I'm pretty sure most of you didn't know anything about my skills playing chess. And well, it wouldn't be surprising. Because the truth is that I've never commented on it before. Or is it that our formidable chess-playing skills also grant us soothsayer abilities?
Well, maybe just a bit of those clairvoyant skills only useful to anticipate the plays and movements on the board that our opponents might make in response to our brainy and impeccable deliberations at the moment that it is our turn to move our pieces.
Especially if it is following the conventional rules of the game to the letter and if we already have memorized and have stored in our heads all those strategies & movements with all that heap of openings, gambits, defenses and whatnot right?
Uhm ok, I guess everyone here is already on the same page of what I'm gonna tell you next. Isn't it?
And I'm gonna write this opening post in this community with a Queen's Gambit before the Hive #hf26 scheduled for today at 1200 GMT is done. Just in case, of course. Since usually, it's only the first moves according to the chess books the ones which can be guessed. Because once the chess game is already advanced, it is almost always a matter of "hit & miss" in our winning strategies. ¿Am I correct? };)
Okay! then let's start with the chess story that I wanted to tell you today.
The thing is that many decades ago, when I was a teenager and most of you weren't even born. I used to play chess almost every day. And certainly, I achieved to become very good at this sport. These were the times in which the greatest luminaries of the game and best masters of this sport-science worldwide, were Bobby Fisher and Boris Spassky who were disputing the first place in the position of honor in the early 70's exactly 50 years ago. Around September 1th, 1972.
"Match of the Century"
By this date and without really intending it, I had already achieved a certain degree of notoriety in the world of chess in the local scene of my country. Since for that year, it had been a few months since I had reached and had been awarded the title of National Chess Expert along with other close friends from my neighborhood with whom I used to play and compete in various and multiple tournaments of national scale.
In those days, same as my friends, I was also one of those freaks who had already studied, memorized and stored dozens of chess books in our heads with all kinds of lessons on strategies, openings, gambits, defenses and whatnot about this sport.
And among my favorites of that time:
Openings:
- Catalan Opening.
- Queen's Gambit.
- English Opening.
- Dutch Opening.
- King's Gambit.
Being the King's Gambit the one I liked to use the least which was almost always my last opening resort depending on my opponent. Since my favorite defense was the Scandinavian Defense and I didn't like to reveal too much of my tricks and variations of defense when I was using it. You know, never give your opponents hints of your game in advance.
Defenses:
- Scandinavian Defence.
- Alekhine's Defence.
- Caro–Kann Defence Capablanca variant.
- Sicilian Defence.
- Some other random & rare defences depending on the opponent.
As you can imagine. Same as many of my chess friends from the neighborhood and a good group of my classmates at school who were real chess freaks. All of us already had memorized and stored in our brains all the lessons with the techniques, plays, strategies, tricks and classic movements of this sport-science that our bedside books on the subject taught us. Openings, gambits, defenses, variants, etc.
However, after a few years of competing together in some national tournaments. I realized that my very good memory usually played in my favor to overcome them and defeat them when it was our turn to face each other. Given that many times before, we had faced each other in many friendly games in our neighborhood and therefore we knew each other's game strategies quite well. But they didn't have such a good memory. Hahaha
But hey, to make this story short. The issue here is that pretty soon I got very bored with chess and basically detested it during a good while.
I, like many of my friends in the neighborhood, had joined a very popular social club in the city with all the amenities of a normal social club. Only, that this one in particular had the characteristic of having a Chess Club that was famous in the city for being the quarry from which the great experts and national masters of chess in our country emerged. Which was exactly from where some of us got the title of National Experts.
A social club in which they used to invite a bunch of international grandmasters to give talks, seminars, workshops, demonstrations and offer solo simultaneous chess competitions quite often. And you know what? I used to be one of the few who used to beat these international grandmasters in chess simuls even though I was ranked lower than many of the national masters in the competition room. A thing that curiously many of them didn't forgive me at the time nor never forgave me as long as I remained as an active member of that renowned local chess club.
That's when I first realized what a bunch of crazy and gaga freaks a lot of these chess players really are. And the higher their category, more infatuated they are in showing their certifiable crackbrained psycho behavior. Authentic whacky maniacs! ¡Cuckoos!
And consequently, I sent them all to hell and I never wanted to know anything about chess again. All of them thought they were a chess-playing machine like Capablanca and even came to hate you if you ever dared to win them a match, even if it was friendly one. Who wants to be surrounded by these kind of screwed loonies as friends? LoL
But hey, enough of personal stories, loonies, bonkers and maniac bughouses. That I know that what the members of The Chess Community of Hive really like and are interested in the most are rather chess riddles and chess problems. Probably the more complicated and difficult to solve, the better. And today I have brought them two!
First let's start with the pretty old and classic chess problem that surely nowadays everyone here already knows the answer. But I can tell you that it was actually a very popular and entertaining riddle to solve in my time. It is the classic chess problem of placing 8 queens on a 64-square chessboard ensuring that none attack or eat the other.
But yeah, not the famous chess-based mathematical problem that Franz Nauck stated the solution to in 1850, and who said that the eight queens can be placed in 92 different ways on the board. Nope, I am referring to the old and classic problem of the eight chess queens that many of us probably already know and surely we have solved many times before. Do you remember which one I'm talking about?
Well, if you don't remember, I can only tell you that the solution of this chess riddle already appears in the content of this post. But in case you don't find it either, uhm, well, here's an image below that might give you a hint of the solution.
¿Why can't I see all twelve black dots simultaneously?
Okay, alright, I see that this first chess problem has been too easy to solve for the veteran chess players and members of this sporting Hive community. But taking advantage of the fact that we are now only about five hours left before the 26th hardfork in Hive will take place. From a practical, structural, logical, chessy and financial point of view. Let me now present to you the real chess riddle to solve and the one which will be the nightmare that will keep all chess experts in our ecosystem up at night. ¿Are you ready for the challenge? ¡Ok, here you go! ;o)
¡Say Cheeze!
By the way. Did you notice that a good bunch of second-layer DApps in the Hive blockchain like autovoting and trails services and scheduled votes were down or out-of-order until now during the day of yesterday monday?
Ah yes! that's the kind of chess riddles and games that I like to see the most going on once in a while through our blog posts tournaments in our Hive blockchain. Hahahaha
Meanwhile...
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