Jeopardy had a category “Let’s talk chess, champs” in a quarterfinal game in their “Tournament of Champions” series within the last week. Some of the questions, er answers included, “With two pawns up this should be a win for white except these pieces can only move on one color.” (A contestant said kings and bishops instead of just bishops); What is the French Defense?; and in a position where white had a queen against nothing, he blundered leading to “What is a stalemate?”.
Was there a diagram given for question #1? There are quite a few positions where it is theoretical draw with white/black being two pawns up and with pieces other than bishops.
An example that immediately comes to mind is rook ending where two pawns are doubled and on either a or h file with defending side king in front of pawns.
Or did they mean opposite colors bishops endgame, where it is often a draw even when pawns are connected?
But they aren’t always drawn. One US Open I ended up getting a win against my 150-point lower-rated opponent by offering a rook trade shortly before the first time control and getting into a won K+B+5P vs K+B+5P ending with bishops of opposite colors and no passers yet (though the king position was such that in about 10 moves I’d have one). With time pressure my opponent went with the rule of thumb while keeping the rooks on would have left the position very drawish.
In the diagram the pawns were connected. The BK blockaded the lead one while the unattacked bishop had control of the square in front of the back one.
The position shown on Jeopardy was K+B+P+P vs K+B. The position was an easy draw, even though the pawns were connected on the 5th and 6th.
It was interesting that, of the five chess questions, two were answered correctly by the only female contestant, one was answered correctly by one of the men, and two were either answered incorrectly (by one of the men) or not answered at all.
Bill Smythe
I just realized that the question has little to do with the diagram and knowledge of chess beyond the very basics. The key was :“except these pieces can only move on one color”, so the Jeopardy answer should have been “What are bishops?”. Seems like diagram only confused the contestant.
The point of the question was the “bishops of opposite color is often an easy draw” business. So they asked which two pieces in the diagram moved on opposite colors. That would have allowed a clever contestant to short-circuit his way to an answer in the manner you described, without even knowing about bishops-of-opposite-colors. But the contestants evidently weren’t clever enough – they blew that question.
Bill Smythe
Bill, I respectfully disagree with your “not clever enough” statement. This is Jeopardy championship of champions and every single one of contestansts won on the average 3-5 competitions before, you can not have not clever enough folks to do that. They are Grandmasters of Jeopardy.
My guess is that the guy buzzed too quickly in attempt to be the first to answer and did not have a chance to really “think” about the answer. To give a chess analogy, in the blitz or severe time pressure there is always a temptation to grab/capture the oponents pieces or give checks ('cause it could be a mate!)
I am curious what was the question that led to answer “What is French Defense?”. You really need to possess certain chess knowledge to answer this correctly.
I think it was something like, “It’s use in a correspondence match between London and Paris in 1834 led to the name of this chess opening.” That could lead to the right question or (good guess but wrong) English Opening just from the clue if they knew “just enough chess to be dangerous”.
WOW, an impressive answer to a very difficult question.
For anyone interested the Boylston Chess Club blogged about this and included diagrams along with the complete “questions.” The full text, along with diagrams shown on the screen, can be found at boylston-chess-club.blogspot.com … night.html.
The clue also said 1.e4 e6
Actually, it was an impressive question to a very difficult answer. 
No points for you, sorry - Alex T. 
On Dec 1, the first part of Jeopardy had these categories: chess, nights, castling, king takes queen, prawns, and "check"mate. The questions (answers) I can remember were time delay clock invented by Fischer, Vish… was first world champ from India, Kasparov lost to a chess computer from IBM, and the piece worth about as much as a knight is the bishop.
The man who ran the category missed a true daily double and final jeopardy to finish last today.
I like my prawns with sweet and sour sauce… :mrgreen:
I like my prawns to be on MY side of the table. They pointed out that what we call shrimp are elsewhere called prawns. BUT in another Jeopardy session, perhaps a year ago, “snails” was rejected as an answer and “escargots” was judged correct. Is there a difference? I love it when Jeopardy makes a mistake. It gives me something to talk about. For instance, they had the Kennedy compound in the “town” of Hyannisport. Barnstable is the name of the town, Hyannis the name of the village in that town, and “Hyannis Port” is merely a place name.