Comments on: For the Love of Curling

By: paulhoffman

paulhoffman — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 17:58:57 +0000

Cool, HG! Westchester is not too far for curling; I’ll just skate on over. And thanks, Chessaholic, for the kind feedback. I agree AP, and now the world chess federation is stepping up random drug testing, despite the fact that the game has never had a drug problem. Yes, Irvin: sometime a game should be though of as, well, just a game.

By: HagstromCondor

HagstromCondor — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 00:14:45 +0000

re: “I’m trying to find a place in New York where my Canadian friends and I can try out the sport.”

If Westchester’s feasible, you might look into the Ardsley Curling Club.

By: Chessaholic

Chessaholic — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 00:09:29 +0000

How do you castle in Curling?

Mr. Hoffman: just wanted to let you know that I thoroughly enjoyed “King’s Gambit”. It prompted me to order your other books too.

By: Irvin

Irvin — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 20:42:10 +0000

The fact that most chessplayers actually think of chess as something other than a beautiful, complex game is a good inidicator of how stupid and out of touch the average player is.

Pretending that chess is a sport implies that Vladimir Epishin and Jay Bonin (who I greatly respect as both a person and a player) are athletes. We can easily see they are not.

Pretending that chess is a sport means that so are dominoes, poker, parchisi and tic-tac-toe. We can see they are not.

Besides, what’s to be gained from pretending that chess is a sport? Goverment funding? Even that doesn’t benefit the average chessplayer. It only benefits those who make money by telling people that chess makes kids smarter, that chess teaches discipline, that chess this and chess that… The truth is that chess benefits kids the exact same way that any other after-school activity benefits kids. No more, no less.

People are happy to blame Kirsan for everything that is wrong with international chess, but it is probably the other way around: chess has Kirsan because of its own problems, the main one being that the so-called “professionals” feel entitled to an income not commesurate with the game’s fair market value.

Hey, before anyone gets mad at me: I love chess. I play at a decent level. I like the game, but the reality is that it attracts a lot of weirdos…

By: Atomic Patzer

Atomic Patzer — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 17:06:27 +0000

Curling reminds me more of bocce and NOT chess. It does look like fun. I feel chess should keep out of the Olympics. Doesn’t feel like a good fit to me. One is all about physical sport and the other is all about a cerebral competition. I see no benefit to chess by getting involved with the Olympics. The chess community should continue doing it’s own Olympics and drop that drug testing nonsense.