10 Nov

ByDrDave

Welcome to Max

I teased a couple of you with a Very Hard Mate In One last week, and found another one.

I have collected some more!  21 more in fact.

Similar Posts

  • Exeter Juniors (3-1) Newton Abbot Juniors 1st April 2011

    ByDrDave

    Ken Bloodworth, who donated the Cup for this junior chess league, died just over a week ago aged 96, playing chess even in his last year. A wonderful man and a player, who did so much for junior chess, not just in Devon but all over Britain.

    Obituary at Keverel Chess: http://www.keverelchess.com/ken-bloodworth-1914-2011/
    Biography at Keverel Chess: http://www.keverelchess.com/k-j-bloodworth-25-06-1914/

    {This back-and-forth game was settling into a tense endgame when White allowed
    a snap mate. Both sides allowed and missed chances!}

    {Black won a pawn and a piece early on and steered the game to a calm win.}

    { White grabbed a loose piece but lost it back to a neat Black tactic. White came up with a tactic of his own to win the exchange, and swapped off to win.}

    {Some loose play by Black gave White a pawn in the opening, and White swapped
    his way to the win.}

  • Said the Elephant to the Bishop…

    ByDrDave


    “What’s this piece called?”
    “A Bishop.”
    “What is it in Spanish, Sophie?”
    “Alfil”
    “And in French, Agathe?”
    “Fou!”

    Therein lies a story…

    The old Arab form of chess had a piece called the elephant, which, unlike most elephants I know, could jump two squares at a time, diagonally. And ‘al-fil’ means the Elephant in Arabic (Pil in Persian).

    But if you have a lump of stone, or wood, and you want to show that it is an elephant, you might carve two curving lines on it for tusks, or make two points on it to show the same.

    And if you then showed it to someone from England, you might hear them say, what’s that, a Bishop’s hat?

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Mitre_evolution.gif

    And if you showed it to someone from France, you might hear them say, what’s that, a hat for a jester, the court fool?

    http://a401.idata.over-blog.com/0/26/53/98/logos/eeg.jpg

    Here Bruno Fauditti has swapped a jester’s hat for a metal funnel:
    https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temp%C3%AAte_sur_l%27%C3%A9chiquier

    Now in modern Western chess, this piece doesn’t hop a little way, it can run right across the board. So the Germans adopted a different name for this piece, Läufer, the runner. There used to be played a version of chess in some parts of Germany which had both the old short-hopping Bishop, and the new long-running Currier, and that variant is called Courier Chess.

    http://www.chessvariants.com/historic.dir/courier.html

    There is a famous painting of some people playing this game:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courier_chess#/media/File:Lucas_van_Leyden…

    The Chinese form of chess still keeps the original piece with its original move; in fact, the name of the game, Xiang-Chi, means the Elephant Game.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiangqi

  • Exeter Juniors 1½-2½ Exeter Gambits

    ByDrDave

    Well, a loss for the juniors, but by the narrowest of margins, and
    against a team who were a bit stronger than they looked on paper. A
    couple of the Gambits players have had much higher grades in the past,
    and in the end I think experience told.




  • EJCC 2-2 Newton Abbot Juniors 16th Dec 2011

    ByDrDave

    One of the best and best-contested matches I’ve had the pleasure to watch. Well done to all players!

    W Royle ½-½ Fraser
    B Trott ½-½ Whitehead
    S Keat 1-0 Ramesh
    B Terrill 0-1 Chornenkyy

    A tough game fought in the jungles of a hypermodern opening, in the end Black’s
    exchange was enough to balance an advanced passed pawn – or maybe the
    other way around!

    A wild game where both sides did enough to win…

    Some devilishly complicated opening play resulted in an early win of a
    piece for White.

  • A good start

    ByDrDave

    Great to see faces old and new this evening — welcome to Ernie, Leo N, Orestes and Sophie.

  • EJCC 1-3 Exeter Gambits 30th March 2012

    ByDrDave

    A close match ended in a 1-3 defeat for the youngsters. As so often in
    chess, it wouldn’t have taken much to reverse the score!

    The juniors, unusually, fielded a team which had a majority of girls.

    {1. A well-fought game: White got some attacking ideas muddled and lost a piece,
    but pressure won the exchange leaving an exciting RvNN endgame.}

    {2. A carefully-played game ended in a draw, but both sides missed good
    chances to go ahead.}

    {3. Black was allowed to launch a tactic to win a piece early on, after which White was not allowed much fun.}

    {4. Black grabbed a Rook but then seemed to run out of ideas; White then
    had an idea and Black missed it!}