His own private 737

Top GM's (and I mean very top GM's) make a decent enough living from chess, due to appearance fees, prize money, and in recent times, product endorsements. However they generally have to ask for them on a case by case basis, and I suspect there isn't a list of standard conditions that the 2750+ GM's are expected to receive.
But for all the conditions, inducements or other payments that players have received over the years, it would be hard to top what Nigel Short just scored on a trip to southern Africa. While flying from South Africa to Zimbabwe, GM Short found he was the only passenger on an Air Zimbabwe 737. This was a fully equipped plane, that can seat anywhere between 85 and 212 passengers (depending on the model), and a full service crew. Apparently 4 people had booked this flight, but when the plane took off, the other 3 passengers had cancelled, leaving Short with a 737 all to himself. As befitting his role as the sole passenger, the in flight announcements were addressed to him personally, and he received quite good in flight service. The only complaint from Nigel was that they did not give him an upgrade from economy!
After the flight he both shared this on facebook and even did an interview with the BBC Newsday. You can catch a replay of it here.

And now a reply from the opposition

Just for a change of pace, here is a link to a post by some who does not like chess. Why I Hate Chess is an amusing take from a non chessplayer about why they do not like the game. While some of the complaints are factually wrong (no doubt for reasons of humour rather than ignorance), I can happily accept that there are things not to like about chess. In fact even the most passionate chess player could probably write a similar post (eg 1. Other chessplayers 2. I'm not getting better etc), although the reasons would obviously be different.
However it is worth reading in full, and then as an added bonus, checking out the contributions in the comments section!

A repeatable mistake

My ability to remember opening theory stopped around the time The Simpsons started appearing on TV. This is not a coincidence mind you, as the part of my brain that was set aside to remember new opening lines, was instead filled with quotes from various Simpson's episodes.
So pretty much my in depth opening knowledge dates back to 1993, and anything after that has a half life of about 4 days.
This was rammed home to me once again this evening, after losing the game below. 12. ... Qd5 is a big blunder, but amazingly, a blunder I have made in a previous game. During the 2007 Australian Open Major, I blundered in an identical manner to Edward Xing, but was fortunate to escape after he took the rook on g8, rather than play the much stronger Nge4.
No such luck this evening, as not only did I lose the rook on g8, but after 17.Bg5 I was dropping the piece on c5 as well. And that was enough for me!


Litchfield,Fred - Press,Shaun [C56]
ANU Winter Swiss, 12.08.2015

A Bishop Problem

From the book "Across the Board" by John Watkins, comes an interesting question about Bishop Tours. Can a Bishop starting on a1 visit each black square along a diagonal only once, before finishing on h8? (Note: the term "along a diagonal" means the bishop can cross a square it has already passed over, as long as it isn't travelling in the same or opposite direction when previously reaching that square)

Did GG start with chess?

Staying in touch with the latest slang is quite difficult for a 48 year old, but fortunately running a number of junior events has allowed me to keep up, in a limited manner. One interesting term I heard was "spamming", the meaning of which has evolved over the years. In the modern context it seams to mean "repeatedly press", as in "to reset the clock, just keep spamming the middle button".
Another term that has bled over from online gaming is "GG" which means "Good Game". On more than one occasion I heard "Checkmate. GG" being said, although it sometimes wasn't checkmate. But unlike "spamming" I had a thought that "GG" was in fact a chess term, from the early days of online gaming.
At first I thought I would have to do a great degree of research to see if "GG" did start in the chess community. Turns out that searching for "first use of GG" threw up and instant answer, which was Yes. It became a common sign off on ICC, which does make sense, as online chess was one of the first examples of online gaming. It then carried over to other multiplayer games (eg Starcraft) before entering into the vernacular. If you want to check this history out yourself, you can do so here.

The sneaky Qb6

There was a murmur of excitement at Street Chess, when one of the players (Thomas Johnston) found a very clever mating idea against Matthew Bennett. "Put this on your blog" was one comment, the only problem being that the game was not recorded.
However the key idea in the game was easy to remember, as it involved a white queen landing on b6, protected from capture by a pin on the c pawn. The unusual feature here is that it occurred on the queenside, as examples of Qg6/g3 are significantly more common (Game 1 in Logical Chess Move by Move is one such example).
As I don't have the game played on Saturday to hand, I can at least show you a similar game where the same idea is executed. I'm sure White saw the idea a few moves earlier, and so found a way to punt the Black queen before lowering the boom.

Schneider,Rafael (1823) - Pericas Rechi,Marc [B01]
EU-ch U16 19th Fermo (8), 08.09.2009

Some freelance software work (* with the emphasis on free)

Spurred on by a request in an earlier comment, I have made the effort to develop a DGT game display system that does not use flash. It is written in Javascript/jQuery and is designed to run on browsers that do not/ cannot have flash (which is what the standard DGT display system uses).
At this stage it is till in alpha (a little extra parsing work, plus improved layout changes), but it does read native DGT format files and allows you to replay games.
If you wish to give it a test, have a look at http://streetchess.net/software/livegame_test/
Once I get it bullet proof I will put it up for download at http://streetchess.net/software