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.

April 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover'

Continuing last month's 'On the Cover', March 1973 & 1998 (March 2023), let's again follow the wheel of chess history as it was recorded in U.S. chess mazines 50 and 25 years ago. This month we find 'USA all the way'.

Left: '?'
Right: 'Imagine! ... Inside: 1998 USCF Yearbook'

Chess Life & Review (50 Years Ago)

Grandmaster Robert Byrne, who won the 1972 U.S. Championship by out-scoring Reshevsky and Kavalek in a playoff this February. This is the first time Byrne has won this title. Story and games [inside].

The story inside started,

Grandmaster Robert Byrne of Ossining, New York, is the new U.S. Chess Champion. He scored 3-1 by notching one victory and one draw each against Grandmasters Samuel Reshevsky and Lubomir Kavalek in a play-off at Chicago's LaSalle Hotel February 3-11.

For the CL report on the main tournament, see July 1972 & 1997 'On the Cover' (July 2022). This was the first step in Byrne's unexpected success in that World Championship cycle. For his progress in the cycle, see

• 1972-1975 Zonal Cycle (C09) • '[Zone] 5 New York 1972-04'
• 1973 Leningrad Interzonal Tournament • 'Leningrad, VI, 1973'; Byrne finished third, a point behind Soviet GMs Korchnoi and Karpov
• 1973-75 Candidates Matches • Quarterfinal match 'San Juan, Puerto Rico, I, 1974', lost to Spassky +0-3=3

In the semifinal match, 'Leningrad, IV-V, 1974', Karpov beat Spassky +4-1=6. He then beat Korchnoi +3-2=19 in the final match to earn the right to challenge Fischer in the cycle's title match.

Chess Life (25 Years Ago)

The Chess In The Schools IMAGINE! tournament was a great success for the kids of New York City, primarily due to the support given by Yoko Ono, shown on our cover with her son, Sean. Brian Killigrew is the photographer and writer. Based in New York city, his work has been featured in newspapers and magazines around the world. A chess neophyte, he will work for chess lessons. E-mail him at ***@aol.com.

FIDE GMA PCA WCC World Champion Garry Kasparov is back in the news, having announced that he will defend his title in October, against either Kramnik or Anand. See [inside] for details and prognostications.

The 'Imagine' tournament report was incorporated into the 20-page USCF Yearbook. The top quarter of each yearbook page had a running story with details of the event plus a photo or two. The story by Brian Killigrew started,

Imagine a 94 ft. blue whale, the largest mammal on earth. Two hundred New York City school children stare, some nervous, some downright scared. A brave nine-year-old moves his hand tentatively, then pulls it back. He steadies himself, then pushes a pawn to e4.

You are at the Chess-in-the-Schools (CIS) First Annual Imagine Tournament held on January 15, 1998, at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. In the museum's Hall of Ocean Life, 209 students, from 41 schools, are here to do battle for team and individual honors in a four round swiss, game 30 tournament.

The accompanying photo was captioned,

Overhead view of 1st Annual Imagine Tournament held in the Hall of Ocean Life. Above, right corner, is a small part of the 94 foot blue whale. • All photos by Brian Killigrew

As for 'First Annual' / '1st Annual', that will take more effort to research. I'll try to tackle that some other time.

In the first paragraph, did I say, 'USA all the way'? The second part of the introduction to the April 1998 'On the Cover' mentioned news of Kasparov's non-FIDE World Championship title; see also the letter from Karpov. I'll come back to that later, probably on my World Championship blog.

What Makes a Great Coach?

Tired of all the recent, seemingly endless, stories and videos about cheating in chess? For this month's featured video, let's change the subject.

RB Ramesh free talk: "Let your kids enjoy the game of chess!" (1:06:37) • '[Published on] Sep 12, 2022'

The description summarized the message of the video.

The great coach RB Ramesh invited parents attending the World Youth Chess Championships 2022 for a discussion to help them understand what a healthy parent-child relationship looks like.

"Let them enjoy themselves, have fun playing chess. Of course you want them to perform, but don't put pressure on them and don't try to coach them. You are their parents, you are their support, you are their biggest fans. Encourage them when they lose. Without pleasure, without enjoying the game, there are no great results in any sport, but especially in chess, which is not called the sport of the mind for nothing. Take care of their minds and that's how you'll raise happy and healthy athletes and adults!"

Note the phrase 'great coach'. The GM's Wikipedia page, Ramachandran Ramesh (wikipedia.org; currently just a stub), says,

He started Chess Gurukul, Chess Academy in Chennai to train young players in 2008. Since then, Chess Gurukul has produced many international chess champions from India.

For several tributes from the year 2020 to Ramesh, see Top Grandmasters of Indian chess pay homage to their teachers (chessbase.in; Sagar Shah). For a more recent commentary, see Interview: GM Ramesh On Coaching India-2 At Chess Olympiad, Winning Bronze (chess.com), especially 'Working With Praggnanandhaa'.

World Champion Petrosian Chess 'School'

Chess is so popular in Armenia that the title of this photo, 'Chess School Yerevan', doesn't tell us much. Yerevan is the capital of Armenia.

The Chess School Yerevan © Flickr user mcfarlandmo under Creative Commons.

Thanks to Google I found a similar photo on Wikipedia's page Tigran Petrosian Chess House. The page starts,

Tigran Petrosian Chess House, officially the Central House of Chess-player named after Tigran Petrosian, is the center of the sport of chess in Yerevan, Armenia. It was opened in 1970. In 1984, it was renamed after the former world chess champion Tigran Petrosian.

The same photo is on another Wikipedia page Chess in Armenia. Since I've already referenced that page in Armenian Candidates (March 2016), specifically for 'Teaching of chess in schools', I'll stop here.

Chess Movie 2020

By coincidence, before I saw this trailer I had just seen the report John Leguizamo Stars in Directorial Debut Critical Thinking: Watch Powerful Trailer for Chess Drama (people.com), subtitled,

Based on a true story, Critical Thinking follows John Leguizamo as a Miami high school teacher leading his underserved students to the National Chess Championship.

'Available On Demand on Sept. 4'; I expect we'll hear more about the movie as the release date approaches.

Critical Thinking Trailer (2020) John Leguizamo, Chess Drama Movie (2:24) • '[Published on] Aug 6, 2020'

The description of the trailer didn't have much to say, but the comments did. Here are a few I particularly liked.

When the teacher came in to teach chess class that was my nap time. • You had me at 'Chess Drama Movie'. • Is this like 'Sister Act' but with a chess board? • I've seen this movie so many times. The only difference is that instead of dance, baseball, singing or football they have chess as their talent of choice. • On the lines of 'Queen of Katwe' and 'Endgame' • It’s like a dance movie but with chess. • So they basically copied from FAHIM?

The reference to FAHIM had me scratching my head but Wikipedia (in French) came to the rescue: Fahim (film; with Gérard Depardieu). It starts,

Fahim est un film français réalisé par Pierre-François Martin-Laval, sorti en 2019. Il s'agit d'un film biographique sur le joueur d'échecs franco-bengladais Fahim Mohammad.

...or as Google translates it...

Fahim is a French film directed by Pierre-François Martin-Laval, released in 2019. It is a biographical film about the Franco-Bengladian chess player Fahim Mohammad.

If you change 'Bengladian' to 'Bangladeshi', it makes more sense. That makes two movies I have to watch.

The Dilemma of Women's Chess

Pay attention, because this is important. It goes well beyond The Sociology of Chess (November 2016).

Alexandra Botez shares a personal experience about sexual harassment & predatory behavior in chess (34:50) • '[Published on] Jun 23, 2020'

The title could have been 'Alexandra Botez shares a personal experience about sexual harassment & predatory behavior' -- the video isn't about just chess. The top comment of the 522 comments says,

Gotta report stuff. My daughter reported all three incidents that happened to her and in all three cases the pervert turned out to have assaulted multiple girls. By reporting it she prevented them from future assaults.

At 20:35, WFM Botez wonders, 'I'm also encouraging more girls to get into a space that I know is nasty and toxic. Is that even the right thing to do?' Therein lies a dilemma. And for all those men who question the need for women-only tournaments, there is your answer.

For more about one of the top streamers in chess see Wikipedia's Alexandra Botez. Bravo, Alexandra!

London Chess Conference 2019

This month's edition of The Sociology of Chess (November 2016), echoes a post from two years ago, London Chess Conference 2017 (December 2017).

KVDC interview IM Malcolm Pein London Chess Conference 2019 (14:03) • '[Published on] Dec 5, 2019'

KVDC is Karel van Delft. His description says,

IM Malcolm Pein tells about the London Chess Conference 2019, Chess in Schools and research about benefits of chess education.

Other videos on the KVDC channel from the London Conference include:-

• Interview GM Jonathan Rowson
• Quality Standards in Scholastic Chess
• Chess Education and Science, the new journal
• Research updates, Nemanja Vaci

A description of the clip about GM Rowson is at 64 Life Lessons (londonchessconference.com):-

In The Moves that Matter the Scottish grandmaster with a PhD in philosophy and a very active Twitter account reflects the life lessons chess taught him in 64 chapters. Stephen Moss from The Guardian, whose book The Rookie was published in 2016, also by Bloomsbury, interviewed him during the lunch break of the first conference day. Jonathan was later on also interviewed by Karel van Delft.

The clip about the journal 'Chess Education and Science' features Jerry Nash of USchess presenting an initiative of the Chess Scientific Research Institute (CSRI), Armenian State Pedagogical University. Anyone who remembers the Journal of Chess Research (May 2014), will hope that the new journal actually sees publication.

For more about the conference, see Chess and Female Empowerment conference concluded in London (fide.com). The web site for the conference itself can be found by following the link for '64 Life Lessons' given above.

'Smart Is the New Sexy'

I don't remember where I saw the news first. Maybe it was Chessable joins the Play Magnus chess24 family (chess24.com):-

We're excited to be able to announce that Chessable is now part of the Play Magnus and chess24 group. Play Magnus will invest heavily in the fast-growing chess improvement site, and although nothing will change at first on chess24 or Chessable we’re looking forward to a great opportunity to combine our forces to provide more and better resources for chess players of all levels.

Maybe it was Chessable joins Play Magnus and chess24 – yes, it’s true! (chessable.com/blog; by David Kramaley, 'Chessable's CEO and Chief Scientist'):-

Dear Chessable members, today is simply unbelievable! We are delighted to announce that Chessable has become part of the Play Magnus & chess24 family. That’s right, The World Champion himself, Magnus Carlsen, is now part of our Chessable family! It’s been an exciting and incredible journey, and we wanted to thank you for being part of it.

Both announcements were dated a week ago, 3 September. My first reaction was, 'What is the "Play Magnus Chess24 family'"? Then I remembered an announcement from a few months ago, Chess24 and Play Magnus join forces (chess24.com; March 2019):-

Today we’re proud to announce that chess24 has merged with Play Magnus, the Norwegian company behind a family of apps building on the brand of World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen. Play Magnus and chess24 will continue to operate independently online, but with our joint resources and know-how we believe we’re better equipped than ever to provide the very best possible chess experience.

One of the comments noted,

WildBillHickok: Chess24 owners [Enrique] Guzman and [Jan] Gustafsson will own 38% of the newly merged company according to Norwegian business paper Dagens Naeringsliv.

By one of those coincidences that often seems to be more than a coincidence, Chess24 and 'Play Magnus' both started operating within a few months of each other; see Play Magnus! (chess24.com; August 2014):-

Canadian Kate Murphy is the CEO of Play Magnus, the company behind the chess app of the same name. Her ambition is to popularize cultural and educational activities for youngsters, and Magnus Carlsen seemed like the perfect man to do this with chess. (Interview by GM Jonathan Tisdall)

For some reason the Wikipedia pages for Play Magnus and Kate A. Murphy do not link to each other. For more from the comely Canadian, see Youtube channel 'TEDx Talks', Chess and the Game of Life | Kate Murphy | TEDx UWCRCN (December 2016), 'Smart is the new sexy.'

A Chess Epiphany

Last week's post, The Value of Deep Learning, featured a Wired.com article by Gary Marcus, titled 'DeepMind's Losses and the Future of Artificial Intelligence'. This week I discovered another article appearing this month in the same source, Inside DeepMind's epic mission to solve science's trickiest problem (wired.co.uk), written by Greg Williams. The subtitle explains,

DeepMind's AI has beaten chess grandmasters and Go champions. But founder and CEO Demis Hassabis now has his sights set on bigger, real-world problems that could change lives. First up: protein folding.

The article is much more about protein folding than it is about chess, but it has a long chess anecdote that I had seen elsewhere. I located the first version in Sadler & Regan's book 'Game Changer', in its 'Introduction by Demis Hassabis'. It starts, 'Far from being just a game, chess has always been a part of me.' The 'Game Changer' version of the anecdote goes like this:-

One particular moment would end up having a big impact on the direction I would take for the rest of my life. I was 11 years old and in the middle of a gruelling eight hour match with a veteran Danish master at a big international tournament in Liechtenstein. We had reached a highly unusual endgame, which I had never seen before -- I only had my queen, and my far more experienced opponent had a rook, bishop and knight. He was ahead in material but if I could just keep his king in check with my queen, I could force a draw. Hours rolled by as he pushed his pieces around trying to outmaneuver me, and the vast playing hall slowly emptied as everyone else finished their games. Then suddenly, after dozens of moves of not making any progress, he finally somehow managed to trap my king, with checkmate seemingly forced on his next move. Exhausted and shocked, I resigned.

Immediately he stood up, perplexed. He laughed as he dramatically gestured that I could have secured a draw if only I had sacrificed my queen, to achieve a stalemate. At the last moment he had just tried a final cheap trick, and it had worked! I felt sick to the pit of my stomach. The next day I reflected over what had happened, and as I looked out over the packed hall filled with brilliant minds, I vividly remember wondering, what if all this incredible collective mental effort being expended could instead somehow be channelled into something beyond games, perhaps an important area of science or medicine, what might it be possible to achieve?

That epiphany marked the beginning of the end of my professional chess career, but also sowed the initial seeds for what would eventually become DeepMind, the artificial intelligence (AI) research company I co-founded in 2010.

The Wired.co.uk version ends with a slightly different conclusion:-

Hassabis recalls that, at that moment, he had an epiphany: he questioned the purpose of the brilliant minds in the room competing with each other to win a zero-sum game. He would go on to play the game at the highest level, captaining his university team, and still talks of his continued love of complex games, but the experience led to him channeling his energy into something beyond games. “The reason that I could not become a professional chess player, he says. “Is that it didn't feel productive enough somehow.”

The first version ('incredible collective mental effort'), presumably written by Hassabis himself, is kinder to chess players than the second version ('brilliant minds competing to win a zero-sum game') by a professional writer. The sentiment that professional chess is somehow a waste of talent is often expressed by people who don't play or like the game.

Would Demis Hassabis have been more useful to society as a professional chess player? Certainly not. Would Bobby Fischer have been more useful as something other than a chess professional? Probably not. Garry Kasparov? He is the rare player who has also excelled in a field other than chess after retiring. Magnus Carlsen? It's too early to say.

The discussion invariably comes around to the chess-in-school programs. Is their purpose to expand the ranks of professional players? To expand the pool of keen chess fans? To accelerate the development of young, bright minds? Maybe all of the above -or- maybe something else. I have the questions, not the answers.

May 1969 'On the Cover'

If this month's 'On the Cover' looks vaguely familiar, it might be because we've already seen the Chess Life side on this blog in Early U.S. High School Championships (May 2017). I'll come back to that post after I present both covers from 50 years ago.

Left: 'John Watson - Winner of the 1st National High School Championship'
Right: 'Chess Sets'

Chess Life

The CL cover promised 'Details next month', so let's skip ahead to the June 1969 Chess Life.

With 370 players from 21 states, D.C., and Puerto Rico, the National High School Championship made a spectacularly successful debut at the McAlpin Hotel in New York April 11-13. Entrants came from as far as Hawaii and all eight USCF regions were represented. The Individual Champion, with a 7 1/2 - 1/2 score, was John Watson, a senior at Brownell-Talbot High School, Omaha, Nebraska; while the team title, determined by combining the scores of each school's four best scorers, went to the "Gompers" team of Chicago, Ill., all of whose members attend Lane Technical High School.

Getting back to that 2017 post on 'Early U.S. High School Championships', I wrote of the five first winners, 'Along with [Larry] Christiansen, John Watson is well known in the current chess scene, primarily as an author.' Indeed, we've seen him several times on this blog in discussions of books. The most extensive writeup was probably Notes on Material Imbalances (January 2013), where I mentioned, '"Secrets Of Modern Chess Strategy" by John Watson (Gambit 1998), a winner of several "Book of the Year" awards'.

Chess Review

Bob Rosenwald says of our cover sets this month: "Enclosed are photos of two different chess sets I recently designed. The top is made of brass; the lower, wood turned on a lathe -- my first serious attempt in some years to design a beautiful and playable set. I feel the bottom one lends itself admirably to a production line -- perhaps in a high quality plastic." This is Bob's fourth cover appearance!

Four Rosenwald cover appearances? I found the third in April 1966 'On the Cover', where the CR blurb said, 'Robert Rosenwald, who seems to specialize in "out" art on the chessboard'. The second was April 1964 'On the Cover', where the CR blurb said, 'The new Rosenwald set (compare with one on March cover last year) [...] Set designed and executed by Robert L. Rosenwald.' Since that 'On the Cover' was only the second in a new series, Rosenwald's work from the March CR 1963 isn't available for a comparison.

CR had a habit of featuring chess pieces on its covers. The previous occurrence was July 1968 'On the Cover where the CR blurb explained that is was from a 'display of chess sets held at the Brooklyn Museum'.

Every Story Has a Beginning

What could be more natural for a series on The Sociology of Chess (November 2016) than a followup to last month's March Yahoos -- A Viral Story:-

A great story, which was picked up by most major news services, appeared twice in the same Yahoo news feed. The first appearance was a featured story at the top of the feed, captioned, 'Homeless refugee chess champion goes viral'.

This video is from Youtube's 'NBC News - Today' channel.

8-Year-Old Chess Champ And Homeless Refugee Gets Fairytale Ending | TODAY (7:11) • 'Published on Mar 19, 2019'

The description said,

At just 8-years-old, Tani [Tanitoluwa] Adewumi is a chess prodigy – and that’s just part of his remarkable story. The third-grader, who has been living in a homeless shelter with his family, plans to move to an apartment thanks to an incredible crowdfunding effort.

Also appearing in the video are 'Coach Russell' (Russell Makofsky) and 'Coach Shawn' (Shawn Martinez). Tani and his coaches are all wearing blue 'PS 116 NYC' T-shirts. For another inspirational video, see 2019 U.S. Chess Championships: Tanitoluwa "Tani" Adewumi Interview, from the Youtube channel for the Saint Louis Chess Club:-

Grandmaster Maurice Ashley interviews Tani Adewumi, the New York 3rd Grade champion, during Round 10 of the U.S. Championships. Tani has an inspirational story, from a Nigerian refugee to a 1500 rating at eight years old.

The Tani story is reminiscent of the Phiona Mutesi story, last seen on this blog in Queen of Katwe Meets Queen of IMF (April 2017). I'm confident that we haven't seen the last of either story.

March Yahoos -- A Viral Story

The drought is over. In last month's post, February Amazon Yahoos, I wrote,

For the third consecutive month, my Yahoo news feed served no chess news. [...] Maybe we'll see some mainstream coverage of chess in March, but I'm not optimistic.

I should have been more optimistic. A great story, which was picked up by most major news services, appeared twice in the same Yahoo news feed. The first appearance was a featured story at the top of the feed, captioned, 'Homeless refugee chess champion goes viral'.

2019-03-18: Homeless 8-year-old refugee wins New York State chess championship, inspiring viral fundraiser (yahoo.com). The story started,

Tanitoluwa Adewumi just said checkmate. Despite learning the game a little over a year ago, the 8-year-old boy -- homeless refugee from Nigeria -- was crowned the New York State Primary Chess Champion in the kindergarten-to-third-grade bracket of the 52nd New York State Scholastic Championships. The elementary school student, better known as "Tani," went undefeated at the championships, where he outsmarted opponents from top private schools with pricey chess tutors.

The story attracted more than 1500 comments, many of them about immigration policy in the U.S. Most of the comments were supportive of the boy's achievement, but some were downright mean.

2019-03-19

As shown in the screenshot above, the second story appeared above other, similar stories, The photo is from Tani's GoFundMe page.

2019-03-18: Homeless 8-year-old boy wins New York State chess championship (yahoo.com; AOL.com) 'The 8-year-old refugee, whose family fled northern Nigeria in 2017 in fears of Boko Haram's attacks on Christians like themselves, first learned how to play chess at Manhattan's P.S. 116.'

Tani plans to play in the USA's national elementary championship in May. His participation might mean that the tournament will attract far more than the usual media attention.

February Amazon Yahoos

For the third consecutive month, my Yahoo news feed served no chess news. Of celebrities and sports, there was plenty to choose from; of chess there was nothing. Is the problem perhaps an overall deterioration in the Yahoo news feed itself?

Maybe yes, maybe no, but Yahoo doesn't have a problem following me around the web to watch what I am doing. For the second consecutive month -- I documented the first in January Amazon Yahoos -- and lasting for several days, it served me an ad echoing what I had browsed on Amazon.

'Sponsored --$-- Amazon.com'

The three books shown are:-

• 'Better Thinking, Better Chess: How a Grandmaster Finds his Moves'; Joel Benjamin
• '300 Most Important Chess Positions'; Thomas Engqvist
• 'Chess for Life'; Matthew Sadler, Natasha Regan

Those are certainly three noteworthy books, but I only recall looking at the last one. That was while preparing the first post of last month, 'Game Changer' Interview. As for the other two books, I've heard about them, but don't remember browsing their pages on Amazon. Did I click on the Yahoo ad to look at any of the books? Of course not. Why encourage creepy web behavior?

Since I don't have any mainstream media chess stories to fill out this post, I get to select my own. I'll start with a theme I introduced in 'January Yahoos', titled 'Weird Chess News'. What's weird for me is not necessarily weird for you, and vice versa, but as long I'm writing the post, I get to pick. Both of these stories are about chess in school and both are from Texas:-

• [San Benito CISD] places chess coach on administrative leave (valleycentral.com) • 'Thousands of dollars spent on the chess club in San Benito has landed their after school program director in hot water.'
• Chess: Coach faces allegations of throwing matches, could be banned (usatoday.com) • 'A coach for an award-winning chess team from El Paso, Texas, could be banned for life following allegations he instructed players to lose games on purpose.'

If there was one single story this month that I would have liked to see get a wider audience, it was this one:-

• Magnus Carlsen On The Ancient Appeal Of Chess And The Opportunities Of A More Modern Game (forbes.com; 'Guest post written by Magnus Carlsen') • GM Carlsen ended his essay saying, 'The excitement of playing a game of chess over a physical board -- feeling the tension as your opponent sits two feet in front of you, studying your every move -- cannot be beaten. Yet nothing would make me sadder than losing the essential benefits of chess because of a righteous refusal to adapt to change.'

Other events might have interested a wider audience. Without too much thought I came up with the Gibraltar Open; the Champions Showdown and the Cairns Cup (for women), both in St.Louis; and even the Stockfish - Leela TCEC match, an engine handcrafted by humans vs. a rapidly improving AI/NN challenger. Maybe we'll see some mainstream coverage of chess in March, but I'm not optimistic.

A Year of Yahoos?

It might seem like a year of Yahoos, but the current monthly series of chess in the mainstream press, last seen in July Yahoos, started with October Yahoos (October 2017). That makes this month's August Yahoos the 11th straight month of Yahoos.

2018-08-10: 9-Year-Old Chess Prodigy Will Be Allowed To Remain In U.K. (yahoo.com). The Yahoo stub pointed to the original story from NPR.org, which started

The United Kingdom has decided to allow a 9-year-old chess prodigy to remain in the country, after his father's work visa expired and his family faced deportation back to India. Shreyas Royal is "very delighted" with the news, his father tells NPR by email. Shreyas has lived in the U.K. since he was 3 and has played chess since he was 5. Now, within his age bracket, he is the top chess player in England and one of the top 10 globally.

For the BBC version of the same story, see Shreyas Royal: Child chess prodigy's family can stay in UK (bbc.com).

2018-08-17: Kevin Love on LeBron James: ‘He’s playing chess and everyone else is playing checkers’ (yahoo.com). This second Yahoo is hardly worth mentioning -- the only mention of chess (or of checkers) is the headline -- but it gives me the opportunity to point to another old post, A:'Playing Checkers' vs. B:'Playing Chess' (October 2014).

Chess in Education and Health

FIDE has just issued a new booklet, Chess - A Tool for Education and Health (fide.com).

This new 48 page booklet is now freely available to download as a PDF from cis.fide.com. In this new edition, we hope to disseminate throughout the worldwide chess community the benefits of education, health, as well as the use of chess in different social and therapeutic areas. We hope it serves as a letter of introduction, not only for amateurs, instructors and teachers, but also for the entire community that wants to know the work that is being carried out with chess as an educational and socialization tool.

The booklet overlaps many of the topics that we've seen on this blog in this ongoing series about The Sociology of Chess (November 2016). Here are its first two pages, the cover and the table of contents:-

If that table of contents is too small to read, here's the list in a more readable format:-

2 Morals of Chess
3 Chess in Bloom
4 Thinking Skills
5 Educational Cutlery
6 Critical & Creative Thinking - Chess in the Educational Process
7 Chess as a Teaching Tool
8 Educational Benefits of Chess
10 Psychomotor Skills
11 STEM Skills
12 Cognitive Abilities
13 Life Skills & Counselling
14 Ethical Sense
15 ADHD & Autism
16 Social Benefi ts & Minorities
18 Health Bene fits
19 Beating Cognitive Decline
20 Smart Girl Uganda
21 Queen of Katwe
22 Prisons - Chess That Brings Freedom
26 Alzheimer's - Checkmating Dementia
28 Teaching Programs - 4-6 Early Years Skills
30 Teaching Programs - 7-11 Planet Chess and others
32 Teacher Training
33 FIDE School Instructor title
34 FIDE School Chess Leader diploma
35 Support for Teachers
36 European Parliament
38 European Union – Erasmus+
39 European Chess Union
40 CiS Around the World
42 Chess & Education Conferences
44 Research
46 Bibliography

Several of these topics are controversial, for example 'Alzheimer's - Checkmating Dementia', a topic I last covered in More on Chess and Alzheimer's (July 2016). The FIDE booklet says,

Research among those over the age of 60 strongly suggests that chess is valuable in combating Alzheimer's.

The phrase 'strongly suggests' is less provocative than the usual phrase 'studies show', and I imagine that FIDE is making an effort to avoid adding fuel to the controversy. Other topics in the booklet show similar circumspection. For more about these topics on this blog, follow the links for 'Chess in School' Summarized (October 2016), and FIDE's Social Commissions 2017 (November 2017).

London Chess Conference 2017

After the transition on this blog from the long series on Chess in School (Summarized; October 2016), to the current series on The Sociology of Chess (November 2016), I skipped a year featuring a video from the London Chess and Education Conference. The first three years were:-

• 'Chess in School' Is Sociable (2013),
• London Chess and Education Conference 2014, and
• London Chess Conference 2015

The video summarizing the 2017 conference is the following.

KVDC London Chess Conference 2017 Impressions (12:04) • 'Published on Dec 10, 2017'

I found a total of 12 similar videos from the same conference, all labeled 'KVDC London Chess Conference 2017':-

• Impressions
• Mads Jacobsen
• William Bart
• Jesper Hall
• Ebenezer Joseph
• Reinaldo Golmia Dante
• Brian Kisida
• Leontxo García
• Maurice Ashley
• Fernand Gobet
• Jakob Rathlev evaluation
• Sunil Weeramantry

For the conference program, which lists all speakers in order, see 2017 Programme : London Chess Conference 2017 The videos from 2016, the year I missed, can be found on the same YouTube channel (the 'KVD' portion of 'KVDC'): Karel van Delft (search?query=london).

Writing this post reminded me that I still haven't looked at all of the videos flagged in the recent post, Chess Educators of the Year (November 2017). That makes more than enough material to keep me busy during the yearend holiday season.

Chess Educators of the Year

This edition of Video Friday is in fact a series of six videos, with promises of more to follow. Since 2004, the University of Texas at Dallas has been making an annual 'Chess Educator of the Year' award. The winner in 2010 was Scottish Grandmaster Jonathan Rowson (wikipedia.org).

Chess Educator of the Year - Jonathan Rowson - 2010 (1:06:03) • 'Published on Nov 8, 2017'

For clips of other acceptance addresses from other years, see Chess Educator of the Year (utdallas.edu). Although GM Rowson's work has been mentioned several times on this blog (see, for example, Chess Psychology/Philosophy; June 2013), it was discussed more extensively on my chess960 blog in Rowson's 'Three Types of Theory' (February 2011).

Of Grass Stains and Prison Breaks

While researching any topic in old chess magazines, one thing invariably leads to another, and other topics offer frequent distractions. A case in point is yesterday's post on Early U.S. Ratings : A Summary and an Exercise, where I noted dozens of other, non-rating topics during the months that I was working on it. Here are a couple of short takes that I noted over the last week.

The first short take, from CL 1953-09-20, is a photo that illustrated the Chess Life report on the 1953 U.S. Open at Milwaukee. Who said mass interest in scholastic chess was a recent phenomenon?

The caption says,

View of the open-air Milwaukee Children's Tournament at Hawthorne Glen where 400 finalists competed for the Milwaukee Junior titles -- an event written up in Collier's and sponsored by the Milwaukee Journal and the Milwaukee Department of Recreation. • Photo: Courtesy Milwaukee Sentinel

From Wikipedia's page on Collier's:-

Collier's was an American magazine, founded in 1888 by Peter Fenelon Collier. It was initially launched as Collier's Once a Week, then changed in 1895 to Collier's Weekly: An Illustrated Journal, and finally shortened in 1905 to simply Collier's. The magazine ceased publication with the issue dated January 4, 1957, though a brief, failed attempt was made to revive the Collier's name with a new magazine in 2012.

The second short take, from CL 1954-08-05, is an atypical filler that appeared on the same page as CL's first photo of William Lombardy. It left me scratching my head.

Chess problemist William J. Couture injured his back in an abortive attempt to escape from Norfolk Prison Colony, Mass. He is now hospitalized and limited to one letter per month. This will explain his inability to continue with his numerous correspondence chess games.

I imagine that escaping from prison would also have resulted in an 'inability to continue with his numerous correspondence chess games', unless he didn't think the whole thing through. The 'MESON Chess Problem Database' has a List of problems by Couture, William J, of which five of the six problems are from other Chess Life issues of the 1950s. Another short item on Couture was in The California Chess Reporter, Vol.1 No.9 (chessdryad.com; PDF):-

William J. Couture is a well-known American problemist and correspondence player. He recently finished serving a long sentence at Rhode Island State Penitentiary, and upon being paroled was reincarcerated in Suffolk County Jail, Boston, on an old charge.

It was during Couture's imprisonment in Rhode Island that his chess talents as player and composer became manifest. He is in need of funds for attorney fees, and has asked THE REPORTER to help him. He is trying to raise $250, and promises to pay back any money lent him. Letters should be addressed to Mr. Couture at 163 West Canton Street, Boston, Massachusetts. (CCR p.189)

A striking feature of the early issues of the USCF's flagship publication, Chess Life, was the lack of balance between the two coasts of the United States. Particularly in the 1950s, the East Coast was heavily favored. Did the CCR provide sufficient counterbalance?

Chess Knives Chopping (*)

For this week's edition of Flickr Friday, I noted a handful of interesting photos, all from the same source and all lacking additional information. I'm not even sure how Flickr associated them with the search term 'chess', other than through the name of a common album: 2017 Wereldschaakdag (Global Chess). Here's a composite image showing several of the photos in the album...

Photo bottom row, center:
Taken on October 14, 2017 © Flickr user schaakbond under Creative Commons.

...The album carries a description in the Dutch language, which Google translates as...

On 14 October 2017, it was the world chess day (Global Chess). On this day, it's the goal of chopping as many knives around the world as possible. The strongest female Grandmaster allertijde [of all time], Judith Polgar, is the initiator of this action. Thousands of chessmen have already heard of her call. In the Netherlands, in the Huttonto tournament in Rotterdam, an important contribution was made by the strongest 150 youth scouts in the Netherlands. Also, a special match was organized by the Royal Dutch Chess League between Oscar Verwer and the 97-year-old Win Witvliet. Under the slogan #chessconnectsus, social media received successful attention for the world chess day.

...I suspect that the part about 'the goal of chopping as many knives around the world as possible' was mangled in translation, but the rest is clear enough. For more about the Judith Polgar initiative, see Global Chess Festival. For a previous post on this blog, taken from the Chess in School series, see Polgar Global Chess Festival, Budapest (February 2016).

(*) Another catchy phrase from the translation that I considered using as a title was 'Thousands of chessmen have heard her call'. Take your pick.

Update on FIDE's CIS

The video starts,

Our main objective is to persuade ministries of education and other educational establishments to incorporate chess, because to get chess into schools all around the world is beyond the capability of almost all national chess federations.

The arguments for chess in school are compelling and are based on Bloom's taxonomy (wikipedia.org; 'a set of three hierarchical models used to classify educational learning objectives into levels of complexity and specificity'). According to Kevin O'Connell, 'Chess is the perfect vehicle'.

"Chess should be used as an educational tool", Kevin O'Connell, Chairman of FIDE CIS Commission (4:59) • 'Role of chess in education; 88th FIDE Congress.'

Although it's been a year since I stopped following CIS regularly on this blog -- see 'Chess in School' Summarized (October 2016) for the signoff -- I haven't lost interest in the subject. For more about O'Connell, see a previous post in that series, FIDE's CIS Chairman O'Connell (January 2016). The Youtube channel that made this video available, European ChessTV, started about six months ago and has other recent clips that are worth viewing.