MARK RUBERY CHESS

H G Wells was the author of numerous classic novels, with perhaps his most notable books being ‘The Time Machine’ and ‘War of the Worlds’. He also had quite an extreme view about the game of chess as the following passage reveals...

‘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. A nameless 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 and unreliable - but teach him, inoculate him with chess.’

H.G. Wells, ‘Certain Personal Matters’, 1898

And in a similarly light vein….

‘The true sweetness of chess, if it can ever be called sweet, is to see a victory snatched, by some happy impertinence, out of the shadows of apparently irrevocable disaster.’ - H.G. Wells

The player with White in today’s diagram might well agree with the above quote…

In the following overwhelming position a top GM, on the brink of winning a major tournament, produced the most tragic move of his career. This position was used as the tragic finale in the novel ‘The Dragon Variation’ by Anthony Glyn (1969).

WHAT IS BLACK’S WORST MOVE?

Vasily Ivanchuk on being asked how famous is he in his home country, responded thus:

‘They don’t recognise me that often. I’ll tell you a story. I was once travelling in a train from Kiev to Lvov. Apart from me there were three other people in the compartment. Overnight, of course, they didn’t recognise me. And then in the morning one of them went somewhere, and when he returned he started to talk excitedly: “You know what a celebrity’s travelling with us? Vasyl Virastyuk (a world’s strongest man contestant) himself!” And they ran to have a look at him. They called me as well, but I said no. They were really amazed by that.’