Not the Official World Championship Set

Not even close.

Artisanal chess board... © Flickr user wistreize under Creative Commons.

The title of the photo, which was also the description, continued,

...with a fantastic hand, Arcana Festival, Morges, Switzerland 2024.

The 'business cards' to the right of the board say, 'Seb's Customs, Artiste Sculpteur'. I found a site at Seb's Customs (sebscustoms.jimdofree.com).

For more about the event, see The Swiss Festival of Fantasy and Wonder (arcanafestival.ch; 'Thank you for this crazy 4th edition!'). For the official set mentioned in the title of this post, see Official World Chess Pieces (worldchess.com).

Elon Musk Goes Trolling

According to the recent post, Where Was I? (November 2024), Mondays could be for a new series on AI comics. Sounds good to me, but on what theme?

While I was preparing that post, I browsed bookmarks that had accumulated since I cut back on blogging almost six months ago. One in particular caught my attention: Elon Musk criticizes chess... again! (chessbase.com; Albert Silver):-

In what is now a recurring theme, Elon Musk, the world's richest man, once again took to his now owned Twitter/X to rain hell and fire on the royal game, complaining once more about its many shortcomings, with comments such as "suddenly vaporize the opponent's king with lasers from space", and its inability to compete with the complexity of reality.

This works for me because the first post in the previous AI comics series was Elon Musk and Squirrels (December 2023). The Chessbase.com page opined,

When those 'jokes' (attacks) become sequential and unprovoked, the term to describe them is 'trolling'.

And voila! There was my theme.

'Elon Musk plays chess with a troll.'
AI Comic Factory

The same Chessbase.com page had a photo, 'Elon Musk with his High School's "A" chess team'. There are 11 players in the photo. I'm guessing that the future King Croesus wasn't playing first board.

Carlsen, Ding Liren, Nakamura on WCC 2024

'Take Take Take'? Where have I heard that in reference to chess before? It turns out that it was just a few weeks ago in A Press of Yahoos (October 2024). There I quoted a press report,

2024-10-25: After 20 years at the top of chess, Magnus Carlsen is making his next move (apnews.com; Mark Lewis) • 'Offering a new way to interact with the game, Carlsen on Friday launched his application, Take Take Take, which will follow live games and players, explaining matches in an accessible way that, Carlsen says, is sometimes missing from streaming platforms like YouTube and Twitch. "It will be a chiller vibe," he says.'

A clip from the app's Youtube channel made it to the short list for this month's featured video.

The World Chess Champion Opens Up About His Struggles (35:39) • '[Published on] Nov 4, 2024'

The channel's home page informs,

'Your front row seat to the world of chess. Download the app!' • 'Joined [Youtube] Sep 30, 2024'

The hosts of the clip are Kaja Snare and David Howell. In a post on an earlier title match, 2021 Carlsen - Nepomniachtchi, we saw them mentioned together in A Trio of World Championship Video Makers (December 2021). One of the many teams for the three video makers was:-

Chess24.com: Live commentary by GM David Howell, IM Jovanka Houska, and Norwegian journalist Kaja Snare.

As luck would have it, the featured 'Take Take Take' video received critical analysis on GMHikaru's Youtube channel:-

• 2024-11-06: World Championship Chess Predictions!?!?

GMs Carlsen, Ding Liren, and Nakamura (among many others) all provide expert commentary on the background for the forthcoming 2024 Ding Liren - Gukesh title match. There is much to be gleaned from the two videos.

Election Special 2024

Today is election day in the USA. As with past elections, let's go slightly off-topic to immortalize the day.

'Donald Trump and Kamala Harris play chess in the Oval Office'
AI Comic Factory

For previous posts in the same direction, see:-

• 2016-11-08: Election Special
• 2022-11-08: Election Special 2022

While some pundits are calling the Presidential race as close as can be, we know better, because of:-

• 2022-10-16: Donald Trump, Chess Master

What's Trump's secret? He plays by rules known only to himself and he never admits a loss.

Where Was I?

Over the last six months my blogging has dropped to minimum activity -- five posts a month on this blog, one post a month on my chess960 blog, and nothing at all on my World Championship blog (WCCB). I would like to improve that.

Starting in April, external factors having nothing to do with chess took over my free time, but they have now subsided considerably. It's time to increase the frequency of posts.

Recent posts on this current blog are a continuation of ongoing series that I've been doing for many years. Two shorter term series were interrupted and could be restarted:-

• 2024-04-22: Vikings as AI Stereotypes [Monday series; AI comics]
• 2024-04-19: CFAA's CMP : Blogs [Friday series; Google's CMP, i.e. 'Consent Management Platform']

The last post on my WCCB blog was:-

• 2024-06-12: Toronto Candidates - Wrapup

With a new World Championship match to start at the end of the month, it's high time to reactivate the blog. On top of that I have more than five months of bookmarks to wade through. Consider this post a checkpoint to measure future progress.

More Piggybanx Chess

I've been posting about the series Top eBay Chess Items by Price (March 2010), for so long -- 15 years next March -- that I can barely remember all the different bits and pieces of info behind each post. Consider the following item.

Titled 'Piggybanx 1/1 Chess Piece Matte Variation Moneky D. Luffy', it sold for 'US $2,000.00 or Best Offer'. It was higher in the list of sold items than another chess item that sold for $1826 after 35 bids, so we can accept that the real price was higher than that.

'Piggybanx'. Where have we seen that before on this blog? It turns out that I featured another item earlier this year, A Goat Says, 'It's Chess Not Checkers' (February 2024), where I wrote,

The best items featured on 'Top eBay Chess Items by Price' are those that lead to other avenues of inquiry: 'What is this?' and 'What is that?'

And, yes, that item was also Piggybanx. For this current post I'll show both the front and the back of the Piggybanx card.

Since the item's description simply repeated its title, let's record the 'Item specifics' for posterity:-

Unit of Sale : Single Piece
Signed : Yes
Title : piggybanx 1/1 chess piece
Material : Glass
Framing : Framed
Subject : Anime, Art, Card
Type : Card
Year of Production : 2024
Original/Licensed Reproduction : Original
Style : 3D, Abstract, Art Nouveau
Theme : Art
Country/Region of Manufacture : United States

The first question that comes to mind is the name in the title, 'Moneky D. Luffy'. Is that first name a typo? Yessiree, Bob, it is. According to the Wikipedia page Monkey D. Luffy (wikipedia.org),

Monkey D. Luffy, also known as "Straw Hat" Luffy, is a fictional character and the protagonist in the Japanese manga series One Piece created by Eiichiro Oda. Luffy made his debut as a young boy who acquires the properties of rubber after accidentally eating one of the Devil Fruits that belonged to "Red Hair" Shanks.

The second question that comes to mind is how chess fits into our narrative. Repeating the relevant portions of the item specifics gives:-

'Title : piggybanx 1/1 chess piece'
'Unit of Sale : Single Piece'

That didn't help at all. I failed to answer the second question, but I didn't try very hard. Maybe I'll come back to it some other time.

The third question that comes to mind is why the item is worth $2000. I could probably spend an inordinate amount of time and never find an answer. It's just the way it is.

A Press of Yahoos

Last month's Yahoos post, Historic Olympiad Yahoos (September 2024; see the footnote below for an explanation of Yahoos), had a single subject as the most important chess topic of the month:-

The 100 stories total for September had the first nine under a heading that proclaimed, 'India win historic double gold at Chess Olympiad'. I counted another 18 stories about the Olympiad for a total of 27, plus a few more stories lacking the word 'Olympiad' in the title.

This month's 97 stories -- 10 of them old stories from previous months -- lacked a clear favorite. Eight of the 97 stories were about the 9LX Champions Showdown, which I'll cover in a future post on my chess960 blog; see the link on the right navigation bar.

Another six stories were about the forthcoming World Championship match, which starts next month. I could cover these on my blog dedicated to the subject, but I haven't done much with it in the last six months. I'll include one not-so-typical story here:-

• 2024-10-30: Experience the thrill of FIDE World Chess Championship live in Singapore! (fide.com) • 'Join us in Singapore for the World Chess Championship and witness chess history in the making! Take advantage of specially curated travel packages, each combining exclusive access to the title match with unique attractions, and save up to 30% off.'

A couple of paragraphs at the end of that page explain, 'About the FIDE World Championship Match', but nowhere are the dates given (25 Nov. to 13 Dec.). Another six stories were about a match between a many time competitor for the Women's World Championship and a popular streamer:-

• 2024-10-21: Chess Legend Pia Cramling To Face Off With Levy Rozman In Battle Of Generations (chess.com; TarjeiJS) • 'Get ready for an exciting event between two generations, as Swedish chess legend GM Pia Cramling goes head-to-head against the Internet's chess teacher IM Levy Rozman in a six-day over-the-board event in Stockholm.'

A third batch of articles, with five stories, was about an important national tournament, the American championship:-

• 2024-10-29: Class acts: Caruana, Yip defend chess titles at U.S. national championships (washingtontimes.com; David R. Sands) • 'U.S. national champion GM Fabiano Caruana and U.S. women’s national titleholder IM Carissa Yip successfully defended their crowns at the national championship tournaments that ended last week at the Chess Club of St. Louis. It was the fourth open American title belt for Caruana, the country’s highest-rated player, and the third for Yip.'

I also noted a total of seven stories about Magnus Carlsen. These could all have been on the same angle, but the titles weren't obviously related and I didn't take the time to read them all. Here's one that had caught my interest even before I started the Yahoo list for October:-

• 2024-10-25: After 20 years at the top of chess, Magnus Carlsen is making his next move (apnews.com; Mark Lewis) • 'Offering a new way to interact with the game, Carlsen on Friday launched his application, Take Take Take, which will follow live games and players, explaining matches in an accessible way that, Carlsen says, is sometimes missing from streaming platforms like YouTube and Twitch. "It will be a chiller vibe," he says.'

Hardly a month rolls by without another example of chess players behaving badly. The following stories, both from the same Chess.com journalist, each appeared twice:-

• 2024-10-21: Shevchenko Given 75-Day Ban Amid Cheating Investigation, Misses European Club Cup (chess.com; TarjeiJS) • '[FIDE] has handed GM Kirill Shevchenko a temporary 75-day suspension following last weekend's expulsion from the Spanish Team Chess Championship, where two locked phones were found in a bathroom.'
  
  
• 2024-10-21: Christopher Yoo Issues Apology After Strike: 'Very Sad For What I Did' (chess.com; TarjeiJS) • '17-year-old GM Christopher Yoo expresses deep remorse following his expulsion from the 2024 U.S Chess Championship where he struck a videographer.'

With so many disparate chess topics, I needed a collective noun to group them together. I went looking for a word in one of my favorite reference books, a thesaurus, where -- after throng, multitude, horde, ..., crowd -- I found the perfect word. What was that word? See the title of this post.

[Yahoos (mainstream news stories about chess) are derived from Google News top-100 (or so) stories from the past month.]