Jim West On Chess: PCG Clamp

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

PCG Clamp

Many thanks to yet another fellow blogger!

Yesterday, I said "Thank you!" to Atomic Patzer. This time, I say it to Michael Goeller of the The Kenilworthian, for annotating my victory in the Philidor Counter Gambit against FIDE master Steve Stoyko.

Goeller has coined the expression "Philidor clamp" to describe the game position after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 d6 3.Bc4 f5 4.d3 c6 5.O-O f4. But I can not take credit for this line. Actually, it was analyzed by none other than Philidor himself in 1749!

"My study of chess was accompanied by a strong attraction to music, and it was probably thanks to this that from childhood I became accustomed to thinking of chess as an art, and have never regarded it as anything else, for all the science and sport involved in it. And, moreover, an art which in some ways is closer to music than it is customary to think. Perhaps chess and music are drawn together by laws of harmony and beauty which are difficult to formulate and difficult to grasp, or perhaps by something else." - Vasily Smyslov