Chess
Rice was a prominent figure in the American chess world. He became president of the Manhattan Chess Club, and presented for competition several trophies, including the one that was competed for annually by cable by the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, representing England, and those of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia, representing the United States.
In 1895 he discovered a variation of the Kieseritzky gambit, which then became known as the Rice Gambit and sponsored tournaments where the opening became the starting point of each game. Emanuel Lasker and Mikhail Chigorin were two of many players who contested these tournaments, with bonus prizes for white wins. In 1904 he formed the Rice Gambit Association which published a detailed analysis of the effects of the move.
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Famous quotes containing the word chess:
“What have we achieved in mowing down mountain ranges, harnessing the energy of mighty rivers, or moving whole populations about like chess pieces, if we ourselves remain the same restless, miserable, frustrated creatures we were before? To call such activity progress is utter delusion. We may succeed in altering the face of the earth until it is unrecognizable even to the Creator, but if we are unaffected wherein lies the meaning?”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“Of all my Russian books, The Defense contains and diffuses the greatest “warmth”Mwhich may seem odd seeing how supremely abstract chess is supposed to be.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“The chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chess-board, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem.... I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.”
—Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968)