Chess Items.

Otago Witness, Issue 2455, 3 April 1901, Page 56

Chess Items.

Sir Walter Parrat, "Master of the Musicke " to the late Queen Victoria, and 01 gainst of St Geoige's Chapel, Windsor, is an accomplished chess plß.yei. It is said that he was once

blindfolded, and, while playing the organ, simultansouslj directed the moves of Six games of chess. The clever Harry Pillsbiuy has been mated at la3t, and by a lady, for he recently rnamed Miss Mamie liush at Chicago. Lasker's chess column in the Manchester Evening K"ews, which will appear every Wednesday, judging from the fust i=sue, pronn=es to be a fn&t-rate authority m all depaitments of the game. Tv,o years ago the Hastings Club toured in the north. This yeai they propose p simi'ar excursion, visiting "The Emerald Isle, ' via the West of England and South Wales. We hope the Clifton Association will arrange a fixture with the enterprising visiting team. Messrs Jaques, of London, h«ive introduced a new tuning chess clock. If tb.s turns out to be en improvement on those we have seen at iecent matches — which, hke so many mechsnicsrl contrivances intended to prevent fraud and chicanery, are soon put out of ordei— the chess world will be further indebted to the firm which published "the Staunton chessmen." Chess Ethics. — A chess scribe has something to say aboxit the sensitiveness of plovers iv team matches when they are opposed to others of recognised superior cal.bre. Granted that seme players are reluctant to meet across the board antagonists who could, if it were des.rable, give them odds, it is, vre are certain, also tiue that men who play for the scierce and the infpiept in the game welcome the oppoitumty of encountering superior ftieu^th. In all depaitments of life the old stoic saymg i that '"he who wrest'es with us .*• oiu lie.j.e is applicable, but in none is it truer and more worthy of constant remembrance than in chess, s>-nd sensible chess pliycrs at once exercise and rio I . c their common sense by wiesthng with an opponent of subtler fiiie = be, keener insight, moie comprehensive grjsn, and possibly moie topicii' and exact book Knowledge. Some time a^o, in «i littlo t-pteoh o*i the elh.-s of chefs, a vell-kncvn Syd/iev b-mster referred to chess as the "athletics of thought, a-u! tins p'nase is at once apt and striking. Now, in athleticism, stiength grows a ".'I power develops only by a continued straining "after higher things" — freer movement, greater facility and spontaneousness ol action, readier command of one's resources. So in chess. The chess plnyer who wishes to ' gioV must tholoughH- measure 1113 capabi'itico, and he wiJl rot be able to do that if he does no more thin meet a weaker or an equal cdversary. He lrust fight a stronger. So he finds cut Ins strength and his wcak:ies3;Hj§S is thus m his best mood for knowing himself and what he is capable of doing.— Sydney D.'.ly Telegraph. The Chicago Sunday Tribune L;iv-e; :'n outline of a lecture on ches'= openings delivered l>v Mr H. N. Pillsbury. Ho said that in mo- | ciern practice among the grpat masters Ihe Ruy Lopez and the Queen's Pawn are the o.ily two openings regarded as retiming the advantage of the fir3t move for ary length of time. He demonstrated how in the Giuoco Pipuo, the Four Knights, and other opening? tHe second player can speedily obtain nu n"n g w. H" said that the Berlin defence 11 the crlv coircct rejoinder to the Euv Lopez ;< tt.uk. He doe^ not now entertain *-o bigh a.i opinion of the Petroff defence as he did a few years, ago. This is because the continuation 3 P to Q 4 leaves "^hite with the advantage of the attack. Against the Evans gambit hf> recommended either L?aker's defence or .tho refusal of the gambit, believing th.pt in either case B.'ack should obtain tho belter gaits c. Ha expressed thorough agreement with the principles l.i-"i down in L?sker's "Common Senfae in Chess, and aai-1 that every great master must necessarily bs of the same opinion.