Jayden's Chess Journal Edition #9

🚨New Section🚨

Chess in Pop Culture

Chess can be seen in many prominent parts of pop culture. Music and movies are a prime example. Every week we’ll take a look at some notable mentions of chess.

In The Strokes’ song “Whatever Happened?" lead singer Julian Casablancas sings the line:

“I wait and tell myself, Life ain’t chess”

He uses chess to describe how life is not so complex and that he doesn’t want to think too hard about his decisions. This portrays chess as both intellectually challenging and requiring intense thinking.

💡Puzzle #9

Black has checkmate in two moves, which move leads to the checkmate?

✅Solution

The solution is the sacrifice Rb1+ which directly leads to White having to take the rook to feign checkmate. Now Black can play the move Rd1+, which forces the King to move to h2 and Black can play the very nice Rh1#.

♟️Tip of the Week

Sometimes a sacrifice is necessary to reach checkmate. Material is not necessary to play the game of chess, but checkmate is necessary to win a game of chess.

🪶Chess History

Today we are going to look at a grandmaster who had the longest reign as World Champion in history, Emanuel Lasker. Born in 1800s Germany, Lasker learned chess at age 11 from his older brother Berthold, who was a top 10 player in the world. Lasker dominated tournaments early on in his chess career, in 1894 Lasker challenged Wilhelm Steinitz for the World Championship. Lasker won decisively with ten wins, five losses, and four draws. Let’s see a position from one of the best grandmasters of all time!

This position comes from a game played in 1934 where Lasker was 65 years old. He just played the amazing fork on the Queen and the rook with Bb6. This shows even past his prime Lasker was a forward thinker in the game of chess.

 That wraps up this edition of Jayden’s Chess Journal

I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did, and if you know anyone looking for more chess knowledge, send them this link so they can access this awesome newsletter.

Thank you so much for reading this edition, until next time!