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'Well - I never knew that!'

 

 
It’s reported that the less than universally popular General Montgomery of Alamein, was a chess player but that he gave up playing when his nine year old son beat him.  
  
The most tension-packed match of modern times was a world title eliminator.
Korchnoi-Petrosian (1977) was billed as The Match of Hate and it
 culminated in the organisers having to put a board under the table to stop the two grandmasters kicking each other! 
 
Alexandre Deschapelles (1780-1847), perhaps the strongest player between Philidor and La Bourdonnais, said that he learned all that he needed to know about chess in three days.
He became the best player in France, giving odds of at least a pawn and two moves to even his strongest rivals.
Finding no serious opposition he took up whist instead, rapidly becoming expert at that game too. He is remembered among bridge players today as the originator of the Deschapelles Coup. He composed music and was an expert billiards player, playing with what was left of an arm lost while fighting for Napoleon. 
  
Stephen Fry of television and cinema fame is very keen on chess.
He owns a superb board of bird’s-eye maple and Moluccan ebony edged in sycamore, an 1871 boxwood and ebony Staunton set, plus a chess clock by
Grant’s of Stamford.
Dolefully he confesses that what he brings to this wonderful equipment is the playing talent of a dead rat. 
 
The Dutch for ‘resigns’ is ’Geef het op’ and in Swedish it’s ’Upgivet’.
  
  ‘Lucena’ was the author of the first book on chess, ‘Repeticion de Amores e Arte de Axedrez’.  In 1497 they were a little more long-winded and Lucena wrote, ‘Jugar del peon del rey a 1111 casas, que se entiende contando de donde esta el rey.’
These days we write ‘e4’.
 
Peter Mark Roget is best known for devising the Thesaurus but it's not as well known that he invented the truly 'pocket' chess set (that's the flat, two-dimensional type).
He called it the Economic Chess Board'.
  
In 1061 the Bishop of Florence was caught playing chess in an inn.As a result of this 'shameful, senseless and disgusting' behaviour he had to wash the feet of twelve paupers.
 
King James the Second gave Samuel Pepys a magnificent chess table and men for his services to the crown.
  
Marlon Brando played chess on the set of Julius Caesar. Whilst filming, he gave an interview to a Hollywood reporter on the condition that they played chess. The reporter beat him easily and Brando said, 'THat was the worst interview I ever gave.'
 

So who was the greatest player of them all?
'Morphy' said Bobby Fischer.
'Morphy' said Max Euwe.
'Morphy' said Gligoric......

  
.....but then, Lasker, Alekhine, Botvinnik and Spassky said it was Capablanca.
 
Queen Victoria seldom travelled without her chess set.
  
The brilliant tactician Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederate armies, had his own travelling chess set and was an enthusiastic player.


 

'Baring the King' was a type of win found in ancient Arabic and Indian chess. Victory was achieved when all the opponent's men except his King had been captured.
This type of victory (always considered inferior to checkmate) was abandoned in the Middle Ages in most parts of Europe, although it still existed in Iceland in the nineteenth century.


 

There is a version of the game called 'Alcoholic Chess'. It's played on a large board and the pieces are replaced by glasses (or even bottles) of alcoholic drink.
When players capture a piece they have to consume the drink before the game can continue.
B. H. Wood in 'A History of Chess' says that Lasker once won such a game ...
... 'by sacrificing his queen in ridiculous fashion at the very outset of the game. The queen contained about a quarter litre of cognac; quaffing this seriously incapacitated his opponent in the ensuing complications.'


 

 
The first mention of the Ruy Lopez appears in the Gottingen manuscript thought to date from the fifteenth or early sixteenth century. Its author is believed to be Lucena.
It consists of 33 pages written in Latin, analyses 12 openings and presents 30 chess problems.
Dr. Frederick Borner donated the manuscript to the Gottingen library in 1752.
  
Charles Godfrey Gumpel created 'Mephisto', a chess-playing automaton.
Gumpel was by profession a manufacturer of artificial limbs.
Mephisto was hardly 'armless, however, because in 1878 it won the English Counties' Handicap tournament.
(Gumpel had hired Isidor Gunsberg to hide inside it and it never lost a single game.)


 

 

A chess combination appeared in the German novel,
Anastasia und das Schachspiel, Briefe aus Italien by Wilhelm Heinse
(no - I'm not making this up)
which was first published in 1803.

(For the sake of clarity only the pieces that are relevant to the mate have been shown.)

To play it through click the button.

Anastasia's Mate
It's a classic text book Queen sac. on a castled King leading to checkmate but did you know that it was known as...

... Anastasia's Mate?

 



 

 

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