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The Parrot's Rare Chess Photo Collection Album 5
These images and text first
appeared in The Parrot's column's Also enjoy: Album #1 & Album #2 & Album 3 & Album #4 & Album 5
Readers are invited to contribute their own rare chess photos
A
Chess Set inspired by the novel 'Alice through the Looking Glass' where the
pieces magically turn transparent when they touch the board.
Here is a word picture:
UN
workers carjacked in Gori, AFP - August 14, 2008 Thursday 3:11 PM GMT Armed gunmen held up UN workers in Gori on Thursday and stole their vehicles, a UN official told AFP, adding that the Georgian city on the frontline of the conflict with Russia was not considered safe enough for aid officials to work there. I was going to re-show a picture here of Fide Officials, but on Googling the site I found only other investigators asking what happened to it? So I’ll tell you instead of show you why I wanted to find a picture from Fide; it’s an official FIDE photo of chess officials, about 50 of them from all around the world. The interesting thing about the photo is that every official is male. Perhaps all the female officials have gone to Gori or South Ossetia?
Never mind world championship shenanigans by chess politicians – “hands-on” attention by top players always got more attention from the chess public than bureaucratic talk. “Show me, don’t tell me,” chess players say. Here are two photographs in the great tradition of playing simuls by people who showed us.
Sammy Reshevsky (8 years old, lower right, and
recently arrived from Poland) playing A commentator wrote: “I’d never heard of him until I saw this photo in one of my old chess books. But until 1958, when he was eclipsed by Bobby Fischer, he was the top name in American chess for 38 years.” You can read a fascinating New York Times article about Sammy’s life and career here.
Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura in a Simul
against Detroit Duffield opponent
Read the whole article: Professor Arpad E. Elo – a fond remembrance, By Elmer Dumlao Sangalang, Manila, The Philippines.
This was a caption competition – The Parrot has forwarded his effort to Susan Polgar: What is Vishy saying to Toppy?
“Mr Truong gave me a tie, too. I threw mine away.”
Are you small minded? London Times carried this article April 30th 2008. While it is a remarkable achievement, the Parrot wonders how to actually make moves, and indeed, how to see the board at all?
The set is one of the most remarkable works of the Russian micro-miniaturist Vladimir Aniskin, who has spent a decade perfecting his craft. He uses powerful microscopes and equipment that he designed himself and says that he must work between his heartbeats to create the tiny pieces. “While working I hold my creation in my fingers,” he said. “Even one’s heartbeat disturbs such minute work, so particularly delicate work has to be done between heartbeats.” The chess took six months to complete and he has about another 40 works to his name. His first was a grain of rice inscribed with 2,027 letters. “The rice grain took three months, camels in an eye of a needle took two months and camels in a horse hair also took two months,” he said. “Even with these simpler jobs it is still time-consuming.”
Very rare! A category XV round-robin in the US. In fact, unique! Congratulations to SPICE for returning serious chess to the US, for the second year.
What to do between elections?
Here Gary is
supporting the Harlem Children's Zone, Inc., an internationally renown
not-for-profit, offering education, social-service and community-building
services to children and families in Central Harlem. Founded in 1970 as
Rheedlen, the agency began the innovative, holistic Harlem Children's Zone
Project in 2000, aiming to serve 10,000 children within a 100-block area of
Central Harlem by 2011. The HCZ Project was called "one of the most
ambitious social-policy experiments of out time," by The New York Times
Magazine. Canada and the organization have received numerous awards and
attention in the media. The organizations work has been profiled by The New
York Times, 60 Minutes, The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Today Show, the
Associated Press and The Charlie Rose Show, among others. And the second caption is of Rachel Ballantyne with her score card and GK’s sig. Thanks to Mig Greenard for the photos. I remember playing a simul at a school once – showed up in a suit, and treated everyone seriously. And they, the 5th and 6th graders seemed honored by it. Not by my suit – but to engage an adult on the same basis as themselves. The last few players seemed especially proud of having hung out longest, and without any words spent on philosophy of winning or losing, I saw that these players already got it. Thank you Gary – good thing to do – and they will remember this for the rest of their lives, and this sense of competition may also inform the rest of their lives. It’s the right thing to do between elections. Contact the people at their own level, in their own place – no matter which people they are - and then you too will gain a sense of winning and losing, and understand what is superior to either winning or losing.
The
brother and sister This image is from this excellent French chess site. Afore ye go: Just this year Chessville has introduced several new column themes – on Tactics by Andy, and on Women by Women by Jan. A new column features “reality-chess” and an editor’s real-life experiences with a recent author’s opening innovations in the Colle-Zukertort. We have also placed some of our columnists with major chess publishers this year.
If you wish to support chess in this way, write to the Parrot, since we have yet another new column on the horizon which will also need editing, and we are you! We are ‘of the players, for the players.’ [caption illustrates a typical Chessville editorial meeting] Making money beyond our expenses is not Chessville’s goal – and almost everything we earn by advertising is returned to our readers as some form of chess service. Please consider your own contribution to chess, and we will in turn be pleased to engage you in conversation to try to find a best mutual fit between your editorial talents and interests and our need to maintain the high quality achieved by our columnists, making Chessville the #1 chess site in the USA.
In the good old days this picture reminds us of how the world championship used to be decided. I especially draw readers attention to the two seated figures, neither of which are lawyers or managers or chess officials – they are in fact the players themselves.
The no doubt old-fashioned idea was that they play each other over the board. One of these players, the one adjusting the clock, was thought to be extremely difficult to engage in chess matches, but somehow, and for relatively little money, he was induced to take his seat across from ‘partner’, the respectful word that Russian’s deploy instead of ‘opponent.’ Furthermore, this engagement took place in the middle of the Cold War, and was of such interest to the world in general that even sports bars in New York City turned off the baseball and showed chess. People still discuss this particular match not because of its prize fund, very small compared to today, but for the art of chess performance being demonstrated. Whether the current situation will force a split in FIDE, and a new Western organization emerge to compete with it, is the current chess-chat. Before we enter that new era, let us at least applaud what a previous generation achieved under much more serious conditions of communications than today – they brought the whole world’s attention together over a game: a game which is a ritual conflict, not a real one! There are those of us who see substantial value in that achievement.
These boys are a long way from Dresden, yet they play the same game, the same way and by the same rules as the rest of us. It also seems like this chess set, the clothes they are wearing, and that patchwork tarp is about the sum total of their possessions. Meanwhile, somewhat West of there, other children have similar values, it seems:
About this time every year the Parrot suggests what not to give for the Holiday Season from the vast array of chess products now on the market.
Chessville acquires new office complex Publisher David Surratt formerly announced
this week that due to expanding business and the cramped condition in his
own basement, that after extensive negotiations taking two years and much
beard-pulling, Chessville has mortgaged a new, modular office complex. “From up here you would have 360 degree views if it weren’t for those trees, we are working on that.” In an attempt to attract new editors we are initially putting them into ‘Orange One’ with subscriptions until they become acclimated, then they go into ‘Big Red’ with the rest, he added. Business Manager Phil Innes added that income is already rolling in, ‘We’ve leased the light blue one to the new down-sized USCF’ he said. At first they only wanted half of it, but at $99 a month and the no sub-let clause, they eventually went for it after we threw in free running water.
‘Quiet out here and a man can get to think,’ he said. ‘Trouble is figuring out what to think about’ quipped Atkins with a broad grin, between casts and while editing his new Batsford title on the theory of Flocking in Chess. ‘You see an isolated pawn,’ Atkins said, ‘soon it will form the center of a flock of pieces.’ Susan Polgar and other top US chess teachers are said to have expressed great interest in reviewing the new book, which should be out by Christmas, 2009. “It is not ridiculous to mention a teaching position at SPICE,” she said, and went on to say, “but competition is very fierce, and we also speaking with a fire walker, and a guy who carves ties out of wood.”
Is this picture anything to do with chess? Maybe read the caption which goes with it, and decide.
Susan Polgar wrote: My Grandmother, the last surviving member of our family from Auschwitz, just passed away earlier today in Budapest, Hungary. She is survived by her daughter Klara (my mother), 3 grandchildren (my sisters and I), and 6 great grandchildren (Tommy, Alon, Leeam, Yoav, Oliver, and Hanna). Shall we think that Grandma had something to do with the character and emergence of “the 3” Polgar chess women? I think so, and that, as my wife says, is not nothing.
No best picture this week. Not unless the publisher finds one and puts
one in. I can /tell/ you about the best picture… it was of a group of
linesmen working here in New England to resolve our ice disaster – they were
from Tennessee and also Canada, and all working flat out to get people their
power back, and I suppose to also get back home for Christmas. Of course the guys like to joke around a bit, and everyone pretended they couldn’t understand each other. But they could actually do that very well, since its serious business fixing downed power cables – thousands of them. Merry Christmas to one and all – and maybe you can just picture these electronic ‘elves’ helping us out of our difficulty. Better send this now, before the lights go out again. [ 'publisher': Here is a picture for you, snowman-chess. Notice there aren't any black pieces? ]
Which of you out there makes chess stuff, boards and pieces? I want to know more about this in 2009, and even get a column going about it. Let’s talk, meanwhile here is a particularly handsome board.
Readers are invited to contribute their own rare chess photos
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In ‘Alice through the Looking Glass’ by Lewis Carroll, Alice falls through a
mirror and on the other side of the mirror, she becomes a piece in a game of
chess. Inspired by this, the chess pieces have an opaque mirror finish, when
they touch the surface of the board they magically turn transparent and
reveal the identity of the piece contained inside them. When removed from
the board they revert to being opaque, hiding the identity of the piece.
Chessbase
ran a retrospective appreciation this week of the life of Professor
Arpad Elo, the man who ‘invented’ modern chess ratings. Other people had
made previous attempts at it, but our current variety was the
brain-child of Elo, not that it was celebrated at the time.
The
trouble with our progress is, we have ‘reduced’ one author to a ‘mere’
columnist by this experiment - so need more editors! You need to like chess
to do it, and commit just a few hours per week to accomplish it. Those are
the main qualifications.
“We made a modest pile and invested it and are thinking of powering it all
up with wind power if the Gates Foundation grant comes through,” said
Surratt, whose own nick-name is coincidentally ‘Windy’, speaking from his
new office at the top of the pile. “I’ve been thinking of changing
Chessville’s name to GreenChessVille but nobody likes it,” he added.
Senior
editor Kelly Atkins is away on the newly acquired mobile all-terrain editing
office he has named ‘The Sicilian,’ and is writing his new book.
