From all the sports in the world, boxing is the most mystifying to me. I just cannot picture any decent person answering the question ‘what…
CIPC extra: The best and worst of 2017
A bit less than one year ago, January 11 2017 to be precise, the first post appeared on this blog. Since then, there have been…
CIPC #49: L’Islam – c’est aussi notre histoire
At the time of writing there is an ongoing exhibition in Brussels about the history of Islam in Europe. For the official poster, the organisers…
CIPC #48: Geri’s game
After last week’s post, I was kind of struggling with writer’s block. I mean, how do you follow up on accidentally composing a chess problem?…
CIPC #47: Bennett, Cat and window
It’s a strange but undeniable fact that most people do not read websites about Belgian chess history, nor are they interested in blog posts complaining…
CIPC #46: Independence day
Last week we talked about Red Bull, this week we’re tackling its cinematic counterpart: Roland Emmerich’s 1996 movie Independence day – which revived the disaster…
CIPC #45: Red Bull advertisement
While we’re on the topic of advertisement for drinks featuring chess, let’s talk about Red Bull. It is a relatively new drink, launched in Austria…
CIPC #44: Smirnoff advertisement
Sometimes I have serious difficulty starting one of these posts. For example, what could I possibly tell about Smirnoff that not everybody knows already? The…
CIPC #43: Universum Bremen
Suppose for a moment that by some strange twist of fate you end up in Bremen for a day or two. Maybe the Deutsche Bahn…
CIPC #42: Aladdin
Received opinion has it that chess originated in India, slowly evolving as it spread westwards from the original chaturaṅga into the modern version that is…