DNA Yahoos

Just like last month's Yahoos post, Missing Yahoos (July 2024; see the footnote for an explanation of Yahoos), this month had 99 stories returned by Google News. Of those, 25 were old stories from previous months, compared to 10 old stories returned for the July post. Is Google struggling to find chess stories?

The most frequent topic was the Sinquefield Cup with 11 stories. For example, the last story was:-

• 2024-08-29: Undefeated Firouzja Wins Sinquefield Cup And $100k Prize (chess.com; JackRodgers) • 'GM Alireza Firouzja was crowned as the winner of the 2024 Sinquefield Cup and the Grand Chess Tour on Wednesday after securing a draw with GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu and finishing on 6/9.'

The Tbilisi FIDE Women's Grand Prix 2024 (theweekinchess.com; 14 Aug - 25 Aug) had four stories. None of them were about the final results, which is why I used that TWIC link.

The 2024 Olympiad also had four stories, two of which were the same. Since the event didn't finish in August, I'll save any discussion for next month.

The opponents in the forthcoming match for the World Championship, Ding Liren vs. Gukesh, and the opponents in the most reported game of all time, Carlsen vs. Niemann also received mentions. The most reported of the more colorful stories was:-

• 2024-08-17: Chess Player Suspended After Allegedly Poisoning Her Rival (chess.com; TarjeiJS) • 'A chess player has been suspended by the Russian Chess Federation and is reportedly facing time in jail after she allegedly tried to poison her rival at the chessboard during a tournament. Amina Abakarova, a 40-year-old chess coach from Makhachkala in the Russian Republic of Dagestan, is accused of trying to poison her rival, 30-year-old Umayganat Osmanova.'
  
  
• 2024-08-24: The cheaters, geniuses and creeps of the world of chess (thespectator.com; Luke McShane; 'Nothing says you’re a criminal mastermind like knowing the King’s Indian Attack') • 'Amina Abakarova, a forty-year-old chess player from Russia, supposedly tried to poison a younger rival at the Dagestan Chess Championship this month. Camera footage seems to show her furtively applying a substance to one side of a chess board before the start of the game. Her opponent later became unwell and a Russian news agency claimed that the substance contained mercury.'

Since I dislike closing this post with such a dismal chess story, let's have something more upbeat. This story is behind a paywall, but is intriguing enough to mention it:-

• 2024-08-23: DNA computer can play chess and solve sudoku puzzles (newscientist.com) • 'Computers made from DNA have previously only been able to store information or perform computations on it - now a new device can do both'

Aren't we all 'computers made from DNA'? More research needed...

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