Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Chiv Chat


  • Good cartoon this one, by this lot and via Morgan Daniels:
  • Another thing. Apparently it is not possible to lose a tempo with a knight. What? Really? Why? Why not, rather? How did that happen? How did I only just find that out? And while we're on the subject, why are bishops tied to squares of one colour but rooks are not? A straight line is a straight line, right?
  • I prefer these kinds of questions to real chess questions nowadays, like "why did he play that?" Having returned to competitive chess after a year's absence, I'm getting thrashed in every game. Rusty isn't the word. I don't want to tell you what is.
  • And finally, another collector's item from Kier Eyles - a striking take on Magnus Carlsen's powers, accompanied by the signature of the Overrated One himself:


6 comments:

Jonathan B said...

Oh, this "why can't knights lose a move" question again???

Anonymous said...

How do you come to the conclusion that Carlsen is over-rated? He regularly plays the world's best and crushes them.

You could claim Fischer's lop-sided 6-0 match results gave him an artifically high rating, as general statistical methods may not work so well in extreme conditions, but Carlsen's rating seems pretty solid.

Why can't a knight lose a tempo? Every time a knight moves it changes the colour of its square. Therefore it can only return to the same square in an even number of moves, not an odd one. Hence it can never lose a tempo.

Jonathan B said...

I think Tom was joking about Maggie

Jonathan Rogers said...

On knights (not) losing a tempo, I would put it like this - every other piece can make a move whereby it declines to play another move but preserves the possibility of playing it next time. Eg, Bc2-d3 preserves the possibility of playing it to e4 next move, etc. But knights cannot do this. Once it makes one move, it cannot go back to a previous option on the following move, but must go back to where it came from first.

RuralRob said...

How about this one.

Tom Chivers said...

Thanks Rob & Jonathan. Jonathan your explanation makes sense. Anonymous, the Norwegian Kid is lucky.