Color the Proteins

Let's combine a recent video post, The Noblest Prize (January 2025):-

Nobel lecture with the Nobel Laureate in Chemistry 2024 Demis Hassabis, Google DeepMind, London, UK. [...] "for protein structure prediction"

with a derivative of that post, Proteins Play Chess (January 2025):-

I started to wonder if proteins play chess. It turns out they do, at least according to AI comics.

I constructed a series of test images using the phrase 'Demis Hassabis plays chess with a protein'. While the likenesses of Dr. Hassabis were very good, at least by my standards, the proteins were missing. Maybe, I thought, the proteins will be visible if I color them. Sure enough, it worked.

'Demis Hassabis plays chess with a green protein.'
AI Comic Factory

It turns out the proteins were there all along in my test images, but I didn't recognize them, because they were represented by chess pieces. In the 'Proteins Play Chess' post I noted that proteins were often depicted with 'pointy protusions' on their heads. Here we see the same in the lower left frame. QED?

Chess Guy Likes to Talk

For the third time in less than a year, the monthly featured Flickr post contains two keywords: Shoreditch graffiti [street art]. The previous post was last month's Hackney Wick Street Art (December 2024).

Festive Hair © Flickr user Maureen Barlin [Mabacam] under Creative Commons.

The description said only,

Streetart in Shoreditch, E.London. • Artist: Renatto Ribeiro

I imagine that many people who walk past that part of the sidewalk see the woman's head and the Christmas tree decorations before they see the chess sets, if they see them at all. The sign behind the board on the right says, 'Chess 4 Fun FREE'. A comment to the photo from Loco Steve says, 'The chess guy is pretty interesting and likes to talk. He's from Syria.'

January 1975 & 2000 'On the Cover'

At the end of the old millennium, 25 years ago, the right side of last month's post, December 1974 & 1999 'On the Cover' (December 2024), announced,

Whether you consider it to be the millennium or just the beginning of a new year, one thing is clear: Chess is still going strong.

At the start of the new millennium, also 25 years ago, it was business as usual.

Left: '?'
Right: 'Holiday in Harlem!'

Chess Life & Review (50 Years Ago)

Vlastimil Jansa of Czechoslovakia, winner on tiebreak of the Atlantic Open in New York City, Nov. 28-Dec. 1. See the brief report [inside] and the full story next month. Photo by Nigel Eddis.

The 'brief report' said,

In N.Y., the Atlantic Open had 348 players; winners were Jansa, Matanovic, Bisguier, Zuckerman and Balmazi, with Jansa first on tiebreaks. GM Damjanovic withdrew when he realized that he and the swiss system were incompatible.

As for 'the full story next month', I climbed into my time machine to dive into the next 3-4 issues of CL&R, but came up empty-handed. Maybe something will surface in the next few 'On the Cover' posts. The January 1975 issue of CL&R also contained the 'FIDE International Rating List' with the following details:-

Closed 31 Oct. 1974; effective 1 Jan. 1975; provided by Arpad Elo

The 85 players rated 2500 or higher were also listed in descending order of rating. At the top of the list were:-

No.1 Fischer 2780
No.2 Karpov 2705
No.3 Korchnoi 2665
No.4-6 Petrosian, Polugaevsky, Tal 2645

After the American and five Soviets, the nationalities of the other players were given. The full counts of the nationalities were USA 8, USSR 36, and Other 41. Pachman was listed as 'Stateless'.

GM Jansa was listed in a block of players at no.36-41 rated 2540: Balashov, Gheorghiu, Jansa, Kholmov, Pfleger, and Schmid. His nationality was given as 'Czechoslavakia', where he was the third (of three) from that country after Hort and Smejkal. For an overview of his career, see Vlastimil Jansa (wikipedia.org; 'born 27 November 1942, is a Czech chess player [...] Grandmaster, in 1974').

Chess Life (25 Years Ago)

Holiday in Harlem! That's the most appropriate way of describing the all-day celebration of the opening of the HEAF (Harlem Educational Activities Fund) Harlem Chess Center. The city closed 119th Street and pawns were pushed not only by off-duty, gold-shielded sergeants, but by the likes of Wynton Marsalis, GM Maurice Ashley, New York Congressman Charles B. Rangel, and NYC Parks Commissioner Henry J. Stern. The story begins [inside], but it does not end there. • Cover photo by Brian Killigrew

That was the first of six paragraphs introducing the issue, each paragraph covering a separate topic. The Ashley / Harlem story continued in more than three pages and 18 color, captioned photos.

Maurice Ashley is not one to rest on his laurels. Having completed his goal of becoming a grandmaster, Maurice turned his attention to another passion of his: opening a world-class chess center for kids in Harlem.

On September 25, his passion became a reality as the Harlem Educational Activities Fund (HEAF) held a grand opening for its Harlem Chess Center (HCC) and announced to the world that chess in the inner city is here to stay.

Chess took over Harlem, as 119th Street was closed to traffic and chess games lined the street. The playground of PS190 was turned into a chess-playing area and a large stage was erected for the ceremonial speeches and the great entertainment to come by special guest star Wynton Marsalis and his band.

After the opening speech by HEAF president and Police Atheletic League Board of Directors vice-president Dan Rose, Maurice Ashley spoke to the crowd about wanting to give back to a community that has given him so much. "The center will be wonderful for the community" said Maurice, "My hope is that the idea will not be limited to Harlem, but that it will spread all over the city and eventually, the country." His words were greeted by an enthusiastic audience, filled by people who know how much chess can help a young persons' development.

The only info I could find about the fate of the chess scenter was on Maurice Ashley (heroic.us). It informed,

From 1991 to 1997 Ashley was the chess director of the Harlem Educational Activities Fund, Inc., where he led teams to three scholastic national championships -- three of his players also won the individual national championships for their age groups. [...] After earning his International Grandmaster title in 1999, Ashley returned to coaching and community action by becoming the first director of the Harlem Chess Center (closed in 2002 due to lack of funds).

Starting 2013, there is evience of a website in harlemchesscenter.org (archive.org).

Proteins Play Chess

A week ago, in Surrealist Chess (January 2025), I wrote,

Continuing with the weekly series on AI comics [...] we return to aimless wandering around various topics.

After that post about Magritte, I intended to continue with another artist known for an interest in chess, but I got sidetracked by yesterday's post, The Noblest Prize (January 2025). It featured a video about the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024, awarded:-

half jointly to Demis Hassabis, Google DeepMind, London, UK and John Jumper, Google DeepMind, London, UK "for protein structure prediction".

That amounts to a 25% share for our favorite chess-playing DeepMind employee. While I was working on the post, I started to wonder if proteins play chess. It turns out they do, at least according to AI comics.

'Proteins play chess.'
AI Comic Factory

In all frames except the upper left, there is a protein-like humanoid or molecule visible in the image. In the bottom right frame, the central, green 'protein' has a pointy protusion on its head. That was a common element of the half-dozen (or so) composite panels that I created.

Even in the upper left frame, there is a rectangular head in the center of the upper left quadrant of the frame -- white face looking to the right, green eye, red hat (or hair) -- with a pointy protusion that is topped by a yellowish Pawn. Is that our missing protein player?

The Noblest Prize

Although we've seen Demis Hassabis on this blog almost a dozen times, it's been a few years since the last time -- Beyond AlphaZero (September 2019) -- and even then it was just in passing. What has the chess player turned entrepreneur been doing since then?

Accelerating scientific discovery with AI (29:01) • '[Published on] Dec 16, 2024'

The description of the video says,

Nobel lecture with the Nobel Laureate in Chemistry 2024 Demis Hassabis, Google DeepMind, London, UK. Introduction by Johan Aaqvist, member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. From: The Nobel Lectures 2024, 2024-12-08.

The description then points to a press release from early October: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024: They cracked the code for proteins' amazing structures (kva.se; 'The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences'). It starts,

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024 with one half to David Baker, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, USA "for computational protein design" and the other half jointly to Demis Hassabis, Google DeepMind, London, UK and John Jumper, Google DeepMind, London, UK "for protein structure prediction".

That introduction is followed by an explanation of the science involved:-

The diversity of life testifies to proteins’ amazing capacity as chemical tools. They control and drive all the chemi­cal reactions that together are the basis of life. Proteins also function as hormones, signal substances, antibodies and the building blocks of different tissues.

[More, much more] Follow the downloads...

Surrealist Chess

Continuing with the weekly series on AI comics, after a brief detour for the year-end holidays last seen in Is 2025 a Dystopian Year? (December 2024), we return to aimless wandering around various topics. Here the previous post was World Class Asian Players (ditto).

This current post started with some recent news from November 2024: Magritte painting fetches record $121 million at auction (brusselstimes.com). Which painting was that? The article informed,

A painting by Belgian surrealist René Magritte was sold for a record-breaking $121.16 million (€114 million) at an auction in New York on Tuesday evening. The painting, titled L'empire des lumières ('The Empire of Light') dates back to 1954 and features a solitary lamp post illuminating a darkened street, juxtaposed with a bright blue day-lit sky. It is one of 18 versions painted by Magritte in different mediums (oil and gouache) and with slight variations.

Somewhere in the back of my head was a factoid that Magritte played chess and sometimes incorporated the game into his paintings. Sure enough, I found this from July 2022: Hidden Belgium: Greenwich Modern (brusselstimes.com; Derek Blyth). The lead sentence of the article informed,

The Surrealist painter René Magritte liked to visit the creaky old Brussels bar Le Greenwich in Rue des Chartreux. He would join the local men to play chess and try unsuccessfully to sell one of his paintings.

In the 1980s and 90s, I sometimes played chess in the Greenwich. I'll come back to that in a moment, but first let's see what AI comics have to say about Magritte.

'Rene Magritte plays surrealist chess.'
AI Comic Factory

The 'Greenwich Modern' article continued,

The café closed in 2009 to allow the Ghent architects Robbrecht & Daem to renovate the beautiful Art Nouveau interior dating from 1907. It relaunched two years later as an upmarket brasserie. The chess players were politely asked to leave.

I passed by the Greenwich some time after that and noticed that the chess sets were gone. Apparently they're back again, so next time I'm in the area I'll peek inside the café to see for myself.

An early post on this blog, Le Greenwich (July 2006), pointed to some pictures, but they are also long gone. Maybe they still live in the Internet archive.

Nice Chess Sweater

Items featured in Top eBay Chess Items by Price (March 2010) often repeat. A couple of months ago we had More Piggybanx Chess (November 2024), where two more of the same item sold in December for somewhat less after many bids.

A couple of months before 'Piggybanx Chess' we had Ugly Chess Jacket (September 2024), with a couple of links for 'previous top eBay items in the clothing category'. There's nothing ugly about the item pictured below, titled 'Rowing Blazer Lewis Chessmen Chess Sweater'. It sold for 'US $500.00 or Best Offer', which appears to be close to the final price.

The description said,

Introducing the Lewis Chessmen Chess Sweater by Rowing Blazers [NB: 'New York' according to the label], a stylish and comfortable sweater perfect for any occasion. This sweater, made from high-quality knit fabric, is designed for men with a regular size type and comes in a classic black/white color.

While I was preparing this post, I saw the same item titled, 'Rowing Blazers Lewis Chessman Knitted Chess Sweater Size XL', where a different seller was asking for 'US $297.50 or Best Offer'. The item pictured above was described as 'New with tags: A brand-new, unused, and unworn item', but the item currently for sale was described as 'Very Good pre-owned condition, no holes'. That probably accounts for the difference in price.

Neither item has anything to do with the Lewis chess pieces, about which there have been several posts on this blog. The style of the pieces on the sweater is often used in printed diagrams of chess positions. The design undoubtedly has a name and must be in the public domain.