This remnant will be replaced soon. The FAQ is back, with a new design! What does chess have to do with Phish? The band played "the audiences" in chess during the last half of 1995. Phish won the first of the two games played, when the audience conceded in Florida 11/15/95. The audience won the second, when Phish conceded at the New Year's Eve show at Madison Square Garden, 12/31/95. As Eric Shiller posted (12/3/94): "The band have been playing chess against the audience, with one pair of moves per games, ever since Shoreline (9/30/95). [Lemuria note: The band's move is made at the beginning of or during the first set; audience members gather at the Greenpeace table during the setbreak, and an audience local makes the audience move during the second set.] All four are enthusiasts, and play a lot while on tour. They take this audience match about as seriously as they do anything else on stage, and even asked me to send them some materials relating to an opening strategy which Page employed in the first game. "The early days of the story are chronicled on my web page. I am a professional player, author and software developer who happened to make a move at Shoreline, where I met the band and discussed chess with them during the break. "Chess is well-suited to life on the road, whether the asphalt type or the "info-superhighway". The easiest way to play online is through the worldwide Internet Chess Club (telnet to chess.lm.com) where visitors are always welcome and games take place day and night (I am Jackstraw there, everyone uses handles.) On a practical level, chess is a good way to fill those long-set breaks.... "Phish now hold the all-time record for chess played before a live audience. Indeed, more people have seen them play chess live than have witnessed games played by the World Champion. "By the way, the influence of the Phish tour game continues to affect my play. An opening strategy I devised based on a failed attempt to rehabilitate Page's move has been very successful for me, and in three games with it I have three draws against a Grandmaster and two International Masters (all considered upsets). One game determined the winner of the 1995 American Open (not me, my opponent). "(For the chess-phans: I found 1.e4 e5 2.Bb5?! to be even worse than I thought, but in the search for a plan I resurrected 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 exd4 5.Bb5!?, the disreputable Relfsson Gambit. A *careful* reading of my Unorthodox Openings book (with Joel Benjamin, Macmillan 1987) shows that we didn't actually claim it was refuted. But it did need an influx of new ideas...)" "[Unlike] other rock audience members, they tend to come to lots of different shows. We kind of mix it up from night to night. It becomes this sort of long extended thing where people follow the band around, and we're aware of that, and get to know people, and it becomes a real kind of family atmosphere. ... There's a lot of networking that goes on among them. There's the Phish.net [for example]...." -- Trey Anastasio, Rockline, 3/22/94 This page last updated June 01, 2009. All contents © 1992-2007 Ellis Godard. All rights reserved.