Jim West On Chess: Chess Talk Radio

Friday, January 25, 2008

Chess Talk Radio

There are times in life, as in chess, when you follow your instincts because you are unable to know for certain what the correct move is. That is what happened to me on Monday morning.

I awoke to an e-mail from Jason Payn, who produces a talk show on BSport Radio in Auckland, New Zealand. Having seen my tribute to Bobby Fischer, Payn requested 7 to 8 minutes of my time for a phone interview (at 12:40 pm EST Monday) on a radio show hosted by Ian Smith, Dean Lonergan, and Nathan Rarere.

Somehow I felt it was the wrong move for me, just as sometimes I heed my intuition in a complicated middlegame. Thus, I never followed up on Payn's offer. Still, I am flattered that someone, in as faraway a place as New Zealand, could read my blog post and like it so much!

"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