Friday Night OT: Chess

Northside Hawk

Well-Known Member
Anyone play it? I used to quite a bit, still do occasionally. Could see it making a comeback as people may have rediscovered it during COVID and as on line apps allow other opportunities to play the game.

In a perverse way I always had some admiration for Bobby Fischer, even as he spent a good deal of his life as a reclusive curmudgeon. He was a regular on the old Dick Cavett show where not only was he engaging he was also wicked smart. In one show he described the moment he had his opponent on the ropes-and showed on a chess board the exact positions of his remaining pieces and his opponent's down to the precise square.

You need some mental juice to do that. What I also found fascinating was how he said chess was the closest simulation to war that a human could experience. He also called it the world's most violent sport. With no teammates, no coaches, no officials, no field conditions,, and no ball to take a lucky bounce, you had one remaining available objective-to crush your opponent's mind. Hence the violent nature of the sport.

Fischer also described the arobic workout, and the calories you burned, just from the tension of a game. And how he lived for the point in the match where his opponent would start to squirm in his seat.

I bring all this up because I think we are due for a chess revival. COVID, the internet, the aging of the baby boomers population, and declining interest in youth sports are all factors in my prediction. Just my two cents on the topic.
 
Yeas ago I thought I'd like to get into it and showed my one boy the game but it just never came to fruition. I could see me liking it.
 
I learned as a kid and have gone through a few different phases where I got back into it. Recently I've found chess puzzles on an app. Those are really fun.
 
Fischer and Spassky... great for the game. The cold war really got chess going. Made it seem like a battlefield. Love to play. US/Soviet BB. US Soviet Hocky. Chess.... great stuff.

North, do you remember Doug Krile at KCRG breaking into the US/Soviet Hocky game with minutes to go and announcing a big comeback win for the USA when they were still behind on TV?
 
Fischer and Spassky... great for the game. The cold war really got chess going. Made it seem like a battlefield. Love to play. US/Soviet BB. US Soviet Hocky. Chess.... great stuff.

North, do you remember Doug Krile at KCRG breaking into the US/Soviet Hocky game with minutes to go and announcing a big comeback win for the USA when they were still behind on TV?
Not specifically but I remember Doug Krile. It was my high school freshman year so I was probably at a basketball game.

I also remember that beating the Soviets was only the semifinal game. They still had to come back two nights later, settle down, and beat a formidable Finland team that had just knocked off Czechoslavakia or Canada.
 
I used to play every now and then. I was terrible. Didn't understand all the different strategies. But I still enjoyed it.
 
Samuel Powers beat Spassky’s nephew in a major US-USSR chess match at a California high school in the early 90’s.
 
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