Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Chess Dreams

The position at the start of the most famous chess dream, Thought the Looking Glass.


Chess players often dream about chess positions or tournaments, but sometimes they take a weird turn.

A friend of mine, who shall remain nameless, is a strong player. He told me the other day he is thinking of taking a break from chess for a while. He had a dream where he went on a bicycle trip with Vassily Ivanchuk. They were solving geography puzzles.

Even Freud wouldn't have been able to make to make heads or tails of that one.

P.S.

The diagram above got me thinking. For some reason this has not been mentioned anywhere (to my knowledge), but Alice being the d-pawn -- that is, on the same column as the queen -- as well on (eventually) queening on d8, is significant.

It seems to be an emphasis by Lewis Carroll of her fate of being "born to the purple". In certain times and places, a pawn could only promote to the piece found in the array (the starting position) on the file on which it started, or else on the file on which it was promoted.

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