This time, our topic is only tangentially related to chess in popular culture: we will be talking about famous chess enthusiasts. A few lists like this already exist, but they are all rather unsatisfactory. It seems like every celebrity who was ever seen looking at a chess board is included in these lists. I am not interested in people that know the rules and basta. I am also not interested in people that are mainly known as chess players. Magnus Carlsen, for example, did some modelling work but is clearly better known as a chess player. Lasker, too, is mainly known as a chess player.1 Taimanov is a bit of a special case, where it is unclear whether he’s a chess-playing pianist or a piano-playing chess player.
Here, then, are the criteria for inclusion in my highly prestigious list:
- There should be published results for a tournament the candidate played in. Rapid and blitz tournament are not admissible. Obviously, simultaneous exhibitions are right out.
- The candidate must have a wikipedia page, not necessarily in English, mainly concerned with a topic unrelated to chess.
This should make for a distinguished club of people. Probably, the members will be less famous than Einstein, but that’s half the reason I started the list: in the hopes of stumbling upon some interesting people I hadn’t heard about. Unfortunately, by the above criteria, I would have to include William Herbert Wallace, which I don’t like. Therefore, I will add a third criterion:
- The candidate must not offend the whimsy of yours truly, who retains the right to exclude anyone for any reason.
which gives me all the leeway I could want. With a quick search, I found six people who satisfy these three criteria,2 so without further ado, onto the list:
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CIPC #14: Knight moves
Fourteenth instalment! Finally a nice round number!1 That deserves something special, I’d say. Something very special indeed: I’m going to watch a movie. More specifically, I’m going to watch Knight moves, an obscure 1992 film about a chess grandmaster getting mixed up in a serial killer case, and am going to write my impressions along the way. Clearly, there will be a good deal of chess to discuss, but this time I’ll try to pay attention to the plot as well. The main stars are Christopher Lambert, fresh from the enormous success2 of Highlander II, and one of the lesser Baldwins. What could go wrong? Let’s find out…
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