If I allow the fact that I am a Negro to checkmate my will to do, now, I will inevitably form the habit of being defeated.

quote by Paul Williams
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You all know that each title in the Chronicles has a chess theme; that's partly because of the overall design of the Chronicles themselves - the game of chess as an analogue of the game of life.

quote by Dorothy Dunnett
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I haven't played a chess match for several decades. At one point I lost most of my chess games. Then I realized many of my competitors were memorizing the best moves and I was unwilling to do this.

quote by John Harsanyi
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In our town there was a Gestapo officer who loved to play chess. After the occupation began, he found out that my father was the chess master of the region, and so he had him to his house every night.

quote by Bruno Schulz
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I failed to make the chess team because of my height.

quote by Woody Allen
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Eureka Rings A Bell

“Eureka! ” moments sometimes may result
from outright theft, with Graham Bell the worst
example. For he traveled to consult
the patent of Elisha Gray, the first
to find a way to speak by telephone,
and aided by a drunken patent clerk,
got credit for the patent which alone
should have been Gray’s, who did the major work
before the son of the professor Bernard Shaw
would use as Henry Higgins’ model stole
his great invention and used patent law
to take not part of credit but the whole.
Could it be that Archimedes, too,
stole from a competitor the math
enabling him to figure out what you
and I’ve been told he found out in his bath?

Marjorie Kehe reviews The Telephone Gambit, by Seth Shulman, in The Christian Science Monitor, January 9,2008:

How often does a detective story upend history? Probably about as often as a science and technology journalist pens a page-turner. But with this month's release of 'The Telephone Gambit' by Seth Shulman both these unlikely events are coming to pass at the same moment. This slender volume (252 pages, with notes and credits) is a work of nonfiction - although the strangeness of truth definitely overtakes fiction here as Shulman explains how he unraveled Alexander Graham Bell's claim to have invented the telephone. We may never be absolutely certain, but 'The Telephone Gambit' presents compelling evidence that Bell snuck a look at rival inventor Elisha Gray's patent application, stole a crucial element from it, and then lived an uncomfortable lie for the rest of his days. This is not the work of a muckraker. No one wanted to reach such a conclusion less than did Shulman, a longtime admirer of Bell's. But that's exactly why this book is such a good read. Shulman carefully spells out not only the steps he took to piece together his story, but also the reluctance he battled en route. Why would Bell - a man whose good character was noted by all who knew him - behave so dishonorably? How could he have stolen from a rival he had never met? And is it even possible that such a high-profile crime could have gone undetected for so long? The answers to these questions unspool neatly throughout Shulman's narrative but they read more like the stuff of thrillers than of the history of science. Figures in this real-life drama include (it would seem) an alcoholic patent clerk, some unscrupulous attorneys, and a beautiful young woman whom Bell yearned to marry. Shulman's first glimpse of the story came in 2004. He was enjoying a yearlong research fellowship at the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There, he was studying recently digitized reproductions of the private papers of Bell. Shulman was thrilled to be able to follow so close on the heels of his hero - yet puzzled by something he saw. Shulman knew the story of the invention of the telephone as well as anyone - or at least he thought he did. Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray filed patent applications on the very same day in 1876. (Gray's was actually a 'caveat' - but it would have served the purpose of staking Gray's exclusive righ”The Telephone Gambit, ” by Seth Shulman in The Christian Science Monitor, January 0,2008: t to continue research in this area.) According to the official story, Bell filed a few hours earlier than Gray and so was awarded the patent. Then, the next month, he had the breakthrough moment we've all read about in the history books. (After spilling acid in his lab, Bell shouted, 'Watson, come here, I need you.' Watson, in another room, heard him through the device they were experimenting with and thus was born the telephone.) Or so we've always believed. But what troubled Shulman was that Bell's 'eureka moment' depended on an element that had been completely missing from Bell's research until only two days earlier. Then, this crucial link suddenly appeared in Bell's journal in a sketch remarkably similar to a drawing found in Gray's patent application. In the days just before this sketch appeared, Bell had not been working in his lab. On the contrary, he'd been in Washington, filing his patent claim. I won't spoil the fun (and it is fun) by explaining exactly how Shulman proceeded and what he discovered as he worked backward from that point. Bell, he ended up concluding, was a great innovator who had made much progress toward the telephone, but he is not its creator. Instead, it seems, he was a talented, decent man, who lived with guilt ever after being pressured into an unseemly act of theft. Shulman does a neat job of painting, in rapid brush strokes, a portrait of the thrilling era of innovation in which Bell lived and also of the interesting circumstances of his life. (His speech professor father was the real-life model for the Henry Higgins of George Bernard Shaw's 'Pygmalion.') Shulman also manages to lace his work with just enough technology to tell his story without losing the interest of any low-tech readers. As a result, 'The Telephone Gambit' succeeds splendidly as an edge-of-your- seat historical tale. Yet it also manages to go somewhere deeper, leaving readers with intriguing questions about the ways in which truth may remain undiscovered, even when lying open in plain sight.

[...] Read more

poem by Gershon Hepner
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Family Planning

FAMILY PLANNING

My wife is
In her family way
And is
likely to deliver
In a week or so

The birth of a
new one may be
a news for you -
but, in its arrival
I run the risk
of a good fortune

hence,

you will lend me

[...] Read more

poem by Santhana Louis
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Nowadays young people have great choice of occupations, hobbies, etc, so chess is experiencing difficulties because of the high competition. Now it's hard to make living in chess, so our profession does attract young people.

quote by Boris Spassky
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Our situation has the disaffected beauty of a chess game.

Alan Moore in The league of extraordinary gentlemen
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Chess is ruthless: you've got to be prepared to kill people.

quote by Nigel Short
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I'm like Bush, I see the world more like checkers than chess.

quote by Dennis Miller
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It's quite difficult for me to imagine my life without chess.

quote by Garry Kasparov
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I play chess badly and I've been beaten by my 10-year old son.

quote by John Turturro
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Whoever called snooker 'chess with balls' was rude, but right.

quote by Clive James
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I Am, I Am Not?

people say i shine like the sun, and i brightnen the room up
some people call me cold like a winter night
people dont understand me, because i dont want them to
people want me, but they all want to use me
people confuse me because they dont make sense
i love many things out there but really ask youself
are you one of the things or people i love?
or are you another piece to my game of chess, if you are
checkmate

poem by Nicole Feltes
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Litigation is the pursuit of practical ends, not a game of chess.

quote by Felix Frankfurter
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For us chess players the language of artist is something natural.

quote by Vladimir Kramnik
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My freshman year of high school I joined the chess and math clubs.

quote by Eric Allin Cornell
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These young guys are playing checkers. I'm out there playing chess.

quote by Kobe Bryant
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Robert Fisher

I wrote this poem shortly after his death on January 17,2008.

Bobby Fisher, chess savant and master
Unparalleled among the best that played.
A champion, a genius, destroyer
Of chess opponents, this day passed away.
You either loved him or hated the man
There wasn’t middle ground. His time had come.
Eccentricities never lost his fans.
I am the proof, e pluribus Unum.
In life his brief existence was tragic
Perhaps in death we’ll gain understanding
Of genius. Chess his forte, his magic
Preoccupation gave us deepening
Enlightenment of Caissa, his mentor.
His spirit now with her forevermore.

poem by Albert Ahearn
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