Prime Minister alluded to this as Lord Siva himself playing chess with a princess at the Chaturanga Vallaba temple, while setting off the Olympiad. Tamil Nadu can truly boast of being the Mecca of Chess in India. It is but befitting that the first ever Olympiad is held in India, in Chennai.

 

Musings on Chaturanga-5

Narasimhan Vijayaraghavan

 

 

 

 

Prime Minister alluded to this as Lord Siva himself playing chess with a princess at the Chaturanga Vallaba temple, while setting off the Olympiad. Tamil Nadu can truly boast of being the Mecca of Chess in India. It is but befitting that the first ever Olympiad is held in India, in Chennai.

 

 

 

 

Chess masters are known to employ strange methods to win their games. Ruy Lopez, the famous 16th-century Spanish priest and chess player, once advised, “Sit your opponent with the sun in his eyes.” Another player named Lucena once recommended, “Try to play after your opponent has eaten or drunk freely.”

 

In the 19th century, Harry Nelson Pillsbury attributed his clear thinking to puffing on a cigar during his games. On the other hand, Szymon Winawer said he deliberately smoked bad cigars so the odor would mess with his opponent’s concentration. And at the 1935 World Championship, the superstitious Alexander Alekhine would place his Siamese cat on the chessboard before a game as a good luck charm. Alekhine was also allegedly hoping for an allergic reaction from his opponent. When he was forbidden to play with the cat on his lap, Alekhine turned to wearing a sweater with a picture of his pet on it.

 

So we are left wondering what Rosendo

Balinas was trying to pull off at the 1979 Lone Pine tournament. A Filipino grand master, Balinas was playing against Jeremy Silman. The game started off quietly enough, but 10 turns later, things got a little bit crazy. According to Silman’s eyewitness account;

 

 

 

 

 

At this point, Balinas placed a thermos filled with hot tea on the table. Then he put a big cup of honey next to it. I expected him to take a bit of honey and mix it in with the tea, but instead he shocked me! He took the tea, poured it into the honey (which turned into a thick goo), and then drank every bit of it. Appalled, I noticed that his eyes immediately glazed over as the sugar hit his brain. Then, smiling, he continued the game.

 

But the Filipino was in a stupor after that incomprehensible act of self-sabotage. He lasted only another 12 moves. Silman was so sorry for him that he took no pleasure in his easy win.

 

 

 

 

 

Aron Nimzowitsch Nimzowitsch was a weird one on a few different levels. He once yelled “How could I lose to this idiot?!” at an opponent during a tournament, just for starters. He was once ordered by his doctor to get more exercise and decided to take the advice by working out between and sometimes during matches. What’s weirder, perhaps, is the fact he earnestly believed the chefs at restaurants gave him less food than anyone else at the table. We’ve heard the old joke before from goofy uncles, but he actually, rather seriously, thought his plate was less full.

 

Carlos Torre Carlos Torre was three things: a chess grandmaster, a nudist and a lover of pineapple sundaes. The rumor is he would eat up to ten pineapple sundaes a day — and as for the nudist thing, he was arrested for running nude and for taking his clothes off on a bus. Perhaps he was the first (and possibly last) to ever play “strip chess.”

 

 

 

 

 

“I was once travelling by train to Kerala after I turned professional and an elderly gentleman asked me what I did. I told him that I make my living playing chess. He advised me that sports is not a rewarding career,” Anand recalled.

“Though he did not know my name, he said ‘You can’t make good money unless you are Viswanathan Anand,” and broke into a laugh.

Anand said even after being a public figure, he still experiences funny incidents in everyday life.

 

“I was going through the security check at an airport recently. There was this guy looking at me again and again. Once I cleared formalities, he approached me and said ‘Your last movie was great. I really liked it.’ I kept quiet and told my wife about the incident. She said to me ‘Why didn’t you ask him the name of the movie? Maybe then, I would have known whether you were a hero or villain!'”

Anand admitted that as a young boy he was a bit naive and had mysterious theories in his mind. “Before I went to Russia, I had read about the KGB and secret devices used by them. So when I first went to a hotel, I actually checked the room for hidden cameras and all that stuff,” he confessed.

“As I grew up and realized how the world works, I thought the KGB had better things to do than placing devices in my hotel room,” the chess wizard said to a gush of light laughter from his audience.

 

 

 

 

 

In a park people come across a man playing chess against a dog. They are astonished and say:

“What a clever dog!”

But the man protests:

“No, no, he isn’t that clever. I’m leading three games to one!”

 

(Author of Mahakavi Subramania Bharathiyar- to be published on 15th Aug,2022- and practising advocate in the Madras High Court)

 

 

 

 

 

 

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