Who said chess is a cheap game to play? French artist Bernard Maquin asks 500,000$ for the chess set. That’s what he estimates the work of 30 craftsmen, which spend about 4500 hours working on this chess set. If you think about it for a second his craftsmen make only 3.70$/hour each including the cost of materials. Not much, hah? Anyway, Charles Hollander Collection “The Royal Diamond Chess” is entirely handmade of 1168.75 grams 14 K white gold and 9900 black and white diamonds weighing 186.06 carats. Charles Hollander Collection, one of the most respected names in the diamond industry. Check out the pictures of this beautiful chess set:

Checkout another expensively cool chess sets: Money Chess Set and  Jewel Royale Chess Set.

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After taking a break from online chess, I’ve decided to come back to this old habit and logged on into freechess.org where I used to play. I found somebody of about my strength to play in 5 minute blitz and guess what: get killed quickly. After getting mated/running out of time third time in a row I’ve decided to change rules a little and offer an increase of time to 25 minute game. He accepted the offer. With more time available I easily turnedtable around and won 3 games. I was very surprised how I could lose 3(!) games in a row to somebody who doesn’t think deeper than 2 moves ahead…

For all the fans of Geri's Game from Pixar here is the "real" version of the Game. The idea of this short movie is exactly identical to Geri's Game. The only difference is that it's not animation anymore but a movie with one actor playing. Geri plays chess with himself. He is changing character by putting glasses on and removing glasses after each move. Finally Geri without glasses is about to checkmate Geri with glasses. But Geri with glasses has a trick: he fakes heart attack…

World Champion Vishy Anand said “Chess is beautiful, sometimes you’ll see a game and there is something you’ll take away…” in one of the interviews before the 2008 World Championship. You can see the beauty of chess yourself in this short 10 minute animated video. Just enjoy chess.

I found this neat ad while browsing the net and have decided to share it with you guys. I consider kind of
cool that major luxury car manufacturers use chess theme for their ad campaigns.

Read the ad text on the billboards left to right.

Audi: “Your move, BMW”

BMW: “Checkmate.”

There always has been an idea of making useful things of money. Instead of going to a store and spending some £2500
on a big screen HDTV, one guy decided to handcraft chess set exclusively of British
Pounds, both paper and coins. He calls black and white squares as heads and tails. The board is made of paper money
and total cost of the board is £2360. The pieces are composed of coins. More
valuable pieces worth more moneywise according to the table below:

I have played in 2008 Atlantic Open and did pretty well: end up with 3 out of 5 points. I won the first game, lost second, won third, won forth and lost fifth one (very unfortunately).


The tournament took place in the heart of Washington D.C. in the very nice (but expensive) Westing Hotel. It was a big tournament about 300 registered players, 5 Grandmasters (Sergey Kudrin, Sergey Erenburg, Alexander Stripunsky, Alexander Shabalov and Leonid Kritz ) and many more IMs and FMs. I went to Washington with 4 other players, two of which were members of
Central Delaware Chess Club (the club I belong to) and the other two players played for Milsbury Chess Club (Maryland). We arrived to
Washington at around 4pm, while the first round starts at 7pm. Myself and Dean Miller played in U1700 section, Leon Tschantre played in U 1500, Clinton Young played in U1900 and Darrel West was brave enough to play in OPEN (!).