Chess cookies

Chess is no cookie, but anyway there is a brand that sells black-and-white biscuits under that name.

For the information we can read on the package, "Chess" are 5 rich chocolate sandwich cookies, marketed by Munchy's in the Netherlands. Maybe also in other countries, but I took the picture in a Dutch supermarket in The Hague in September 2004.

Regarding chess motifs, we can see that every cookie has been branded with the word "chess". The fourth letter, the first S is a chess knight similar to a white Pegasus. On the picture we can see a chessboard (partially), it includes three Black pieces: a knight, a bishop and the queen.

Fun Games for Babies

From the book "Baby Manual for Drug Addicts"

Check Mate (a Mini car in Cologne)

What a tiny lovely thing! I catched a glimpse of it in Cologne, while we were waiting for the tramway. a black-and-white Mini car, whose name is "Check Mate"

Botvinnik stamp. Botvinnik - Capablanca, AVRO 1938

I saw this in Chessbase. A stamp from the Central African Republic which celebrates one of the greatest world champions: Mikhail Botvinnik. The most interesting thing is that it includes the diagram of the critical position in the game Botvinnik - Capablanca, in the AVRO tournament played in Brussels in 1938. Kasparov wrote that this game represents the transition from the era of talented players to the era of study and preparation.
I guess most of chess players have played the game through and know which the next White move is.

King of the Clinic

What's going on in the Irish Baltic Clinic? Is that a chess King? I think so. This reinforces the Western European cliché. Chess as Russian or Eastern European stuff.

What's the relationship between chess and health?. Not totally sure, but no matter which field you are into, being the King is best. Sorry about the shaky quality. Mobile phone camera, you know.

Karpov - Kasparov, Valencia 2009

We are almost there. In a few days, Karpov and Kasparov will be playing again. This rivalry that takes us to the eighties when some of us learned to love chess. The event will take place in Valencia, Spain, a city which is advertising itself as the cradle of modern chess.

This nice poster by JM Arce reminds me of the design and style of the seventies, rather than the eighties. I own a few books which show a similar frontpage fashion. For more info on the match, see www.matchkarpovkasparov.com .

Giant chess set in Portage, New Zealand

As you can see for the exuberant vegetation, this is paradise on earth: New Zealand.
Portage is a beutiful place in the Marlborough Sounds, in the North coast of the South Island of New Zealand. There is a small port for recreational boats and a hotel. It seemed to me that the chess set belongs to the hotel. New Zealand... I wish I were there.

Checkmate to your sight problems

A friend sent me this fine example of chess-related advertising. "Check mate to your sight problems" reads the ad on the window shop. There is also a real chess set beside it. Funny that the chessmen aren't glasses or contact lenses or similar. It is just chess in all its purity. Well spotted.

Chess in Christchurch

In Christchurch, New Zealand, in the very main square of the city, they have a king-size chessboard, as in many other cities. They put away the pieces just beside it. You can see how nice the place where they put them away is, with big letters refering to our game

Star Trek chess

Here we have a lovely picture sent by skeptic. It is taken from the legendary tv series "Star Trek" and features the Star Trek Chess. You can see the chessmen perched on that strange metal tree, which draws your attention immediately, and then you can't help wondering how the game can possibly be played.

There are several sites on the net in which you can get the rules. Also the setis available in ebay and other sale spots. If the trekkies could develop a whole language, no wonder they could create a set of rules for his special chess.

* The rules at chessvariants.com
* Some more images related to Star Trek Chess

Dominium

Dominium is a pizza franchise with a nice chess logo. Above is the Dominium shop at Talbot st. Dublin. The cuessboard is unusually large (17 x 9) and it qualifies for our "dark-square-on-right-corner" tag. The Knight is neither white nor black, but red.

One cartoon, twelve chesmen

I was reading news at the splendid Susan Polgar's blog, and came across this nice cartoon (btw, this is the news).

Cartoons tend to be friendly-looking. I wonder why there are only six pawns and why one Knight and one Bishop are missing. Anyway, it is a nice set of twelve pieces.

Chess sets in Oban (Scotland)

Last month in Oban (Scotland) I came across a shop window in which they had a couple of chess sets. One of them was a fantasy set and the other represented the Battle of Culloden.
The Battle was fought in 1746 at Culloden, east of Inverness, between the Jacobites and the British Army. Scotland is a land of many battles, and a very important country in the world of chess.

Spassky - Fischer, 1972 . Logo

One of the logos for the match of the century. Its design is very 1970s. An idealized world and a black and white king. The winner of this match would be considered the king of the chess world. So many things have been said about it that I feel lazy to elaborate.

Alabaster chess set in Volterra, Tuscany (Italy)

I saw this chess set in Volterra, a Tuscan town famous for its alabaster. It is an steep chessboard. Tough job for the pawn to reach the 8th rank.

Long game?

I came accross a few chess cartoons by Jerry King. I especially liked the one above, but you can also see: (1, 2, 3, 4 ,5 ), all of them from section "Cartoons" at impressive, if poorly designed "Chessville".

Nothing on the chessboard is very visible . The joke goes around the idea, commonplace outside the chess world, that playing chess takes loooong time... then, those people get impressed by blitz games... even if classical chess takes long I'm always short of time... time is relative

Games You Can Play with your Pussy

...And Lots of Other Stuff Cat Owners Should Know.

Apparently this a real book. Not sure if a chess book at all, but at least the cover pays hommage to the King of the Games.

Notice the black-and-red 7x5 chessboard, only White pieces (one Knight, one Pawn and probably one Queen)

I found it funny, the chessboard, the cat... you know...

D69 Queens's Gambit

This is a position of the ECO, coded D69. It always struck me that an ECO code had a pseudo-ending as starting position. Indeed D69 is not one of the most played lines, probably it is the most unused code.

I just used this one to test the new ECO Opening Database recently added to chessvideos.tv

Playing chess in Hanoi, Vietnam

Not exactly, but you know. This is Xiangqi or Chinese chess. These two guys were very concentrated playing a game at a corner shop in Hanoi's Old Quarter.
Actually this is a place in which it is quite difficult to get concentration due to the noise, the swarm of motorcycles and the frenzy of the business activities.
Taken in Viernam in December 2007

Sarajevo, people playing chess at Liberation square

5 October 2008. Beside the Orthodox Cathedral in Sarajevo. People are playing chess (and kibitzing). If you ever go to Sarajevo you'll most likely find some saralijas playing at Trg Slobodenja. We have already brought the territories of the former Yugoslavia to Chess Images, but this time the picture is somehow nicer.

Kotor chess club (sign)

I took this shot in Montenegro, in the beutiful town of Kotor. It is a sign beside the entrance of the local chess club. It says "Kotor chess club" (Шах Клуб Котор). I could peek inside and indeed all the chess clubs in the world are very similar.

What I like about it is that the town can be recognized thanks to the logo. The main gate through the walls within it. Actually there is a steep mountain behind the town. Ther Rook is invented or at least exaggerated. I would say the Knight is the most typical chess piece and that its mission here is representing chess as a tower is a quite more ambiguous element.

Chess underwater

Impressive pictures by Barry Brown. Anna Zatonskih playing submarine chess against Robin Swinkels in Curaçao.

I can't see the chessboard with so many fish on it.
Seen here.

Hellers - Hansen, Malmö 1987

This tactics example comes from Chess Today. I like the pattern a lot, as it is not so usual. White starts the sequence with a fine move.

Sensual chess (2)

See the first "sensual chess". Not a lot that I can say about this image. Please observe the lady is playing with the Black pieces and she left you unarmed. I hope that bottle of Southern Comfort on the floor does not prevent you from getting a revanche.
Alekhine died around a bottle, we don't have any news that a similar queen was around.

Chess matryoshkas

I was always attracted by the matryoshkas, those Russian nesting dolls. I've never been to Russia myself (yet), but I remember seeing quite a few of them at shops in Prague's Stare Mesto (Old City).

Today I came accross a few chess matryoshkas in Weburbanist, the post is called "gaming matryoshkas" and it is worth having a look to the non-chess-related ones.

Regarding our game we have 3 sets here and in each of them one minor piece is missing (the bishop in the first one, the knight in the other two). It looks as if the set is decorative. We would need a big matryoshka to make the 16 chessmen each side needs to play a game, and also there would be problems as each pawn should be smaller than the previous one.... also, the colour is ambiguous.

The fact that the Knight or the Bishop are always bigger than the Rook draws my attention, as if inconsciouslly I assumed the hierarchy of points must be respected.

Y ahora te mato la dama

And now I'll kill your Queen!. This is a simple vignette, looks like taken from and old book. Again chess as a metaphore of the war. Where is the fun? Probably in the fact that it is ridiculous to wear a uniform to play a table game, or maybe showing intense emotion, the small cannons have some charm here. It is a pity that the cannon is not a piece in Western chess (it is in Chinese chess, though). In total I would say this comic strip is not funny, but it is charming.

"Chess" shop in Ginza, Tokyo (Japan 2007)

For this one I need looser standards as it can be argued that this is not a chess image at all. Many Japanese productions (literary works, cinema, tv) revolve around their vernacular games (shogi, go) or just use them as one more element within a bigger plot. It is not uncommon for the translators or adaptors of those work to use the word "chess", to help Western audicences understanding.This is more appropiate in the case of shogi that in the case of go, as shogi belongs -as chess does- to the chaturanga family of games.

This is a game shop in Ginza, a shopping area of Tokyo. A place in which you will feel like an ant, like many times in Tokyo. It is a wonderful occasion to link the videos of the famous Shibuya crossing.