Chessville - The Parrot's Rare Chess Picture Collection

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The Parrot's Rare Chess Photo Collection
Album 1

These images and text first appeared in The Parrot's column's
of July 22, 2006 through December, 2006. Enjoy the images.

Readers are invited to contribute their own rare chess photos
for inclusion in future Parrot columns and photo albums.

Chessville executive staff relaxing during a light lunch from the 2006 annual picnic and bored meeting cruise.

Total cost $37.50 including sun-glasses.

Witticism of the day was, ‘Who’s your favorite player?” Answer “Bird.”

Prospective Chessville Columnist explains strategy to a young girl. “I am not bananas” he explained, “I would also do this for peanuts.”

Chessville staff hold informal but important international meeting with Russian chess software company representatives and have frank animated discussion about the health of the chess scene, then a picnic somewhere down along the creek. Chessville’s publisher, of course, has his mouth open. And another thing…

...squaawk, I’ve been censored!

We are not making this up! The German paper Der Spiegel reports on strange activity on the mud flats outside Bremen, on the host island of Baltrum - and there is a video! Follow the links provided by www.chessbase.com.

Don’t miss it! The 3 minute film has commentary in German language, but the pictures are everything, and no prizes awarded for guessing what’s in the bottles. What’s the matter with us in this country? I think we are capable of displaying even more ridiculous venues somewhere between one shining sea and the other.

Is the Chelyabinsk variation of the Pelikan Sicilian sound, or is it really seedy?

Chessville staff discuss…

“Frankly, Frank, I think you are out on a limb on this one.”

One of these people is a Champion of the Soviet Union, European Champion and Twice World Youth Champion, and the other is the Parrot.

Want it? Currently e-bay has this picture of GM Larsen presenting a signed picture of Capablanca – and the asking price is only $22,000. Information courtesy: Lawrence T. Totaro of Nevada.

AND some rare video footage of Viktor Korchnoi is available. Although Viktor is now 75 years old, he just beat off a strong field to win the tournament.

No prizes for guessing that the guy in the beret is Dr. Che Guevara, but readers might not know that the chess players are GMs Mark Taimanov and Larry Evans.

The police photograph of the death of Alexander Alekhine in Estoril, Portugal, 1946.

“I taught him everything he knew,”
a Euro Parrot later said to the police,
“now its all turned into a bad choke.”

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Chess Public, THIS was what a World Championship used to be like. Further comment is superfluous. Enjoy!

Thanks to Lawrence Totaro for advising TheParrot of the great video (available at Google Video) the photo at left is taken from.

"Lawrence Totaro and GM Larry Evans in the summer of 2005 in attendance for the National Open. Here is a photo taken at dinner discussing various chess enthusiasts and the current state of the chess world.

Robert James Fischer
in Iceland with ‘Buddy-Guard.’
[Speculation abounded this week
on a new Fischer match in the Philippines.]

Chess Audio Visual instruction: By going to http://www.kosteniuk.com/ and selecting the higher or lower resolution blitz game [lower res. is fine to see the pieces] against Oleg Nikolenko, Alexandra GM comments on the 10 minute game. Warning! Be patient while the video loads – it is slow!

The charm of this sort of presentation is that it is an underused means of presenting chess instruction on demand, in this case, illustrating play against a French Defense, and also endgame winning technique at supersonic speed.

While you are at it, you might as well check out another 8.5 minute video with commentary against International Master Arthur Gabrielian where, playing in a park, she takes apart his Najdorf Sicilian, makes a defensive oversight in the middle, but finds an adequate resource to continue to expound on blitz-playing technique.

The viewer needs an up-dated Quick-time to watch, but that is available as a free download from the Kosteniuk site. Audio commentary by Kosteniuk is in the English language.

Mexico is nutz@! for Chess

Here are two pictures of a massive 14,000 player turnout for a simul, also attended by A. Karpov, A. Kosteniuk, and V. Korchnoi. The left picture shows detail of one of the red squares, and the right picture all the squares. Seven simuls took place in each square. GM Karpov also achieved a Guinness Record for most books signed.

Both these pictures convey a successfully link of the new with the old. This at least seems possible with actual players of the game, and perhaps we have too many ‘handlers’ to blame for the disrupted atmosphere elsewhere?

(1) In her match with Victor in Mexico, Alexandra won 1.5 : 0.5. Victor doesn’t seem to mind too much!

(2) The participants and guests of World U20 Championship put flowers in front of the 9th World Champion Petrosian's statue.

Here are two images of real lineage for you.

The BBC have uncovered very rare audio interviews pre-dating WW2, including this 4 minute sound-clip with Alexander Alexandrovich Alekhine: http://www.bobby-fischer.net/AlekineInterview.html. It is believed to have been recorded in 1938 by an unknown BBC interviewer, and Alekhine gives his point of view on the just ordinary memory necessary for chess, as well as the benefits of ‘ping-pong’ to help relaxation.

The picture of Alekhine here is dated 1935, and that of his wife from 1937. Alekhine also opines that chess players are born and not made, which to some degree anticipates the study by Dutchman Adrian de Groot.

There is a 50% chance of setting up a chessboard wrong – so why does it always seem 100% wrong in the movies?

DaVinci Code grossed $750 million, but made not one, but two mistakes – points out Lawrence Totaro of Nevada.

Here is the first, note the King/Queen set up in front of Tom Hanks.

And the second has the same good-old wrong-color corner syndrome.

Pictured playing left at Worcester, c.1931, are Mir Sultan Khan (1905-1966) (on the left, playing black) and Theodore H. Tylor (1900-1968) (right, playing white). Spectators include Sir George Thomas (1881-1972) (far left) and Arthur J Mackenzie (1871-1949) (far right). Sultan Khan won the British Championship in 1929, 1932 and 1933, returning in the latter year to India whence he never returned. Sir George Thomas won the British Championship in 1923 and 1934, and was a world-class badminton player as well as a fine hockey and lawn tennis player. Theodore Tylor won the British Correspondence Chess Championship in 1932, 1933 and 1934, and suffered the handicap of near-blindness. In 1965 he was knighted for his service to organizations for the blind. He was Fellow and Tutor in Jurisprudence at Balliol College, Oxford. At chess he finished in high positions in several British Championships and played on board 5 in the England team at the Hamburg 1930 Olympiad (Thomas was on board 3 and Sultan Khan on board 1). Mackenzie was a strong player (top board for Warwickshire) and was president of the MCCU at the time of the photograph. He went on to play for Scotland in the Folkestone Olympiad 1933. Visit Britbase for more information.

Maurice Ashley remains the first and only black GM of note, so who will be next? How about this guy? Asks Daaim Shabazz, Ph.D. about IM Pontus Carlsson, rated 2461.

“Columbian-born Carlsson has a lot of upside. He has earned many of his norms (both IM and GM) in a short period of time which shows that he is improving his game. Carlsson is known as a blitz specialist and has a very enterprising style (including the Dragon). He plays with a lot of confidence against strong players and trains with GM Evgeny Agrest, one of Sweden's top players.

Upside: age (23), momentum, drive, access to training partners, location, multilingual (includes Spanish and English) Challenges: predictable repertoire”

Half a dozen other candidate-GMs are mentioned at www.thechessdrum.net and perhaps the reader can put the right name to the right faces? One interesting feature of the chess bios for each player Daaim Shabazz reviews are the Upside & Challenges analysis for each.

Robert Gwaze (Zimbabwe), Pontus Carlsson (Sweden), Watu Kibese (South Africa), Stephen Muhammad (USA), Amon Simutowe (Zambia), Emory Tate (USA).

Judit and Veselin in dry-run blind-fold mode.

Vishy Anand recently said blindfold chess was to him to the most difficult of all encounters. Here we see two players in a warm-up session, and it is a rare picture, not only that it involves a woman, but because of what they both attempt. It is not just a rare picture, but somehow, a beautiful engagement between two human beings.

What is that thing, beauty? I can’t as well say it, as show these people demonstrating it… The score so far: 3-1 to Toppy with a couple of games to go.

As a postscript I notice that Judit’s sister has posted a similar picture at her blog site, but thinks the picture is funny – and asks her readers to supply a funny caption! No way is the Parrot going to get into that!

What you don’t want to give for Christmas. The Parrot actually likes cats and dogs, but not these! Instead, you might consider giving away Maurice Ashley’s DVD, but I doubt you will – you’ll buy it and keep it, because like the Parrot, you are too cheap. Perhaps readers will receive something like these sets for Christmas and be puzzled with what to do with them? Send a picture and we’ll publish the ugliest Christmas chess gift actually received by a reader, early in the New Year. Maybe we can even auction it off for you? But you won’t care. It just ‘went to a good cause.’

Largest Knight? This is what I call a poster! An enormous knight in Doha for the Asian games.

Vibrant banners hang from lampposts proclaiming these as the Games of your Life to two gateways on the Corniche to 13 giant billboards portraying, for example, gymnasts tumbling over ribbons across their length. However what is arguably more impressive are the giant building wraps that adorn 32 of Doha’s most prominent buildings, including hotels and government ministries, with colourful and powerful sporting images. – says an official pronouncement.