Tired of reading about science ?
In need of a boost to your ego ?
You think you are smarter than me ?
Can you play chess at a reasonable level ? Or, do you have a chess program and you don't mind cheating ?

If you answered "yes" to the above questions, why don't you try to beat at chess a tenured particle physicist with a Ph.D. ? I am willing to take your challenge.

On my way back to CERN from Fermilab (yes, I am betting on two tables at a time these days, as our Poker-addict friend Garth Sundem suggests), I made a 7-hour stopover in New York. Originally this was meant to save money to my employer, because other combinations costed more than the Swiss ticket I found. But I made virtue of necessity, and organized a meeting with my friend Peter Woit in the West Village. It turned out that I picked the right day for my visit.

Chessplayers are a strange lot. Those who get attracted by the game and end up sticking to it, making it the game of their life, are typically intelligent, creative thinkers; yet among them one may usually count a unusually large number of nutcases. It is not a secret, for instance, that several of the best chess players of the past were disturbed souls. Whole books have been written on this topic (see for instance the famous "The psychology of the chess player" by R.Fine), and I cannot offer any meaningful contribution here. However, I can tell you the personal story of the worst moment of mental insanity in my chess career.