Wet pawns

This falls within the category of sad humour. If is fun when you think about the value of the pawn in chess, and sad when you think about what happens in real life. A world in which the better-off can be covered whereas at the same time the poor and week find no place to protect themselves from the metaphorical rain.

Sacrifice (demotivational poster)

SACRIFICE
"Your role may be thankless, but if you're willing to give your all, you just might bring success to those who outlast you."

Demotivational poster found in despair.com , thanks to "9 good things the Internet has ruined for ever".

Sensual chess

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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.

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.

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.

Pawn takes Queen

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