Fanboy Radio #563

"The Chess Show," with Jeremy Silman and Daniel Rensch

Rating: a 2x speed listen

I've been a fan of chess for my entire life. I've never been very good; I think I've been able to beat my father since I was pretty young, and definitely able to beat my mother since I was a small boy. For a while, in preadolescence, I would follow the chess column in the local newspaper and read a book about it every once in a while. My school library and my local public library had one or two books that were occasionally in stock. I kind of lost interest after a while, because no one in my family would play me, none of my friends played, and my computer chess program (on an Atari 800XL) sucked.

Fast forward ten years. In the basement at music school, several of the piano players took up speed chess: two minutes on a timer in each side, and a best two out of three made for a very good practice break. I played once or twice and got soundly beaten each time. So, I've had a mild hobby interest for most of my life.

These guys, however, take it to the next level. Their primary source of income is chess. Jeremy writes chess teaching books; Daniel is a director at chess.com. They're both recognized as International Masters; apparently, the ranking system in chess is really, really important and something that they hang much ego upon. I didn't know that there was such a thorough international rating system, and the ego thing is understandable - I see it in the barbershop quartet world.

I thought that the interviews were interesting. This was another episode where I said, "They have ten minutes to catch me before I turn it off." I listened to the whole episode while on a walk with my younger son. It was interesting hearing about the whole teaching chess thing from Jeremy; I didn't know that such a thing existed. The information about the chess software, and discovering the chess software tournament that is such a big deal every year, was really neat. Daniel's interview was a little bit more of selling chess.com, but it was interesting to hear about the events that were coming up: besides chess instructional videos, there's a neat "Grandmaster vs. the World" gimmick game coming up. That's cool.

I listened to this podcast on 2x speed using the iPhone app "Podcaster."