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.

Yebisu beer chess ad (Japan 2007)

Another of my travel pics, taken on a Tokio train in March 2007. Yebisu (ヱビス) is a beer brand that belongs to Sapporo Breweries. One must take into account that whereas in the Western world the use of chess in advertising is quite common, in Japan the game is quite exotic so I think I came accross a gem. Probably the Western culture is better known in Japan than the other way round, but I think that trying to visualize the effect that go or shogi would have in a Western audience helps to understand the idea.

Also beer is or used to be an alien element in the Japanese culture. When I go to a Japanese restaurant I never see Yebisu in the menu. Asahi seems to be the standard Japanese beer abroad. Looking for a better quality pic, I discovered a game called Beer Chess, which I would not recommend.

El Che en Colonia

Also in Cologne, not so far away from the Grünfeld pub, there is a tobacconist who sells Cuban habanos. We have already talked about Cuba in Chess Images, when we received the visit of Fidel Castro.

In this German tobacco shop we found his revolutionary colleague Ernesto "Che" Guevara, also a chess fan. In front of his image, a chess set, including what I would call "Napoleonic" chessmen.

Allons enfants de la patrie, hasta la victoria siempre.

Grünfeld in Cologne

I had not post much in the last days, as I've been in holidays. I enjoyed a nice trip visiting several German cities, Köln - Cologne, among them.

I came accross a beer garden whose name must be familiar to chess fans. Grünfeld is German for "green field" (or even the more appropiate "green square"), but for the chess player it evokes the Grünfeld Defence, a sequence 1.d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3.Nc3 d5, a favourite of Kasparov in the beginning of the 1990s.

Indeed Grünfeld or Gruenfeld is quite a normal-sounding German name and I would not have taken the picture if a nice Black Knight had not been there. By the way, you can see me in the reflection

Wilhelm Steinitz

Wilhelm Steinitz, 1836 Praha - 1900 New York. Prvni Mistr Sveta v Sachu

I took this picture in Prague, the city where the first world champion of chess was born. Prague belonged then to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Steinitz's first language was German.

I have learnt a few interesting things about Steinitz reading the article about him in Wikipedia, and also came accoss a picture which is quite the same picture.

So the only thing left to try to improve this post, after the photograph I took is not original at all is to put a map, to help any chess fan who visits Prague to find the plaque in the Jewish district of Josefov. It is in Široká, on the wall of the Faculty of Philosophy, Univerzita Karlovka V Praze.

Chess set in a museum (Malmö, Sweden)

I took this pictures in August 2006 in the museum of the city of Malmö, Sweden. The museum is in a nice castle called Malmöhus. I had a very enjoyable holiday there but, you know, the chess player is always looking for any excuse to occupy his mind in its favourite hobby.

This chess set must be valuable. As you can see, it is protected under a glass cover. I tried to make sense out of the possition but two facts prevented me from doing so: the pieces are carved on a way that makes them all look as if they were the same piece, and even taking that into account and forcing the imagination, it does not seem the position makes any sense at all.