I use to be an avid player in the great game of chess. In the last year or two I have been neglecting my chess board which, from boredom and having no ability to do anything else, has decided to collect dust as a hobby .
Anyway, I have always wanted to play chess over email, or in this case, Ben permitting, over posting. I was thinking that maybe we could have a ilovephilosophy chess championship (I know what your thinking ‘Magius, what does chess have to do with philosophy?’). I wouldn’t mind organizing it myself if no one else was willing to volunteer. I will send Ben a PM and see what he thinks.
In the meantime, I was wondering if anyone would like to play me in chess. I was thinking we could do it over PM for now. If Ben permits, maybe we can do it through posts and others can track our game progress.
I like the idea of doing it over email/PM because there is no external variables affecting the game. Like time, hunger, sleep, friends, etc. This way we can just PM whenever we have a minute to scan the board and just write the coordinates (ie. D2-D4). Making it really simple.
I’m not sure I’d have the patience to last the entire length of a game of “PM chess” but if you’re willing to sign up for yahoo games, I’d be happy to give you a game there:
I think if we have a chess tournament there won’t be any need to have chess games over posts. I’ve found Yahoo chess to be a good place to start but there are other sites which let you place online chess for free.
I leave it to Magius to organise so if you want to get involved with the organisation of the tournament please contact him.
JP,
do you want to give it a shot anyway? We can PM each other with the moves. I come onto Ilovephilosophy once a day, rarely does it happen that I will not come on for a whole day or two days. So the game should go fairly quickly. What do you say?
I’ve heard some people say that “Chess makes your smarter…”, anyone believe this? Anyone have any supporting or defying evidence?
I also heard that “Listening to Mozart makes you smarter…”, anyone believe this? Anyone have any supporting or defying evidence?
Lastly, I heard that “Those who are good at math are also good at chess…”, any believe this? Anyone have any supporting or defying evidence?
Personally, with the last hearsay, I have noticed a trend of mathematicians also playing chess well. But I can’t say that I believe that it is MATH that leads people to play chess well. I also can’t say the reverse. This is probably due to the fact that I don’t like certain types of math, but I like to play chess.
Paul Morphy, the first American world chess champion, entered college at 14. At 19, Mikhail Tal (another world champion) was a professor of romance languages at the University of Latvia.
It is common – almost normative – for top players to be multi-lingual.
On the other hand:
Akiba Rubinstein, the strongest player never to become world champion, was considered “slow” by his contemporaries. He certainly was psychotic. And Bobby Fischer, perhaps the greatest player of all time, is no 100-watt bulb.
It is interesting that Russian players tend to be both stronger and saner than their counterparts in the West. Perhaps that is because in Russia, the game itself is more esteemed.
(2) The music of Mozart should be enjoyed for its own sake.
(3) At least three world champions (Anderssen, Lasker and Euwe) were professional mathematicians.
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