In the past 10 years, the number of people who own a boat and are living offshore has been increasing. This has been proven true by several websites that sell boats and yachts like ZeBoats. As the Coronavirus pandemic still threatens the world population, many people opt to stay inside their boats.
We know it, you are confined at your boat you considered home, you cannot leave, the coronavirus lurks outside, and the little freedom you have is used to buy some food, go to the pharmacy, or walk your pet (if it is that you have).
But we still have chess!
An activity that, as Federico Marin explained on his blog, Playing with Head does not stop growing in fans and people who get hooked on the game over the years.
Therefore, in this article, I bring you some proposals for activities that I want to suggest so that you can carry out in confinement.
Aside from playing chess with your family members, friends, or relatives while your boat is being docked, or while sailing, the following activities about chess should be fun to do.
Chess Movies
Aren’t you going to see a chess movie these days of confinement? In addition, you now have very current titles at your disposal, for example, the movie The Fischer Case is already available on Amazon Prime. If you want more details in this article I’ll tell you about this movie.
Chess films for confinement
It is the classic among the classics and a fabulous movie. Josh Waitzkin (Max Pomeranc) is a normal seven-year-old, but also a true chess prodigy. Joe Mantegna plays Josh’s father, a sportswriter determined to see his son become a champion. In Search of Bobby Fischer, he tells the emotional story of his mutual discovery, a journey in which father and son learn what they must never lose: their love for each other. Actors Laurence Fishburne and Ben Kingsley also give us masterful performances in this magnificent film that celebrates all the wonders of life.
It is a Disney comedy-drama inspired by the true story of the Ugandan chess prodigy Phiona Mutesi, a young woman who at the age of 11 already excelled at the strategic board game after winning the Ugandan national youth championship.
The biopic is based on the novel by Tim Crothers and tells the story of overcoming a girl who dreams of becoming a great chess master in a marginalized country and who will face all adversities to achieve it.
Diego Padilla became a chess champion in 1934, but after the outbreak of the Civil War, he was forced to go into exile in France with Marianne Latour and their daughter. She is a French journalist with whom she falls madly in love, so when she asks him to run away she accepts. But when the Nazis occupy the Gallic country, Padilla is accused of being a spy and ends up in an SS prison, where he tries to survive with the help of the commanding officer’s love of chess, Colonel Maier.
In this odyssey, Padilla will know the horror of losing the most important thing, the epiphany of love in desperate times, and the moral misery that ruined the dreams of a good man, of a person for whom chess was his life, but his life was not. just chess.
He is grateful that the director has had chess advisers mount the games on the board.
“Life of a King,” starring Cuba Gooding and directed by Jake Goldberger. Cuba is one of the leading actors in Hollywood, he has been an Oscar winner in 1997 for his performance in Jerry Maguire and has numerous prominent roles in productions such as American Gangster, Pearl Harbor, and Men of Honor among others.
This will remind us of “In Search of Bobby Fischer” and I recommend that you watch it.
The story tells of an old chess club that was built in the early 90s, in a white house in poor condition, and since then, the professor (at that time, not so old) traveled the troubled neighborhoods of Washington recruiting children and young boys to play chess. He has been doing it for 3 decades and his only mission was to prevent boys from being impulsive, not making decisions without thinking that they end up costing them their lives.
Read a chess novel, improve your chess level, and learn more about the game
Stefan Zweig’s chess novel is the story of an unusual chess game between two very unusual players. The first is the current world champion, a kind of terrible child who came from a forgotten corner of the virgin forest of Europe, to surprise the entire chess world with his skill.
We should think of him as a tough chess player, a con artist who uses chess solely as a means of making money as he travels from city to city in search of an opponent. We could place this character somewhere between Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason in Robert Rossen’s movie “The Go-hustler,” probably closer to Gleason’s character.
One night, while traveling on an ocean liner, the enigmatic Dr. B. manages to draw a draw from the world champion himself! So Mirko Czentovič decides to offer him a rematch to restore his honor. The night before the rematch, lawyer Dr. B. tells how he has been able to face Czentovič and achieve the great feat of drawing him.
Years before, the lawyer had been arrested by the Gestapo and then transferred to Austria where he was kept isolated for months in a comfortable hotel room but in complete solitude. When he was on the brink of madness, and willing to confess what his captors wanted to know, the only thing that kept him strong enough to resist was a chess manual found by chance. The “noble game,” with its infinite possibilities, kept his attention alive, allowing him to play hundreds of games in his head while staying sane. That is, the madness of chess saved him from the madness of torture.
Why am I recommending it?
Because underneath his story there is a clear criticism against Nazism and Gestapo methods, isolation, and forced exile, experienced by Zweig, who would never return to his native Austria. Both the portrait of the chess champion, a tough man with an extraordinary innate talent for chess, and that of his antagonist, the lawyer who took refuge in chess as an antidote to madness, are the most interesting thing in history, in that chess is revealed as a real struggle for survival.
This novel is Zweig’s most prestigious work, even though he could never know it since it was published shortly after he committed suicide in February 1942.
You see, playing chess is not your only option but discovering more about chess by watching movies and reading novels while enjoying your time in your boat is a great experience.