Once dismissed as "the Anna Kournikova of chess" for marketing her glamour, Alexandra Kosteniuk is now the Women's World Champion. (previously) [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese on Apr 29, 2009 - 103 comments

The Singing Nerd is a guy who likes to write, play, and record songs about the things that he likes and then post music videos on Youtube. Most of these songs are about nerdy things, such as The Ballad of Catan, a song simply entitled Chess! and a song about Role Playing. But there's also songs about things we can all relate to, like Fast Food Commercials, A Trip To Las Vegas and... um... Pirates?. Hmmm. Anyway, check out the rest of his songs here.
posted by Effigy2000 on Apr 15, 2009 - 7 comments

MateMaster. Flash chess problems ranging from "mate in 1" to the fiendish "mate in 6." (via JiG)
posted by juv3nal on Apr 8, 2009 - 42 comments

The Great Chess Doping Scandal Grandmaster Vassily Ivanchuk refused to submit a urine sample for a drug test at the Chess Olympiad in Dresden and is now considered guilty of doping. The world of chess is outraged that he could face a two-year ban... [He] has been a grandmaster for the past 20 years and is currently ranked third in the world. [more inside]
posted by caddis on Dec 12, 2008 - 36 comments

The Wu-Tang Clan ain't nuthin to PLAY CHESS wit. WuChess.com is the worlds first online chess and Hip-Hop community. You can create and share profiles with your friends and triumph over enemies on the 64 squares. Not just against people in your neighborhood but from all over the world. Play live chess with people from all over the world and get your learn on. Blog.
posted by ColdChef on Jul 17, 2008 - 30 comments

Dutch author Tim Krabbé, also an expert chess player, catalogues the unusual and sublime in chess: Tim Krabbé's Chess Curiosities.

Chess Records. The 110 greatest moves ever. Underpromotion in serious games. A poignant encounter with Garry Kasparov after a loss. Or you could just start at his Open Chess Diary and work your way back.
posted by shadow vector on Jul 12, 2008 - 20 comments

BREAKING NEWS: Kasparov assailed by flying dong. Possible inspiration
posted by thirteenkiller on May 19, 2008 - 83 comments

Cool. Cooler. Awesome! Using Lego bricks as a medium to design chess sets seems absolutely logical to anybody that grew up playing with them. Fans have gone low-tech, the inevitable Star Wars, and a few more. Lego offers a virtual cowboys-and-indians version as well. [more inside]
posted by jabberjaw on Apr 14, 2008 - 11 comments

Brilliant bookshelves by color. What's that? You can't find The Scarlet Letter? Did you look under lipstick red? [more inside]
posted by thebellafonte on Mar 4, 2008 - 54 comments

Chess Problems has hundreds of problems in six difficulty classes from novice to fiendish [java]
posted by Kattullus on Feb 16, 2008 - 10 comments

At the beginning of the Twentieth Century, "International Chess" was the only widely known chess variant in the West. It had its problems. People tried to solve them. Of course, they could just play xiangqi instead. There's also janggi, Makruk, and the granddaddy of them all, chaturanga. Perhaps the most refined game in the family, however, is Japanese Chess--shogi. [more inside]
posted by sonic meat machine on Feb 15, 2008 - 9 comments

Bulgarian chess grandmaster Ivan Cheparinov twice refuses to shake hands with English grandmaster Nigel Short before a match. This is forbidden under tournament rules, so Short protests, and here's how it plays out.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium on Jan 22, 2008 - 88 comments

Bobby Fischer, former World Champion chess player, dead at 64.
posted by JaredSeth on Jan 18, 2008 - 137 comments

Dildo chess set (NSFW, probably). Other suggestive chess sets, part of a small collection of, er, pawnography. [more inside]
posted by GrammarMoses on Jan 12, 2008 - 41 comments

Chess legend Jude Acers. In prison.
posted by The Deej on Aug 9, 2007 - 44 comments

Learn Chess with Igor and Gleb.
posted by basicchannel on Aug 8, 2007 - 17 comments

For nearly two decades, fifty computers have been running day and night on an extremely complex problem. Today, scientists from the University of Alberta announced the result of all that work - they have solved the game of checkers. Chinook, the computer program they developed, can never be beaten - try for yourself. While checkers is the most complicated game to be solved so far, it is not the only one. You can play a perfect game of tic-tac-toe, of course, but also connect four, and a 6x6 board of the game othello. Chess players are already thinking ahead to when their game is solved, with Advanced Chess being Gary Kasparov's answer. The hardest game to completely solve might be Go, which may not be solved until 2100.
posted by blahblahblah on Jul 19, 2007 - 76 comments

Ajax your chess experience up with 64squar.es.
posted by boo_radley on Jul 12, 2007 - 23 comments

A Field Guide to Chess Tactics. Chess tactics explained in plain English, with hundreds of examples. A great site for beginning to mid-level players. Includes a large library of positional problems, organized thematically, with the solutions explained and discussed. For example, learn about knight forks, then quiz yourself on the same topic.
posted by Rumple on Jun 19, 2007 - 76 comments

A disturbing chess set uses the US war in the Middle East as inspiration for its pieces. This is only one modern take of many variations of sets which play off of religious/cultural conflict. to The game itself generally has had a turbulent relationship with religion. In the 13th Century, Pope Innocent III excused post-chess homicide as an involuntary act. Some modern Muslims don't approve of chess, despite Islam having probably introduced it to Europe. Judaism also has a long, if disputed engagement with the game, including enduring anti-semitic attacks about "Jewish" gameplay. The Taliban banned chess in Afghanistan, and the game has returned after their fall (though it now sounds like the Afghan women's team has been withdrawn).
posted by dkg on Jan 3, 2007 - 22 comments

Machine beaths Man. Deep Fritz (.pdf) has beaten world chess champion Vladimir Kramnikin in Bonn.
posted by four panels on Dec 5, 2006 - 68 comments

Chess has a long, if somewhat shrouded, history, with beautiful chess pieces found dating from the 5th century. It has spawned hundreds of fascinating stories, and many interesting names for moves. For the last five decades, the history of chess and computers have been intertwined in many ways. Chess continues to adapt to a new age, with controversies around computer-assisted cheating, attempts to sex-up chess books, thousands of variants, and an amazing online database that can search through recorded games for the last 200 years.
posted by blahblahblah on Dec 4, 2006 - 5 comments

Bobby Fischer vs. the Union Bank of Switzerland: Chess master doesn't like his Swiss bank unilaterally closing his account. Letters go back and forth, lawyers get involved. Fischer posts all letters sent and received on his website. [Link goes to coral cache, original site is hosted at Geocities Japan. via namics weblog]
posted by slater on Nov 12, 2006 - 43 comments

The year is 1909, the man is Jose Raul Capablanca of Cuba, and the result is a whitewash: 28 wins in as many games. The exhibition was part of a tour in which Capablanca won 168 games in a row.
posted by mattbucher on Jul 26, 2006 - 6 comments

Chess queen triggers 'Gormallygate' Australian WIM (Women's International Master) Arianne Caoili, "the Anna Kournikova of chess" has sent the chess world into a spin with her salsa crazy antics. A love triangle between herself, British chess grandmaster Danny Gormally and the world's No. 3 player, Armenia's Levon Aronian turned ugly in a Turin nightclub during the World Chess Olympiad recently.
posted by kurtrudder on Jun 7, 2006 - 72 comments

The Immortal Game between Anderssen and Kieseritzsky is, by some, "considered to be perhaps the most entertaining game of chess ever played". Now, 155 years later, you can enjoy the interactive version, the many many commentaries , and even buy the movie.
posted by hoverboards don't work on water on Feb 21, 2006 - 20 comments

Happy little puzzles using a chess knight's moves to change the white squares into other colors await those who click.
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies on Sep 23, 2005 - 20 comments

I just finished up reading The Turk by Tom Standage (briefly mentioned in passing here) a biography of the chess-playing automaton that toured Europe and later the Americas during the pivotal transition from the 18th to the 19th century. The Automaton was invented as an exercise in national pride by Wolfgang von Kempelen, who considered it a trifle compared to his experiments with mechanical speech synthesis. As a celebrity, the automaton had historic encounters with Benjamin Franklin, Napoleon, Beethoven, Philidor and Charles Babbage, and fictional encounters with the monarchs Catherine the Great, George III and Frederick II. Standage credits it with influencing the development of the Difference Engine, the power loom, Poe's mystery stories, and Barnum's manipulation of the press. The myths surrounding have even caught James Randi, who seems to have been unaware of a colleague's reconstruction based on notes from the last owner.
posted by KirkJobSluder on Sep 21, 2005 - 7 comments

It isn't difficult to find a chess programme that is better at playing chess, but you won't find many that shows you what it is thinking. It also explains how it works. Rather fascinating.
posted by SharQ on Sep 9, 2005 - 28 comments

ChessRogue = Chess + Rogue. (Open source, versions available for Linux and Windows.)

This console-based game takes the pieces of chess and puts them into a Roguelike environment. You start out with a weakened King who can only move and capture horizontally and vertically, in a randomized board full of multi-directional Pawns. As you capture more pieces, the king slowly gains additional powers, like diagonal capture and movement, Knight jumping, and eventually even Rook movement, among others. The opposition gets tougher too, until eventually the entire selection of pieces is out to get you.
Originally created for a three-day programming challenge on rec.games.roguelike.development, it's surprisingly cool, and works rather better than you might expect. It's useful as a break between Nethack fatalities.
posted by JHarris on Aug 2, 2005 - 19 comments

As you're reading this, Grand Master Susan Polgar is on her way to breaking the Guinness World Record for playing simultaneous games of chess. She began at 10 a.m. today playing over 300 opponents. Going from board to board, by 5 p.m. she had already walked 5 miles. Polgar, with a fascinating backstory, broke the glass ceiling of male-dominated international chess in 1990 and cleared the way for her sister Judit, an even stronger player. As of early tonight, Susan had yet to lose a single game (she must win at lest 80% of them), but acknowledged that some players might get lucky: "At least I will make their day."
posted by soyjoy on Aug 1, 2005 - 20 comments

Chess, as a political metaphor and ideological weapon.
posted by semmi on May 20, 2005 - 8 comments

Play chess against the computer & Watch it think.
posted by growabrain on Apr 28, 2005 - 25 comments

Kasparov retires. Garry Kasparov, ranked the #1 chess player in the world (and who's at least among the top three players all-time) said the 2005 Linares tournament will be his last as a professional player. It seems this announcement leaves professional chess and FIDE, at least, in a bit of a bind. Although he's not an official champ, he's still ranked as the strongest player by FIDE. If he really is gone, how much legitimacy will any successor as "unified champ" have? Or does it really matter? How many people on Metafilter care about this, and is it more or less than those who worry about the hockey strike?
posted by Leege on Mar 11, 2005 - 36 comments

Iceland awaits grandmaster Bobby Fischer ...if he doesn't first get extradited to the United States for tax evasion. Fate hangs in the balance for a man who played a uniquely patriotic role during the Cold War, ending more than two decades of Soviet domination of the sport of chess.
posted by AlexReynolds on Mar 10, 2005 - 19 comments

"I've put more than a million dollars worth of cocaine up my nose." - The Philadelphia-based writer of "Stuck Like Chuck" returns with three vignettes ( I | II | III ) of trader-room life and its characters. Brief, but captivating writing.
posted by AlexReynolds on Mar 5, 2005 - 25 comments

Knight's Tour Notes. More than you ever wanted to know about knight's tours on a chessboard.
posted by Johnny Assay on Jan 20, 2005 - 7 comments

If chess is the game of kings... The 2005 U.S. Chessmaster Championships are being held right now, in 2004, here in San Diego. When you have tons of money and a lifelong passion, like Erik Anderson, you can do things like prevent the tourney's demise. Keep your eyes on Hikaru Nakamura and Gata Kamsky, and ask yourself what Garry Kasparov will be doing this weekend. Deep Blue's press secretary told me that he will not attend, but I plan to stop by with my Ivan II, The Conqueror. And if I can't get in, I'll just stay home and read a book, watch a movie or do my damnedest to get my kicks above the waistline, sunshine. (First one is Swedish, last one's a midi.)
posted by mathowie on Nov 24, 2004 - 17 comments

Thinking Machine 4 explores the invisible, elusive nature of thought. Play chess against a transparent intelligence, its evolving thought process visible on the board before you.

From Martin Wattenberg (with Marek Walczak); they have been noted here before.
posted by e.e. coli on Oct 27, 2004 - 11 comments

A large catalog of interesting handmade Russian chess sets. Some that caught my eye: Soviet vs. American; "Soviet-Fascist Chess" (note the kings); and American vs. Russian politicians (note the American queen).
posted by Prospero on Jul 19, 2004 - 5 comments

If you're bored with the kind of chess grandpappy taught you, know there are well over 1,000 other ways to do it. Play chess on a Moebius strip, with hexagons, or like Monopoly. Or play Chaturanga, chess's earliest ancestor. And if you don't have the time to, say, build your own 3-D Star Trek chessboard, there are also variations playable with a standard chess set.
posted by tepidmonkey on Apr 7, 2004 - 13 comments

Perhaps it says something about the intellectual sophistication of ancient cultures that some of the most entertaining games in existence are thousands of years old: backgammon, Go, mancala... The now-ubiquitous chess is a relative newcomer, dating back merely 1400 years. One wonders whether Boggle or Monopoly will withstand the test of time so well.
posted by letourneau on Feb 18, 2004 - 17 comments

Chess games. Study William Steinitz, Aaron Nimzovitch, Jose Capablanca, and check out some people who try to rediscover the games they played. Learn openings, endgames and everything else.
posted by Pseudoephedrine on Dec 28, 2003 - 8 comments

Chess Boxing. "The basic idea in chessboxing is to combine the #1 thinking sport and the #1 fighting sport into a hybrid that demands the most of its competitors – both mentally and physically, yet which can be performed by easiest means. In a chessboxing fight two opponents play alternating rounds of chess and boxing. The contest starts with a round of chess, followed by a boxing round, followed by another round of chess and so on." Radio Netherlands recently did a show about it. (RealAudio, 29m30s)
posted by tpoh.org on Dec 9, 2003 - 15 comments

"He's not in this for the paycheck. He really takes the 'defender-of-humanity' thing seriously." Gary Kasparov faces another, still-tougher computer opponent, but this time in VR! "For the first time the man will meet the machine on its own turf, the virtual world," is the spin on this latest twist on the Kasparov-vs-Computer tradition. You can watch the match online starting tomorrow, but note that ESPN (!) will cover the entire match - "nearly 18 thrilling hours of live chess," Wired notes wryly.
posted by soyjoy on Nov 10, 2003 - 30 comments

Human chess on a city-block scale. Giant chess games, played by international masters, using humans as pieces and city blocks as the board squares. Another game is in the works for New York next year, and the organizer is preparing to hold a similar game in San Francisco next month. Plus, bonus stories from the front line: "Black Queen's Bishop gets call on cell phone, ordering him to move South. We note that the Black Queen has apparently moved from her position at c7. We appear to be on the attack! I eagerly await my own orders to move."
posted by majcher on Sep 19, 2003 - 14 comments

You can never have too many Chess sets. The artists at "Sticks", whose website seems to be barely functioning at all, have put their entire collection of hand carved & painted whimsical chess sets & boards online. This web collection doesn't do the work justice, as the detail on the boards & pieces is fantastic. The themes, however, are what make it great. From Junk Food vs Healthy Food or Farmers vs Livestock, the collection is seemingly endless. To navigate, just keep clicking the right arrow. Warning - the site is not working all that well (at least not for me), so if you click the up arrow you might get stranded. Stay off of the moors, stick to the path!!
posted by jonson on Jul 9, 2003 - 15 comments

College Chess Team Recruiting Scandal! Stacking the deck with grandmasters allegedly earning degrees. Ludicrous/pathetic consequences.
posted by crunchburger on May 23, 2003 - 8 comments

Fancy 3D Chess, pinball or crosswords? It's all just more of that Friday Flash Fun!
posted by twine42 on Mar 21, 2003 - 9 comments

"Bobby Fisher's Pathetic Endgame." An interesting account of Bobby Fisher's decline from greatness to absolutelycrazyness. I used to really like Searching for Bobby Fisher when I was younger, but for some reason I always thought he had disappeared or something mysterious. The truth makes me sad. (Via Plastic.com)
posted by hughbot on Nov 21, 2002 - 12 comments