Just in case you needed an excuse to go outside today, the Philolexian Society is playing a game of human chess complete with costumes on the Low Steps right now:

Chabad is the new place in Harlem for singles to meet and “schmooze“.  Seriously, it beats 1020.

Coming soon in theaters, Checkmate at 112^th Street. You never knew a bishop could be so dangerous.

Why don’t you just go to Africa and save some lives like our “celebrated economist” tells us to?  Phelps and Stiglitz are in the next room, kind of ticked off.

You can’t get into Barnard because of failed mercantilism?  Bwog is just itching to protest the Columbia-Barnard Free Trade Agreement.

All the world’s a stage!  Know thyself!  At least before you go trick-or-treating…

Bwog has just gotten word that a favorite Morningside Heights character, that guy who always sits outside of Deluxe playing chess, has amassed some elementary school-aged disciples and is teaching them his craft with a group called NYC Chess. Overheard next to one young chess fiend: “you know what? That kid wins three out of four.” 

Photo by Joseph Meyers

Bwog correspondent Coogan Brennan caught up with chess legend Garry Kasparaov in Harlem this afternoon.

United Civil Front leader and former world chess champion Garry Kasparov made an appearance at the Harlem Children’s Zone today starting at around 2 PM. Kasparov is the fifteen-year reigning chess champion who also currently holds the highest ranking of any living chess player anywhere in the world. Children’s Zone CEO Geoffrey Canada introduced Kasparov, referring him as “an individual who led the fight against the autocratic regime of former President Vladimir Putin.”

The gymnasium at Promise Academy was packed with chess boards, clocks and players, all of which were encircled by enraptured onlookers. A hearty-looking senior man challenged your Bwog correspondent to a blitz match in the midst of the mayhem. Feigning intrigue and intelligence, your correspondent managed to seem like a master for the first eight moves. Later, the senior man walloped him on the diagonals, resulting in a sound endgame for your correspondent’s opponent.

Read more…

In which Bwog correspondent CML alights from the stygian sauna that is Woodbridge Residence Hall to nestle himself between the facade of Cardomat and the awning of Oren’s Daily Roast, to document a picaresque evening of rare chess camaraderie.

When you think of chess, you think of bearded Slavs with vodka on their breath, sterile cafeterias filled with five year-olds waiting to go home and play Super Smash Bros., and Garry Kasparov, the Mike Gravel of Russia.  And when you think of chess in New York, what probably comes to mind are a few sepia-toned tableaux from ‘Searching for Bobby Fischer’ – bums in Washington Square, tyrannical tutors, kids developing scoliosis from hunching over a board for hours a day, and so on.  

But chess in Morningside Heights?  Read more…

On Sunday, Low Plaza saw a woman of great intellect and beauty stride on her steps to challenge the great chess minds of Fair Alma.  Not one to avoid a fight, Bwog’s Chess Correspondent Chris Morris-Lent took up his pawn and rook in an epic battle on 64 wooden squares.

It’s been said that “chess is a sea in which a gnat can drink and an elephant can bathe” (Indian proverb), and “chess is mental masturbation” (Bobby Fischer). So how would you classify twenty-nine dorky men (and a few women), including yours truly, participating in a simultaneous exhibition against Grandmaster Alexandra Kosteniuk, a prodigy and sex symbol who was both 1000 rating points higher and 1000 times hotter than the bulk of the participants? Read more…

A Diamond Under Pressure

Diamond is a Campus Paper’s Best Friend 

Diamonds in the rough not worth breaking the rules 

It is hard to make any more “Diamond” puns, but read about this chess grandmaster.

“Columbia got some wood at the 2007 NCAA Championships.”

Bwog was utterly charmed this afternoon by the sight of a little girl taking on the best of Broadway on the chess board. What a worldbeater.