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