God, so Einstein assured us, does not play dice. I disagree. If there is any game that God chose to play, dice would be practically the only one worth undertaking. Any other game or sport would be pointless, since the supreme being would be bound to win every time, knowing all of the rules, allRead More
The World Chess Championship has started, and I am glued to my screen. Along with millions of others, I am able to follow the contest between India’s Vishy Anand (the current world champion) and Norway’s Magnus Carlsen through a bewildering variety of options, as the internet connects up all of us across the globe toRead More
I’ve had enough of these long, infrequent posts. I spend ages deliberating over what to write, then still longer putting off writing itself because it takes up so much time – and once I’ve started I can’t stop. Shorter, pithier, more frequent – that’s what’s required. In the interim, here’s a photo from today, takenRead More
Can there be a stranger human activity than watching people play chess? To sit in an audience looking up at two people seated and staring at a table, thinking? And sometimes thinking for a very long time. I remember one glorious Channel 4 TV transmission at the time of the Gary Kasparaov-Nigel Short world chessRead More