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Chessville
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The Kennedy Kids: Mary Elizabeth & Jon
What's In A Name? I had my football in the living room, careful this time about the end table lamp, when my sister breezed in through the back door. "Hey, Jon" she called out, "come here. I want to show you something." Fourth and goal at the three yard line, with time running out, and she wanted me to look away? "Come on," Mary insisted. "It's a chess problem. A weird one. You'll like it." With only seconds remaining, QB Jeff Blake called his last time out, and trotted over to the sidelines to talk it over... Mary was arranging the pieces on the chess board. "I learned this one from my friend, Georgie," she said.
"What kind of a chess name is 'Georgie'?" I skoffed. "Nobody in chess is named 'Georgie.'" "Actually," she said, appearing a bit miffed, "Georgie is a great chess player." She had to be kidding. "Right! Georgie Kasparov. Georgie Karpov. Georgie Fischer. Georgie Polgar. They're all chess greats!" That silenced her, for the moment. "In this position, Black realized that the end was near, and so played a pawn to h1, promoting it to another king! (1...h1=K!) If White now plays 2.Bd4, mating one Black king, the other one is stalemated!" I liked that. You can't really promote to a king, and you can't really have more than one king on a side -- but it was one of those "hidden resources" I relied on sometimes, myself. "What is White to do?" Mary continued. "There is only one resource: White plays 2.a8=K, promoting a pawn to a third Black king!" "Awesome!" I gasped. "Black, then, moves 2...Kb8; White responds with
3.h7, Black has only "Oh, no!" I groaned, holding my head. I couldn't believe it. "...White finishes up with 4.h8=Q, promoting the last pawn to a White queen, and checkmating all three Black kings!!" "Incredible. Who is this Georgie girl?" I wanted to know. She was a real serious player. A regular Polgar in the making. "Not a girl, silly," said my sister, giggling. "Georgie is a wonderful gentleman who stopped by to talk to our chess club today. Our teacher wanted us all to call him 'Mr. Koltanowski," but that sounded much too stuffy to me. I like 'Georgie.'" She had fooled me again. "The rest of the chess world knows him as 'Kolty,'" I informed her. "'Kolty'?" she asked me, not so seriously. "What kind of a chess name is 'Kolty'?" Only the best in the game, we both had to agree,
wholeheartedly. Index of Fiction at Chessville
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