Jim West On Chess: Maurice Ashley on CNN

Friday, July 25, 2008

Maurice Ashley on CNN

In this CNN interview, GM Maurice Ashley describes chess as "intellectual martial arts."

Maurice Ashley is the only grandmaster that I have ever defeated with the Philidor Counter Gambit, although I drew against GM Pavel Blatny with the PCG as well.

Ashley also won this game against me at the Marshall Chess Club, mistakenly reported as taking place in Chicago.

"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