Thursday, December 26, 2013

Chess-boxing: Lewis vs. Klitschko

After reading this article, in which Lennox Lewis discusses how similar chess is to boxing, I decided that if ever there were a chess boxing match-up between Lewis and one of the Klitschko brothers, I'd pay to watch that per-per-view fight.

Can you imagine how big a boost chess-boxing would get if that fight were arranged?

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

redditviz: chess

after reading this article on wired.com, i went to the redditviz website and searched for chess.  the top related sub-reddits that were related to the chess reddit were:
- allthingsprotoss
- cheatatmathhomework
- Cubers
- day9
- excel

it's an interesting website.

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Midnight Underwater Speed Chess

first came this: http://blog.xkcd.com/2008/05/19/friday-night/

then came this: a board and set that will sit on the bottom of a pool.


anyone up to play a game?

via reddit/r/chess

Thursday, December 05, 2013

Chess Movies to Watch (or have watched)

With some free time coming around in the next few weeks, I thought I'd list out all the chess movies I know of.  As I watch them, I'll update this post with a link to my review of the movie.

Did I miss any other movies?

Searching for Bobby Fischer (4.5 / 5 stars)
Bobby Fischer Against the World (i watched this about a year ago, but plan to watch this again)
Queen to Play (3.6 / 5 stars)
Computer Chess (2.7 / 5 stars ... my review)
Checkmate (have not seen; heard it's not that great)
Brooklyn Castle (queued up on netflix)
Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine (queued up on netflix)
The Chess Players (Shatranj Ke Khilari) (need to find a copy of this somewhere)

Wednesday, December 04, 2013

Tuesday, December 03, 2013

Need a Christmas Present Idea? - Try Ice Chess

came across this neat idea while reading a reddit post.

thinkgeek sells ice tray molds for chess pieces (link).  currently the item is out of stock and won't be back in stock until March!  Must be pretty popular!

Monday, December 02, 2013

Good Summary Article on Chess Improvement

How to Get Good at Chess, Fast is a pretty good article that summarizes quite well all the things you need to do be be a good chess player.

- he defines "good" as 90th percentile of the player pool you are involved in
- play lots, do tactics, analyze your games
- one really good point he made about chess psychology: "don't ever be afraid of your opponent" and "fight as hard as you can until the game is over"  He says if you follow these two psychology rules, you can add 100 points to your rating.

Again, nothing new here other than it was a really good summary article about chess improvement.