Some years ago we hosted a special column by chess journalist Mig Greengard. Today Mig is a hard-working assistant to Garry Kasparov, helping write and edit his books and press releases.
On the ChessBase news page, Mig was in charge of humour. He could be called the man who first brought it into the hitherto perfectly humourless world of chess publication. Our introduction of playful and droll stories into the otherwise staid reports was well appreciated by our readers. We introduce a regular column for Mig's mischievous ideas. Here's an example.
Few sports, Mig wrote, have such a deep and complicated world as chess. A world that is completely closed to outsiders. One of the reasons chess has such an intellectual reputation is because if you don’t understand chess, you don't understand it at all. "It's like speaking a foreign language or liking cauliflower, it puts you into a special group of people that understand something that those out of the group can't."
A big part of the secret language of chess is that it confuses even long-time chess fans. If you've ever bought a chess book or magazine you're familiar with the symbols of chess notation. These are used to indicate the quality or character of a move, and they're fairly easy to understand – at least until you buy your second book or magazine. There they may seem to mean different things. This is what the basics annotator symbols mean (according to Mig):
! - Heh, I bet the other guy didn't see this one
!! - The player who made this move went on to win the game
? - Opponent's next move will get an !
?? - Even I could tell that this sucked
?! - There are probably worse moves, but I can't find one
!? - I have a deadline to meet and am too lazy to analyze this
+- - My computer tells me it's a mate in 9
+/- - This player has a few more pawns
+= - This player has a higher rating
= - The players agreed to a draw a few moves later
~ - I have no idea what's happening here
Seems like a simple, complete system, right? But Mig thought it left a lot out, and decided to add a few symbols to make things a little clearer, and certainly more informative. Here are some of his suggestions:
$ - Player made this move because he had to win to get any money
??$ - Player lost a bunch of money with this move
"" - The player didn't want to talk about this move
%#$*!!%& - The player was very angry about this move
The readers of our news page joined in with their own suggestion. Mig wrote:
