Chess

We have something exciting going on at our house. My husband is the new chess teacher at Berkeley Glen Elementary School! And our son Mike will be the assistant teacher on days he can get there after work. This class is not actually during school, but is an optional after school program. Quite a few students signed up, and there are even several girls. Way to go, girls! Right now, the class is only every other Friday, but we would like every Friday. In 1996, Deep Blue became the first machine to win a chess game against a reigning world champion, Garry Kasparov. These pictures are of Deep blue and the chess match. After the loss, Kasparov said that he saw deep intelligence and creativity in the computer’s moves, suggesting that human chess players, in violation of the rules, intervened. IBM denied that it cheated. Deep Blue, with its capability of evaluating 200 million positions per second, was the fastest computer that ever faced a world chess champion. Unlike a computer, chess masters have quite a history of eccentric behavior. Many years ago, chess master Alexander Alekhine arrived at an airport without his passport. He likely forgot it. When told that he needed his passport to continue, he exclaimed “I am Alexander Alekhine, chess champion of the world. I have a cat named Chess, and I don’t need a passport.” Bobby Fisher, arguably the best chess player ever, was a haunted soul who had extreme paranoia. He went to a dentist and had all his fillings drilled out, and not replaced. Why? He said the Russian KGB had put transmitters in his dental fillings to change his brainwave patterns. It has always seemed to me that most extremely intelligent people with high I.Q.’s are tortured souls. Some seem truly in another realm. Many have trouble relating to people, fitting into society, and are unhappy. Have you found this to be so? Someone else who was smart and unhappy was King Solomon. His wisdom was a gift from God. “With much wisdom comes much sorrow” is what he said. He may have written the book of Ecclesiastes. Pessimistic, shocking, and unorthodox, it is considered to be the most problematic book in the bible. “Whatever wisdom may be, it is far off and most profound-who can discover it?” Certainly not me, and I am very glad that I’m normal, and not a brainiac, for truly, in my ignorance I am happy.