The second art that I acquired in Pentonville was so-called ‘Marseilles chess’. It was invented by an elderly Frenchman, with a red scarf round hs neck, who taught it to me during exercise hours. In this game, each player in turn makes two moves instead…
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A couple of years ago, Hartston did the following calculation during a grandmaster tournament in Spain: assuming that all the prize money on offer was divided simply between the grandmasters (and there were some powerful IMs scrapping for the loot as well), their average earnings…
Read MoreWhen you eavesdrop on the chatter of chess, you discover that it reproduces and confirms the game’s compelling mixture of violence and intellectuality. As pieces are finger-flipped around demonstration boards in swift refutation of some other grandmaster’s naïve proposition, half the language has a street-fighting…
Read More“An evil man who is not going to be missed. Thoroughly corrupt persecutor of those who wanted chess to move forward. Destroyer of our beloved World Championship. Some champagne with dinner tonight to wish him good riddance!” Eric Schiller’s moving eulogy to the former FIDE…
Read MoreChess scene from ‘The Wire’ ‘The Buys’ (2002) D’Angelo Barksdale: Yo, what was that? Wallace: Hm? D’Angelo Barksdale: Castle can’t move like that. Yo, castle move up and down and sideways like. Preston ‘Bodie’ Broadus: Nah, we ain’t playing that. Wallace: Yeah, look at the…
Read MoreJournalism ‘I tend to make the articles in The Spectator more wordy and The Times I make a little bit more lapidary in the style.’ Tunisgate ‘When I did my accounts after that event, I think I’d made eleven pounds profit.’ Being expelled from the…
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Frank D Berry Jr
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