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.