Jim West On Chess: E-mail from Matt Phelps

Sunday, February 21, 2010

E-mail from Matt Phelps

On Thursday, I received this e-mail from Matt Phelps, who lost to my teammate Ziping Liu in the final round of the USATE 2010.

Jim,

Thanks for posting my last round game with Ziping (really!). I can't remember if I explicitly congratulated him for the cleverness of the mating attack. Please convey that to him if you get the chance. Let's hope we all meet again next year, but this time on board 1 for all the marbles!

Thanks again,

Matt

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As Ziping's chess teacher, I can tell you that it is the best game he has ever played!

"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