This Month Features a Bottom Yahoo

So you thought you had seen the last of the Hans Niemann controversy? Not even close. Last month's Yahoos post, Top Yahoos: Niemann, WRTC, and Pragg (August 2023), mentioned,

That [Niemann] page had four stories under 'Top news', four Twitter tweets, and 44 stories from a variety of other sources.

This month we had only eight Niemann stories, but that's still a lot of stories compared to the hottest chess story in an average month. Before we look at the details, let's cover the month's stats.

This month Google News returned 99 stories. As the chart on the left shows, there were 10 sources with more than one story and they accounted for 53 stories. That leaves 46 sources with a single story.

The month saw the usual no.1 & no.2 sources, and this is also not the first time we've seen a top place for the no.3 source, USchess.org. The three 'Times' Yahoos -- Times of India, Financial Times, and The New York Times -- are often seen among the top sources, for example, in Three Times Yahoos (July 2021).

Back to the infamous Hans Niemann, the 99 stories started with a group of eight stories under the heading 'Chess grandmaster Hans Niemann denies using sex toy to cheat'. Of the eight stories, the first was:-

• 2023-09-26: Chess grandmaster Hans Niemann denies using vibrating sex toy to cheat (bbc.com) • 'An American grandmaster who was part of a row which rattled the world of chess has denied using a vibrating sex toy to cheat.'

The next news sources, respectable organizations like Forbes, CNN, and People, were mostly focused on the 'vibrating sex toy' angle of the story. Two, already in the title, identified the toy as 'anal beads'. Should we classify this under human interest? How about bottom fishing?

Removing those eight stories from consideration leaves 91 other stories on more uplifting chess topics. I'll come back to those another day.

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

How (Not?) To Impress the Opposite Sex

In this long series on The Sociology of Chess (November 2016), I was sure I had done a post on cheating. I looked two years back into the series and found nothing. So here we are.

Six months ago, in Cheating for all Ages (March 2023), I put together a summary of previous blog posts about cheating. As happens with many summaries, it soon needed to be updated, but that will have to wait for another time. The most recent post on the subject was Top Yahoos: Niemann, WRTC, and Pragg (August 2023), where the Niemann angle was the latest news in what is without a doubt the most famous scandal with roots in cheating.

Chess.com Reacts To The Craziest Emails From Cheaters (15:18) • '[Published on] Sep 5, 2023'

This particular video is both entertaining and instructive. The description said,

Chess.com's Head of Community Kassa Korley and Chief Chess Officer Danny Rensch sit down to read some of the most hilarious, and crazy requests we've received from cheaters looking to be unbanned.

What particularly struck me was the number of alleged chess cheaters who blamed their fall from grace on a misguided attempt to impress a woman. Really, guys? Do women use the same dubious tactic to impress men? I somehow doubt it.

***

Later: Not long after I wrote this post, an article related to the topic appeared: Narratives on Cheating in Online Chess (chessable.com; Alexey Root). It started,

This is a guest post written by Raul Sanchez Garcia. Raul is a lecturer on motor learning and the theory of play at the Sports Science school of the Polytechnic University of Madrid. [...] He is currently conducting a qualitative study on cheating in online chess, which he describes in this post.

The 'guest post' started,

In the wake of the pandemic, online chess has experienced a remarkable surge in popularity, welcoming diverse participants to the game. [...] Amidst this evolution, a pressing concern has arisen -- the pervasive issue of cheating.

The post seeks volunteers to participate in the study, with a mid-December deadline for participation. It ends with eight references to other academic papers relevant to the topic.

CFAA's CMP : Wrapup

For the past month I've been running a series on actions provoked by Google's Adsense. Here are the relevant posts:-

• 2023-08-18: Adsense on CFAA++ • 'I need to catch up with new actions from Google'; CFAA++ means my web site and blogs
• 2023-08-25: Adsense and the GDPR • GDPR = General Data Protection Regulation
• 2023-09-01: Adsense and the CMP • CMP = Consent Management Platform
• 2023-09-08: Adsense and CFAA's CMP
• 2023-09-15: CFAA's Consent Management

In that last post, I wondered,

What happens if a visitor to my site doesn't grant consent? No ad is shown. Since I routinely use two different devices, I'll grant consent on one and withhold it on the other. That way I'll be able to monitor both sides of Google's consent management.

It turns out that wasn't a useful strategy. I automatically delete cookies when I close a browser. The consent appears to be stored in a cookie, so I routinely lose the consent cookie and have to go through the process each time I access my own site. [NB: Confirm this.] In that same post, I also wondered,

What's next? I need to improve my own privacy policy to answer the questions that Google says I'm answering. To do that, I'll summarize the current series and point to that summary.

The most important question is 'How can I change my choice of consent?'. Since Google is constantly tinkering with its software, I'll describe the procedure as it is today. After going through the consent procedure, the following image attaches to the left side of a page on my site.

That's what it looks like near the bottom of the page. To re-open the consent procedure, click on the blue text. Near the top of the page, the image collapse into the icon displayed in the upper left (a check mark on a shield). Clicking the icon expands to the image shown above. This procedure is sure to change in the future, but I'll try to keep up with it.

As for CMP on my blogs, I'll follow Google directives for them. All of the blogs are managed using Google's services. For the moment, ads aren't being displayed on this current blog or on my two other chess blogs (WCCB, C960; accessible via my Blogger.com profile). The non-chess blog is showing ads. Since ad revenue is near zero on all of the blogs taken together, I really don't care if no ads are displayed.

I Want To Go Squirrel Hunting

In last month's Yahoos post (aka 'chess in the mainstream news'), Top Yahoos: Niemann, WRTC, and Pragg (August 2023), I mentioned,

Two of the stories in Niemann's main block were repeated in the top news, while the third story, not repeated, was the off-the-wall Elon Musk nonsense that I covered last year in It's Not Polytopia (March 2022).

A few days earlier, that same Elon Musk story had appeared as a real Yahoo (appearing in the news feed from Yahoo.com) on its own. These days real Yahoos are so unusual -- the previous sighting was How Many for Carlsen? For Niemann? (December 2022) -- that I felt compelled to record it on this blog.

The title says,

Business • Benzinga // Elon Musk Thinks Chess Is 'Too Simple' -- 'Understandable When All We Had To Play With Were Squirrels And Rocks, But Now We Have ...'

The missing word behind the '...' is 'Computers', as in 'But Now We Have Computers'. After the title we learn,

Tesla Inc. and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is known for his innovation and tendency to question conventions. Last year, he publicly stated his disinterest in the classic board game chess. ... // 3 min read

Here the missing text behind '...' is:-

Musk, who played chess during his childhood, has distanced himself from the strategic game, citing six reasons he finds it "too simple" for his liking. In March 2022, he posted on X, formerly Twitter, "Chess is a simple game. Understandable when all we had to play with were squirrels and rocks, but now we have computers."

Why is Benzinga (followed by Yahoo) picking up on on a remark from almost a year and a half ago? Maybe it was just a slow news day. For the full Yahoo, see Elon Musk Thinks Chess Is 'Too Simple' -- 'Understandable When All We Had' [etc. etc.] (finance.yahoo.com).

The best part of a real Yahoo is the comments section and this particular story earned 551 comments. Those comments plus the six bullets in the story explaining Musk's dislike for chess (e.g. No 1: 'Limited 8-by-8 grid') would be worth another post on the topic, but I can't tackle that just now. This morning I spotted a red squirrel in the back yard and I have a burning desire to throw rocks at it. [NB: No animals were or will be harmed in the making of this post.]

News from Number 10

Among other stories, last month's Yahoos post (aka 'chess news in the mainstream press'), Top Yahoos: Niemann, WRTC, and Pragg (August 2023), offered this:-

• 2023-08-08: Rishi Sunak to announce £500,000 government funding boost for English chess (ft.com)

The story is a prelude to this month's Flickr photo.

The Prime Minister hosts young chess champions © Flickr user Number 10 under Creative Commons.

The description of the photo explained,

22 Aug 2023. London, United Kingdom. The Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, together with the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Lucy Frazer, hosts young chess champions Bodhana Sivanandan, aged 8, and Shreyas Royal, aged 14, in 10 Downing Street. Picture by Simon Walker / No 10 Downing Street

For the related photo album, see The Prime Minister hosts young chess champions (flickr.com). For background to the story, see The future of English chess (chessbase.com) by Malcolm Pein.

In an earlier Flickr Favorite post, No.1 Chess Bod (April 2013), we saw No 11 Downing Street. If you came to this post looking for another example of AI chess art, like last month's Chess Sets Are the Real Deal (August 2023), you'll find one here: A turtle playing chess with a Bishop, in the style of Paul Cézanne (flickr.com).

Cézanne? I knew Cézanne. Paul Cézanne was a friend of mine. Believe me, dear visitor, this is no Cézanne. Use search to find a few more dubious AI chess photos by the same Flickr user.

CFAA's Consent Management

For the current Friday series, I closed the previous post, Adsense and CFAA's CMP (September 2023; CMP = Google's Consent Management Platform), in a holding pattern:-

After adding the logo, my GDPR message was accepted. As I was preparing this post for publishing, the message still wasn't showing on my pages, so maybe I did something wrong. I'll come back to it for next Friday's post.

I had indeed done something wrong. I was watching the top level page for my domain which doesn't display an ad. The Adsense code to display an ad is the trigger for the consent message. When I accessed a page with an ad, I saw the following popup message.

The message is the tip of an iceberg. The text reads like this:-

mark-weeks.com asks for your consent to use your personal data to:

* Personalised ads and content, ad and content measurement, audience insights and product development devices [sic; the phrase needs verbs]
* Store and/or access information on a device

Learn more

Your personal data will be processed and information from your device (cookies, unique identifiers, and other device data) may be stored by, accessed by and shared with third party vendors, or used specifically by this site or app.

Some vendors may process your personal data on the basis of legitimate interest, which you can object to by managing your options below. Look for a link at the bottom of this page or in our privacy policy where you can withdraw consent.

[Do not consent] [Consent]

Manage options

I looked at all of the hidden text and discovered a few important points.

• 'Learn more' expands to a series of four questions. The first question is 'How can I change my choice?'. The answer says, 'View our privacy policy to learn more' and points to my page World Chess Championship : Site map. The first section there is a 'Privacy Statement', but this is the first I learned that this page has to explain 'How can I change my choice?'. I need to address that.

The answers to two other questions discuss 'legitimate interest', which seems to be some sort of legal override of the whole consent process. Back to the popup message:-

• The mention of 'third party vendors' expands to a single question: 'What third party vendors can access my data?'. The answer is a list of (currently) 203 vendors. By any reckoning, that's a lot of vendors.

The last line of the popup message is the most important.

• 'Manage options' opens another section of the popup that starts, 'You can choose your data preferences. This site or app wants your permission to do the following: [...]'. The first 16 consents are for 'TCF vendors' (referring to 'the IAB Europe Transparency and Consent Framework') followed by a single consent for the 'Site or app' (that means my site). This is followed by 'Vendor preferences', where each of the 203 vendors presents a cookie policy, a link to its privacy policy, and perhaps a statement of 'legitimate interest'.

What happens if a visitor to my site doesn't grant consent? No ad is shown. Since I routinely use two different devices, I'll grant consent on one and withhold it on the other. That way I'll be able to monitor both sides of Google's consent management.

What's next? I need to improve my own privacy policy to answer the questions that Google says I'm answering. To do that, I'll summarize the current series and point to that summary.

September 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover'

The left side of last month's 'On the Cover' post, August 1973 & 1998 (August 2023) featured Robert Byrne, 'who finished 3rd at the Leningrad Interzonal and thus qualified for the Candidates' Matches'. This month features the winner of the second Interzonal for that cycle. It was the first World Chess Championship cycle to have more than one Interzonal.

Left: '?'
Right: '1998 U.S. CHESSathon' • 'Interplay Junior Championship ... Junior Open ... Cadet Championship ... National Scholastics ... U.S. Amateur Championships ... World Open ... it all begins [inside]!'

Chess Life & Review (50 Years Ago)

Henrique Mecking, winner of the Interzonal in Petropolis, Brazil, in a typical pose. Bulletin [inside], full story next month. Photo by Burt Hochberg.

The bulletin '[inside]' said,

Twenty-one-year-old Henrique Mecking of Brazil triumphed on his home territory, winning the second of the two 1973 Interzonals with an undefeated score of 12.0-5.0. Pre-tournament favorite Lajos Portisch of Hungary suffered a disastrous last-round loss to Soviet Grandmaster Lev Polugaevsky, creating a three-way tie for 2nd-4th places among Yefim Geller, Portisch and Polugaevsky with scores of 11.5-5.5. Since only the top three may advance to the Candidates Matches, a playoff match among the three tied players is necessary to eliminate one of them. The date and site of this playoff is not known at this writing.

Here are the final scores from Petropolis. [...] Bronstein replaced Leonid Stein, who died suddenly a few weeks before the tournament.

For more about the two Interzonals, see:-

• Leningrad, VI, 1973
• Petropolis, Brazil, VII-VIII, 1973

The footnote saying, 'Bronstein replaced Stein', doesn't square with related info on my other pages. More research needed...

Chess Life (25 Years Ago)

It almost didn't happen. Having made the decision to not hold a CHESSathon this year, the USCF office was dragged, kicking and screaming, into an organizational nightmare, when one very determined USCF Past President, Denis Barry, decided that there would be a CHESSathon!

Executive Director Mike Cavallo gave Denis the green light, and with less than three months lead time, Denis was able to find a site, secure the cooperation of an entire city (Newark, New Jersey), find local sponsors ("Just One," a division of the Office of the Mayor of Newark, Public Service Electric and Gas [PSE&G]), a state sponsor (New Jersey State Chess Federation) AND he was to convince the majority of the employees of the USCF business office to once again, donate their time and experience to make the CHESSathon a reality.

But that's only the beginning of the story. The rest of it appears [inside]. Our cover shot, from the sixth floor of the PSE&G building, overlooks the PSE&G Plaza, and was taken by Brian Killigrew.

This is the first issue that most youth members, coaches, and parents will receive as the new school year begins. Make the most of it! Our three National Scholastics, the Cadet, the Junior, the Junior Open, the CHESSathon, a bright piece on college chess and scholarships, Chess-in-the-Schools, our youth team in England -- it's all in this issue. Just what the doctor ordered to convince an edgy school board, a doubtful principal, or a curious PTA, to get a chess program started or expanded.

By any standard, that's a long explanation of the month's cover. It raises a number of points that deserve a deeper look, but I've run out of time for now.

***

Later: If ever there was an issue of Chess Life (CL) devoted to scholastic chess, it was for September 1998. The table of contents looked like this:-

p.36 College Chess by Tim Redman
p.38 National High School by Steve Immitt
p.40 National Junior High
p.42 National Elementary
p.44 U.S. Cadet Championship by Anthony Crawley
p.46 U.S. Junior Open Championship by Karl Heck
p.48 U.S. Interplay Junior Championship by Steve Immitt
p.50 Intercontinental Youth Team Tournament by Beatriz Marinello
p.52 Chess in the Schools by Brian Killigrew
p.53 Chess Profiles: David MacEnulty by Brian Killigrew
p.56 CHESSathon 1998
p.58 U.S. Amateur Championships
p.64 Goldin is Golden at the World Open by Jerry Hanken
p.69 Donny Ariel by Nick Conticello
p.71 U.S. Amateur Playoffs
p.72 Dahlia vs. PBS by Shay Bushinsky
p.73 Alexei Shirov visits N.Y. by Irina Krush

The first 11 stories were about scholastic chess. The next two stories, the U.S. Amateur and the World Open, would have been lead stories in most other issues of CL. Following are some highlights.

Hikaru Nakamura had his photo in the three related stories that started with the 'National High School' championship, as did his brother Asuka. The brothers appeared together in the first photo for 'CHESSathon 1998'. The younger Nakamura, a future GM and U.S. champion, had his own CL cover a few months ago in May 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover' (May 2023).

Jennifer Shahade was honored as 'Player of the Month' and had her photo at the top of the story for the 'U.S. Junior Open Championship'. From that tournament report:-

The 17-year-old Shahade became the first woman ever to win the U.S. Junior Open in its 53-year history, on July 19 in Ithaca, New York, by scoring 5.5-0.5 in the tournament's Open section. Shahade (2200), the tournament's highest-rated player, won her title the hard way, by facing four of the top five players below her in the standings.

Shahade's brother Gregory (Greg) was also mentioned in 'Player of the Month' and had his photo in the report 'U.S. Interplay Junior Championship'. He finished in the middle of the ten-player event.

Irina Krush, on top of writing the story 'Alexei Shirov visits N.Y.', was pictured in 'Intercontinental Youth Team Tournament', where she led the '14 and under' team that finished well ahead of the three other national teams. For another angle on the Shirov visit, see last year's post Shirov's SmartChess Videos (December 2022).

Cover photographer Brian Killigrew has been mentioned in two previous 'On the Cover' posts this year. His credits for the two 'Chess in the Schools' stories in this issue were for 'Photos and Text'. I expect we'll be seeing more of him in future 'On the Cover' posts.

'Let Others Say You're a Champion'

At the recently concluded Chess World Cup 2023 (wikipedia.org), India's Praggnanandhaa, who turned 18-years old during the tournament, was runner-up. He lost to former World Champion Magnus Carlsen in the final round.

Praggnanandhaa Asks: How To Handle Tension in a Game? | Chess World Cup (6:58) • '[Published on] Aug 24, 2023'

The description of the video said,

Chess prodigy and grandmaster, Praggnanandhaa, attended the Inner Engineering Program at the Isha Yoga Center in 2022, and asked Sadhguru a question about handling tension during a tight game. Watch Sadhguru's answer.

The description also mentioned, 'Official YouTube Channel of Sadhguru' and explained,

Considered among India’s 50 most influential people, Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, bestselling author, and poet. Absolute clarity of perception places him in a unique space, not only in matters spiritual but in business, environmental and international affairs, and opens a new door on all that he touches.

As of today, the channel has '11.5M subscribers' and the video has had '1,155,698 views' with close to 1200 comments. Sample comment:-

The last few sentences are extraordinary: "Give attention to the game. Don't think that you are a champion. Just think you're a great chess player. Let others say you're a champion."

He's a champion.

Adsense and CFAA's CMP

Last Friday's post, Adsense and the CMP (September 2023), established a plan:-

Google's permanent page on the subject [...] sets a deadline: 'Beginning January 16, 2024, publishers and developers using Google AdSense, Ad Manager, or AdMob will be required to use a Consent Management Platform (CMP) [...]'. The page contains a list of 'Google-certified CMPs' that currently has 50 names with a link for each name. Only one of the 50 names was even vaguely familiar to me, 'Google consent management solutions', so no prize for guessing which one I chose to investigate further. [...] That leads to the next stage of the adventure, which I'll cover in the next Friday post.

That 'next Friday post' is today's post. When I signed into Adsense to continue the adventure, I received a new notification on CMPs, shown below.

Since I had already started to create a GDPR consent message for the previous post, I chose the second option and CONFIRMed. Now I was nagged a second time with the message:-

Notifications: Remember to publish your GDPR message using a Google-certified CMP to continue showing AdSense ads on your site in the EEA and the UK. If you don't publish it by January 16, 2024, we'll publish one for you.

This was the first time I knew that Google would 'publish one' for me. If I had known that earlier, I probably would have gone that route. Instead, I accessed my stored message and published it. I received an error message:-

Your message is almost ready to publish. You need to add a logo to publish your message.

My domain has two main sites (linked near the top of the right sidebar), both with a different logo. The CFAA portion of the site generates the most Adsense revenue, so I used the following logo. It's based on the logo for the CFAA pages, but respecting Google's CMP requirements.

After adding the logo, my GDPR message was accepted. As I was preparing this post for publishing, the message still wasn't showing on my pages, so maybe I did something wrong. I'll come back to it for next Friday's post.

1963 and 1966 Piatigorsky Cups

In last month's post, Dachshunds Play Chess (August 2023), the latest for the long-running series Top eBay Chess Items by Price (March 2010), I wrote,

After so many years of Top eBay Chess Items, I sometimes can't be sure whether I've already featured an item or not.

This month I was sure that I had featured the item(s) pictured below, but when? It turned out that half of the current auction appeared in Mrs. Piatigorsky's Autograph Collection (April 2017).

The current auction was titled, 'Piatigorsky Cup Signed Programs - 1963 & 1966 - Chess - Bobby Fischer - Photos!'. The winning bid was US $2026 after nine bids from five bidders on a starting price of $1000.

The description proclaimed, 'This is a rare find for chess enthusiasts!', and continued,

Two signed programs from the prestigious Piatigorsky Cup in 1963 and 1966. The programs feature photos of legendary players including Bobby Fischer, and are in their original condition as printed in the United States. These programs are a piece of chess history, perfect for collectors and fans alike.

The first edition programs also include special attributes such as signatures from Bobby Fischer, Boris Spassky, Tigran Petrosian, Jan Hein Donner, Borislav Ivkov, Jordan Bent Larsen, Miguel Najdorf, Lajos Portisch, Samuel Reshevsky, Wolfgang Unzicker, Isaac Kashdan, Harry Borochow, Pal Benko, Svetozar Gligoric, Paul Keres, Fridrik Olafsson, and Oscar Panno.

This includes a copy of some unpublished photos from the tournaments!

Starting with Fischer, the first ten names were players in the 1966 tournament. The last five played in the 1963 tournament along with Petrosian, Najdorf, and Reshevsky, who played in both. Kashdan served as tournament director in both, 'assisted by' Borochow (plus George Goehler and Jack Moskowitz) in both. The name 'Jordan Bent Larsen', given in the program as 'Jorden Bent Larsen', should have been 'Jørgen Bent Larsen'.

Crosstables for both tournaments are in Piatigorsky Cup (wikipedia.org). Viktor Korchnoi was listed as 'Reserve' on the list of players for the 1963 program. The 'unpublished photos' mentioned in the description were all from 1966.

Adsense and the CMP

In last week's Friday post, Adsense and the GDPR (August 2023), I wrote,

Ads are related to cookies. It's been eight years since the last time I looked at the European cookie monster. [...] Since then, the European Union has introduced the GDPR, which stands for General Data Protection Regulation (wikipedia.org). The CMP requirements are a response to the GDPR. What does that entail for small web sites like mine? I'll look at that in the next post.

A few months ago Google introduced a new requirement.

• 2023-05-16: New Consent Management Platform requirements for serving ads in the EEA and UK • 'In 2020, we integrated our ads systems with IAB Europe’s Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF). That framework is supported across the advertising ecosystem today, including by numerous Consent Management Platforms (CMPs), which support many of Google’s publisher partners.'

The two phrases in italics link to two more explanatory pages -- from blog.google and iabeurope.eu -- but first let's make sure we understand the acronyms:-

• EEA : European Economic Area (wikipedia.org)
• UK : United Kingdom (aka Britain)
• IAB : Interactive Advertising Bureau

Google's permanent page on the subject is New Google consent management requirements for serving ads in the EEA and UK (for publishers; support.google.com). It sets a deadline:-

Beginning January 16, 2024, publishers and developers using Google AdSense, Ad Manager, or AdMob will be required to use a Consent Management Platform (CMP) that has been certified by Google and has integrated with the IAB's Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF) when serving ads to users in the EEA or the UK.

The page contains a list of 'Google-certified CMPs' that currently has 50 names with a link for each name. Only one of the 50 names was even vaguely familiar to me, 'Google consent management solutions', so no prize for guessing which one I chose to investigate further. Its link went to a page titled, About Privacy & Messaging (support.google.com). The 'Get started' message instructed,

To access your Privacy & Messaging page, sign in to your AdSense account and click Privacy & Messaging in the AdSense sidebar.

That leads to the next stage of the adventure, which I'll cover in the next Friday post.

Top Yahoos: Niemann, WRTC, and Pragg

I can start this month's post on Yahoos [see the footnote for an explanation of 'Yahoos'] by repeating a sentence from last month's post, Blocks of Yahoos (July 2023):-

For this current post Google News again 'returned blocks of stories on two specific chess topics' [note to self: find out what Google calls these sections]. Before I look at those, let's have the usual statistics.

Change 'two' to 'three' and the sentence becomes 100% accurate. First, here are the stats.

This month Google News returned 104 stories on a straightfoward search for 'chess'. Ten news sources with two or more stories each accounted for 59 of the 104 stories. That left 45 news sources with a single story each.

Once again, Chess.com alone accounted for more stories than the other nine news sources combined. Once again, Chessbase was runner-up with six stories plus another two from ChessBase India.

Back to those three blocks of stories, with three stories each, they were:-

• 'News about Hans Niemann, chess'
• 'Chess World Rapid Team Championship'
• 'R Praggnanandhaa receives grand welcome at Chennai airport'

That summary doesn't give the full picture, because the block of Hans Niemann stories expanded to a second page linked as 'Full coverage of this story'. That page had four stories under 'Top news', four Twitter tweets, and 44 stories from a variety of other sources.

Two of the stories in Niemann's main block were repeated in the top news, while the third story, not repeated, was the off-the-wall Elon Musk nonsense that I covered last year in It's Not Polytopia (March 2022). Following are the first stories from each of the three Yahoo blocks:-

• 2023-08-30: Hans Niemann reinstated by Chess.com, vows to become 'best chess player in the world' after alleged cheating scandal (cnn.com)
  
  
• 2023-08-28: WR Chess triumphs as inaugural FIDE World Rapid Team Champions (fide.com)
  
  
• 2023-08-30: Praggnanandhaa receives hero's welcome after FIDE World Cup Success (indiatimes.com)

As often happens in the world of Yahoos, I ran out of time to continue with this post. I'll come back later to look at some of the other stories for the month.

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

***

Later: On top of the three stories flagged by Google News as worthy of a special highlight, three other stories merit inclusion in this month's Yahoos post. All received coverage from multiple mainstream sources. Here they are in chronological order.

• 2023-08-08: Rishi Sunak to announce £500,000 government funding boost for English chess (ft.com) • 'Subscribe to unlock this [FT] article'

I've never understood why news sources surrounded by paywalls are returned by Google News. Everyone loses: Google News loses credibility; the news source loses a reader; the person who follows the Google link loses time. Does anyone really think that someone with an interest in a single story is going to pay for a permanent subscription to read that story? It's a lose-lose-lose proposition. There are plenty of other news sources reporting on the same story. Following is another example of paywall unpleasantness.

• 2023-08-16: Chess World Splits Over Handling of Sexual Misconduct Allegations (wsj.com) • 'Continue reading your article with a WSJ subscription.'
  
  Here's another angle on the same story, returned by a normal search on the title of the FT story. Note that it's straight from the original source of the chess news.
  
  2023-08-17: WSJ: Chess Platforms Halt Relationships With Saint Louis Chess Club (chess.com; TarjeiJS) • 'Chess.com and Lichess will halt their relationships with St. Louis Chess Club and no longer provide support for or cover any of their tournaments in the wake of allegations of sexual misconduct, The Wall Street Journal revealed on Wednesday.'

For the events leading up to this break between the online chess powers and a major chess sponsor, see Three Yahoo Surprises (June 2023; keyword = 'Alejandro Ramirez'). We certainly haven't seen the end of it.

• 2023-08-23: Labrador chess master blindsided by ruling banning transgender women from competing in events (cbc.ca) • 'Ban could keep transgender women out of events for up to 2 years'
  
  That story needs some background.
  
  2023-08-18: FIDE Publishes Controversial New Transgender Policy (chess.com; TarjeiJS) • 'FIDE has come under heavy criticism after publishing a new policy that states that transgender women are banned from taking part in official female-only events until the federation conducts "further analysis" that can last up to two years.'

That makes two major themes related to women's chess. Over the last few years, much effort has been spent supporting women's chess. Was anyone expecting this much negativity?

[NB: The two Chess.com/TarjeiJS stories quoted here were not returned by Google News.]

2023 CJA Awards - Part 2

Continuing with 2023 CJA Awards - Part 1 (August 2023), the following composite image shows how the 107 awards for the year 2023 break down in various ways.

The charts in the upper left ('Award') and lower right ('Person/Brand') cover only entities with more than two awards. The other three charts cover all 107 awards.

How did 'Best Interview - Print' manage to account for nine awards? With four 'Co-winner' and five 'Honorable Mention' awards.

The Arab Chess Federation

After so many years of posting on The Sociology of Chess (November 2016), it finally occurred to me to ask the question, 'What is the difference between a sociologist and a historian?' Google pointed me to Difference Between Sociology and History (byjusexamprep.com), where I learned,

The key difference between sociology and history is that sociology is a social science that focuses on the contemporary social environment. However, history deals with the past and examines previous societies. Sociology is an abstract field, while history is a concrete subject.

Let's consider that an introduction to the following video.

History of Arab Chess Federation (23:24) • '[Published on] Jul 27, 2023'

The description starts,

On July 27, 2023, we celebrate the 48th anniversary of the establishment of the Arab Chess Federation. The federation, currently headquartered in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, is under the esteemed leadership of President Sheikh Saud Bin Abdulaziz Al Mualla.

Its origins date back nearly 50 years, precisely on July 27, 1975, when it was founded in Damascus, Syria by seven national federations, its founding members. On this day, we would like to share this movie that delves into the history of the Arab Chess Federation. [more++]

The video is in Arabic, subtitled in English. Early in the clip, the narrator says, 'He who does not have a past has neither a present nor a future.'

Wikipedia has a page Arab Chess Federation (wikipedia.org), flagged as a stub. The corresponding Arabic page also looks like a stub. A transcript of the video's subtitles would make a useful addition for further study.

Adsense and the GDPR

In last Friday's post, Adsense on CFAA++ (August 2023), I concluded with:-

Adsense is once again increasing the volume of its commanding voice: 'New Consent Management Platform [CMP] requirements for serving ads in the EEA and UK'. • TBD. Watch this space...

My WCC index page, shown below, is a typical example of how I handle ads across the site.

Index : World Chess Championship

The ad ('Download de whitepaper'; that's Dutch, believe it or not) appears between the site 'logo' and the link to Amazon. The small right-pointing triangle on the left side of the ad, leads to a page titled About this ad (adssettings.google.com). The small 'x' beneath the triangle removes the ad.

Ads are related to cookies. It's been eight years since the last time I looked at the European cookie monster. At that time I wrote two posts:-

• 2015-08-31: Fighting Cookies with Cookies
• 2015-09-07: Other Shareaholic Services

Since then, the European Union has introduced the GDPR, which stands for General Data Protection Regulation (wikipedia.org). The CMP requirements are a response to the GDPR. What does that entail for small web sites like mine? I'll look at that in the next post.

Chess Sets Are the Real Deal

For this month's Flickr favorite, I had another AI image on the short list, DALL-E 2023-02-04 23.17.22 - A picture of two AIs playing chess (flickr.com), which came with another half-dozen images in the same series. This latest DALL-E example wasn't nearly as compelling as the previous examples, last seen in Karpov and Kasparov Play Chess in Iceland (March 2023), so I went with a different composite.

Upper right: UK TV Antiques Shows © Flickr user antefixus21 under Creative Commons.

The description on the linked Flickr page explained,

I found these images of an antique (around 1860) English ivory hand turned chess set requiring some restoration on YouTube in a popular UK TV series "A Very Attractive Set of Three Bottles Tantalus | Dickinson’s Real Deal | Season 07 Episode 76 | HomeStyle". The vendor sold the lot to a dealer for £250.

The title in quotes ("") is the same as a Youtube video (channel: 'The Real Deal') linked after the Flickr description. After the video link is a second link to a page titled, 'The Standardization of Chess Set Design' (kottke.org).

The photographer's index page of photos has a few other chess sets and boards, indicating a general interest in the subject. For more about the TV series, see Dickinson's Real Deal (wikipedia.org).

Adsense on CFAA++

Earlier this year, in TGIF on CFAA (June 2023), I wrote,

Some of my blog posts are basically notes to myself. This is one of them.

This current post is another. To parrot the thought process introduced in the TGIF post,

I took three weeks off at the beginning of July and have been scrambling since then to get my blogs back on track. Although you can't see it easily from the dates on the posts, I wrote 21 posts in 25 days and am now caught up.

In addition to the actions mentioned in the TGIF post, I need to catch up with new actions from Google ('Your wish is my command, master!'). The last time I did this was documented in Party Cookies (October 2022; 'Earlier this year I ran a series of four posts about living with Google's Adsense').

Adsense is once again increasing the volume of its commanding voice: 'New Consent Management Platform requirements for serving ads in the EEA and UK'. • TBD. Watch this space...

2023 CJA Awards - Part 1

A month after posting about the 2023 CJA Award Entries (July 2023; Chess Journalists of America), I'm ready to do a short series on the awards themselves. In that post I wanted 'to collect all of the entries across all of the categories', but I ran into an obstacle:-

The data behind the page is embedded on the page's HTML, so it should be possible to extract the entries using straightforward text tools. That would require more work than I have time for right now. I might come back to it later, but I wouldn't bet any money on that happening soon. The winners will be announced next month.

If anyone had made that bet, they would have won. After a little work, I discovered that there were 361 entries.

As expected, the winners were announced earlier this month in 2023 CJA Award Winners (chessjournalism.org; 'Congratulations to this year's CJA Award Winners!'). Around the same time, US Chess revealed their portion of the awards in 2023 Chess Journalist of America Awards (uschess.org):-

Writers, columnists, photographers and analysts from US Chess had much to celebrate at the annual Chess Journalists of America (CJA) meeting on August 2 in Grand Rapids. US Chess took home 27 awards, including two of the "big three".

For the final awards, the CJA offered an option to download a complete list of all the awards. I did this and discovered that 107 awards were made. I'll have more to say about the entries and the awards in a follow-up post. This time you can bet on it.

August 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover'

In last month's post for the 'On the Cover' series, titled July 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover' (July 2023), I observed, 'we find two foreign-born GMs dominating both covers'. This month is mostly about the World Chess Championship both 50 and 25 years ago.

Left: '?'
Right: 'Shirov to Challenge Kasparov'

Chess Life & Review (50 Years Ago)

Robert Byrne, who finished 3rd at the Leningrad Interzonal and thus qualified for the Candidates' Matches, relaxing after his return to the States. Bulletin [inside], complete story and games next month. Photo by Burt Hochberg.

The bulletin summarized the Interzonal like this:-

At the peak of his strength, Robert Byrne had the greatest success of his career to date by finishing third in the Leningrad Interzonal, one point behind tournament winners Victor Korchnoi and Anatoly Karpov. Korchnoi, Karpov and Byrne have thus qualified for the Candidates' Matches, the next step on the road to the World Championship. The two Russians scored 13.5 points in the 18-player tournament, while Byrne scored 12.5. Korchnoi had 11 wins and one loss (to Rukavina), Karpov had 10 wins and no losses, and Byrne won 9 games, losing only to Korchnoi. [...] A full crosstable and reports will appear in our next issue.

After winning the 1972 U.S. Championship, Byrne made the cover a few months ago in April 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover' (April 2023). In the post I added a summary of his 'progress in that World Championship cycle [C09]'.

Chess Life (25 Years Ago)

Over the years, thanks to the pioneering efforts of previous editors such as Burt Hochberg, Frank Elley, and Larry Parr, our Senior Art Director Jami L. Anson has a morgue file which includes samples of the work of almost 2,500 cartoonists, illustrators, and artists. And new work comes in every week. Jami has developed quite an eye for spotting "good stuff," and our cover this month is no exception.

Knights on Easter Island (or "Statues that aren't in any travel books.") was one of 13 computer generated works submitted by Jon F. Buckley of Naperville, Illinois. I am sure Mr. Buckley would enjoy hearing your comments and you can reach him by snail-mail at [postal address]; by e-mail at [email address]; or by visiting his website: [URL].

In 2023 you might end up on the wrong side of a privacy case if you publish someone's postal and email addresses in a national magazine. It's still OK to publish a web address, which was given as:-

members.aol.com/jfbuckleyl

I should say more about the cover art, but it will take more time than I have for this post. Maybe later.

As for the Shirov/Kasparov news on the cover, the story inside was titled, 'Shirov Defeats Kramnik (continued)' by GM Leonid Shamkovich. Part I, in the July issue of CL, was titled 'Shirov Defeats Kramnik in WCC Match: Kasparov Next' by GM Leonid Shamkovich. It started,

Two outstanding young grandmasters, Vladimir Kramnik (22) and Alexei Shirov (25), crossed chess swords in the best of ten World Chess Council (WCC) World Championship candidates' match. The match started May 24 and finished June 5 in the small Spanish city of Cazorla, in Andalusia. Alexei Shirov, who won the match with a score of 5.5-3.5, will meet Garry Kasparov in October for the WCC World Championship.

This duel represents great interest for the chess world, in both the sporting and psychological aspects. These great rivals have demonstrated an almost permanent success at the top level in recent years. Kramnik came into the match ranked third in the world, behind only Kasparov and Viswanathan Anand, while Shirov was ranked fourth. Each has his own distinctive chess style; Kramnik is a classical virtuoso a la Capablanca, while Shirov is a knight of combinations and attacks in the Mikhail Tal style. No wonder he titled his book of best games Fire on Board.

Going into the match, Kramnik and Shirov have met over-the-board about 20 times, with Shirov leading by an impressive 8-1.

Part II issued a correction to the score: '10.5-8.5 in favor of Shirov'. The Kasparov - Shirov match never took place. For more about its collapse, see 1998-99 World Chess Council ('and more'; m-w.com).

'At the Center of AI Research'

GM Rogoff has made occasional appearances on this blog since the first, featured mention in Kenny Rogoff as You've Never Seen Him (February 2012), where he had a full head of hair. Here he weighs in on the top computer topic of the 2020s.

How AI makes Chess 'more interesting': International Grandmaster (3:43) • '[Published on] Aug 12, 2023'

The description, although brief, gives the essentials of the video:-

International Grandmaster Kenneth Rogoff spoke with Yahoo Finance anchor Julie Hyman about the link between chess and artificial intelligence.

Just like the genial GM, Yahoo Finance has made a few appearances on the blog. See, for example, The Money Game (May 2016; 'What do Jack and Jane Yahoo have to say about money in chess?').

Dachshunds Play Chess

After so many years of the series Top eBay Chess Items by Price (March 2010), I sometimes can't be sure whether I've already featured an item or not. The item in the image below is a good example.

Titled 'Charming Vienna Bronze two Dachshunds playing chess at a table', it apparently sold for $425.00. Ebay has changed the look of its auctions since I last posted about 'Top Chess Items' and I'm not sure how to interpret the info correctly. The index of items returned said,

1 bid
Best offer accepted

The auction itself said,

1 bid
Ended 08/02, 11:06 PM
or Best Offer

So which is it -- '1 bid' or 'Best offer accepted'? On top of that, 'Ended 08/02' (presumably August 2nd) didn't match the end of the auction shown on both the index and the item: 'Jul 25, 2023'.

The description added only,

Liquidating from my collection. Excellent condition. Rare, Marked.

The mark, which was under both chairs, looked like 'BERMANN WIEN' (Vienna) above some kind of cachet. The size of the item wasn't specified.

As for 'whether I've already featured it or not', I haven't. I once used a painting of Dalmatians playing chess in An NN for Chess Images? (June 2018). I last featured a bronze, also from Vienna, in Cold Painted Cats (December 2022).

Ebay has eliminated the intermediate page that was required to see the original listing, has changed the way it presents images of the item, and appears to have added more links to current auctions than it had before. I counted seven rows of multiple (>5) links, most of them for 'sponsored items'. That's a lot of links.

***

Later: Re '"Ended 08/02" (presumably August 2nd) didn't match the end of the auction shown on both the index and the item: "Jul 25, 2023"', when I looked at the bids, I noticed that 'Jul 25' was the day the only bid (marked 'Best Offer') was made. The auction start day was listed as 'Jul 23'. The auction also said, 'Duration: 10 days'. Putting this together, 'Jul 23' plus '10 days' equals Aug 2. Now the dates make some sense.

Gotham Gets Gaga

This latest post on The Sociology of Chess (November 2016), echoes this month's featured video Gotham Gets Giddy (July 2023), including the title. That's not really fair, because the entire clip is a reasoned summary of the current chess boom by one of its main beneficiaries.

Chess is surging in popularity among all ages. Here's why. (7:19) • '[Published on] Jul 2, 2023'

The description of the video explains,

Chess is a centuries-old game that’s enjoying new popularity with young people. The renewed interest has created demand for more online content, and international chess master and commentator Levy Rozman is one of those providing it. He joins John Yang for our Weekend Spotlight to discuss the game’s big boom.

IM Rozman uses the opportunity to promote his forthcoming book, 'How to Win at Chess: The Ultimate Guide for Beginners and Beyond'. The book's Amazon page, How to Win at Chess: Rozman, Levy, says,

Levy Rozman, more popularly known as GothamChess, is an online chess streamer who earned the International Master title in 2018. A former scholastic chess coach, he is passionate about chess accessibility, and has donated $100,000 in scholarship funds for chess programs in education. He currently boasts the biggest chess channel on YouTube, where he focuses on creating fun and educational content.

Why 'Gaga'? Why not!

Blocks of Yahoos

The month of July 2023 is coming to an end, meaning that it's time for a roundup of the month's chess news, aka Yahoos. For a more precise definition of Yahoos, see the footnote below.

I always start a post with a summary of the sources that reported the month's news, as shown in the chart on the left. This month we had nine sources with two or more stories, topped as usual by Chess.com.

Second was Chessbase, with double the count for the two sources tied for third. Last month Chessbase was missing from the list of sources with more than one story. In that post, Three Yahoo Surprises (June 2023), I wrote,

The first surprise is the no.2 position held by FIDE. Last month, in Youtube Yahoos (May 2023), Chessbase was no.2, a ranking it has held or shared every month since last year's post Cheating Mania (September 2022), where the New York Times was no.2 and Chessbase was no.3.

That post was split in two parts, which led to an error. In the second part I admitted,

I made a couple of mistakes when I prepared the discussion [in the first part]. At the top of its results, Google News returned blocks of stories on two specific chess topics that I failed to include in my counts. As an example, both blocks included a story by CNN.

For this current post Google News again 'returned blocks of stories on two specific chess topics' [note to self: find out what Google calls these sections]. Before I look at those, let's have the usual statistics.

This month Google News returned 103 stories from 51 sources. Of those, 42 sources had a single story. The two blocks of stories accounted for three stories each. I selected a single report from each of the two blocks of stories.

'Iranian chess player gets Spanish citizenship' (three stories; no other stories among the other 97 returned by Google News)

• 2023-07-27: Iranian chess player Sara Khadem who competed without hijab granted Spanish nationality (cnn.com) • 'An Iranian chess player, who competed in an international tournament without wearing a hijab, has been granted Spanish nationality, Spain’s Minister of Justice announced on Tuesday. Sara Khadem, also known as Sarasadat Khademalsharieh, competed in the FIDE World Rapid and Blitz Chess Championships in Almaty, Kazakhstan, in December 2022.'

For the original hijab story, see First Yahoos of 2023 (January 2023). This CNN story was one of the three stories from CNN. The other two were featured in last month's 'Yahoo Surprises', due to an overlap in the reporting periods for June and July.

'Queen's Gambit Chess on Netflix' (three stories; no other stories...)

• 2023-07-25: Rook No Further, The Queen's Gambit Chess Is Now on Netflix Games (cnet.com) • 'Almost three years after the premiere of the popular Netflix show The Queen's Gambit, the streaming giant released The Queen's Gambit Chess, a game based on the series, on Tuesday. You can play this game for free and without ads or paywalls with a Netflix subscription (starting at $7, £7 or AU$7 a month) on Android and iOS devices.'

Those two stories make a good start for the month's news, but there's more. I'll come back to the rest later.

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

***

Later: Let's first have a word about a couple of newcomers to the list of news sources. About Android Police (androidpolice.com), says,

Android Police started in 2010 as a resource for Android news and reviews, but has since expanded to be one of the most authoritative and trustworthy technology sites on the internet. And we’ve done that without losing the signature intelligence, humor, and integrity you’ve come to expect from us.

One of its stories was about the same 'Queen's Gambit Chess' we saw in the first part ('Relive the Netflix show as you hone your chess skills'). Dexerto (dexerto.media; 'The World’s Largest Esports & Influencer Media Group'), says,

DEXERTO is an award-winning media company at the forefront of gaming culture and esports. Engage with our network of esports, gaming and influencer brands attracting over 100 million fans each month, supported by a group of exclusive gaming publisher partners.

One of its two stories was about PogChamps, a frequent visitor to the series about Yahoos:-

• 2023-07-25: PogChamps 5 Chess Tournament announced ft. xQc, Tyler1, Sykkuno, more (dexerto.com) • 'The fifth iteration of PogChamps is finally back after a two-year absence, and it has been announced that it will consist of a who’s who of the world’s top streamers and chess players duking it out for the $100,000 prize pool.'

If, like me, you're more interested in world class chess than in millennial zeitgeist, FIDE's stories are worth more than a quick glance.

• 2023-07-01: The rise of China as a chess power • 'China's ascent as a global chess powerhouse has been nothing short of extraordinary. From its humble beginnings, China has now emerged as a dominant force in the chess world. The unfolding of China's path to chess dominance is something which should be looked at carefully and studied.'
• 2023-07-24: All eyes on Baku as the chess elite descends on Azerbaijan for the World Cup • 'The event will feature an unprecedented prize fund of 2.5 million US dollars. For the first time, the top three players from both the Open and the Women's section will qualify for the Candidates tournaments.'

One more story, this one with a romantic twist, is worth mentioning.

• 2023-07-26: Hikaru Nakamura Finds His Queen, Marries Atousa Pourkashiyan (chess.com; TarjeiJS) • 'GM Hikaru Nakamura has had great success on the chess board recently, but everything appears to work out off the board as well. The world number-two confirmed to Chess.com that he married WGM Atousa Pourkashiyan.'

Later in the same story we learn:-

35-year-old Pourkashiyan is a seven-time Iranian women's champion. She made her debut for the Iranian national team as a 11-year-old in 2000, and has played a total of nine Olympiads, six of them on board one. She moved to the U.S. just a few years ago and officially changed federations to represent the U.S. last December. Her current FIDE rating is 2305, making her the eighth highest-rated woman in the country.

Congratulations to the chess newlyweds!

Chess as a Symbol

Chess as a symbol of war, chess as a symbol of peace. Two photos on the short list for this month's featured Flickr photo used a chess game to convey opposing messages.

Top: Chess match USSR (Russia) vs USA © Flickr user Ted under Creative Commons
Bottom: Cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev and Astronaut Woody Hoburg play chess © Flickr user NASA Johnson under Creative Commons

The top photo, which had 16 views and one fave (mine), carried no other information beyond a link to an album titled, 2023 National Museum of the United States Air Force. The bottom photo, which had 6054 views and 22 faves (the most recent was mine) had a description that said,

From left, Expedition 69 Commander Sergey Prokopyev of Roscosmos and Flight Engineer Woody Hoburg of NASA each contemplate their next move during an orbital game of chess inside the International Space Station's [ISS] cupola. The orbital lab was soaring 259 miles above the Colombia - Venezuela border at the time of this photograph.

Chess as a symbol of war was widespread during the 1972 Fischer - Spassky Title Match (m-w.com). See, for example, last year's post, Cold Warriors of Chess (August 2022; 'Before the match started, [media] focus was on aspects of the cold war between two nuclear superpowers, the USA and the USSR.').

Chess as a symbol of peace has been seen before on this blog using the same Flickr source; see At the Cosmonaut Hotel (April 2020). I frequently use the phrase, 'Chess is a game of war'. Maybe I also need to say, 'Chess is a game of peace'.

July 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover'

A month after June 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover' (June 2023; 'the winners of super strong U.S. Swiss-system tournaments'), which players were featured on the covers of CL&R/CL 50 and 25 years ago? For the first time in a year -- June 1972 & 1997 'On the Cover' (June 2022; Spassky and Kasparov) -- we find two foreign-born GMs dominating both covers.

Left: '?'
Right: 'Karpov at the National Open'

Chess Life & Review (50 Years Ago)

Lubomir Kavalek, also known as Lubosh, won a tournament at Lanzarote, Spain, but at Las Palmas... He tells the whole story [inside]. Photo by Burt Hochberg.

The story inside was '25 Games in a Chess Paradise' by Lubosh Kavalek. It started,

Since the Candidate Match between Larsen and Uhlmann in 1971, the Chess Federation of Gran Canaria, Spain, has made great progress. Last year they organized their first international tournament. and a fighting tournament it was. The winner. Portisch, had nine outright wins.

This year the organizers decided to have a very strong tournament. And it was strong enough -- category 11 according to the Elo rating system adopted by the FIDE. But it could have been even stronger: at the last moment Bent Larsen cabled from Copenhagen that for "personal reasons" he could not take part, and Arturo Pomar became ill. So Hans Ree from Holland and Bernard Huguet from France replaced those two.

That Las Palmas tournament, held in April 1973, was won by Soviet GMs Leonid Stein and Tigran Petrosian. A follow-up tournament, also in the Canary Islands, was held soon thereafter. Kavalek explained,

Ricardo Calvo won the prize for the best attacking combination against me. And because Ricardo made two points more than the norm for international master and because he needed that average in at least 25 games, the Federation in Las Palmas and its president, Mr. Betancourt, decided to organize another tournament in Lanzarote.

Andersson. Ljubojevic, Ribli, Saidy and I gratefully accepted the invitation. Another six players were local. Spanish Champion Visier, Calvo, and Menveille came from the Spanish mainland. The Frenchman Huguet was so delighted with the great chess interest here that he moved here from France.

Kavalek tied for first with Ulf Andersson in the second tournament. For Kavalek's previous appearance on a cover in this series, see July 1972 & 1997 'On the Cover' (July 2022); for his previous solo cover appearance, see September 1970 & 1995 'On the Cover' (September 2020).

Chess Life (25 Years Ago)

It wasn't all work for FIDE World Champion Anatoly Karpov while he was in Las Vegas for the National Open. He found the time to attend a Siegfried and Roy performance. As it turns out, Siegfried and Roy are great chess enthusiasts. When they pointed out Karpov's presence, Anatoly received a standing ovation from the audience! • Cover photograph courtesy of Fred Gruenberg.

Although Karpov is still a familiar name to chess players, Siegfried & Roy might be less well known today. According to the page Siegfried & Roy (wikipedia.org),

Siegfried Fischbacher (June 13, 1939 – January 13, 2021) and Roy Horn (born Uwe Ludwig Horn; October 3, 1944 – May 8, 2020) were German-American magicians and entertainers who performed together as Siegfried & Roy. They were best known for their use of white lions and white tigers in their acts.

Karpov's presence in Las Vegas was explained in the story '1998 National Open, Part II: "A Really Big Shew"' by Jerry Hanken. A sidebar to the story, titled 'Karpov Speaks', started,

The highlight of the weekend, apart from the play itself, was undoubtedly the luncheon between rounds 5 and 6, at which FIDE World Champion Anatoly Karpov addressed more than 200 players. Anatoly had signed books and other chess items for a line of people which seemed to get longer by the minute. He was very gracious and patient with it all, and when we finally had to go in to the luncheon, many approached him at his table during the meal and he continued to sign everything from chessboards to napkins!

When Al Losoff introduced the world champion after dessert, we expected a few minutes at most of offhand remarks. We got a lot more! Karpov spoke for 20 minutes, and thanks to my good friend Tim Hanks of Litton Industries, we got a tape of this delightful speech, which was punctuated by frequent hearty laughs and sustained, deafening applause at the end.

Just a few months ago, Karpov appeared in the series for March 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover' (March 2023; 'Karpov Reigns Supreme as FIDE World Champion!'). His appearance in Las Vegas was undoubtedly related to his friendship with GM Ron Henley. For more about that era, see Wayback to Smartchess (November 2022).

2023 CJA Award Entries

When I posted 2023 CJA Awards Announcement (May 2023), I wrote,

Since I'm gradually winding down by blogging activity, I don't know if I'll post [about the CJA] so many times this year, but I'll certainly do what I can.

Both out of curiosity and force of habit, I tried to look at the list of 2023 CJA (Chess Journalists of America) entries after it became available. The following image is a screen capture of the page I found.

2023 CJA Award Entries (chessjournalism.org)

To see the entries for a particular award, click on a category, then click on the award. All entries for the award are then displayed. The image shows the four awards under the category 'Book Awards', i.e. 'Best Book of The Year' (sic), which has four awards: 'Overall', 'Other', 'Instructional', and 'Self Published'. The 'Overall' award lists 14 entries, each with a link to a separate page.

To collect all of the entries across all of the categories would require clicking on each award, then performing a copy/paste on the entries for that award. You might expect there would be an option to download the list of all entries in all awards, but no such luck.

The data behind the page is embedded on the page's HTML, so it should be possible to extract the entries using straightforward text tools. That would require more work than I have time for right now. I might come back to it later, but I wouldn't bet any money on that happening soon. The winners will be announced next month.

Gotham Gets Giddy

This month's short list for featured video had more clips than any month since November 2022, when the so-called Niemann affair was reaching its peak interest. This video, from Youtube channel Athletic Interest, was my favorite among many excellent choices.

How Chess Broke YouTube (10:28) • '[Published on] Jul 13, 2023'

What's Athletic Interest? The description for the clip explains,

Athletic Interest is a video essay series that investigates business stories from the world of sports.

Most of the channel's recent videos are about football ('soccer' if you're American), but other popular sports get occasional coverage. As for the chess video, its seven segments have the following titles:-

00:00 The Incredible Economics of Chess
01:14 The History - Maniacs, Murder and Marketing
03:28 The Boom - Netflix, YouTube & More
05:08 The Secret Behind the Rise
06:52 The Player - Magnus Inc.
08:17 The Company
10:04 The Power of Content

The video starts, 'This might be the most interesting Instagram ad ever' and just gets better and better. In case you're wondering about its sources of info, 'Big thanks to @GothamChess for the amazing insights and collaboration on this video!'

Posters for 'Blade Runner'

My routine for preparing the monthly post in the series Top eBay Chess Items by Price (March 2010) always starts with preparing a short list of chess items sold in the previous month. Once in a while the same item -- or similar items -- appears twice on the short list. There is often a side story associated with this and the last time it happened was eBay Deja Vu (August 2021).

The composite image below shows two items from two different auctions. Both items were based on the title 'Blade Runner poster Laurent Durieux Variant The Final Chess Game'. For the specifics of the two auctions, see below.

Top row: Posters for 'Blade Runner' ('A Ridley Scott Film')
Bottom row: Detail from upper right poster

The item shown in the upper left was titled 'Blade Runner poster Laurent Durieux Aluminum Variant The Final Chess Game #/100'. It sold for around $450.00, 'Best offer accepted'. The description said,

The Final Chess Game - Aluminum Print by Laurent Durieux • 2mm thick aluminum panel • 24 x 36 inches • Limited edition of 100

The item shown in the upper right was titled 'Blade Runner poster Laurent Durieux Variant The Final Chess Game #/325'. It sold for around $400.00 'Best offer accepted'. Its description said,

The Final Chess Game - Variant by Laurent Durieux - Bottleneck Gallery • Screen print • 24 x 36 inches • Hand-numbered edition of 325

The descriptions for both items also included the phrase 'Please note, this item is a preorder that will ship when received. Item will ship properly in a sturdy tube with kraft paper.' You might guess from all of this that the items were offered by the same seller, but different seller names were attached to the two auctions. Both auctions also included the same info under 'Item specifics':-

Condition; New: A brand-new, unused, unopened, undamaged item (including handmade items). • Year of Production; 2023

Did either of these posters have anything to do with posters for the original 1982 movie? I have no answer for that question. For a previous post in the series on 'Top eBay Chess Items' on the same topic, see More Birds from Blade Runner (March 2013).

TCEC/CCC 2023-H1 Summary

Six months have passed since the previous summary of the fortnightly TCEC/CCC posts on this blog. That post was appropriately titled TCEC/CCC 2022-H2 Summary (January 2023). Here are the latest six months of posts that covered the first half of 2023.

TCEC/CCC	Off-week
2023-01-09: TCEC Cup 11 Underway; CCC19 Bullet in Semifinals	2023-01-16: Chessify Progress Report
2023-01-23: LCZero Wins TCEC Cup 11; Stockfish Wins CCC19 Bullet	2023-01-30: Talkchess Talks Top Engines
2023-02-06: TCEC Swiss 4 Underway; CCC Mystery Matches	2023-02-13: Chessify's Other Engines
2023-02-20: Stockfish Wins TCEC Swiss 4; TCEC S24 L2 & CCC20 Blitz Underway	2023-02-27: Chessify vs. Chessbase Engine Cloud
2023-03-06: TCEC S24 L1, CCC20 Blitz Semifinals: Final Week	2023-03-13: NextChessMove.com
2023-03-20: TCEC S24 DivP, CCC20 Blitz Final : Both Underway	2023-03-27: Chessify Resources
2023-04-03: TCEC S24 DivP Finishing; Stockfish Wins CCC20 Blitz Final	2023-04-10: OpenBench Interlude
2023-04-17: TCEC S24 Sufi, CCC20 Rapid - Both Underway	2023-04-24: The Komodo Baton
2023-05-15: Stockfish Wins TCEC S24; Engine Mysteries	2023-05-22: An 'Advice-taking' Chess Machine
2023-05-29: TCEC FRC6, CCC20 Rapid Finals; Both Underway	2023-06-05: The CCC's Mystery Engine
2023-06-12: TCEC FRC6, CCC20 Rapid; Stockfish Wins Both	2023-06-19: Chessify Coins and Combos
2023-06-26: Stockfish Wins TCEC DFRC2; CCC20 Bullet Underway

The last cell in the table represents this current post. In the previous post, 'TCEC DFRC2, CCC20 Bullet', I wrote,

What goes around doesn't always come around. Sometimes it stops. The TCEC is starting S25; the CCC is coming to the end of CCC20. I'm almost certain this current post will be the last in the series on this blog.

Make that the next-to-last post. This summary is the last post.

Three Yahoo Surprises

Once again, the last unconditional post of the month brings us the month's Yahoos. (For an explanation of 'Yahoos', see the footnote below.) Before looking at the month's stories, let's have the usual statistics and meta-analysis of the month's news.

At the end of June, Google News returned 98 stories from 49 different news sources. The 10 news sources with at least two stories are listed in the chart on the left.

As usual, Chess.com dominated the chess news stories with more stories than the other top nine sources combined. This is no surprise and has happened umpteen times before, maybe even every month. The list of top sources does, however, contain a number of surprises.

The first surprise is the no.2 position held by FIDE. Last month, in Youtube Yahoos (May 2023), Chessbase was no.2, a ranking it has held or shared every month since last year's post Cheating Mania (September 2022), where the New York Times was no.2 and Chessbase was no.3.

The second surprise is the number of news sources which we haven't seen before in the Yahoo series. I should spend some time discussing those new sources, but that will have to wait for later. I'm already late with this post and there are other matters to attend to.

The third surprise isn't really a surprise. It's been expected since the September 2022 'Cheating Mania' post, which started,

It didn't take a crystal ball to predict that this month's Yahoos' post was going to be about Carlsen/Nakamura vs. Niemann, aka the chess cheating affair. The scandal broke three weeks ago and shows no sign of disappearing anytime soon.

For a summary of posts about the scandal, see Cheating for all Ages (March 2023). For the latest on the scandal, this month's top story, I come back to 'that will have to wait for later'.

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

***

Later: Unfortunately, I made a couple of mistakes when I prepared the discussion above. At the top of its results, Google News returned blocks of stories on two specific chess topics that I failed to include in my counts. As an example, both blocks included a story by CNN. If I had counted both stories, the CNN count would show four stories instead of two. I'll use the CNN stories to represent the two blocks.

'News about Global Chess League' (three stories; plus six more stories among the other 98 returned by Google News)

• 2023-06-29: Magnus Carlsen headlines new chess tournament ‘to scale the game to a billion fans’ (cnn.com) • 'With chess riding a wave of popularity in recent years, the game is seizing on the opportunity to revolutionize the way it’s played and consumed. The inaugural Global Chess League (GCL), which got underway in Dubai on June 22, is the latest event to offer a new format for the game.'

'Judge dismisses $100m chess lawsuit' (two stories, plus link for 'Full Coverage'; eight more stories among the other 98)

• 2023-06-28: Judge dismisses Hans Niemann’s $100 million lawsuit against Magnus Carlsen, among others, in chess cheating scandal (cnn.com) • 'A US judge on Tuesday dismissed the $100 million defamation lawsuit filed by American chess grandmaster Hans Niemann against Magnus Carlsen, among others, in an alleged cheating scandal which has rocked the sport, according to court documents.'

Those two topics each accounted for far more stories than we usually see on a single topic in a typical month of Yahoos. What about the nine sources (excluding Chess.com) with at least two stories? I'll feature what I consider the top story for each source.

• 2023-06-28: The match for Women's World Champion title: Celebration of China and Chess (fide.com) • 'The forthcoming match for the title of the Women's World Chess Champion will be a unique event in chess history. China, known for its supremacy in women's chess, finds itself in a very rare position of holding both the absolute [NB: the title currently held by Ding Liren] and women's chess crowns simultaneously.'
• 2023-06-27: GM Srinath Narayanan: There’s a consensus in world of chess that India is a superpower (indianexpress.com) • 'In GCL [Global Chess League; another story!], upGrad Mumba Masters team manager Srinath Narayanan is bringing Indian chess team’s traditions to help his side gel together.'
• 2023-06-23: Members Sanctioned by US Chess Now Public Information (uschess.org) • 'Effective immediately, US Chess is publishing the names of US Chess members who have been sanctioned by our organization. This decision by the Executive Board was reached via an 8-0 vote. Minors will not be named, but their sanction will be listed.' • For background, see last month's 'Youtube Yahoos', linked in the first part of this post; keyword = 'Alejandro Ramirez'.
• 2023-06-29: Explained: The format of the world’s first and largest official franchise chess league (cnbctv18.com) • 'The Global Chess League or GCL, is the world's first and the largest official franchise chess league. The inaugural edition of the GCL is being played in Dubai.' • Yet another GCL story!
• 2023-06-19: Body language, knowledge of the game and luck: the art of chess photography (cnn.com) • 'Maria Emelianova is a leading chess photographer, tasked with traveling the world to document the highs and lows of the sport.'

The next three sources -- Huntington Herald Dispatch, Jewish Link of New Jersey, and Prima Games -- had local stories mainly of interest to local readers. The last source, Sportstar, has been mentioned in several Yahoos, most recently in Deja Vu Yahoos (December 2022; 'the Sportstar [thehindu.com] stories were mostly about the National Chess Championships of India'). This month, both Sportstar stories were about the GCL. Because of other commitments, I haven't been following the GCL, but it doesn't take a keen chess news fan to figure out that India is deeply involved.

Stockfish Wins TCEC DFRC2; CCC20 Bullet Underway

In this continuing, fortnightly series on the world's top two engine vs. engine competitions, the previous post was TCEC FRC6, CCC20 Rapid; Stockfish Wins Both (June 2023). Expanding that title produces the following summary:-

TCEC: In the 'S24 FRC6 Final', Stockfish beat LCZero +15-12=23. The site then organized 'S24 DFRC2', which has reached 'League 1', the third of four stages. • CCC: In the 'CCC20 Rapid Finals', Stockfish crushed Lc0 143.0-107.0, then crushed the Mystery engine 67.0-33.0 in an exhibition match. The site then launched the 'CCC20 Bullet Entry League'.

Fast forward two weeks and the current situation looks like this...

TCEC: Stockfish beat LCZero +10-7=33 in the 'S24 DFRC2 Final'. This was the final event for TCEC season 24 (S24). The plans for S25 announce,

Now !Swiss5; then !1day, Cup 12, !1day, Leagues, !1day, !FRD1, !1day, !S26; (current plan, can change, also !r-mobility (armageddon) demo or bonus might be inserted somewhere); !1day per move bonus done in alternate and parallel with other tournaments (ongoing)

What's FRD? The !Command says,

Fischer Random Double event, combining FRC and DFRC in one event: FRC in early part, DFRC for later and final parts.

This is a new form of engine competition. It's unclear what issue it is trying to resolve.

CCC: In the 'CCC20 Bullet' tournment, the 'Entry League' was followed by 'Qualifier 1' and 'Qualifier 2'. Before launching the 'CCC20 Bullet Main' event, the site is conducting a match between Dragon and the Mystery engine.

Given that the sequence for both CCC19 and CCC20 was Blitz, Rapid, Bullet, we can expect that the next event will be 'CCC21 Blitz'. Bold prediction: Stockfish will win both 'CCC20 Bullet' and 'CCC21 Blitz'. Timid prediction: Stockfish will win both 'CCC20 Bullet' and 'CCC21 Blitz'.

...According to my first summary of engine vs. engine events, TCEC/CCC 2019 Q1-Q3 Summary (October 2019), I've been doing this series of posts since January 2019. Back then I was following TCEC S14 and CCC03.

What goes around doesn't always come around. Sometimes it stops. The TCEC is starting S25; the CCC is coming to the end of CCC20. I'm almost certain this current post will be the last in the series on this blog.

[For further information from the various stakeholders in the engine-to-engine events, see the tab 'TCEC/CCC Links' at the top of this page. • NB: Leela = LC0 = LCzero; Dragon = KomodoDragon]

The Sociology of Memes

In all the years that I've been running the series on The Sociology of Chess (November 2016), I've never mentioned memes. So here we go.

Google Image search on 'chess memes'

The last time I used the 'Google Image search' trick was Election Special 2022 (November 2022). At that time I had three rows of image thumbnails. Now I have two. Why the difference? Here's the election image...

Google Image search on 'chess trump biden'

...Looks like the thumbnails are taller now. Of the 13 thumbnails for 'chess memes', 11 are from Chess.com. Why am I not surprised?

June 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover'

Another month has passed, so let's have another look at U.S. chess magazine covers from 50 and 25 years ago. Both magazines featured the winners of super strong U.S. Swiss-system tournaments of their respective eras.

Left: '?'
Right: 'Minasian Sweeps the New York Open'

Chess Life & Review (50 Years Ago)

Grandmaster Arthur Bisguier, who won the powerful Lone Pine Tournament in California, which included five grandmasters. Story [inside]. Photo by Burt Hochberg.

The story inside was titled 'Bisguier Wins at Lone Pine'. It started,

[We are indebted to Isaac Kashdan's column in the Los Angeles Times for the story details and selected games. - Ed.]

Grandmaster Arthur Bisguier was the undisputed winner of the powerful Louis D. Statham Masters and Experts Tournament held for the third time in Lone Pine, California. With five grandmasters, the average rating of the tournament was 2322, highest ever for a Swiss in the U.S. and possibly the world.

Bisguier's play was strongly dynamic when necessary, careful and pragmatic when violence was not called for. Now living in a new home in Rock Hill, New York, Bisguier may count this fine victory as a highlight of his recent career.

The Lone Pine tournament also featured a year ago in May 1972 & 1997 'On the Cover' (May 2022): 'In the center, Svetozar Gligoric, winner of the Statham Tournament in Lone Pine, California.'

GM Bisguier was mentioned in last month's, May 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover' (May 2023): 'The reference to Arthur Bisguier is for that column ['Player of the Month'], which included a game where the GM lost in 21 moves playing White against Nakamura.' A more typical mention was last year's December 1972 & 1997 'On the Cover' (December 2022): 'Another Title for Arthur Bisguier', the 1997 U.S. Senior champion.

Chess Life (25 Years Ago)

Professional photographer Brian Killigrew was at the New York Open, when Artashes Minasian received a special prize from New York Open organizer Jose Cuchi (left) and Lladro USA representative Glenn Conciatori (right). This special edition chess set, handcrafted by Lladro (masters of porcelain art), has been awarded to Pablo San Segundo for winning the Championship of Spain, to Judit Polgar at Dos Hermanas (for her "Fighting Spirit"), and now to Minasian for winning the New York Open.

Lladro has come a long way since 1951, when three brothers, Juan, Jose, and Vicente, constructed their first kiln in Tavernes Blanques. Lladro USA is well-established in Moonachie, New Jersey; the Lladro Museum and Gallery is located on West 57th Street in New York City, exhibitions of their fine porcelain creations are held in Russia and Japan, and their fundraising commitment for the U.S. Special Olympics has resulted in even more praise directed towards the company, which now employs more than 2,000 people.

The three page tournament report on the 1998 New York Open was followed by a page and a half of games titled, 'Theoretical Disputes'. This is the first time we've seen Cuchi in this blog on a Chess Life cover, although he received a mention last year in July 1972 & 1997 'On the Cover' (July 2022): 'Jose Cuchi set a new record for organizing the strongest USCF rated event, the 15th New York Open.'