Meeting up to play will not be an option for at least three weeks, and quite possibly much longer. So it looks like online chess will provide us with opportunities to keep playing and not let our wonderful chess community become dormant.
Fortunately Oliver Brennan of Rotherham CC has been proactive and has organised an online tournament. Full instructions on what to do can be found at https://rotherham.cc/online-championship.html
I have had a few thoughts regarding online chess recently. How about posting more online games on the site to raise awareness of what and who is out there. Maybe we could have a virtual club night. Same time on a Tuesday evening but with games played from the comfort of our living rooms.
All thoughts around making online chess between Sheffield players a real thing are most welcome.
Best of luck to everyone and really looking forward to the day we can get back to our normal league games and club nights.
Any players who would like their online chess profile(s) listed on this site please email your details (username, platform, and link to profile if possible) to Steve Withingon.
Once again Norbury plays over a dozen consecutive pawn moves, before bothering to touch a piece. His sloppy style of play delivers the results in a decidedly imperfect game, that is instructive nonetheless.
The Turk is supported by The Arts Council of England and is a piece of dark mystery, philosophical adventure and dramatic showmanship. Here’s a quick introduction…
The History:
In 1770 an incredible ‘thinking machine’ was presented to Empress Maria Theresa of Austria that was to influence and bamboozle the world for over 80 years.
A life-sized automaton in the fashionable garb of a ‘mysterious’ Turk gazed down onto two opposing armies of chessmen. A Key was inserted, the mechanism was wound and in a whirring of cogs The Turk came to life, raising its head and making its move.
With historical opponents from Napoleon to Beethoven, Barnum to Babbage, Benjamin Franklin to Edgar Allan Poe, The Turk’s enigmatic legacy of technology and chess paved the way for the future of computing, automation, artificial intelligence and even magic.
The Show:
1838. Interior. Ships hold. Night.
Surrounded by well-travelled packing crates and empty wine bottles, a drunken and dying Johann Nepomuk Maelzel revisits scenes from his life, losses and adventures with the amazing, chess playing automaton known as, The Turk.
Fuelled with alcohol and yellow fevered madness, Maelzel and The Turk explore the sacrifice of the showman, the promise of the engineer and the passion of the dreamer against a philosophical backdrop of life, love, cognition and existence.
…The show incorporates intrigue, mystery and dark humour along with atmospheric sound, music, song…and even robotics!!! I wondered if you might be interested in perhaps letting your adult members know as it has an obvious chess connection and really tries to open up discussion into how we process our own ideas of self, being and existence through reason and analysis alongside our ever moving relationship with the machine. There are telling connections here with computing, artificial intelligence and, of course, chess itself.
