Dominium

Dominium is a pizza franchise with a nice chess logo. Above is the Dominium shop at Talbot st. Dublin. The cuessboard is unusually large (17 x 9) and it qualifies for our "dark-square-on-right-corner" tag. The Knight is neither white nor black, but red.

Spassky - Fischer, 1972 . Logo

One of the logos for the match of the century. Its design is very 1970s. An idealized world and a black and white king. The winner of this match would be considered the king of the chess world. So many things have been said about it that I feel lazy to elaborate.

Kotor chess club (sign)

I took this shot in Montenegro, in the beutiful town of Kotor. It is a sign beside the entrance of the local chess club. It says "Kotor chess club" (Шах Клуб Котор). I could peek inside and indeed all the chess clubs in the world are very similar.

What I like about it is that the town can be recognized thanks to the logo. The main gate through the walls within it. Actually there is a steep mountain behind the town. Ther Rook is invented or at least exaggerated. I would say the Knight is the most typical chess piece and that its mission here is representing chess as a tower is a quite more ambiguous element.

Czech mates

I came accross this car in Dawson st, Dublin, in December last year. It is advertising Pražský beer (from Prague). This pun has already been seen before in examples such as the sexy girl in a T-Shirt asking to Czech it out.

X European women's chess championship

This is the logo of the X European chess championship in which some of the most important female players of Europe will take part in this month of March 2009 in Saint Petersburg. You can check the official page here . Saint Petersburg has been a very important city in the history of chess. Even its former name, Leningrad, survives for chess players in the form of a variation of the Dutch Defence.

I like this blue logo a lot. We have a checkered background and also a Queen, which represents both the feminity of the participants and the important piece. Her hair seems to form a river. Is it the Neva River? and what is that tower with a spire on top? is it a Rook? Is it the tower in the Fortress of Peter and Paul?

Best luck to all the players. May their moves bring more beauty to our game, as this logo has already done.

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.

I