Bonch-Mikhail Osmolovsky.' There is no player 'Bonch' as far as I know, nor a chessic 'Mikhail Osmolovsky'; but there was a player who rejoiced under the name 'Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bonch-Osmolovsky.' The correct title of the game in question, which can also be located here, is 'Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bonch-Osmolovsy v. Boris Fedorovich Baranov.'

I wonder if Bonch-Osmolovsky ever compared notes with Znosko-Borovsky. And you thought that 'Huckabee' was funny?

I just received my copy of the May 2007 Chess Life. On p. 8 we find a delightful assortment of chess anagrams. Here are a few:

• Vladimir Akopian: I nail a dim Karpov

• Alexander Grischuk: Crush a relaxed king

• Artyom Timofeev: Move forty — I mate!

• Susan Polgar: A gal on spurs

So I thought I'd try my hand with the names of chess-playing acquaintances. It turns out not to be easy. I could come up with only three, and only one of them is any good chessicly:

• Ed Yetman: Deny mate!

• Dennis Monokroussos: Monk, or Nous in Ed's son?

Since Dennis is sensitive about his name, and may take umbrage, I'll provide three (count 'em three) unflattering self-anagrams:

• Bill Vallicella: All Vail lice ball.

• Bill Vallicella: All vice! Ill ball.

• Bill Vallicella: All vice! I'll ball!

Give it a try. No computers! The rules allow the addition of punctuation.

I learned just now, banging on the above hyperlink, that 'Mr. Mojo Risin'' is an anagram of 'Jim Morrison.' How about: abnormal intellect = malcontent liberal?

Arguably, the most famous of all Latin anagrams was penned by Schopenhauer: anus obit, onus abit. For explanation, see The Proctology of a Pessimist.

UPDATE: Using an anagram engine, I found 'Mated, nay drew!' which is an anagram of 'Edward Yetman.'

H. J. R. Murray, A History of Chess (Oxford UP, 1913), p. 164:

Hippocrates and Galen apparently found in chess a potent antidote to diarrhoea and erysipelas, and prescribed it with success, while Aristotle figures among the many hypothetical inventors of chess. Another story tells how Galen once met a friend whom he had not seen for some time, and learnt that he had been into the country to see a farm which he had purchased with the result of his gains at chess, whereupon the physician exclaimed with what sounds like a strong flavour of irony, 'What a fine thing chess is, and how profitable!' Pure fiction, the whole of it, of course.

Jeremy Silman, in his review of Bob Basalla, Chess in the Movies, observes, "Chess players always seem to get excited when they notice a chessboard in a TV show or movie." Yes indeed. And they tend to get especially excited when it is set up wrong as in the shot to the left from a by now well known Rozerem commercial. Squint hard and you may be able to see that the kings are on the queens' squares and vice versa.

Edward Winter reviews Basalla's book here. And the indefatigable Bill Wall, apparently drawing on Basalla's efforts, lists 1704 movies with chess scenes. I have a number of Cleveland Chess Bulletins from the late 1980's during Basalla's tenure as editor.

Dennis Monokroussos closed down his excellent chess weblog on 17 October of last year. A moment ago, I stopped by his site to see whether it was still available, and to my pleasure I discovered that Dennis is back at it. Apparently, he spent New Year's Eve climbing back on the blogic treadmill. If I were a liberal, I'd say Dennis is 'addicted' to chess and to blogging about it. But I'm no liberal. So I'll just say that Monokroussos has a ferocious passion for the game and wants to share it with us. Welcome back to the 'sphere, Dennis.

Victor must have time to burn if he has time to start a chess blog. But he needs to learn how to import diagrams. After he learns, he can teach me.

Story here. Jews have made outstanding contributions to culture, out of all proportion to their numbers, in many fields. See Jews in Chess:

In his 1978 book, The Rating of Chess Players, Past and Present, Professor Arpad Elo numerically rated some 476 major tournament players from the nineteenth century onward. Of the fifty-one highest ranked players, approximately one-half were Jewish, or of Jewish descent.

Joe from New York writes:

I have a question about chess. Would you be kind enough to tell me in your opinion what is the one chess book a person should have? What is your favorite? I am presently reading [Irving Chervev's] Logical Chess Move by Move.

I am a patzer.

I think your blog is great.

An Internet Chess Club first for me: my opponent requested an adjournment in a one-minute game for continuation later. I ignored his request. He was rated about 300 points above me. Go figure.

Why, with so many painful losses to my 'credit,' do I continue to submit my aging self to the rigors of tournament chess? Because the strenuous life has a property Bobby Fischer once ascribed to 1. P-K4: it is "best by test."

Urine check!

I didn't make that up. It was at some cheesy Knight's Inn or similar venue in Phoenix in the early-to-mid 'nineties, when Myron Lieberman presided in his inimitable manner over well-attended tournaments and Ed Yetman, bandanna around his neck and sidearm strapped to his hip, manned the book concession. Say what you want about the chess scene, it is chock full of colorful characters.

When I lived in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, I was within walking distance of the old Arabica coffee house on Coventry Road. It was quite a scene and there I met numerous interesting characters of the sort one expects to find in coffee houses: would-be poets and novelists, pseudo-intellectual bullshitters of every stripe, and a wide range of chess players from patzers to masters. It was there that I became acquainted with International Master Calvin Blocker. Observing a game of mine one day, he kibitzed, "You'd be lucky to be mated." Here is his story.

If a patzer can worry about an opponent's cheating, think what it must be like if you are world champion! Story here.

"I play chess to make money and meet women."

That's the handle of a player at the Internet Chess Club. It is one of the more clever handles. The legendary weakness of f7 is illustrated in this blitz miniature which I just uncorked at the ICC: 1. e4 c5 2. d4 cxd4 3. c3 dxc3 4. Nf3 cxb2 5. Bxb2 Nc6 6. Bc4 d5 7. Bxd5 Nb4 8. Bxf7+ {Black resigns} 1-0 (If 9. Kxf7, then Black loses his queen.)

This website can boast some strong USCF rated chess players among its elite Commenter Corps, including a Master and an Expert. Here they are ranked according to their ratings. Click on their names to see their sites.

• Dennis Monokroussos 2352

• Dr. Tim McGrew (Life Member) 2122

• Dr. Alan Rhoda 1955

• Dr. Victor Reppert (Life Member) 1900

• Edward Yetman III (Life Member) 1827

• Robert Pearson 1613

What do these six have in common? Their ratings are higher than that of your humble Grandpatzer correspondent who presently languishes at his rating floor of 1500, having been beaten down by a horde of overrated scholastic players. The first five also have in common that they are teachers of philosophy.

Addendum: Not to slight non-USCF rated players who comment here, Malcolm Pollack beat me in two casual correspondence games.

GM Wojtkiewicz is dead at 43. (Via Steve Kamp) And here at Seoul Hero you can take a gander at the world's first chess computer.

Marcel Duchamp abandoned art for chess because of the latter's superior uselessness. Art objects, after all, have exchange value as commodities, and may make the artist some money. But with few exceptions chess lies entirely beyond the sphere of the utile. In this sense, the art of the 64 squares is the highest art. There is little danger that Caissa's acolytes will fill their bellies from her service. There is just no market for the artistry of chess games, not even those of the very highest quality. Here you can review some of Duchamp's games.

In a brutal and insane world chess is an oasis of order limited in breadth but inexhaustible in depth.

I had three points going into the sixth and final round of the National Open chess tournament in Las Vegas last weekend. My opponent also had three points. Anyone with a plus score -- 3 1/2 points or better -- wins a $50 gift certificate redeemable at the chess store. So my opponent proposed that we agree to a draw before the commencement of play. Realizing that neither of us had a shot at the prize money, I reasoned as follows. Agreeing to a draw insures $50 to both me and my opponent whereas playing for a win (i) insures that only one of us will earn $50 and (ii) does not insure that that one will be me. So I both maximize utility ($100 is a greater good than $50) and guarantee myself a plus score and $50 if I agree to the 'grandpatzer draw.' So I agreed to the draw and we played the game anyway for the fun of it.

What say you, loyal readers? Was my behavior in any way objectionable?

A double tip of the hat to Kevin Kim and Seoul Hero for directing me to this Guardian article about GM Lev Aronian.

I have long held that, as a general rule admitting of many exceptions, the size of a player's library stands in an inverse relation to his chess rating: the more books, the lower the rating. Compensation may play a role. If one cannot play well, one can at least stuff one's head with lore. In a similar compensatory vein, 'Cactus Ed' Abbey once wisecracked, "The bigger the truck, the smaller the penis."

Take the above as a sort of jocose exaggeration. I don't mean to imply that if a patzer like me buys five more chess books, then his rating will go down. In my case, it can't go down: I'm languishing at my rating floor!

A very good post by The Chess Mind.

Caissa calls, so my dear Philosophia must be relegated to the back burner for the space of a day. I hope the bitch-goddess won't mind too much and demand her pound of flesh.

In the meantime, the penetrating 'Ockham' has showered me with a number of outstanding comments to which I will respond with pleasure in due course. Please read them. You can get to his sites from them, and I recommend that you do.

I bought Dennett's new book on religion yesterday. I'm itching to get my blogomaniacal claws into it.

There are cartoons we never forget. One in Chess Life some years back depicted two intense guys bent over a chess board. The caption read, "Eat, drink, and beat Harry."

Emmanuel Lasker would have like that. He was always going on about the role of Kampf, stuggle, in chess. Lasker would also have liked this quotation lifted from Michael Gilleland's erudite weblog:

After all, what would life be without fighting, I should like to know? From the cradle to the grave, fighting, rightly understood, is the business, the real highest, honestest business of every son of man. Every one who is worth his salt has his enemies, who must be beaten, be they evil thoughts and habits in himself, or spiritual wickednesses in high places, or Russians, or Border-ruffians, or Bill, Tom, or Harry, who will not let him live his life in quiet till he has thrashed them. (Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays, Part II, Chapter V.)

Next time I'm paired with Harry, I'm going to thrash that meshuggeneh patzer and I'm going to thrash him good.

I was shocked to hear (via Steve Kamp) that Igor Ivanov died at age 58 on November 17th in St. George, Utah. When we spoke at the U.S. Open in Phoenix in August, he mentioned that he had cancer, but he appeared healthy. Victor Reppert had just introduced us, and we ended up talking about Rush Limbaugh among other things. He said he was a regular listener. I suggested that Michael Medved's show was more substantial, but Ivanov seemed unlikely to give up his allegiance.

Just a couple of days ago I was examining Monokroussos-Ivanov (Reno, 1985) in which Igor had the Black pieces against Dennis' Smith-Morra Gambit.

See here for a Wikipedia entry on Ivanov. 882 of Igor's games are here.

One should always insist on this rule with every opponent in every (non-blitz) game whether serious or casual, rated or unrated. You will save yourself a lot of unnecessary vexation if you do. Now you might think you knew all there was to know about the touch-move rule; but if you are like me, you would have been wrong.

The rule no doubt applies to pieces on the board, but what about those off the board?

Malcolm Pollack, tired of debating qualia wants to debate chess. He has thrown down the gauntlet over at Red Hot Pawn (to be added to my sidebar) and I have risen to the challenge. The site appears to be an excellent venue for e-mail correspondence chess. Better I should be corresponding here than blitzing over at the Internet Chess Club.

Correspondence chess approximates unto pure chess. It is chess measured by the calendar, not the clock. In over-the-board chess, the clock rules, but as taskmaster. In blitz however, the clock dominates, becoming a weapon in the game and not merely a regulator of it.

You might expect chess to be banned in a Left coast place like Berserkley. See previous humorous post. Unfortunately, chess actually has been banned in a couple of places in fly-over country, places where one would not expect to find a high concentration of either PC-heads or Taliban. (As I recall, the Taliban's beef was that the Royal Game is one of chance; they also took a dim view of kite-flying for reasons that escape me.)

BERKELEY, CA - The Berkeley Board of Education voted last night to ban the game of Chess from all of its elementary, junior high and high schools. The board claims that Chess has a negative influence on students because of the backwards and outdated thinking that was responsible for creating the game.

One board member, Claudia Starsniffer, compiled a list of seven grievances against Chess. Starsniffer's list claims,

Dennis Monokroussos, the Chess Mind, offers us another dose of masterly opening analysis.

All praise to the parents, teachers, coaches, tournament directors, organizers, and support staff who make possible the influx of young blood into the ranks of chess players. The scholastic players — as they are called — are the future of the game. But I hate getting paired with low-rated hyperactive kids and sullen teenagers whose ratings belie their actual playing strength. One of their annoying characteristics is that they don't know when to resign. Apparently, they are taught to play on until mated in the off-chance that their grizzled opponent will either have a heart attack or stupidly stumble into stalemate. In the game part of which I am about to reproduce, my young opponent played on in a position in which I was up a rook and had two connected passed pawns under royal escort! It took 77 moves to dispatch the little rascal. (Besides saying something about him, that says something about my endgame technique.) I was hoping to have a much longer conversation with Victor Reppert than I turned out having.

Anyway, the opening is interesting — something I worked out during ICC blitz games — and will perhaps elicit some masterly comments from Dennis Monokroussos.

Vallicella (1500)- Chakraborty (1297) U. S. Open Phoenix, Arizona, 13 August 2005 Round 8 Caro-Kann Exchange Gunderam Variation

1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. ed cd 4. c4 Nf6 5. Nf3 Bg4 6. c5 Nc6 7. Bb5 e6 8. Qa4 Qc7 9. Ne5 Rc8 10. Bf4 a6 11. Bxc6+ bc 12. Qxa6 Rg8 13. Nxg4 Qxf4 14. Qxc8+ Ke7 . . . 1-0

I'll stop here, since White is now up a rook and has a won game.

Chess master Dennis Monokroussos, the Chess Mind, presents some penetrating analysis of a recent game of mine from the U.S. Open. You can play through the game move by move and read his commentary by simply clicking your mouse.

The U. S. Open ended yesterday, and I hoped to get some blogging in today, but I am still exhausted from the nine round tournament and the lack of sleep. But I am glad I attended, and am again all fired up about chess.

My interest in chess waxes and wanes, but I cannot imagine ever giving it up. The game is too rich, too fascinating, and too deeply satisfying. Every game is different and some are remembered for years. A player came up to me and recalled a Scotch Gambit I had played against him years before and pointed that I had lost because I had played such-and-such. Even patzers have long memories of their adventures on the 64 squares.

Back to blog tomorrow.

I played like an idiot in rounds one and two, losing both games, the first to a player rated 1976, the second to one rated 1780. I am sitting on my rating floor of 1500. (I've earned the right not to drop any lower than this, no matter how shoddy my play.)

The venue is pleasant, however. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and built in the 1920's, the Arizona Biltmore certainly beats the crummy dives at which most low-level tournaments are held.

It's nice renewing old acquaintances. I hadn't see Crazy Harry in a couple of years. He once had the dubious distinction of playing more USCF rated tournament games in a year than any other USCF member. Unfortunately, all his play does him no good; his rating hovers around 1500. He's a sort of chessic Woody Allen, a neurotic obsessive who sucks his fingers, tears his hair, and double records all his moves: he fills out the standard score sheet, as the rules require, but also enters his moves into his own score book, with plenty of frantic erasing and re-entering. He must have hundreds of these books cluttering his house. A true wild man, he never arises from his chair, but springs out of it, typically knocking it over. I've had to calm him down more than once. One time I gave him an ultimatum: if he sucks his fingers, then we play with his equipment.

A crazy world, the world of chess. Here is an 80 year old guy that looks like Yosemite Sam with a white beard down to his belt seated across from a seven year old girl. Over there, a guy plays an entire long game with a motorcycle helmet on. Some show up for play in a filthy T-shirt, then ask to borrow a pen.

Chess, a game of reason, attracts a fair amount of superstitious folk. One guy I never saw at a tournament without a ridiculously small, beat-to-hell and dirty cap upon his head, his good luck charm.

But I've got to gird my loins for the next round.