Two characters are playing chess. (This applies to movies that don’t have chess as a central plot element.) One of the characters makes a move, and announces “Checkmate!”
Almost always there are two problems with the scene:
Almost all the pieces seem to be on the board. Outside of a Fool’s Mate, that doesn’t happen often.
The character who’s just lost is supposed to be competent, but somehow he was totally unaware that he was a move away from being mated. He’s surprised.
But then, along comes Mel Brooks.
I’m watching a DVD of Blazing Saddles. When Sheriff Bart meets the Waco Kid (drunk in a jail cell), he asks the Kid what he likes to do. The Kid thinks and says, “Oh, play chess. . . screw . . .” Bart quickly says, “Let’s play chess!”
So then you see them at a chessboard. Bart announces “Checkmate!” The Kid seems surprised – but he’s a liquor-soaked alcoholic, so that’s plausible.
Here’s the important thing – it really is checkmate. I stopped the DVD to look, and the Kid’s king is in check by one of Bart’s rooks, and can’t move without being in the path of Bart’s other rook and remaining bishop. There are only seven pieces on the board – it looks like the endgame of a real match.
I don’t know if Mel Brooks plays chess, but he’s a smart guy and obviously likes to get details right. So, kudos to Mel.
I do not play chess, but isn’t it usually customary to call “Check” when the king is in danger? I never understood why people are so surprised at “Checkmate” because they should understand they are in trouble, right?
Not really. Check is when a piece could capture the king on the next turn if nothing else happens. Checkmate is when the player in check cannot make his king safe.
It’s possible to be placed in check without ever really being in danger of checkmate, in fact it happens all the time, and it’s possible to be put in checkmate without ever having been placed in check.
Three-dimensional chess had, I believe, been thought of before Star Trek. However, the version that was put together for the television show was a creation of the minds of the producers/directors of the show. Of course, the show’s eventual popularity induced people to come up with working versions of whatever it was that Spock was playing. As I recall, when I had my first Star Fleet Techinical Manual (back in the mid-70s), they had dimensions and some rules, but it wasn’t fully fleshed out, as I recall. Franklin Mint produced some versions of the board at one point. Now, I believe it’s been retroactively invented to have a complete set of rules, etc., by people who obviously are as, um, obsessed, shall we say, as the ones who have extended Klingon into an almost complete language.
Actually this reminds me of a pet peeve of mine about chess on TV. Basically one guy will move into checkmate which last I checked wasn’t allowed. (I mean usually it’s one guy being arrogant and makes his move and then other guy immediately announces checkmate.)
So, wait, you mean Player A moves, then Player B announces checkmate without having moved a piece of their own? I must admit, I’ve never seen this sequence on TV.
Pretty much, actually play B moves and immediately takes the king. I kind of remember it from Leave to Beaver where Wally is playing Eddie Haskel. Eddie makes a move and Wally asks him a couple of times if he really wants to make that move. Eddie keeps saying he does and then Wally just announces checkmate and takes the king. It was my impression that you can never make a move to put your king in check.
That’s true, although some versions of blitz (fast chess) rules do allow you to take your opponent’s king if he leaves it in check. In normal chess, moving your king into check is just illegal, the same as moving a rook diagonally or something like that.
From either player’s point of view. The rightmost square on the row nearest the player shopuld be light-coloured (“white to the right”). There’s a trick chess puzzle, that I can’t find right now, which exploits this, by presenting an apparently impossible mate-in-two or whatever. Impossible until you realise that the board has been rotated 90° from its usual orientation.
Right; just remember “white to the right” and “Queen on color” when you’re setting up. I’ve seen chessboards in movies where apparently nobody on the whole set knew how to set it up.
One thing that amused me was one commercial where an older man and a boy were playing chess.
Older man (makes move): Check
Boy (makes move): Checkmate.
Now I won’t say such an exchange is impossible, but it strikes me as highly unlikely. The boy’s move would have to block the piece that was attacking his king and at the same time attack the opposing king so that the king couldn’t escape. You might be able to come up with a situation that fits, but the odds of it happening in the course of two players of even novice ability seem very long.
