How does a young person come to chess? A recent feature by Gerald Drissner in Credo, the wealth journal of the Liechtenstein Global Trust, struck certain chords with my own experiences. Credo is lent added poignancy, in that it is published by my good friend and sponsor of Tony Buzan’s mental skills Intelligence Institute Academy, His Serene Highness Prince Philipp Von and Zu Liechtenstein.
In what follows I have made ample use of the Credo feature and I gratefully acknowledge Gerald Drissner’s excellent in depth portrayal of one of the most remarkable characters on the current UK chess scene. Carl Portman is the author of Never Mind the Grandmasters (Steel City Press, £14.99).
According to Drissner, Portman grew up in a remote village called Kynnersley, in the English West Midlands, in a council flat with no heat or electricity. As a child, he would often sit by the door of his room until late into the night. The door had a crack that would let in just enough light for him to study his chess books.
Portman was fascinated by this new world he was discovering, filled with funny terms like forks, pins, bishop sacrifices and poisoned pawns, where the heroes had strange names like Bogoljubow, Nimzowitsch and Karpov. Portman would spend hours sitting on the floor of his room, in the dark, in front of the door. If he left his room, he would likely be beaten. Violence was routine when Portman was growing up. And amid all of this harshness, chess became his refuge.
I find the reference to Nimzowitsch interesting. I too was fascinated by Nimzowitsch’s games when I first started to study chess. His moves were often eccentric, bizarre even, but, at his best, his name and his style conjured up for me an aura of witchcraft and mystical ceremony, which was not to be found in the victories of the pellucid Capablanca or the tempestuous Alekhine.
“Chess was always there in the way a listening friend or attentive pet is always there.” Portman says today. “I couldn’t discuss my emotions with the game, but I could channel and act them out without harming anybody or being harmed.”
Drissner interviewed Portman in his cozy home in Oxfordshire, where he lives with his wife Susan and their dogs Dickens, Ozzie and Raven. Hundreds of chess books are arranged on various shelves. I was delighted, in the photos accompanying the interview, to see one of my own books peeping out from a crowded bookshelf, and I am reliably informed that many more of my 208 published books can be found on the reserve shelves.
In Chateau Portman, coffee is served in chess-themed cups; leaning against the wall is a chess-inspired black and white guitar, like the one Scorpions’ guitarist Michael Schenker used to play. Carl Portman loves hard rock and heavy metal. He’s also a loyal fan of the Aston Villa Football Club and has a fondness for large, venomous spiders, which he keeps as pets.
My acute arachnophobia is one reason why I shall almost certainly never be making the pilgrimage personally to the Portman abode. The most fleeting appearance of an eight legged monster is enough to send me into shock and at home I employ a friend to capture intruders in a matchbox and expel them into our garden, whenever they have the temerity to appear in public.
Carl went on to explain his Chess Credo (appropriately enough for a periodical of the same name). It’s a game where age, gender, background and skin colour don’t matter. Victory belongs to the person who plays the better game, or, as Grandmaster Savielly Tartakower famously said, whoever makes the second-last mistake. When Portman talks about chess, it sounds like he’s talking about a lifelong love affair – a magic that offers solace in difficult times and moments of pure joy. “At home, no one ever said ‘I love you.’ There were no hugs or kisses”, he says. “I was never told I was any good at anything.”
Portman’s mother worked at the bar in a local Working Men’s Club. She was an articulate woman, who as a young mother had taught him good manners: how to use a knife and fork properly, how to walk with a lady to shield her from passing cars. But sadly, his mother was attracted to unstable men – and to alcohol.
When she went grocery shopping, she would come back with cider and cigarettes. Portman never met his biological father, and refers to his stepfather, a farmhand, as “John the Bastard”.
The parallels with my own experience are not insignificant. My father was the founding member of Alcoholics Conspicuous and used to sport a tie emblazoned with the Latin motto Nunc est Bibendum, now is the time for a drink. As far as he was concerned, that exhortation referred to any and all times!
Carl’s stepfatherly violence left lasting scars. Once, he lost his temper so badly, that he knocked out some of Carl’s mother’s teeth, broke her jaw and one of her arms. At some point, Carl decided to stop crying when his stepfather beat him.
My own father was, in contrast, never physically violent, but he had a lacerating tongue at his disposal (when sufficiently sober to speak, that is.) It certainly took him a long time to realise that he had a potential chess champion as a son, and he really only took notice when (age twenty) I won a large prize (by 1968 standards) in a tournament sponsored by the chess-loving financier Jim Slater. To give my father credit where it’s due, he pivoted swiftly to recognition of my chess abilities — and borrowed the entire sum!
Drissner once again: One rainy day in 1976, 12-year-old Carl wanted to play a game of football at lunchtime. But the weather was bad, so he popped his head inside the geography room where the chess team always met. “It was so quiet!” he recalls. “My house was always so noisy.” The teacher welcomed him and Carl soon became a regular member of the team. At tournaments, tea and cake were served, luxuries he rarely got at home. He immersed himself in studying the French Defence and rook endgames, replaying grandmaster games late into the night by the faint light from the crack in his door. Four years later, in the spring of 1980, Carl won the school championship, and on the bus ride home, the driver congratulated him as he proudly placed the trophy on the seat next to him. “That was the first time in my life that I had achieved something truly special,” he says.
A noisy house also resonates with my own experience. A typical Ray Day at Dulwich College (where I had won a state scholarship) went something like this: school until four pm; play chess match against local school; travel home and do homework; go to bed and soon be woken up by my mother and father shouting at each other; sit on staircase with my younger sister until the shouting subsided, and so to bed, once silence reigned, to snatch some sleep. Then up at seven am to prepare for the journey back to Dulwich.
I went on to become a chess Grandmaster, was awarded the OBE and have published the world record 208 books on chess, mind sports and mental fitness. My sister chose the route of qualifying as a major academic, Professor Emerita and President of the UK Historical Association. So perhaps there is some merit to be found in the formative combination of sleep deprivation and surviving in trepidation of a perpetually inebriated paterfamilas.
Reverting to the Drissner conversation with Carl: The way chess players talk about the game and the reverence they show for it can be baffling for outsiders. What is it about this board and its 32 pieces? Is it a sport, a science or an art?
The French artist Marcel Duchamp once remarked that not all artists are chess players, but that all chess players are artists. Or is chess just a game after all?
In his book Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture (1938), the great Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga examined the importance of play. He concluded that play predates culture and forms the basis of many cultural practices and institutions. According to Huizinga, play is a voluntary activity that takes place within defined times and spaces, follows established rules and serves no practical purpose. It is accompanied by feelings of excitement and joy, and it offers a sense of otherness that people don’t experience in ordinary life.
From battling the legendary Karpov to championship UK chess in prisons and representing the nation at the NATO Championships, Carl Portman’s chess journey, as revealed in his entertaining new book, offers a unique glimpse into the world of amateur play.
This is his story – a tribute to amateur chess, crafted for the great unsung heroes of the game: club players looking to deepen their understanding and improve their own play. Never Mind the Grandmasters is Carl’s third chess book, drawing heavily from his popular CHESS magazine columns. Revised and packed with bonus content, even his most dedicated fans will find fresh insights and practical tips on nearly every page.
Blending chess history with down-to-earth wisdom, Carl guides readers from pub function rooms to Europe’s grandest chess halls, celebrating the amateur players who form the bedrock of the game.
Carl’s hero is the World Champion (1975-1985) Anatoly Karpov, and the book recalls what happened when Carl finally crossed swords with his role model. Caissa, by the way, is the legendary goddess of chess. The ingenious Heinrich Fraenkel, for many years chess columnist of the New Statesman, used to write under the nom de plume of Assiac, Caissa in reverse.
The history of chess has been marked by numerous epic confrontations. These include Staunton vs. St Amant, a microcosmic struggle from 1843 which acquired particular relevance from memories of the traditional macrocosmic Anglo-French rivalry, culminating at the Battle of Waterloo. Later in the 19th century the rivalry between Steinitz and Zukertort spilled over from the chessboard into literary animosity. Then there was the Spassky vs. Fischer clash from 1972, which reflected the extreme tensions of the USSR vs.USA Cold War battle for global hegemony, coming, as it did, just a decade after the Cuban missile crisis. Thereafter, the colossal five-part Karpov vs. Kasparov series from 1984 to 1990, witnessed the switch of focus to internal Soviet hostilities, between the reforming forces of glasnost and perestroika, pitted against the old school sons of Lenin, who were fighting a reactionary rear-guard action to revive the principles of deathbed Communism.
Among the most celebrated of such hostile conjunctions was the long-standing opposition between the great German writer and chess theoretician, Dr Siegbert Tarrasch (1862–1934), and his ideological rival, the Latvian/Danish genius, Aron Nimzowitsch (1886-1935). Both grandmasters were products of European Jewish culture, so
the antagonism was neither nationalistic nor political, but based on personal antipathy and seemingly opposing, indeed irreconcilable, views on the nature of chess .
A fresh publication from New in Chess, The Philosopher and the Housewife (the latter being one of Nimzo’s least flattering jibes about his great rival) analyses the confrontation between the two. The author, Willy Hendriks, adds for good measure a third actor, the rogue Russian Alapin, into the drama — a man who seems to have terminally irritated everyone with whom he came into contact.
I have no hesitation in pronouncing Hendriks’s work a masterpiece, the like of which we would be lucky to see once in a decade. If this book does not win ECF book of the year, there is no justice in the universe. What are its virtues, let me count the ways:
Research: exhaustive
Scholarship: immaculate
Style: entertaining and dramatic
Comprehension of subject: masterly
Originality of thought: profoundly impressive
Relevance: extreme…the debate about Tarrasch’s favourite, the isolated queens pawn, and Nimzowitsch’s ultimate desideratum, overprotection, rages to this day.
In short, this is the best and most riveting chess book which I have read for years.
Siegbert Tarrasch was one of the most successful tournament players of all time. He shot to fame when he won five consecutive elite tournaments: Nuremberg 1888, Breslau 1889, Manchester 1890, Dresden 1892 and Leipzig 1894.
The most spectacular success of Tarrasch’s long and distinguished career came with his first prize in the Emperor Franz Josef Jubilee tournament at Vienna 1898, a colossal double-round event of 20 masters, in which he tied with the new American star, Harry Nelson Pillsbury, in the tournament proper and went on to defeat him in the play-off. Thereafter, Tarrasch scored two more significant tournament successes: at Monte Carlo 1903 and in the Champions’ Tournament at Ostend 1907 (which was organised in order to establish a “tournament world champion“). In individual games Tarrasch defeated no fewer than five World Champions: Steinitz, Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine and Euwe.
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At the perihelion of his early triumphs Tarrasch was offered a World Title match against Steinitz in Havana, but declined. Later he backed out from a virtually agreed Title match against Lasker in 1904. His pretext was that he was too preoccupied with his medical practice, but that did not prevent him from playing extended matches against such opponents as Mikhail Tchigorin, the leading Russian contender, and Frank Marshall, the US champion. The genuine reasons for repeatedly holding back must have been deeper and darker than mere professional obligations, but whatever they were, we shall never know. When Tarrasch did finally agree to challenge Lasker in 1908, he was in his 47th year and well past his best. In terms of active play, Tarrasch was great, but could have been even greater. When destiny called, he twice hung up.
Tarrasch’s immortal fame, however, rests on his writing rather than sporting achievements. With his superbly written books Dreihundert Schachpartien (“Three Hundred Games of Chess”) of 1895 and Die Moderne Schachpartie (“The Modern Game of Chess”) in 1912, as well as his innumerable chess columns and articles, he acquired a reputation as the Praeceptor Germaniae: chess teacher of Germany and, by extension, the world. His swansong, The Game of Chess (1931) — a primer aimed at the widest readership— remains one of the classics of chess literature.
Tarrasch valued the concept of mobility above all. A Freudian explanation for this has been suggested by the German/Jewish/Irish writer Wolfgang Heidenfeld: that Tarrasch attached exaggerated importance to mobility on the chessboard, because in life his own mobility was gravely restricted by a club foot. As the result of this approach he was the supreme advocate of “freeing” moves, especially in the opening, of which the defence to the Queen‘s Gambit which bears his name is a typical example (The Tarrasch Defence: 1. d4 d5 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 c5).
The apodictic dogmatism of his opinions may be somewhat off-putting to a modern audience. For example, Tarrasch wrote that, after the moves 1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nd2 the response 3…c5! literally“refutes” White’s third move, since Black can thereby force the acquisition of an isolated queen’s pawn. It was a particular Tarrasch fetish that possession of an isolated queen’s pawn automatically conferred an advantage, a view not entirely endorsed by theory and practice today. Tarrasch was dogmatic, but not alone in his dogmatism. Any reading of the works of Tarrasch’s contemporary, Sigmund Freud, will rapidly reveal a similar self-assurance, which brooks no countervailing alternative opinion. Tarrasch, indeed, was a kind of Freud of the chessboard.
According to Heidenfeld, it was exactly this dogmatism which made Tarrasch’s teaching so effective. His was a time when amateurs still had to learn that a game of chess should not be a haphazard conglomeration of unrelated ideas, but a logical whole.
In his authoritative book, Chess and Chessmasters, magisterially translated by Harry Golombek from the original Swedish, Grandmaster Gideon Stahlberg concurs that at the beginning of the 20th century, Tarrasch occupied a unique place in the chess pantheon. His great tournament successes had granted him a richly deserved reputation as a player, while his widespread literary activities energetically publicised his theories, so that it was not long before he had built up a significant school of followers. “Thus he became the great teacher, whose every word was listened to with hushed attention. To Tarrasch, chess was above all a science. The game followed strict laws and woe to him who broke one of them!”
Suddenly, though, there arose a tempest of contradicting opinion, particularly from one of the younger, less experienced masters: Aron Nimzowitsch. The Balt rapidly made his mark by original, apparently irrational, play, and fought his way into the leading group of the world‘s Masters. After achieving this entry into the “Magic Circle”, he astonished the chess world by a vehement attack against the ancien régime — that is, against the precepts of Tarrasch. At the same time, Nimzowitsch embarked on a fierce campaign on behalf of his own theories.
Nimzowitsch accused Tarrasch of routine dogmatism, and, as we have seen with the case of 3…c5! to a 21st century observer, such an accusation does indeed seem justified. Nimzowitsch also opposed Tarrasch’s conception of the openings, and in substitution propounded a theory of development which welcomed constricted yet resilient positions that were rich in potentialities, just such positions as Tarrasch normally condemned on principle. In my own games, I have frequently followed the Nimzowitschian precepts, heading for seemingly cramped structures which were, however, packed with possibilities for decisive breakouts.
Aron Nimzowitsch, like Tarrasch himself, holds an honoured position amongst those great masters who never became world champion. Nimzowitsch was perhaps the most colourful, making his impressive mark not only with his successful play but also with his profound writings and his eccentric behaviour away from the chessboard.
Born in Riga (then part of the Russian Empire) into the Jewish family of Niemzowitsch, he learnt the moves at an early age from his father — a player of master strength in his own right. It was not until 1904, while in Germany ostensibly to study mathematics that Nimzowitsch began to concentrate on chess. Unlike Tarrasch, Nimzowitsch was never seduced by the temptations of an alternative professional career, away from the chessboard.
At the start of his learning trajectory, Nimzowitsch’s talent seemed to lie in the purely tactical and combinational field, but several failures led him to undertake a complete revision of his chess ideas, placing greater emphasis on positional play, blockading strategy and consolidation. With his changed outlook, Nimzowitsch achieved significant successes, including equal second, behind Rubinstein, at San Sebastian 1912 and equal first with Alekhine at the All-Russian Championship in St Petersburg 1913.
The Great War, combined with the Russian Revolution, brought an abrupt halt to Nimzowitsch’s activities. In 1920 he left Latvia for Scandinavia, changing his name in the process from Niemzowitsch to Nimzowitsch. At first he took refuge in Sweden but eventually settled in Denmark. Nimzowitsch’s return to tournament competition in the early 1920s was disastrous, but gradually he played himself into form. He secured a number of notable successes in the mid-1920s, including equal first with Rubinstein at Marienbad 1925, first at Dresden 1926 (scoring 8½ out of nine, ahead of Alekhine and Rubinstein) and first at Hannover 1926. He also garnered two first prizes in strong tournaments in London during 1927. It was during this rich period that Nimzowitsch’s most influential work appeared: Mein System (“My System”). Published in 1925, it underwent several revisions until 1928 and is still a bestseller in many translations over the entire chess-playing world.
Nevertheless, the World Title still eluded him. Nimzowitsch took third place in the prestigious New York tournament of 1927, behind Capablanca and Alekhine. His brilliant first prize at Carlsbad 1929 was achieved ahead of Capablanca, Spielmann, Rubinstein, Euwe, Vidmar and Bogoljubow, yet Alekhine (by then World Champion) was not competing. His performance at Carlsbad possibly justified Nimzowitsch in adopting the title “Crown Prince of the chess world“ which he then assumed — somewhat pompously, given that he never managed to beat Capablanca. Yet Alexander Alekhine, the reigning monarch, refused to give way and the crown prince never managed to secure the funds for a world championship match.
Nimzowitsch’s best results in major tournaments from 1929 onwards (2nd at San Remo 1930, 3rd at Bled 1931) were achieved in the shadow of the mighty Alekhine, against whom he won three games, lost nine and drew nine. Ill-health caused Nimzowitsch’s sudden decline in the mid-1930s and he died, just 48 years old, at the Hareskov Sanatorium, Copenhagen, in 1935.
In his playing style Nimzowitsch belonged to the so-called Hypermodern School, which held (inter alia) that control of the centre did not necessarily imply occupation by pawns. Adherence to these views, combined with a decided mutual incompatibility, brought him into frequent opposition with the great exponent of the classical school, Tarrasch. Neither master was averse to self-adulation and the bitterness emanating from their first meeting in 1904 was never entirely eradicated. In fact, hostility towards Tarrasch and his works was a recurring theme of Nimzowitsch’s literary endeavours.
However, Nimzowitsch’s major contribution to chess literature consisted not in his ridicule of Tarrasch, nor yet in the discovery of a novel method of play, but in his elaboration of a new chess vocabulary which made intelligible the hitherto but vaguely articulated strategy of master-strength players. Nimzowitsch possessed an unrivalled facility for capturing the essence of an already known operation or structure with a memorable and meaningful word or phrase, which thereby increased speed of comprehension and assisted clarity of thought. Nimzowitsch introduced into chess terminology such phrases as “the passed pawn’s lust to expand”, “the mysterious rook move”, “prophylaxis”, “7th rank absolute”, “isolani” and “hanging pawns”. It is an established phenomenon that rapid advances in performance are often immediately preceded by advances in modes of expression, and we may indeed detect an upsurge in the general level of chess after the publication of My System.
Nimzowitsch’s writings were penned with such enthusiastic and allusive wit that only the most hardened could resist the appeal of his message. Consider the following passage on Tarrasch’s favourite hobby horse, the isolated queen’s pawn: “… we no longer consider it necessary to render the enemy isolani absolutely immobile; on the contrary, we like to give him the illusion of freedom, rather than shut him up in a cage (the principle of the large zoo applied to the small beast of prey).”
The rivalry between Tarrasch and Nimzowitsch is a common trope of chess literature, yet sometimes (as with Hendriks) I wonder whether the gulf between their relative visions of chess strategy is quite so wide as is commonly supposed. Nimzowitsch was known as an early advocate of 3. e5 against the Caro Kann Defence, namely 1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 and now 3.e5. Yet, where did this advance first crop up? It was played by Tarrasch himself against Nimzowitsch in their game at San Sebastian in 1912.
I have frequently maintained that chess as a game of war, mirrors battlefield strategy of the day. Thus chess originally reflected the chariots, foot soldiers, cavalry and war elephants of the ancient Indian army. During the Renaissance the chess queen acquired her rampant new powers, a metaphor for the new distance weapon, the cannon. Most strikingly, given that the prime modus operandi of warfare in 1914-1918 consisted of trench and blockade operations, both on land in Flanders and at sea, after the Battle of Jutland, the blockade in chess came to the fore.
Indeed, both Tarrasch and Nimzowitsch were expert blockaders (see the game Tarrasch vs. Georg Marco). There is yet another point of chess board consanguinity between the two: it is normally held that Tarrasch preferred to occupy the centre with pawns, while Nimzowitsch preferred central domination by pieces. This was an argument made vehemently by that Pontifex Maximus of Hypermodernism, Richard Réti, in his classic Masters of the Chessboard, published posthumously in English in 1933. In that context, the win by Nimzowitsch against the strong Polish master Georg Salwe was considered revolutionary. However, now examine the Tarrasch win against Max Kuerschner, the president of Tarrasch’s own chess club in his home city of Nuremberg, played 31 years earlier. These two games are strikingly similar and it is hard to credit that the two victors maintained an exclusively diametric opposition of views on all chess strategic thinking.
As a modest incursion into the realms of speculation, it almost seems that Freud is even more relevant than might at first sight appear. Freud’s Oedipus Complex requires the son to kill the father. Nimzowitsch’s attempt to slay Tarrasch, who was 24 years older, could in fact have been a reaction to their overt similarities. Was Nimzowitsch trying to kill his chessboard father?
What,bone might ask, can modern chess games tell us about contemporary warfare? I enter here the realms of further extreme speculation, but Bongcloud openings (1. e4 e5 2. Ke2), early queen sorties based on Qh5 and deliberate tempo loss (1. c3 followed swiftly by c4), all practised by the elite, including the current first ranked player and former World Champion, Magnus Carlsen, indicate to me that the direction of conflict is towards asymmetric warfare. This involves terrorism, surprise, psychological combat and guerilla tactics, rather than the stately orchestration of grand strategy, as might have appealed to a Capablanca, a Botvinnik, a Karpov — or indeed Tarrasch and Nimzowitsch.
Meanwhile, within the confines of the chessboard, Nimzowitsch’s words still ring true: “Ridicule can do much, for example, it can embitter the existence of young talents; but one thing is not given to it, to put a stop permanently to the incursion of new and powerful ideas.”
Siegbert Tarrasch and Aron Nimzowitsch could be called the two vainest chess players in history. This book tells the fascinating story of their lifelong rivalry. They clashed as personalities, as players and as chess writers, both searching for the truth in chess, but with very different perspectives.Tarrasch is seen as the dogmatic theorist and, according to Nimzowitsch, didn't offer much more than the well-meaning advice of a housewife. Nimzowitsch is the philosopher, the designer of a complete ‘system’ that explains everything there is to know about chess to future generations of students.Does chess history treat these giants fairly or are…
Masterpieces and Dramas of the Soviet Championship Volume 1 (1920–1937)by Sergey Voronkov, published by Elk and Ruby, with a foreword by former World Champion and one of the greatest chess players in history, Garry Kasparov. This book fully lives up to its title including accounts of the daunting problems of organising anything in the chaotic times of the post-Russian Revolution. The tournaments were of high quality (greats such as the mighty Alexander Alekhine, Efim Bogoljubov and Mikhail Botvinnik were amongst the winners) and there are many historical, dramatic, and competitive games to enjoy. A book of considerable importance, but also an absorbing read.
The third volume of Sergey Voronkov’s epic tale takes the reader on a historical journey through the late Stalinist period in the USSR. It covers in depth the five Soviet championships from 1948 to 1952 and the playoff match between Botvinnik and Taimanov in 1953, which concludes one month before Stalin’s death. Against a background of rampant anti-Semitism, a new wave of repressions and descent into the First Cold War, in which chess was an important front, the USSR captures the world chess crown and Botvinnik and the generation that followed him, including Smyslov, Keres, Bronstein, and Boleslavsky, assert their…
Chess Grandmaster Ray Keene OBE is the UK’s senior chess Grandmaster. Keene first shot to global fame when, while still a schoolboy at Dulwich College ( also Nigel Farage’s old school) he defeated the two Soviet World Champions Mikhail Tal and Mikhail Botvinnik. Ray went on to study at Trinity College Cambridge, where he shared Great Court digs for a year with the future King Charles III. This is Ray’s 208th book, a world record for books on chess and mental fitness.
Artist Barry Martin has contributed the second half of this volume. Twice official match artist for Garry Kasparov’s world title defences of 1993 and 2000 in London, Barry is celebrated for his unique take on the venerable game of chess, such as his potato chess set , briefly on display at Somerset House, before the enlisted tubers grew leaves and began to sprout. Along with Marcel Duchamp, Barry is renowned as one of the world’s most accomplished chess-playing artists.
Composed of an anthology of previous columns for The Article and Eye on London , Chess through the Looking Glass avoids reams of detailed chess analysis and telephone directory acres of moves. Instead this book raises the cultural , historical and artistic resonances of chess, and in an homage to Lewis Carroll, takes the occasional satirical swipe at the Kings, Queens , Castles, Knights , Bishops and Pawns of the political , religious and social chessboard.
