Ep. 73: Chess - Top 8 Greatest Players of all Time

April 25, 2023 Peter Jans

Intro

Hello and Welcome to this episode of the podcast, "The Mnemonic Tree", where we add a single mnemonic leaf, to our Tree of Knowledge.

Today's episode is a little indulgent as it’s on a game, that is one of my favourite sports, and that is chess. And, yes, it is a sport, well at least according to the International Olympic Committee.

Basically, Chess is a metaphor for life illustrating such values as planning, strategy, persistence, patience, cause and effect, calculation, mind control, bullying, body language, teamwork, sacrifice and opening your mind to an endless possibility of combinations.

And if you have the inclination to learn more, at least from a Hollywood perspective, I highly recommend the movies “Bobby Fischer Against the World” and “Pawn Sacrifice” along with the Netflix series “The Queens Gambit”

Today’s mnemonic is on the top eight greatest chess players of all time.

So, with no further ado, we will begin with a summary from Wikipedia.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Opening_chess_position_from_black_side.jpg

Wikipedia Summary

Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to distinguish it from related games, such as xiangqi (Chinese chess) and shogi (Japanese chess). The recorded history of chess goes back at least to the emergence of a similar game, chaturanga, in seventh-century India. The rules of chess as we know them today emerged in Europe at the end of the 15th century, with standardization and universal acceptance by the end of the 19th century. Today, chess is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide.

Chess is an abstract strategy game that involves no hidden information and no use of dice or cards. It is played on a chessboard with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. At the start, each player controls sixteen pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, two bishops, two knights, and eight pawns. White moves first, followed by Black. Checkmating the opponent's king involves putting the king under immediate attack (in "check") whereby there is no way for it to escape. There are also several ways a game can end in a draw.

Organized chess arose in the 19th century. Chess competition today is governed internationally by FIDE (the International Chess Federation). The first universally recognized World Chess Champion, Wilhelm Steinitz, claimed his title in 1886; Magnus Carlsen is the current World Champion. A huge body of chess theory has developed since the game's inception. Aspects of art are found in chess composition, and chess in its turn influenced Western culture and art, and has connections with other fields such as mathematics, computer science, and psychology.

One of the goals of early computer scientists was to create a chess-playing machine. In 1997, Deep Blue became the first computer to beat the reigning World Champion in a match when it defeated Garry Kasparov. Today's chess engines are significantly stronger than the best human players and have deeply influenced the development of chess theory.

Extracted from: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess]

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Garry_Kasparov,_New_York_City,_2003.jpg

Mnemonic

Chess – Top 8 Greatest Players of all Time – Gary Versus Magnus JAB ME!

(Picture the two greatest players of all time, Gary Kasparov and Magnus Carlsen, playing off against each other in their prime)

1. Garry Kasparov

2. Vladimir Kramnik

3. Magnus Carlsen

4. Jose Raul Capablanca

5. Anatoly Karpov

6. Bobby Fischer

7. Mikhail Botvinnik

8. Emanuel Lasker

Five Fun Facts

1. In Armenian schools, chess is one of the mandatory subjects.

2. The longest official game of chess took place in 1989 that included 269 moves and went on for over 20 hours. The game was between Ivan Nikolic and Goran Arsovic and was held in Belgrade and after 20 hours it was a draw.

3. The topic of chess was printed in the second book to ever be printed in English and it was called “The Game and Playe of the Chesse” by William Caxton.

4. The first computer program developed for playing chess came in 1951 by the English mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing, who features in the movie “The Imitation Game”, which was about deciphering the German enigma code during World War II.

5. The word "Checkmate" in chess comes from the Persian phrase "Shah Mat," which means "the King is dead."

Now just speaking of the King. I recently had the pleasure of having Gary Kasparov over for dinner. We had a great chat, only problem was however, I had a chequered table cloth and it took him an hour to pass the salt!

Anyway, he’s stalling tactics with the condiments was really stressing me out, so I took the knight off!

6. The queen is the strongest piece on the board, but this wasn’t always the case.

Initially the queen could only move one square at a time diagonally. Later, it was then two squares diagonally.

But it wasn’t until Reconquista Spain, with its powerful queen Isabella, that the Queen became the strongest piece on the board, being able to move up, down, and diagonally as many squares as she liked.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Magnus_Carlsen_(cropped)_(cropped).jpg

Three Question Quiz

Q.1. The number of ways of playing the first four moves in a chess game is how many possible moves? Options are 318,979, 318,979,564, or 318,979,564,000.

Q.2. What was the name of the first computer to beat an international grandmaster in November 1988 at Long Beach, California? Options are Deep Blue, Deep Thought or Deep Ocean

Q.3. Where did the game of chess originate?

Bonus Q. What is the name of the governing body of the sport of chess?

Mnemonic Recap

Chess – Top 8 Greatest Players of all Time – Gary Versus Magnus JAB ME!

(Picture the two greatest players of all time, Gary Kasparov and Magnus Carlsen, playing off against each other in their prime)

1. Garry Kasparov

2. Vladimir Kramnik

3. Magnus Carlsen

4. Jose Raul Capablanca

5. Anatoly Karpov

6. Bobby Fischer

7. Mikhail Botvinnik

8. Emanuel Lasker

Three Question Quiz Answers

Q.1. The number of ways of playing the first four moves in a chess game is how many possible moves? Options are 318,979, 318,979,564, or 318,979,564,000.

A. 318,979,564,000.

Q.2. What was the name of the first computer to beat an international grandmaster in November 1988 at Long Beach, California? Options are Deep Blue, Deep Thought or Deep Ocean

A. Deep Thought

Q.3. Where did the game of chess originate?

A. India in the 6th century and was called Chaturanga

Bonus Q. What is the name of the governing body of the sport of chess?

A. The International Chess Federation or FIDE

Word of the Week

petrichor

[ pet-ri-kawr, pe-trahy-kawr ]

noun

a distinctive scent, usually described as earthy, pleasant, or sweet, produced by rainfall on very dry ground.

Example

The chess board on the lawn made from the repetitious mowing patterns had a scent of petrichor following the rain the night before