Bit of Monty Python with Basil Faulty...aka Celebrity Chess

[Spacious_Mind]

The early part of last year, I was contacted by Garry Scott-Irvine who works with John Cleese and handles his business affairs. He tells me about John Cleese's passion for chess and his love for his Chess Computer, which is a 1980 Model Chafitz Auto Response Board with the Sargon 2.5 Module.

Well, apparently John Cleese spends about 1/2 the year in his house in California and the other half traveling across Europe working on movies and TV shows. When he is at home, he likes to relax playing a game of chess with his computer, probably with a glass of wine in his other hand

So anyway, traveling back from Europe he had lost his wooden chess pieces for the ARB. As it happened I had a spare set of nice Brazilian Hardwood full size chess pieces that work perfectly with the ARB, and I sold these to him.

He told me at the the time, that they are heading back to Europe and would not be back in USA until the end of 2009.

So anyway, I packed the pieces and mailed them.

Sooooooooo, now about a month or so ago, I decided to play a game of chess with my Sargon ARB 2.5, wanting to test it against my more recent acquisition a Sargon ARB 3.0, after setting up the pieces I find myself staring at these nice wooden Brazilian Hardwood chess pieces.

Oooooooops, I said to myself. I must have sent him my original chess pieces, which due to hard use, don’t look anywhere near as pretty or as like the photo I had sent to him. But, being original, I really preferred to keep the ugly ones and I am sure he would have preferred to have the nice wooden Brazilian Hardwood ones!

So, I contacted him and explained what happened and offered the choice of swap. The response I get is "not too worry, still traveling, back soon, sort it out then"

Last week I get an e-mail saying, "Finally back, let's swap!" So I give him my address and he confirms his again... and the swap is on!

End of that story right! ...... wrong! Today I boxed the pieces, making absolutely sure that they are in fact THE "nice wooden Brazilian Hardwood" ones, and decided to shoot off an e-mail that the pieces will be on their way tomorrow!

Well, I opened my e-mail and what do I see staring at me... MY STREET ADDRESS with a totally dyslexic house number.... I had typoed the house number completely wrong.

So, I quicly send off an e-mail... nice Wooden Brazilian Hardwood chess pieces on the way tomorrow...but WAIT... don't send to me my pieces yet without reading this e-mail with my correct Street Address!

Reply came back fairly quickly... oooooops too late, already sent etc..etc etc..... .. So I got into my car and tried to find this dyslexic house number. Fortunately, it exists ... but, it was all dark, no cars up the drive, no one was at home ........ So the story continues...............

Anyway back to the reason for this Post... I was just wondering who else from the Celebrity World (outside chess) plays chess with computers... does anyone else have a story to tell !!

Best regards....

Nick

[Steve B]

Interesting Story Nick
good read!

while i have no personal stories with Movie Stars or Sports figure types i did have a few dealings with well known chess programmers

i was somewhat involved with Fabien Letouzey agreeing to let Fruit be used in the Resurrection
he contacted me when Ruud asked him about allowing Fruit to be used and after he agreed we got to talking about dedicated computers(he read my posts here at the time)
turns out he always wanted a Novag Calculator type chess computer(Ruby/Vip..etc etc)
well it took me 10 or so emails to convince him to let me send him one
a nicer person then Fabien you will not meet

Mark Uniacke is also a big fan of the oldies and once you get Mark talking about the old dedicated computers his knowledge is Encyclopedic
he also has a very good collection of them

Finally.. about two years ago the Son of the owners of the Chafitz company (who released the ARB ) showed up on the Hiarcs Forum with the screen name...SON OF BORIS


we shared some emails and he turned out to be a very interesting fellow.
he mentioned that his parents released a Boris 10 FT Tall for Marketing purposes and they manufactured one made totally out of Lucite!

Memory Lane Regards
Steve

[Spacious_Mind]

Thanks for your interesting reply Steve. I had followed your Posts with interest regarding Son of Boris.

I was not aware of your communications with Fabien

But, I have to say that we should say a great big thank you to Fabien Letouzy, Thomas Gaksch, Perola Valfridsson, Gian-Carlo Pascutto and of course Vasik Rajlich for their support of Ruud's project and our hobby! Without them we would not be having so much fun playing Resurrections or Revelations.

I would love to someday see some more programs for these machines! Bob Hyatt's Crafty amongst many others would be a dream come true for me.

I don't have too many famous chess stories to tell but a couple do spring to mind. Here is one:

Eric van Riet Paap, author of several old Mephistos and Saiteks chess programs. He was in touch recently. I was thinking of doing a post sometime called "Where are they now?" Anyway, he stopped progamming chess and now has a new passion called "Dynamic Freediving", that is what he spends his spare time on now.

This is what he had sent to me:

"My name is Eric van Riet Paap and I am the author/programmer of some Saitek and Mephisto chesscomputers. I would like to thank you for creating the spacious mind website! It is great so see this little piece of history conserved like this.

cheers
Eric

P.S. I blog - not about chess - but about my latest obsesion called freediving. I don't think you are interested but maybe it is nice to see where one of these programmers ended up http://ericvanrietpaap.blogspot.com"

Hopefully someday when I ever get to finish my site I will make a page called "Where are they now?"

regards

Nick

[Steve B]

Hopefully someday when I ever get to finish my site I will make a page called "Where are they now?"

and a GREAT site it is Nick
you are way to modest to ever post a link to it so here it is:

http://www.spacious-mind.com/

Best Regards
Steve

[mephisto]

Hi Nick
Excellent story about John Cleese, many thanks.
If you do update your site with 'Where Are They Now', I could provide you with an up-to-date photo of Richard Lang as we watched England qualify for the World Cup finals at his house when they beat Croatia last year.
Also, you can use parts of my interview with Dave Kittinger also if you like.
Regards
Bryan

[Spacious_Mind]

Hi Nick
Excellent story about John Cleese, many thanks.
If you do update your site with 'Where Are They Now', I could provide you with an up-to-date photo of Richard Lang as we watched England qualify for the World Cup finals at his house when they beat Croatia last year.
Also, you can use parts of my interview with Dave Kittinger also if you like.
Regards
Bryan

Hi Brian,

Thanks a lot, that's encouraging. I will certainly put some thoughts into adding a "Where are you Now?" section to the site. Since those are your experiences I would certainly be happier if I could quote these inputs as yours.

Best Regards

Nick