1. Spending quality time with family, close friends, or the Son of God.

2. Reading. It's by far the best use of non-relational leisure time. Drop the video game controller. Turn off the boob tube. Pick up a piece of literature. :-)

From my infancy I was passionately fond of reading, and all the money that came into my hands was laid out in the purchasing of books.
-- Benjamin Franklin

Even though he probably already knows this.

The knight on a chess board can visit each square exactly once.



HT: Abraham Piper

Anyone interested in playing chess on Thinklings Chess? In case you don't know, Thinklings Chess is a private online club here at Thinklings. The system sets up a board for you, you make a move, then your opponent gets an email telling them to make a move. A typical game can take a week, a month, or several months. Leave a comment if you're interested.

America will have to continue to wait for another dominant World Chess Championship contender. Alas, our Gata Kamsky lost his match to the Bulgarian chess genius Veselin Topalov.

Truth be told, Kamsky never dominated the game of chess like Fischer did in his day, but it would have been fun to see him playing for Old Glory, going for the world crown. Oh well.

Since me and Thinklings commenter, Les, are probably the only ones who care about this topic, I suppose I should have just sent Les an email ... but what would be the fun in that?

He's a Soviet-born American chess grandmaster, and he's currently battling Bulgarian grandmaster, Veselin Topalov, in an eight game match for the right to challenge Viswanathan Anand for the Chess World Championship later this year.

For any American to reach the pinnacle of the chess world is rare indeed. Two American grandmasters have done it in the past: Paul Morphy (circa 1860), and, of course, the incomparable Bobby Fischer in 1972.

Kamsky's an underdog, and he's not expected to win the match, but he just evened it out today with a win as white.

Go, Gata!

I finished Paul Hoffman's book, King's Gambit, yesterday evening.



If you're a chess fan, and if you follow modern chess celebrities like Kasparov, you'll probably get a kick out of King's Gambit, but I doubt the average reader will find it very interesting at all.

The book didn't seem to have a strong, central theme. Sure, it's chock-full if interesting, and downright exciting, interviews with colorful, flamboyant, and wacky chess personalities, but the tome tasted more like a so-so pot luck dinner than a filet mignon, or even a double-quarter-pounder meal. At its best King's Gambit is a hodgepodge of chess anecdotes with no real, substantive connecting thread between the chapters (with the exception of a good dose of father bashing; man, this guy's got an Eldredgian Wound like you'd never believe).

Hoffman must have received inspiration from J.C. Hallman's, The Chess Artist, because he tried his darndest to emulate Hallman's knack for storytelling. While Hoffman is no slouch, he's not quite a J.C. Hallman.

If you're a chess fiend, pick up King's Gambit, it's a worthy read. If not, don't bother.

C-

McCain: You brought out your queen too early, Barack. Kind of like your presidential hopes I'd say. Hehehe. You simply don't have the experience a good chess master needs.

Obama: Why do I keep having to look at the back of your head, John? Look me in the eyes!

McCain: You should think about developing your knights before bringing out your queen.

Obama: Henry Kissinger advocated early queen development.

McCain: Kissinger is a friend of mine. He would never say something like that. You just don't get it.

Obama: You're absolutely right. But if my queen makes a mistake, I don't want her to be punished with a baby.

McCain: After I checkmate you in three moves, I'm going to go join Thinklings Chess.

His name is Magnus Carlsen, and this 17-year-old Norwegian kid with a bushy haircut is, right now, the number one rated chess player in the world. (The linked article is a few days old, and it has him rated sixth in the world.)

For the one or two of you out there who are even semi-interested in professional chess, you'll want to keep an eye on Magnus Carlsen. This kid is a freak of nature. I don't think the world of chess has seen anything like him since Bobby Fischer.

Unfortunately, since he's not an American, I'm sure he won't become a household name in the USA. I mean, I'll bet no one out there has heard of Vishy Anand (the current World Champion who hails from India). Oh well. It's a solitary world when you're a chess fan.

Our humble Thinklings Chess Club is in need of some new blood. If you're a friend of Thinklings, please leave a comment or send us an email if you're interested in playing correspondence style chess against other Thinklings and Thinklings readers.

For a chess fanboy like me, this is great ...

The three American hostages recently freed from Colombian rebels carved chessmen while in captivity and played the game on a board made of cardboard.

"When you are doing that you are free. Your mind is engaged, you are not a prisoner. That's the gain, that's the victory."

I know. I know. I know. I’m a few days late for my inaugural post here at the new and improved thinklings.org. I’m glad the other guys have picked up the slack in my absence (not that that’s much slack to pick up).

The truth is, I’ve been swamped, and I don’t have a lot to add to the discussions going on here. I did, however, want to throw in my two cents about the death of the legendary Bobby Fischer.

Fischer, by all accounts, was a chess genius. He liked to consider himself a genius who focused his brilliance on one subject: chess. He was obsessed with the game, spending all of his free time studying, improving, and subsequently slaughtering his opponents in tournament play.

Unfortunately, after taking the World Championship from the Russians in 1972, he promptly faded away, disappearing to a life of paranoia, hatred, and self-destruction.

Since he’s the only Chess World Champion that America has ever produced, the chess community in the United States has always had a love-hate relationship with him; but, the reality is, most chess players in America honor him despite his dishonorable actions.

So, to the eccentric Bobby Fischer: thanks for leaving chess fans a catalog of brilliance over the board. I know you were a tortured soul.

For you chess fans out there, head on down to chessgames.com and check out Fischer’s 1956 match, Byrne vs. Fischer. That game -- won by a young Fischer -- is absolutely brilliant. Fischer’s queen sacrifice is something to behold.

Goodbye, Bobby.

Eric, our resident chess stud, is MIA, or he would have posted this, no doubt with some expert commentary.

American chess master Bobby Fischer dead at 64.

Since I'm in a chess mood, and since I thought you guys might enjoy a chuckle ...



(The video's only about 45 seconds long. So go ahead and watch it.)

Thinklings Chess is awesome. I've got a killer game going right now with Isaiah543. I'm white, and Isaiah is black.

Here's our position:



It's black to move, and the last move that was made was dxe6+.

By the way, I'm just posting this for fun. Since we're in the middle of a game, please don't offer any move suggestions. Thanks!

[A nod to chessvideos.tv for the diagram generator.]

We've got about 15 active members in our humble, correspondence-style chess club here at Thinklings.

I'm proud to say that one of our chess club members, Robofriven, has an excellent interview on chessvideos.tv with International Master and chess author, Jeremy Silman.

Here's a taste:

Q: What was your training schedule like when you were competing the most?

JS: If I played in an international tournament, I would live, eat, and breathe chess. In Hungary, I would prepare for 4 hours in the evening for the next day's game, then another 4 hours in the morning before the game. Then I would repeat that over and over for each game. There were, of course, distractions (women, insane directors or players, money issues, sub-par accommodations, lack of edible food, etc.), but such things are also part of the whole experience of competitive chess. I have to admit that I really miss the intensity of those years!

As some of you may recall, in June I posted a Thinklings interview with author and chess historian, J.C. Hallman.

Hallman is the author of two books: The Chess Artist and The Devil is a Gentleman.

If you'd like to learn more about Hallman's writings, visit his website -- jchallman.com.

Incidentally, if you go to his site, you can see that he linked back to his Thinklings interview. Here's a piece of that interview:

Both of your published books -- The Chess Artist and The Devil Is a Gentleman -- have a religious theme to them. What's your concept of religion in the world? Did you grow up in a religious environment?

Hallman: I started out Catholic but rejected it very early. Like when I was ten. As to my conception of religion in the world, it's something I articulated more in the second book, in which I explored a variety of religious movements, taking along with me the thinking of William James as a kind of guiding spirit. What I came up with, in terms of the big picture of religion, is that consciousness, human consciousness, comes with a significant attendant cosmological curiosity. That is, when we become conscious as people, we begin to get curious about big questions: why am I here, what is the nature of the universe, and so forth. All this is another way of saying that the side effect of sentience is a god-shaped hole in our psyches. Now that's Sartre (I think), but what James might add to it is that failing to satisfy that curiosity can result in a kind of profound sadness, even the tendency to reject life. So people are hardwired to find some set of answers that satisfies that cosmological curiosity. Fills the god-shaped hole. Very often that set of answers is God, but it can just as well be science's version of creation, the Big Bang (which some string theorists describe as quaint, it's so out of date), or organized Atheism, or Christianity, or Satanism, or chess, or literature, or whatever else satisfies you in terms of your personal quandary about the basic questions and mysteries of life. This is basically what we mean when we turn religion into an adverb and note that someone pursues whatever they pursue "religiously."

For the two of you who may be interested, they're currently playing the World Chess Championship Tournament in Mexico. Check it out.

There are eight players participating, and, so far, Round 1 has ended with a draw for all four games. Now that's World Championship Chess right there! (Seriously, those Grandmasters are always drawing each other.)

Nf3!

I'm looking to recruit new members for our little chess community here at Thinklings. If you're a friend of the Thinklings -- or, heck, even a troll -- and you know how to move the pieces, and you'd like to play correspondence style chess, then leave a comment and I'll tell you all about the initiation process.

Oh, one more thing. For all of you former Thinklings Chess players who have petered out over the past few months, consider this your altar call.

Quaid, where are you? It's been your turn in our chess game since May 2nd.

It took him more than 80 moves, but Bird finally prevailed over Blo in their epic match to win the victor's crown in the Thinklings Spring 2007 Chess Tournament!

The match also was, bar none, the best smack-fest I've ever witnessed in Thinklings chess. I hope to be able to publish the game, with commentary and in-game smackage, here on the blog one day (that poses some technical challenges but is doable). For those of you in the Thinklings Chess Club, you should be able to see the archive with player commentary this weekend.

Well done Bird!

(excellent Chess picture by Rob G. Atlas)