1.e4 testify!
Sister Blah2 kindly alerted me to this item, in which Daniel Peterson announces his project of putting up a web site containing the testimonies of LDS gospel scholars. He suggests similar ventures in other fields: “I think there ought to be similar on-line collections of testimonies from athletes, executives, farmers, housewives, morticians, retirees, chess players, stamp collectors, everybody.”
Unfortunately, I am not aware of any LDS professional chess players. If I’m wrong, and you’re an LDS top grandmaster, please post your testimony in the comments.
Reshevsky. Does Sunday work for you?
I don’t get the sense that chess players are a particularly pious group on the whole. Though I will note that eight-time US champion and world champion contender Sammy Reshevsky was an Orthodox Jew and he refused to play on his sabbath. I believe that Fischer too sometimes objected to sabbath play when he was an ahderent to the Worldwide Church of God, which also observed a Saturday sabbath.
Bogoljubow, Beloved of God.
Ukrainian/German GM Efim Bogoljubow (1889-1952) once said, “When I play with the white pieces, I win because I have the first move. When I play with the black pieces, I win because I’m Bogoljubow.” I thought that was just a pretty funny boast, until I learned that Bogoljubow means “beloved of God” in Russian. So it was a bit of a play on words that I missed, and also a sort of testimony. But mostly a boast.
Filed under: Deseret Review | Tags: Bogoljubow, chess, Fischer, Reshevsky, sabbath
Ben Pratt
January 4, 2010
As an LDS scientist, I testify that I interpreted 1.e4 to mean 10,000.
Adam Greenwood
January 4, 2010
Me too, Ben P. I was expecting, I dunno, some wierd science jargon homage to world history, the insertion of the 1e4 to a littoral environment, something.
Great post, GST. Not a chess maven myself, I still find your chess posts engagin.
Vader
January 4, 2010
I’d add my testimony, but I have a sneaking suspicion that they don’t really want a collection of LDS testimonies from designers of weapons of mass destruction.
Nate Oman
January 5, 2010
Excellent. The intersection of chess and the gospel is a much under-appreciated subject…
Vader
January 5, 2010
Curiously, Bogoliubov is also the name of a particle physicist responsible for an important recursion formula for renormalizable quantum field theories. Just noticed his name on the page of the textbook on QFD I’ve been studying.
I don’t think he’s LDS, though.
Matthew Boren
November 19, 2012
Kayden Troff is a young LDS player to watch out for. Just won the World Under 14 Championship. He’s also an IM-elect, and well on his way to 2500 USCF.