Topalov - Kamsky cartoons

Today the match between Kamsky and Topalov ended with the victory of the latter in the 7th game. The overall result was 4.5 - 2.5 for Topalov. We already brought the logo of the event to Chess Images.

Extensive coverage may be found on the usual blogs and webpages. We keep refering to chess pictures.

These caricatures were made for the Sofia 2007 tournament. The players do not look handsome and Topalov's nose seems way too big.

Chess: war on war

During the last war in the former Yugoslavia, two men play chess on top of a blue car.

Chess is a very good metaphor of the war and this is a very good photograph by Roger Richards DVreporter.com

This is Spartaaaa!!!!!!!!!!

I have seen this one in several places and I love it.

It seems to be a reference to the 300 Spartans who fought the Persians of Xerxes in the Battle of Thermopylae.
They are now a very well-known story in terms of pop-cluture, thanks to a comic and a 2007 film.

The battlefield here is a 16x16 chessboard (that is 256 squares, or 4 conventional chessboards) in which our 300 Greeks [White] are represented by quite standart material in terms of Rooks, Knights and Bishop (2 of each class), 10 Pawns, 2 Queens, and 3 Kings (one of them a human head, shouting).

The Persian side [Black] is composed by eight ranks of soldiers. When you add the material that gives you 64 Pawns, 16 Rooks, 16 Bishops, 16 Knights, 8 Quuens and 8 Kings. A total 128 chess pieces.

But you know the beauty in chess resides in victory of the spirit over the material. A very appropiate metaphor.

Two Knights against a Pawn.

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A nice diagram that helps to understand a quite difficult ending.

It is quite well known that two Knights cannot defeat a bare King. It would be possible, should the weak side play terribly (there are mate positions indeed, but they are always avoidable).

All of this may change if the weak side has a single pawn. Then, the strong side (in our diagram, the White) can force a stalemate position with one Knight plus the King and then, ride the other Knight to the checkmate while the weak side moves its sad pawn.

I find it difficult to force the opposite King into the corner with only one Knight and the eventual support of the other, but it can be done. It has been studied by Cheron and others.

The green squares are the ones in which the pawn can be placed so that the ending can be won.

I took the picture somewhere in the Chessbase page. The original url is not available anymore.

Weird chess teacher

An unidentified chess piece kind of teaches chess.

The weird facts about the mural chessboard are the following:

- The square in the right corner is not light as it should be
- There are two black Kings on the board
- All the 4 pieces in the chessboard occupy more than one square

Regarding our teacher. Is it a black or a white piece? Hard to tell, his skin is Caucasian but I would rather say he's black.

Which piece it is? I would say a pawn.

I do not like the yellow background.

Echecs - Championnat de France (1925)

Here we have a nice poster for the French national chess championship played in 1925.
The event took place in the beautiful city of Ni ce between September 2 and 11.
The picture is somehow monochromatic but it goes with the cubist aesthetics so in vogue at the time.
As in a painting by George Braque or Juan Gris, a group of cubes (tridimensional squares?) flow over the background, the silhouette of a King.
I did some research in Wikipedia and it seems the champion that year was Robert Crépaux, who had also won the title the previous year in Strasbourg and would make it again in Paris in 1941. One of those inconnus we are indebted with.

Topalov - Kamsky match logo

Today the match between Topalov and Kamsky started. The first game ended in a draw after an interesting Grünfeld in which Topalov sacrificed a pawn for the initiative.

We bring here the logo of the match, Bulgarian (Cyrillic) version and chess.com version. I took it from Susan Polgar's blog.

There is a smaller version that uses the Latin alphabet in the official webpage, but I suppose most chessplayers -smart guys- will be able to read here TOPALOV-KAMSKY, SOFIA 2009.

If we use our mind to delete the chess.com logo, as we would do to imagine the chessboard after some material exchange and simplification, we can see two eagles (or are they vultures?) on top of two spheres that evoke the head of two pawns: a white pawn, a black pawn.

It is going to be a great match. It is already a great logo.

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The World in a Pawn

The World in a Pawn, or maybe America in a Pawn. I do not remember from where I took this. I think it was from a commercial, not specifically chess context.

We have a white pawn on a dark square. The black and white image suggests seriousness, the pawn and the map evoke strategy. For sure it is an image for businness.

Spanish radio station ad on a newspaper (2006).

This is a double-page ad I scanned somehow (you can see the line). Funny that a radio station advertises itself in a newspaper, you may say. The reason may be that Cadena SER belongs to PRISA, a media group that contains, among others, the influential "El País" newspaper and television channels such as "Canal +" and "Cuatro".

There is no other reference to the game of chess, apart from the image. In which there is a huge black King (which supposedly represents SER) and three small pawns, one of them fallen. In a way, we could say this is a Freudian image. The fact that the winner is the Black side draws my attention as it breaks a convention, the white-black contrast as a representation of the good-evil dichotomy.

For the sake of completeness, I include the text even if it has nothing to do with chess.

Gana la radio. Gana la Ser.
4.896.000 oyentes diarios.
[...] en 2006 la SER es la radio más escuchada de España. Así lo confirman los datos oficiales del Estudio General de Medios (EGM) correspondientes al primer trimestre del año. La radio gana en oyentes y la SER vuelve a ganar. a Enhorabuena a nuestros competidores y a los 4.896.000 oyentes que hacen que la SER esté siempre un paso por delante. Pase lo que pase.

The radio wins. SER wins.
4,896,000 daily listeners.
[...] in 2006, SER is the most listened radio Station in Spain. The official data of the Media General Study (EGM) confirm so. There are more radio listeners than ever and SER wins again. Congratulations to our competitors and to those 4,896,000 listeners of ours that make SER to be, always, one step ahead. No matter what happens.

On the right side, close to the faraway pawn, you will see the logo of "Cadena SER". On the bottom you can see the logo of the Quixote year (which was actually 2005), and the reference to the EGM.

Round chessboard

We have this round chessboard here. I don't know where the picture comes from or if the set can be bought somewhere. Maybe it is just a unique piece of art.

It is worth to mention that this is actually a 8x16 board, so it is double size the ordinary chessboard. Apparently pieces do not run in both directions, as the Kings are side by side. No idea if pawns promote after arriving to 16th row.

This is my conjecture after seeing the image. Maybe the game could be more fun if we set the pieces in opposite sides of the circle and let the fight go both clockwise and counterclockwise. If we don't, the game will be very similar to other chess variations that can be played in the ordinary chessboard, such as the cylinder chess.

Sand chessmen

Another misterious picture. This is a sand giant chessboard. It is well protected from the wind. We can imagine the sea in the background. All the types of pieces can be seen. It seems that all of them are white. At least I see three white bishops and knights.

Where did this happen? If you've got any clue please write it in the comments.

Elephants playing chess

Indeed the one on the right seems better equipped. The left one looks more beautiful, though.

Pawn takes Queen

A nice wallpaper By Vladstudio , in which apart from a beautiful word game we can enjoy a pawn playing paparazzo.

Chess clubs in the world

A heatmap published in www.xakeweb.com, including data on the chess clubs registered in the webpage of FIDE. Updated in June 2008.

It seems the United States, the Philippines and Spain are the countries whose clubs have taken advantage of this tool.Not much success for FIDE in former Soviet territories, though. Most of the African countries have not even one registered chess club.

It will be interesting to see how this evolves.

Chess letters. Typographical pieces

This is my first post for this new blog, Chess Images. The goal of this blog will be to upload my chess images repository into the Internet. I've been collecting pictures for quite a while and I think this is the moment to share it with other people who enjoy the physical beauty of chess. Chess pieces, diagrams, players, anything related to chess can have a place in here. Whenever Ï have a source for the image it will be provided. Feel free to comment.

I start with this set of chessmen that overcomes the problems children may have in learning the name of the pieces. In the picture we can see the Rook and the Pawn and with some difficulty the Knight, the Bishop, and the letter G for K-I-N-G. It is nice how the G creates the cross on top of the crown.

If anybody could provide background on the set, who the designer is, where to buy it, I'd really appreciate it.