Hitchcock’s Chess Suspense with Poker: Be Careful, I’ll Get You Yet
Sir Alfred Hitchcock, KBE (Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, 1899 – 1980), the famous British filmmaker and producer pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. Hitchcock directed more than fifty feature films in a career spanning six decades. He remains one of the most popular and most recognised filmmakers, and his works are still popular today. Hitchcock did a great deal to shape modern cinema, which would be utterly different without him. His flair was for narrative, cruelly withholding crucial information (from his characters and from us) and engaging the emotions of the audience like no one else.
A serial killer, “The Avenger” is on the loose in London, murdering blonde women
The Lodger movie marks the first time in which audiences encounter the mannerism which would make Alfred Hitchcock’s films famous.
The Lodger
A serial killer known as the Avenger has been killing blonde women in London. A young woman named Daisy, who works as a model, and her coworkers hear about the latest murder. Several of the blonde girls are scared and consider changing their hair color or getting wigs while Daisy doesn’t seem worried. She lives with her parents who rent out rooms in their home. Just recently they rented a room to a stranger. It doesn’t take long for the Lodger and Daisy to start to grow close. They become friends, and we see her spending more time visiting in his room. They play chess together, and display all the cinematic signs of an emergent romance. The Lodger acts oddly though, which causes Daisy’s mother to believe that he is actually the Avenger.
Here we see the Lodger, in an elegant smoking jacket, and Daisy, in a slinky dress with pearls, playing chess in front of the fireplace in his room. She drops a piece on the floor and bends down to pick it up, while he makes what looks like an ominous grasp for a poker… but when we cut back, she is replacing the chessmen, and he is calmly tending the fire.
The chess game proceeds. The lodger and Daisy exchange a sequence of glances suggesting a combination of seduction and uncertainty. The intimate close-ups suddenly end with a long shot as the Lodger and Daisy draw back from one another in response to a knock at the door. When her mother enters, Daisy’s expression is an unqualified look of disappointment, and she leaves the lodger’s room reluctantly.
“Be careful, I’ll get you yet,” the Lodger warns.
Miraculous Intervention for Phiona
Children of Africa
What is it like to be a child, growing up and living in Africa?
Life is simply harsh for children there. Especially if you are a child born in one of the worst slums of Kampala, Uganda, like Katwe, where families live in utmost poverty. There is little for children, their education, clothing, shoes, housing, food…
Kisenyi, Uganda. A street boy sitting in the garbage, looking for things to use, sell or play with
Children play ball with plastic bottles. There are no toys to play with, no dolls for girls, no books to read. And then there are a lot of daily chores for them, from cleaning, washing clothes, taking care of the younger children, cooking — many things that children in the West would not be made to do.
A child growing up here – has no future and no hope – unless there is a miraculous intervention…
Phiona Mutesi, chess prodigy
At age 11, Phiona Mutesi had a lot of strikes against her; barely literate, she lived in Katwe. To be from Katwe is to be an underdog in Uganda.
Then a slum dweller taught her to play chess.
Phiona recalls what first drew her to the game. “When I first saw chess, I thought, What could make all these kids so silent? Then I watched them play the game and get happy and excited, and I wanted a chance to be that happy.”
She first won the Uganda women’s junior championship in 2007, when she was 11. She won that title three years in a row. She is still so early in her learning curve. Chess experts believe her potential is staggering.
Phiona’s dream is to perfect the game and become a grandmaster to help her family out. So they can have a better life.
Children of Africa need a chance.
Read more about Phiona:
1. Queen of Katwe (sportsoutreach.net)
2. Game of her life (sports.espn.go.com)
3. Ugandan girl, Phiona Mutesi leads chess revolution from the slums (guardian.co.uk)
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Capablanca Constantly Getting in Zeitnot?
So you think Capa has rarely got in zeitnot? Actually, he was in constant time trouble: as a bonvivan he seemed to be dating a lot. Here’s a story Andre Lilienthal told in his 1969 book, published in Russia (the translation is mine):
The Genius and the Princess. Capa met Olga, a Russian princess in 1934
“I couldn’t find a tayloring job and soon, looking for one, was forced to leave Hungary. I found myself in Austria. One day, wandering through the streets of Vienna, I saw a colorful poster announcing the simultaneous exhibition on forty boards to be given by Jose Raul Capablanca. Admission: 5 shillings for spectators, 10 shillings for players.”
“Of course, just to be there and watch wasn’t enough. I wanted to play even though 10 shillings was a huge amount for me. But it was so tempting. I couldn’t help myself and collected my last pennies to take part in the event.”
“Too absorbed with the game, I didn’t realize that I was the last one, still playing the elegant, a little bit condescending master. I was too excited. Although I had a piece for two pawns, Capablanca’s authority was stifling, so I offered draw with much trepidation. Peace was agreed. I was feeling high as a kite.”
Chess competition, chess art by Olga Suvorova
“I wanted a validation of my successful debut and stretched out my scoresheet over to my idol for an autograph, but obviously it was too late as Capablanca was already gone. Later I learned the Cuban was in his usual time rouble – he rushed off to a date.”
“No matter how complex chess is, the life is even more so – on the board Capablanca almost never got into time trouble.”
Source:
Andor Lilienthal, Life for Chess, Fiskultura and Sport, Moscow, 1969
Further reading:
- Edward Winter’s Chess Explorations, Olga Capablanca (see all the links on Capablanca listed at the end of the Chessbase article)
- The Genius and the Princess, by Edward Winter
Get Tough!
Mental powers vs Skills
Winners in life and sports are not always determined by their skills alone.
At all levels of competition, those who are most successful have one characteristic in common: mental toughness. Great performance is as much about mental poise and focus as it is about physical fitness and skills.
Mental toughness is difficult to define. Here is a definition that encompasses the essence of it (Jones, Hanton, & Connaughton, 2002).
Stay tough in all your battles. Chess, art work by Katerina Miroshkina
Mental toughness is having the natural or developed psychological edge that enables you to:
– Generally cope better than your opponents with the many demands (competition, training, and lifestyle) that sport places on a performer.
– Specifically, be more consistent and better than your opponents in remaining determined, focused, confident, and in control under pressure.
The Iron Man
Cal Ripken, the “Iron Man”, played 21 seasons with the Baltimore Orioles. During his career, he played 2,632 consecutive games, setting the longest consecutive games played streak in major league baseball history.
In 2004, Cal Ripken identified 8 characteristics of perseverance, a term used synonymously with mental toughness, that he felt contributed to his consecutive game streak. The following are the characteristics he identified (Creasy, An Analysis of the Components of Mental Toughness in Sport, 2005):
1. Take the right approach: always be ready to play.
2. Have a strong will to succeed: don’t let setbacks stop you from achieving your goal.
3. Have passion for what you do: love what you do.
4. Be competitive: it’s not just about beating your opponent. You have to internalize
competitiveness and take pride in what you do.
5. Be consistent: recognize and adjust to change so that you are always able to make a
contribution to your team.
6. Have conviction: you have to be a little bit stubborn.
7. Strength: You have to be in good physical and mental condition. You must be
psychologically prepared.
8. Personal management: don’t duck potential problems; take on the problems directly
to prevent small problems from building into bigger problems.
These attributes or characteristics provide some specific insight into how athletes can achieve mental toughness.
Djoker and Rafa: the great rivalry of tennis. Who is mentally tougher?
Locking horns again
Let’s take a look what things look like in the tennis arena. Djokovic and Nadal are meeting again at Rolex Masters in Monte Carlo. In the last seven matches Djokovic got upper hand. Sunday it is going to be as mental as physical fitness and demonstrating skills. When you reach a certain skills level in the game, fighting at the top of the tier, the mental component might be 90% of the game.
Looks like Djokovic is sticking out his jaw, looking for a fight. Let’s see what Rafa has to say to that. A great tennis rivalry indeed. Now you may want to read Peter Bodo’s blog post about the Sunday match. Our studying attributes found in the more successful athletes helps us actually get closer to the definition of mental toughness across the board, in chess, sports, business…
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What Annihilates Men?
Chess: Passion, fight, or seeking power for domination?
H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds
The passion for playing chess is one of the most unaccountable in the world. It slaps the theory of natural selection in the face. It is the most absorbing of occupations, the least satisfying of desires, an aimless excrescence upon life. It annihilates a man. You have, let us say, a promising politician, a rising artist, that you wish to destroy. Dagger or bomb are archaic, clumsy, and unreliable–but teach him, inoculate him with chess! It is well, perhaps, that the right way of teaching chess is so little known, that consequently in most cases the plot fails in the performance, the dagger turns aside. Else we should all be chess-players–there would be none left to do the business of the world. Our statesmen would sit with pocket boards while the country went to the devil, our army would bury itself in chequered contemplation, our bread-winners would forget their wives in seeking after impossible mates. The whole world would be disorganised. I can fancy this abominable hypnotism so wrought into the constitution of men that the cabmen would go trying to drive their horses in Knights’ moves up and down Charing Cross Road. And now and again a suicide would come to hand with the pathetic inscription pinned to his chest: “I checked with my Queen too soon. I cannot bear the thought of it.” There is no remorse like the remorse of chess.
It is a curse upon a man. There is no happiness in chess–Mr. St. George Mivart, who can find happiness in the strangest places, would be at a loss to demonstrate it upon the chess-board. The mild delight of a pretty mate is the least unhappy phase of it. But, generally, you find afterwards that you ought to have mated two moves before, or at the time that an unforeseen reply takes your Queen. No chess-player sleeps well. After the painful strategy of the day one fights one’s battles over again. You see with more than daylight clearness that it was the Rook you should have moved, and not the Knight. No! it is impossible! no common sinner innocent of chess knows these lower deeps of remorse. Vast desert boards lie for the chess-player beyond the gates of horn. Stalwart Rooks ram headlong at one, Knights hop sidelong, one’s Pawns are all tied, and a mate hangs threatening and never descends. And once chess has been begun in the proper way, it is flesh of your flesh, bone of your bone; you are sold, and the bargain is sealed, and the evil spirit hath entered in.
The War of the Worlds
The proper outlet for the craving is the playing of games, and there is a class of men–shadowy, unhappy, unreal-looking men–who gather in coffee-houses, and play with a desire that dieth not, and a fire that is not quenched…
Excerpt from “Concerning Chess,” by H. G. Wells (in Certain Personal Matters, London, T. Fisher Unwin, p.140)
Playing on the Big Chessboard of the World. Science fiction?
H. G. Wells (1866-1946), English author, futurist, essayist, historian, socialist, and teacher.
He is now best known for his work in the science fiction genre (novels The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, The First Men in the Moon and The Island of Dr. Moreau). Together with Jules Verne and Hugo Gernsback, Wells has been referred to as “The Father of Science Fiction”.
“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe,” H. G. Wells once said. But others said, Wells was quite the fascist and insane powermonger.
Wells was also a wargamer and chess player. In this amusing little tongue-in-cheek essay (written in 1898), Wells expresses both the joy and horror found in succumbing to the siren call of the Royal Game.
* * *
“By some ardent enthusiasts Chess has been elevated into a science or an art. It is neither; but its principal characteristic seems to be – what human nature mostly delights in – a fight.” — Dr. Emanuel Lasker
Or perhaps power to dominate?
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The First Ever Draw
In 1925, Reti played a blindfold simultaneous exhibition on 30 boards. When he was going home after that, he forgot a suitcase. When somebody reminded him about it, Reti said: “Thank you very much. My memory is so bad…”
* * *
George Carlin once asked, “Can you buy an entire chess set at a pawn shop?”
The first draw ever
Two friends meet on the street one day and one of them says, “My wife says if I play in the chess tournament tomorrow he’ll take the kids and leave me.” The other asks him, “So what are you going to do?” And the other answers, “Same as always, e4.”
* * *
Best play for White against the Sicilian? 1.d4!
* * *
Alexander Alekhine was once asked by a playful interviewer whether he preferred the queen on the board or on the bed. “It depends,” he replied, “on the position.”
* * *
Q. What is the difference between a chess player and a couple on a blind date?
A. The chess player mates then chats…
* * *
What do you call a Catholic Priest who doesn’t know how to play chess?
A Bad Bishop.
* * *
“Chess is not something that drives people mad,” chess-playing psychologist William Hartston once remarked. “Chess is something that keeps mad people sane.”
Drunk Knight
A Russian gulag back in 1972. All the prisoners were listening to a world championship match everyday over a radio. One day when the match was all tied up the guards discovered the radio and took it from the prisoners so they could listen.
After two weeks of not knowing what had happened in the Fischer Spassky match, a new prisoner arrived. Everyone immediately asked him what had happened in the World Chess Championship match. “I lost. “
* * *
Coach told them: Boxing isn’t like chess, you have got to think!
* * *
- It’s become impossible to play chess with the Chinese. Especially when they start moving those knights around the board.
- What’s with that? Well, knight goes like “L”.
- Really? Have you ever seen how they write “L”?
* * *
Chess is merely a continuation of politics by means of checkmate.
* * *
- Do you love me, she asked snuggling closer.
- Of course, he replied gently.
- Do you want to marry me?
- Why do you have such a habit of forcing the game right into the endgame?
If you have some jokes and you want to share it, please feel free to add in the comments box. Thanks
Djokovic or Murray: What is Ultimate Science of Winning in Chess, err Tennis?
The world’s #1 and #4 are facing each other for the third time in 2012 on Sunday in the Miami Masters. It seems to be a match of equals. After all, there is a small difference between the top four in professional tennis (Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Andy Murray).
Murray and Djokovic, big friends off the court since their youth beginnings in tennis. Who will be celebrating Sunday in the Miami Masters? Whose strategy will prevail?
We’ll see many great shots down the line to win the point. We’ll see many amazing shots screeching across the net. Bam!
But do you ever really think about why they won the point or why they even hit the ball in that specific direction (cross-court vs. down the line) or why they used that specific spin (top vs slice) to put themselves in that kind of winning position.
So, what will really separate them tomorrow? What will make one of them the victor?
It’s not their technique. Their secret and ultimate skill as a warrior is rooted in their…
Game Plan
That is the greatest un-equalizer between equals. The champs from the runner-ups differentiator. Never mind the pros and the club players.
That is why we focus on the best players in the game to uncover what makes them so special.
Everyone can hit a ball. You already may spend a ton of hours on the practice court working on how to hit it (or on the chessboard working on various tactics to learn how to make your winning stroke).
How you hit the ball, what move to make is important, but the ultimate science is: Where to hit it, when, and why it should go there.
She knows what she's doing: why and where to make that winning stroke. "Chess," art by Georgy Kurasov
That’s a game changer.
When you add strategy to your game you’ll have the much needed guide or roadmap to navigate through the match. It helps you get in the proper positioning you must have before using your deadly tactical weapons to get the victory.
It’s what provides you that sense of purpose and direction so you’re not out there running around like a chicken with your head cut off!
Yet the problem is…
Strategy is an invisible thing
“All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.” Sun Tzu, c. 500 B.C.
All those strategies that the sport’s best use to constantly place their opponent in uncomfortable situations so they can emerge victorious are hidden from us and only experts can read them easily:
- Selection and maintenance of aim
- Decision making and stroke selection
- Strengths protection
- Weakness exploitation
- Weakness protection
- Court movement
- (Counter)attacks and their timing
- Setup positioning and recovery positioning
- Mental toughness
These, my friend, are the greatest un-equalizers. But to teach the invisible things isn’t easy. And for the experts it’s something mostly intuitive and automatic, sometimes hard to express in words.
Our education is badly broken
At the recent MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference they all agreed that analytics cannot help the sorry state of U.S. Tennis at the moment. Todd Martin, the former tennis pro, briefly channeled Bill Murray: “If the game’s not taught well at the beginning levels, it just doesn’t matter.”
Americans (and not only them) are being taught how to hit, but not where to hit the ball. As Paul Annacone, a pro tennis coach and former pro tennis player said, “You get 16-20 year olds trying to figure out how to play after eight years or so of bad habits.”
The game of tennis (Игра в теннис), art by Georgy Kurasov
This is true across the board. In tennis, chess, or math. I could attest it’s true from what I’ve seen in chess (how about this game between players with more than a year of chess “experience”: 1.e4 d5 2.Bd3 Bg4 3.exd5 Bxd1).
“Our education in any domain is frightfully wasteful of time and values. In math and physics the results arrived are still worse than in chess. The bad state of education in chess is due entirely to our backwardness,” Dr. Emanuel Lasker, the former World Chess Champion for 27 years.
Things look pretty bad, don’t they? Is there anything we could do to change the sorry state of affairs? In chess, tennis, or elsewhere… in our individual lives, or in how we’re leading states, peoples, teams…
Well, strokes in tennis or chess are virtually useless without strategy that gives them direction. The greatest question of all is not How-to, but Why-and-Where-to. It’s not a matter of tactics, but strategy (even some GMs still tell us chess is 99% tactics – is that a part of the backwardness Dr. Lasker mentioned above?).
Let’s work on winning.
Follow @chessContactLike this:
Man Who Beat World Champion by Winning First Three of 4-game Blitz Match
The victim was Dr. Alexander Alekhine.
The victor could boast, as recently as the year 2010, that he also humiliated the great Capablanca in a tournament game by sacking queen!
The list of victims went on, including names of Dr. Lasker, Euwe, Botvinnik, Smyslov…
Who is this guy anyway?
He is…
The last Chess Mohican
Andor Lilienthal (Moscow, 1911), the last of the original 27 chess grandmasters, died two years ago this May. He was 99.
His parents moved to Hungary when he was two. He had the distinction of having met every single world chess champion from Emanuel Lasker to Viswanathan Anand (with the sole exception of Wilhelm Steinitz). Lilienthal played 10 and beat 6 of them.
Lilienthal grew up in poverty. After finishing the 5th grade, he gave up school and started to learn tailoring. Luckily, for him and us, he then discovered chess
Beginnings: Coffee house chess in Paris
Lilienthal learned to play at 13, a relatively late start, and never had any formal training. Instead, he honed his natural talent leading the bohemian and precarious life of a professional, playing in the coffeehouses of Western Europe in the 1930s. [3]
Coffeehouses were natural haunts for many of the best players. In his books, “Life for Chess,” Fiskultura and Sport, Moscow, 1969, and “Chess Was My Life,” Budapest, 1985, Lilienthal described encounters in 1929 with Capablanca, in the Café Central in Vienna, and with Dr. Lasker at the Café König in Berlin in October 1929.
But he spent most of time in Paris back then. At the Café de la Régence, once the epicenter of chess in Europe, he regularly played with players like Savielly Tartakower (whom Lilienthal later named as his first teacher), Kostić and Znosko-Borovsky, but also people better known in other fields, like Bernstein. An attorney by profession, he once advised Lilienthal, “You should look for an occupation for living, since it’s as hard to earn money with chess in Paris as it is anywhere else.” Lilienthal also played the artist Marcel Duchamp, and the composer Sergei Prokofiev, both of Master strength.
At the Régence he also met Alekhine who once stopped by and was told there was a 19-year old who was beating everyone in blitz. Alekhine approached Lilienthal and offered to play four games (5-minute blitz). To everybody’s surprise, Lilienthal won the first three. In his biography, Lilienthal wrote that Alekhine demanded that they play four more games but declined, saying that he wanted to retain the result as a pleasant memory.
Somehow after that time Lilienthal began playing in tournaments. He quickly established a reputation as an aggressive and dangerous player. His games were lauded for their elegance and he left many fantastic games with his attractive chess style (we will show some of them with the commentary from his “Life for Chess” book in future posts).
"Life for Chess," Russian edition (1969)
There are three more Lilienthal's books published in Hungarian (1985), German (1988) and English (2001)
Lilienthal’s absolute moment of glory was to come in his clash against the near-invincible former world champion José Raul Capablanca at Hastings 1933-34. Capablanca, a virtuoso of the chessboard, was capable of going for years on end without losing a single game.
Lilienthal, however, remained glacially unimpressed by his formidable opponent’s reputation and delivered a death blow to the mighty Cuban in a sparkling game featuring a sublime queen sacrifice. [1] (When Bobby Fischer noticed Lilienthal in the audience at his 1992 return match against Boris Spassky in Yugoslavia, Fischer greeted him, “Pawn e5 takes f6!”)
Back to the USSR
Lilienthal stayed in Russia after he played in the Moscow Tournament in 1935. He worked as a chess trainer to the trade unions and became a Soviet citizen in 1939.
He gave large simultaneous exhibitions. In 1935 in the Moscow Gorky Park, he tied the then world record, held by Frank Marshall (Montreal, 1922) by playing 155 players simultaneously. Lilienthal writes: “The play had already progressed considerably, when it began to rain. Within seconds 150 large black umbrellas were stretched over the chessboards. Finally I also got an umbrella, which a young man held over me. He accompanied me from board to board for about 5 to 6 hours. This helpful boy was Yuri Averbakh.” Averbakh also was one of the 12 players who won against Lilienthal. [5] Interestinlgy, today GM Averbakh (b. 1922) holds the title of doyen, the senior member among world’s GM elite.
Lilienthal was not a professional in the modern sense. Looking at his games we had the impression that an interesting position or a game meant more to him than a win (of course for the modern top players a win is the only thing that matters). Maybe this attitude prevented Lilienthal from achieving even better results. [2]
He won (+8-0=11) the 12th USSR Championship in 1940 (his best tournament result), together with Bondarevsky, leaving behind Smyslov, Keres, Boleslavsky and Botvinnik.
From 1951 to 1960, Lilienthal trained Petrosian, who became the ninth world champion in 1963. He also acted as Smyslov’s coach during his world championship matches with Botvinnik in 1954, 1957 and 1958.
Lilienthal moved back to Hungary in 1976. He was a much loved and highly respected member of the global chess community. His chess wisdom and experience were admired for their depth and insights. His good nature and a great sense of humor made him a subject of many chess anecdotes and legends.
* * *
We will see some anecdotes from his Russian book in upcoming posts.
Follow @chessContactReferences:
1. Andor Lilienthal: Chess grandmaster, by Raymond Keene (www.impalapublications.com)
2. Andor Lilienthal – The last Chess Romantic, by Gregory Serper (www.chess.com)
3. Andor Lilienthal, a Chess Grandmaster, Dies at 99 (NewYork Times)
4. Andor Arnoldovich Lilienthal, 1911 – 2010 (www.chessbase.com)
5. Andor Lilienthal and His Contribution to the History of Modern Chess (www.chesscafe.com)
Would You Like Some Chess, or Perhaps Backgammon with Your Coffee?
History of coffee house
What is the world’s most popular beverage? Well, by any name, in any language, all around the world, at any time of day, coffee is one of the top entrants. Its great taste, energizing properties and the endless ways you can have your cup of coffee, make it so popular.
But it must have been something else, much more important, that it deserved that status. Actually, coffee has been at the center of social interaction for centuries satisfying the need that humans and many other species have: to be an accepted member of a group. Whether it is family, friends, co-workers, or a sports team, humans have an inherent desire to belong. The motive to belong is the need for strong, stable relationships with other people.
Since the coffee houses originated in the Near East, they have become the center of society, a great meeting ground, providing a place to meet and talk. The popularity of the coffee houses was unequaled and people frequented them for all kinds of social activity.
Backgammon players, by Jan Steen (c.1625-1679). As always, the Dutch is to the point of chaos
Not only did people drink coffee and engage in conversation, but they also listened to music, watched performers, played chess (coffee was considered as “milk” of chess players and thinkers) and kept current on the news of the day. In fact, they quickly became such an important center for the exchange of information that the coffee houses were often referred to as “Schools of the Wise.”
Sounds familiar? People used these establishments, as they do today, to discuss business, read, and enjoy each other’s company. It seems that hardly anything has changed in our approach to the social atmosphere of coffee houses over the centuries. Where better can you enjoy a delightful chat with a friend, as well as a delicious brew of coffee? That is why there are many coffee house chains prospering in America: Starbucks, Caribou Coffee, Tim Horton’s, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Coffee Beanery, Seattle’s Best, Peet’s Coffee, Tully’s, Dunn Bros. Coffee, Port City Java…
You will find many things in the coffee house in the name of creativity. It can be a wonderful place for finding some much needed inspiration. It is a place that allows you to use the internet, and sit all day writing a book or doing some creative work. But nothing gives inspiration like a friendly animated conversation with other people and friends.
Cafes and board games
An increasing number of coffee shops, cafes and restaurants all around the world is now taking on regaining the status of the epicenter of social life. To attract customers, they are experimenting with new menu items–board games such as chess, shogi, and backgammon. The Mind Café in Singapore offers over 2,000 board games. The whole concept of being able to play board games while dining is unique, as not many establishments offer this.
Meet, talk, play. Chess Cafe, Gent Belgium. And no chaos here
Board games, such as chess, require a certain kind of communication. That is why they are well-suited to being played in environments such as cafes where people come to meet and socialize. Board games are that gluing ingredient that may make people get together, a great opportunity for them to meet others through the game. You want to sate your palette and catch up with friends? No problem. Have you coffee, or meal, and entertainment at the same time.
Cafe Plus, a coffee shop in East Syracuse; Cornwall’s, a typical English pub in Boston; The Mind Café in Singapore; Hotel du Nord, one of the best restaurant finds in Paris tucked away on picturesque Canal St. Martin; Chess Cafe Anpasan in Osaka, Japan; Milkshakes and Games Old Fashioned Family Night! at Chick-fil-A.
What is so special about them? You can enjoy playing board games while meeting and dining with your old or newly made friends, or your co-workers after a stressful day.
You want your establishment, restaurant, pub, or coffee shop to solidify its status as the neighborhood’s social and cultural meeting point, or become the culinary epicenter for years to come? Well, maybe you should join this increasingly popular trend around the Globe that seems to be addressing our deeply-ingrained need to meet, eat and socialize.
Follow @chessContactRelated articles:
- Cafes get their game on (www.yomiuri.co.jp)
- The history of coffee (National Coffee Association USA)
- The oldest chess café in Amsterdam (chessbase.com)
- The Mind Cafe (www.themindcafe.com.sg)
- Cornwall’s, Boston (cornwalls.com)
- Hotel du Nord (www.vingtparismagazine.com)
- Backgammon (Wikipedia)
- Early Chess Clubs, by Bill Wall (chessville.com)
What Messi Soccer Genius Can Teach Us about Board Visualization Skills in Chess
Did you know that the best soccer players rely on maths and scientific principles to reach the top of their game? Actually, any expert in any field, be it other sports, chess, or classic warfare, depends on it. For example, Lionel Messi, the five-star Soccer General of FC Barcelona, by many the best soccer player ever, uses geometry, aerodynamics and probability to best his opponents.
Lionel Messi: General that soccer battlefield may have never seen before. Does he have eyes in the back of his head?
What we are interested in here is to find out underlying mechanisms of expert performance. How does the expert’s brain makes, mostly unconscious, intuitive decisions? We want to find out how experts do it in order to use this knowledge in teaching the skill to the beginner. We need to include this key skill early in the learning process, because if the game is not taught well at the beginning level, “it just doesn’t matter,” as Bill Murray would say. It’s not how to kick the ball, but where to kick it. Or you get learners trying to figure out how to play better after months, or years or so of bad habits. Alas it is then usually too late to break the old habits and change behavior. They are convicted to stay mediocre, or even worse, to give up the game altogether.
The vision is fundamental to all our actions in the world – everything follows from it. We monitor the environment all the time so as to be able to react to it in ways conducive for survival and success in all struggles of life.
Power of the glance
The fact is, experts see more. They have a bigger picture of the game than anyone around him and get more information from the field than less-skilled players. What kind of information are we talking about here? It is the positions of their opponents and team-mates at any one time. It is a current line-up of of all players on the field, a structured network of their interconnections.
Messi has a better game overview because he uses his powerful coup d’oeil (or power of a glance) to get the sense of more connections between players on the field than less-skilled players. This supports the chunk theory, based on the discovery that the best chess players sense any board position, not in terms of a unconnected set of individual pieces, but as five or six groups of pieces with their functional relations.
The genius of Lionel Messi uses this understanding of players’ geometry intuitively to map this information out and get understanding and meaning of what is going on on the field. This is not a static view. It is very important to anticipate how this dynamic system may evolve in space and time.
Geometry of the battlefield helps the sixth sense. "Chess pieces," chess art by Peter Funk
Power of sixth sense
We see how Messi, like a trained hunter, possess an increased visual awareness. Not only that, his rich experience and larger knowledge base help him discover the relevant information in the current situation, which then directs his attention to the most pressing issue. Once all this visual information has been processed from a single gaze, the brain combines current visual input with pre-existing knowledge, concepts and patterns, already stored in it, to grasp the meaning of the situation and respond to it.
That is what we usually call the sixth sense - the ‘expert intuition’, an instinctive method of solving a particular problem. For example, firefighters search for cues that lead to the heat source. In chess, everything comes from spatial relationships between pieces and their four basic roles, or functions. You need to identify critical, while ignoring irrelevant piece contacts. The cues then lead to the recognition of patterns.
Decision making: what move to make
Messi uses his exceptional anticipation abilities and probability to select from few possible choices of stored patterns and mental images which helps him solve the complex problem in the best possible way: he decides where to go and what to do with the ball in a single moment, whether to make the right run (to escape from a marking, for instance), or play the right pass over to a team mate.
Strong chess vision is a guarantee of your success! "Chess board in the misty gorge," chess art by Peter Funk
How to improve board visualization skills in chess
Now replace the word Messi in the previous text and put, say, Capablanca, or Fischer. You will see that the same applies and explains the exceptional expert visualization skills in soccer and chess, or any other domain, for that matter.
There is no question that we need to use this knowledge to teach chess more effectively. Obviously, every one needs to spend those proverbial 10,000 hours to become good at something. But we need to have them build a knowledge base with such methods that will at the same time help discover the relevant information in the current situation. They need to develop ways of more efficient information pick-up from the board. In training less skilled players, it would be extremely helpful to orient their attention to the relevant features of play.
They need to be taught where to look at and what to look for first.
A more efficient way of teaching chess must start with piece contacts, not aimless woodpushing moves.
Follow @chessContactRelated articles:
1. Messi’s sixth sense explained (UEFA.com)
2. Scientists try to explain Messy Genius (www.espnstar.com)
3. A game of two halves, played with maths and science skills: Top footballers have high intelligence, study suggests (www.dailymail.co.uk)
4. Why Ask Why? Just Enjoy Messi (www.nytimes.com)
