What are the origins of the fishing pole?
Does it have another name ?
What is Brian Wall’s relationship to it?
NM Brian Wall has a long running series of humorous chess articles, which he distributes by e-mail. Now he has a Yahoo group you have to sign up for but formerly he had a list he mailed to weekly. He has a web site here:
where many of the old articles are preserved.
As for the fishing pole, it was the subject of many of these articles. He played hundreds of blitz games with it on ICC, many of which he published with hilarious notes gloating over how many opponents lost to the opening. Brian just loves offbeat/gambit openings.
I’m not sure where the name comes from but some of the names for these weird openings he discusses originate with Jack Young, a New England area Master who specialized in these openings (in tournament play, not ICC blitz!). Back in the late 1980s- early 1990s there was a whole sub-culture of players who exchanged information on these strange openings. If you take the time to plow through all of Wall’s old articles, you will find some history on all of this.
– Hal Terrie