Sorry Mr Banks (the guy from G-Unit that looks like Craig David ) but the title of your quite respectable debut album doesn’t seem to have held true for your rap career since then. ‘The hunger for more’. What is this ‘more‘ about anyway and if we do get it, will we be satisfied or will interest just simply peter away and die? Picture the classic scenario; ‘Oliver Twist stretches out his basin and spoon and asks his master for more… eliciting a positively violent response for having the temerity to ask for more!…’  I guess it’s worth looking at the other side of the coin; if the master had acceded to this simple request from his boy (blasphemous at the time, yes; but a quite logical request), would that classic piece of Dickensian literature have achieved some sort of immortality? When the ‘hunger‘, the ‘want‘ is satisfied; what is there to look forward or even aspire to?

This idea can easily be looked at from an infinite range of features from our daily existence but I’ll try and stick to music, after all, that’s where this conversation started from. From Sinatra’s self satisfied eulogy ‘my way’ to Dr Dre’s classic ‘been there, done that’ it is easy to pick out themes of people who are giving out the message; ‘I asked for more, got it and now there’s nothing left’. Bittersweet. Sad. For some, asking for and receiving more has led to frustration and some sense of derailment, a lack of purpose in life now that the ‘hard’ questions have been answered. I view DMX this way. I mean, just listen to his first two major albums; ‘it’s dark and hell is hot’ and ‘flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood’, absorb the power from songs like ’slippin’…’, ‘coming from…’, ’stop being greedy…’, ‘let me fly…’ and many others. Every song is asking; where is the way in? Give me more! Lyrics like: “you say you hunger for knowledge?/here it is/eat it!…”. Compare this with later efforts where I feel he’s simply asking; “Lord give me a sign”, where do I go now I’ve ’eaten and digested’ more? 

I guess that interesting saying comes across here; “be careful what you ask for, you might get it…”.

Or, as the ‘Joker’ (Jack Nicholson) complained moments before uttering these words in the original ‘Batman’ movie; “why didn’t someone tell me he had one of those things?!”. The scene from the film is the one in which: as the evil villain releases poisonous gas-oozing balloons into the air, trying to wipe out the entire population of Gotham City (!); Batman swoops down from somewhere in the stratosphere (yeah, yeah, comic book movies ) in his ‘Batcraft’ and with a pair garden shears attached to the front of the craft ( ), nips the balloons and safely carries them off to outer space or something. Apologies to all you true blue Batman buffs for my cannibalization of your great movie.

Anyway, the line, and how it was delivered by a very visibly upset and jealous Joker stuck to my grey matter (as so many millions of other irrelevant things have also, over the years…). “got to get me one of those!”

Obviously, the context in which this trip down memory lane is relevant should be self explanatory, how many times have you been walking down the street, observing the finer things of nature on two legs and thinking to yourself; “d**n, got to get me…..”

I’ve always enjoyed playing the Alekhine’s. It’s been a very useful tool for me over the years, particularly when I’ve wanted to take my opponents off the beaten track. Because of the essentially ‘provocative’ nature of this opening, you’re odds on to be in unexplored territory as early as the 7th move. In these days of mass computer-analysis driven Chess, the ability to steer a game into relatively unknown areas is very useful for those of us that like to ‘roll up our sleeves’ and ‘dig into a good game of Chess’.

GettyImages ESPNsoccernet.com

Or for those of you out there that skipped latin in elementary school; “fortune favours the brave”.

Tied for the first position yesterday at the 31st Kings Head Rapidplay, I guess it was yet another case of ‘wobbling and fumbling’ to the finish line. Maybe one day I’ll become a good Chess player. Anyway, the title above refers particularly to the game I played in the last round, it produced a real cliffhanger finish!

Check it out, the comments should give the full gist of what the game was like . Thrilling.

Interesting Chess Congress in Hertfordshire this past weekend. I somehow managed to ‘wobble and fumble’ my way to another Congress victory. The venue was at St Albans, home to the extremely beautiful Cathedral and Abbey Church of Saint Alban. According to local info, “Alban, a citizen of the Roman city of Verulamium, became a Christian after having sheltered a visiting Christian priest from persecution. He was put to death in the 3rd century AD for refusing to renounce his new faith. Alban was buried on a local hillside (the Cathedral site) and honoured there as the first Christian martyr of Britain”. The original Church construction which was built around the tomb of St. Alban cannot be dated but the earliest records show a larger Abbey Church was built for the Benedictine monastry circa 793 by King Offa of Mercia. The Cathedral is a truly wonderful building, steeped in history. Recommended visiting.

Anyway, back to the Chess board and the Congress which was at the St. Albans School, just opposite the Cathedral. The five round event produced five interesting games for me; four victories and a draw made for a clear first position in the Open section. One of the more interesting games is below, one or two pictures from the event are up in the Chess Room.