Kara Dreamer (obsolete) ⚧ @kara_dreamer@witches.town
obsolete account, please follow @kara
But what if, I daydreamed, Alekhine's cat had something to do with it?
Euwe wasn't supposed to win in 1935. Hardly anybody thought he could, anyway. After defeating Capablanca in 1927, Alekhine dominated the chess world. (Why he never played another match with Capablanca is a matter of some dispute. Alekhine has been accused of "dodging" Capablanca--and the reverse accusation has also been made.) But after a shaky start (winning only one game and drawing two out of the first seven) Euwe pulled himself together and eventually beat Alekhine with a score 15½-14½. It's often suggested that Alekhine's drinking got the better of him in 1935, though this (like everything else about the man) is hotly disputed.
Indeed it seemed that a lot of the weirder details about Alekhine and his cat come from the 1935 championship, and from Alekhine's challenger in that match, Max Euwe. A few years ago, intrigued by the whole business, I started digging into the story of the 1935 championship a bit more.
Euwe's become something of a minor hero of mine. He did not consider himself a chess master by profession; he had a doctorate in mathematics and was teaching high-school math all during the '30s, running off to play chess with the greats and then running back to resume his teaching duties. Very different from Alekhine, whose whole life was chess and drinking--and cats.
There are other stories that Alekhine would insist on bringing his cat with him into the tournament hall, and wouldn't sit to play until the cat had sniffed at the board. If he wasn't allowed to have the cat with him, Alekhine would wear a sweater with a depiction of his cat knitted into it. And then there's this tidbit about the 1935 world championship match against Euwe, relayed by Dutch GM Jan Timman, describing how unnerved Alekhine was when his journey to the tournament hall was twice interrupted by cats: https://witches.town/media/rw71gBIfUHbyVHyVUIc
Anyway, it's not like Alekhine would be the hero of my story. I'm saving that role for Max Euwe. But more on him later. I want to talk a bit more about Alekhine's cat, or at least the cat's legend.
There's a story about Alekhine of uncertain provenance (Reuben Fine first told it, maybe), that's gotten sillier over time: supposedly Alekhine tried to enter Poland for a 1935 tournament without a passport and when challenged declared, "I am Alekhine, chess champion of the world. This is my cat. Her name is Chess," as though the cat were sufficient proof of his identity. This tall tale gives some idea of the quality of the stories about Alekhine and his cat.
and Ivanchuk could only draw against Aronian today, so he's been eliminated from the tournament. So much for dreams of a world championship candidate slot...
antisemitism, Nazism Afficher plus
(actually, gonna just basically repost this one, with a bit added on)
Alexander Alekhine was a...colorful man, as chessmasters go, and there are a whole bunch of not very well-attested stories about Alekhine's cat, or perhaps cats, and it's unclear to me how many of them are true. I was going to "print the legend" in my story, though, and go with the idea that the cat's name was "Chess". "Caissa" has also been offered as a possibility. But some digging produces another picture of _two_ cats, one of whom is named "Shamat", which might be a corruption of the Russian word for "Chess" (шахматы).
poking around at the chess news gets me to thinking about one of my more elaborately imagined story ideas that I'll probably never actually get round to thrashing out, and that's my idea for a story about the 1935 world chess championship and about Alexander Alekhine's semi-legendary cat. Pictured: Alexander Alekhine, with cat. https://witches.town/media/7zkQV1ow2yS1Ligo47M
remember how I was talking about how Vassily Ivanchuk was really brilliant, but erratic? well, he showed us the "erratic" part today :( Some kind of opening experiment against GM Aronian went horribly wrong and he resigned after only 24 moves. Sorry, Chucky. :(
http://en.chessbase.com/post/fide-world-cup-2017-flawless-aronian-crushes-chucky
had @KaylinEvergreen over and she got me some gifts, including a replacement for my undersized (and now slightly water-damaged) Thoth tarot deck, a book to accompany the deck, and a little censer ^^ and then we watched a bit more Gundam Wing, "After V", and also I decided to show her the first episode of Kamen Rider Build
went for a short walk to find an oak leaf to put on my makeshift altar in honor of Cernunnos, whom I really don't know too much about or have had much to do with hitherto, but my friend @KaylinEvergreen is trying to get a job and Cernunnos is the deity with whom she's most closely aligned
oh, yeah, it's Friday isn't it? so it's time for more #followfriday / #ff picks, chosen with the agency of dice rolls (using some rather nice metal ones my girlfriend got me at PAX) from the list of people following me.
and the lucky eight are
OK, decided to make a little thing to illustrate Undyne's GET IN A FIGHT WITH A CLOUD!!! advice. source of original Undyne pic is https://soundcloud.com/keno9988iii/if-undyne-was-a-punch-out-opponent https://witches.town/media/sxHxgf1qtZic95ePpBU
OK, how many people here have created accounts on Tumblr (or other popular sites), used them for two weeks, abandoned them, then just created new ones later rather than go back to the old ones
say, are you supposed to say "WUN-ett" or "ON-ett"
dunno why the Onett theme has been playing in my head for much of the day
also, is even Toriel capable of making fruitcake something you'd want to eat https://witches.town/media/01qbUcy_X4K9hXvCjBo
I, myself, always sing along (for a few seconds, at least) to "Don't Stop Believing" whenever I hear it. Cheesy '80s power ballads have the power to cheer me up when few other things do, even chemistry papers or (heaven help me) Undertale.
Undyne, I love you, but get stuffed
(source - http://undertale.tumblr.com/post/165367197345/undertale-2nd-anniversary-and-alarm-clock) https://witches.town/media/_uziz7lS13Wj8aTe2tY