{"id":361,"date":"2011-07-25T00:47:52","date_gmt":"2011-07-25T00:47:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/notranting\/?p=361"},"modified":"2011-07-25T23:32:09","modified_gmt":"2011-07-25T23:32:09","slug":"where-to-put-the-chess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/notranting\/2011\/07\/25\/where-to-put-the-chess\/","title":{"rendered":"Where to put the chess?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In which I ponder where to hide my latest, and oldest, obsessive enthusiasm…<\/span><\/p>\n

I have another of my chess games, played last week, I thought I might post up… but as I was thinking about this, a question arose.<\/p>\n

Or rather – two related questions<\/em>:<\/p>\n

First<\/strong> – how many readers of the blog are there are that actually want<\/em> to see<\/em> chess games?<\/p>\n

[I know of four chess-playing scientists that read the blog, including the two Steves Caplan and Moss. But that’s …four people. I think there are at least three times that many readers in all.]<\/p>\n

Second<\/strong> – WHERE should any chess games posted up go?<\/p>\n

After all, I am pretty sure non-chess-ical readers would rather not have to wade though acres of my chess games, with only-of-interest-to-proper-obsessives chess analysis, to find the non-chess-ist thoughts in a chess-ist post.<\/p>\n

There are a couple of obvious solutions.<\/strong><\/p>\n

[Excluding the most obvious one…]<\/p>\n

One solution would be to keep the periodic chess posts here, but badge them with a Stern Health Warning<\/strong> at the top – so that anyone non-chess-fascinated would not be tempted to read them.<\/p>\n

Another<\/strong> would be to have a separate page, but still as part of the blog, and post chess posts (or even just the detailed chess analysis) \u00a0to THAT page, perhaps linked from the main blog when games appeared and\/or when some interesting not-simply-chess question was in play.<\/p>\n

[Richard – can we do that? I can do it on my other WordPress blog, where I used to run a separate Diary page].<\/p>\n

On the last question there – that is, of chess touching on issues interesting to those who AREN’T chess players – there really are some such that are worth a discussion. \u00a0Just off the top of my head, there is the correlation between chess playing and mathematical ability (there are three British chess grandmasters with PhDs in Maths that I know of, and the topic ‘chess-playing mathematicians’ even has its own Wikipedia page<\/a>). There is, a bit related, the occurrence in chess (along with maths, again, and music) of true child prodigies<\/a>. And there are some interesting things to say about the ways early computer scientists seized on chess as a model for trying to make a ‘machine that could think’, and how changes in computer hardware have changed the way chess computers actually do what they do – though I think I don’t know enough about computers to do that last one justice.<\/p>\n

By the way, if you hunt around, you also find links between, not just maths and chess, but science<\/em> and chess.<\/p>\n

One example. There is a new film out<\/a> about perhaps the ultimate tragically flawed chess genius<\/a>, the late American player Bobby Fischer<\/a>. Fischer’s mother Regina (nee Wender) was a medical student and later a doctor. His long-presumed father Hans-Gerhardt Fischer (the man listed as his father on Bobby’s birth certificate) was a biophysicist, but more recently it has become clear that Bobby Fischer’s biological father was almost certainly Hungarian physicist Paul Nemenyi<\/a>, one of the many eminent Jewish scientists expelled from Germany in the 1930s by the Nazis. [More on this here<\/a>, and even more here<\/a>.]<\/p>\n

Another example – probably the most famous scientist who played chess for fun was Albert Einstein<\/a>, who was a friend of long-time world chess champion Dr Emanuel Lasker<\/a>. There is even a chess game attributed to Einstein out there on the internet. You can play through it here<\/a>, though its ‘provenance’, and even the identity of Einstein’s opponent, are a subject of much chessical discussion (see the discussion thread under the game, or try\u00a0here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

But anyway – none of that really bears particularly on my own<\/em> chess playing… and it is where to put stuff relating to that that I haven’t decided.<\/p>\n

So: views please – from both the chess-positive and the more, errm, ‘chess-negative<\/em>‘.<\/span><\/p>\n

——————————————————————-<\/p>\n

UPDATE:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Have decided to put the analysis of last Tuesday night’s league game in a solely chessical post, to spare the rest of the readers. To follow later, or perhaps tomorrow morning (PS – now up here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

I actually played a game I like better that my league game later on last Tuesday evening, whilst playing some casual rapid stuff with other people from the club. So here is that one for my chess-ist readers, to tide you over while I finish the diagrams for the league game.<\/p>\n

White: AE Black: AN Other Czech\/Pribyl Defence (10 min a side rapid game)
\n1. e4 c6 2. d4 d6 3. Nc3 Qc7 4. f4 Nbd7 5. Nf3 Nf6 6. Bd3 a5 7. a4 e5 8. de: de: 9. f5 Bb4 10. 0-0 Bc3: 11. bc: 0-0 12. Ba3 Re8 13. Qe2 b5 14. ab: cb: 15. Bb5: Qc3: 16. Rfd1 Ra7? 17. Ng5! h6 18. Nf7:! Nc5 (if ..Kf7: 19. Bc4+ wins) 19. Be8: Ba6?! 20. Bb5 Bb5: 21. Qb5: Qe3+ 22. Kh1 Nce5: (threat Nf2+ and mate) 23. Qb8+! Kf7: (if ..Kh7 24. Qh8 mate) 24. Qf8 mate<\/p>\n

Quite a fun one – I was pleased with N-g5-f7, and the Qb8-f8 mate idea is also quite neat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In which I ponder where to hide my latest, and oldest, obsessive enthusiasm… I have another of my chess games, played last week, I thought I might post up… but as I was thinking about this, a question arose. Or … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,26,8,27,6,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-ology","category-chess","category-history","category-nerdishness","category-procrastination","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/notranting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/notranting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/notranting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/notranting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/notranting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/notranting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/notranting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/notranting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/notranting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}