Have I mentioned recently just how much I despise Manchester United?

No? Well, let me mention that I hate, despise, abhor and detest Manchester United with the white hot fury of a million supernovae.

I am looking forward to this fervently now. Chelsea will face Man. U. in the Finals and will have the chance it wants to take its revenge. I just might have to find my way to a sports bar to see if it happens.

This is just utterly astounding and brilliant craftsmanship. I can only imagine how good a standard size chess set would be if Vladimir Aniskin built it.

I could go chess-piece/chessboard shopping.

I have been tremendously neglectful in covering the various happenings in the English Premier League and the Champions League as well. But let it be noted that despite a tumultuous season--one that has seen the departure of a legendary club skipper and threats of players departing for other clubs--Chelsea will be playing in the Champions League final.

Wonderful news. Won't it be sweet beyond measure to beat Manchester United in the final now that Liverpool has been disposed of?

From my perspective, a healthy dose of schadenfreude goes along with this laugh.

Behold:

The ending is maddening, but the whole thing is very enjoyable to watch. (Thanks to Dylan Loeb McClain for the link.)

But this is pretty important:

During the Go Tournament in Paris, staged between 22 and 24 March 2008 by the French Go Federation (FFG), the MoGo artificial intelligence (IA) engine developed by INRIA - the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control - running on a Bull NovaScale supercomputer, won a 9x9 game of Go against professional 5th DAN Catalin Taranu. This was the first ever officially sanctioned 'non blitz' victory of a 'machine' over a Go Master.

Found here. A useful resource if you are a Fischer fanatic, or just a chess fan in general. (Thanks to Dylan Loeb McClain for the link.)

Yeah, this sounds like Bobby Fischer.

Via Gambit, we have this interactive site that tells us about the history of chess in New York City.

Scrabulous is fabulous. But I really do wish that I could play better than I do. I only recently joined Facebook and started playing the game--I had never played Scrabble before. If my Win-Loss record doesn't get any better, I may have to leave the Facebook community with my tail between my legs.

Oh, this looks fun. And in the event that you choose to exclusively play traditional chess, let it be noted that you are in good company.

Once the paeans have been offered--and let us admit, paeans are deserved--let there be no doubt that this article is right on the money and that the Chicago Bears and their fans will not miss Brett Favre. Sure, my beloved Bears did quite well against the Favre-led Packers over the past few years, but for most of Favre's career, he dominated the Bears like few other football players ever did.

Now he is gone and the worst we have to fear is Aaron Rodgers. And as the article rightly points out, the balance of power in the NFC North may have shifted enough to give the Bears a chance at being competitive again. Yes, I know, this all depends on what the Bears' front office does and yes, I know, Rex Grossman may well set us up for yet another season of heartbreak. But I will take my chances with this situation rather than face the Packers with Favre at the helm for yet another season.

Again, Brett Favre was a great quarterback and even Bears fans will pay him the proper degree of respect. Then, we'll make sure that he doesn't get to keep any of his equipment or jerseys so that he doesn't even think about making a comeback.

Dick Cavett's blog post is a must read. See also the video, which is perhaps easier to relate to now that we know of the mental illnesses that plagued Fischer until the end of his life.

The 2007-2008 New England Patriots ended up with the same record as the 1985-1986 Chicago Bears.

And unlike the Patriots, the Bears won the Super Bowl.

And curiously enough, the Bears did it by beating the Patriots.

I love football. Also, I should go buy lottery tickets, or something.

An appreciation. I suppose that we will see a lot of these and this memorial is a nicely written one. It is undeniable that Bobby Fischer was a great and masterful chess player. It is equally undeniable, unfortunately, that his madness has at least in part succeeded at eclipsing the brilliance he displayed on the chess board.

It pays to be courteous. And no, the forfeit was not an overreaction. At some point in time, a stand needs to be taken in favor of sportsmanship and good behavior.

Never let it be said that playing them is not useful.

A panoply of links deserve notice and attention in the wake of Bobby Fischer's death. Here is the remembrance by the Gambit, the chess blog of the New York Times. This post provides additional coverage worthy of attention, though I think that calling Fischer "as right-wing as Attila the Hun" is bizarre and ridiculous when most "right-wingers" display philo-Americanism and philo-Semitism.

This story contains a tidbit I didn't know about:

You might of course speculate that [Fischer's] perceptions were affected by never having seen his father, a physicist named Mr. Fischer, after he was 2. A revealing profile in Harper's magazine in 1962 indicated that Mr. Fischer's mother, Regina Wender, also had other preoccupations. Bobby's sister described her as a "professional crusader." Bobby had dropped out of high school and was a chess wunderkind with a world reputation, while, at the time of the profile, his mother was spending eight months walking to Moscow in a "pacifist" protest.

A few years ago the Philadelphia Inquirer, obtaining F.B.I. records under the Freedom of Information Act, also found compelling evidence that Bobby Fischer's father was not the man named on his birth certificate, but a brilliant Hungarian scientist, Paul F. Nemenyi, with whom his mother had an affair. Mr. Nemenyi apparently paid to help support Bobby, and there is even the record of a complaint he made to a social worker about Bobby's upbringing. If that identification is accurate, the paradoxes of Mr. Fischer's virulent anti-Semitism become still more profound, since Mr. Nemenyi, like Ms. Wender, was Jewish.

More NYT coverage here, featuring an interview with Garry Kasparov. The piece is also worthy and notable because of the item at the end, which illustrates the depth and breadth of Fischer's chess knowledge.

Relatedly, this piece will show you how not to get hustled by a street player. And yes, when playing blitz chess, attack at every opportunity. Players who specialize in defensive positions that wear out and crush opposing attacks should stay away from street games. Their styles are not rewarded.

Bobby Fischer is dead.

At one point in time, Fischer achieved the exalted status of Greatest Chess Player Ever, a status he solidified with his triumph over Boris Spassky for the World Chess Championship in Reykjavik in 1972. He could have kept his status throughout his life if it weren't for the fact that he was--for lack of a better word--mad.

His belief in conspiracies everywhere was a manifestation of his madness. His belief that the FBI was monitoring him through the fillings in his teeth--leading him to remark once that he would "gum it" if he had to when it came to eating food if that was what was necessary to avoid the FBI--was a manifestation of madness. His anti-Semitism--despite a Jewish mother--was madness and his rejoicing in the 9/11 attacks was complete lunacy.

Of course, I did not know of Fischer's eccentricities when I was growing up. I was born right before the summer of 1972, the summer of Bobby Fischer's triumph over Spassky. Having been taught chess by my father at an early age, I learned about Fischer because his legend loomed so large in the years after his victory. The legend loomed even larger thanks to his disappearance. It would have been best if Fischer remained vanished; his reemergence on the world stage only served to shock those who were his fans. The very eccentricities that were responsible for him unnerving Spassky and taking the crown away from him in 1972 also served to ruin and annihilate his sense of reason, and ultimately, his life. Disillusionment stemmed from the fact that the eccentricities were not a form of gamesmanship used by an otherwise sane Fischer to throw Spassky off his game. Rather, they were the product of genuine and increasing mental disturbances. Spassky may have been vulnerable to mind games but ultimately, Fischer's mind games only served to destroy Fischer.

Bobby Fischer was once the Greatest Chess Player Ever. At the end, he just became pitiful. Contrast his behavior with that of Garry Kasparov, who is as sane as he is brilliant--even though he is arrogant and almost fanatically determined at a given task--and you have a sense of the tragedy that was Bobby Fischer's life. He could have remained a legend. Instead, he died a shell of himself.