10 Interesting Stories From The World Of Chess
King or pawn, they both go back into the same box at the end of the game.
Chess has been played by millions of people all over the world from the 6th century onwards in one form or another. Young and old, rich and poor: chess transcends all normal social barriers.
16 pawns, 16 pieces, 64 squares and two opponents, but we are still nowhere near reaching the stage of the game being fully solved. Even in the modern era, when computers and programs can cycle through millions of positions and calculate to unbelievable depths, there are still entirely new positions being reached every day. The amount of possible permutations is just that big.
Especially now with the explosion of Internet chess, where streamers and Grandmasters alike are bringing the game to new audiences, there are more eyes on the chess world than arguably ever before.
So what kind of stories surround the "Game of Kings" and who are the players involved in them? From titled players to novices, there will hopefully be something here to pique the interest of everyone. Let's see what kind of stories have involved that chequered board in one way or another.
10. The Criminal Who Gamed The Rating System
For any unfamiliar with the rating system of chess, a very basic explanation is that your "rating" is represented by a number, with higher representing a stronger player. When you win, you gain ratings points and when you lose, your rating lowers.
A criminal named Claude Bloodgood managed to achieve the second highest rating in the USA at the time through either scamming the system or (as he states it) simply playing the only opposition he was allowed. Since he was in prison for life, the only opponents available to him were other inmates, several of whom he had taught to play. As well as playing correspondence games, he was far and away the strongest chess player within the prison system and as such his rating continued to rise.
It reached such a level that had he not been incarcerated, he would have to have been invited to the highest-level chess tournament in the country at the time. Bloodgood insisted he had not cheated his rating in any way and instead pointed out that the current system was prone to exploitation in circumstances like his own.
The ratings system was altered to account for situations like his. Bloodgood died in 2004, still behind bars.