Chess Games of Sting

Pop singer Sting, it turns out, is a pretty good chess player. He got Garry Kasparov to play him and his band the Police in a simultaneous chess exhibition in 2000. Sting lost, but he is a strong player, and gave Garry a better game than many of us would have. I looked up Sting in the USCF, (the United States Chess Federation). That is where all the players are rated and their playing history is recorded. HIs real name is Gordon Sumner, and sure enough, he's in there. His USCF ID number is 12831824. It's fun to see celebrities playing chess. Actually there are quite a few! Arnold Schwarzenegger, Humphrey Bogart, Peter Falk and Yoko and Sean Ono Lennon, to name a few others, are all chess afficionados.

It says on the chessgames page that this game is from the Hungarian Opening, but it is an English formation. The Hungarian Opening starts out with g3, intending obviously and immediately to fianchetto his light squared bishop, meaning place it on g2. This type of system aims to control the center with pieces rather than pawns and is called hypermodern as opposed to classical chess. White's bishop is not hemmed in by his own pawns, and as you can see, never does get blocked in throughout this game. This is different from some king's indian formations where the bishop doesn't always have scope. Sting lost a center pawn to Garry. That's like being down a whole rook, because it's Kasparov. I give credit to Sting for being willing to play someone to whom he knew he would lose badly, and allowing for public scrutiny like he did.

This is such a good example of a bad bishop that this article could have been about bad bishops instead of Sting. In fact, this is a better example of a bad bishop than the other hubpage article I wrote about bad bishops. A bad bishop is one that is blocked in by it's own pawns. Notice how the pawn on a7 can't move? Or it can, but only to b8. It's in a cage. Sting might as well not even have that bishop. You could see if you watched the game that Kasparov plans things far in advance. It was impressive the way the pieces just seemed to fall into place for him, caging the bishop. What a great game, between one of the best musicians ever and probably the world's all time greatest chess player. Music and chess go together well, and actually, they say that musicians make great chess players, using a lot of the same parts of the brain. Philidor, for example, was a great musician and great chess player all at the same time.