From YouTube's 'Yoko Chess' channel...
Official Yoko's Chess Game Trailer (1:03) • 'Free to Download for iOS devices from the App Store...'
...You might have also heard about the game as Yoko Ono Releases Chess App With Dogs as Pieces (although this clip mentions a price). See also Yoko Chess | The Official Website for Yoko's Chess Game. • NB: This is not an endorsement! I just like dogs.
Two years ago I discussed the 2013 USCF Executive Board Election, and last year, with two candidates for two positions, the election was a non-event. This year the candidates were announced some months ago in 2015 Executive Board election candidates (uschess.org; January 2015; USCF membership required to view the original post):-
The following individuals submitted nomination petitions for the 2015 Executive Board election: Randy Bauer, Anjelina Belakovskaia, Charles D. Unruh. Regrettably, Mr. Unruh's submitted petitions fell short of the requirements of Article VI Section 4 of the USCF Bylaws. Therefore, the Election Committee announces that two candidates have qualified for the 2015 USCF Executive Board election.
All three would-be candidates made an appearance later in the thread. Two weeks into the thread, we learned,
Boyd Reed is mounting a write-in campaign. He is well respected and energetic, so he stands a real chance.
Reed made an appearance a few days later, responding to the question,
How does one run a "write-in" campaign?
He answered,
One runs a write-in campaign for the EB the same way one might run a write-in campaign for any other elected position - by contacting voters directly. Meeting people directly, emails, phone calls, Internet discussion and direct mail would be my tools of choice. It is correct that write-in candidates do not get candidate statements in Chess Life. Nor do they appear on the printed ballot. But if it gets more people energized and sufficiently interested to register and vote, the Federation benefits.
Former USCF President Bill Goichberg, a long-time chess insider, weighed in on his website with an opinion piece, The 2015 USCF Executive Board Election (checkmate.us). He recommended,
There are two Executive Board seats to be filled this year, and two candidates on the ballot, Randy Bauer and Anjelina Belakovskaia. Another candidate, Boyd Reed, is campaigning for write-in votes. • I recommend voting for Randy Bauer and writing in Boyd Reed.
As for my vote, I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other. Bauer will undoubtedly be re-elected and voters who feel strongly will choose between Belakovskaia and Reed. Since that's fine with me, I won't waste a stamp on returning the ballot.
The results will be announced next month.
On the short list for my most recent Flickr Friday post, The Travelling Chess Statue, was the photo shown below.
Chess, Lorna Simpson, 2013
© Flickr user trevor.patt under
Creative Commons.
Trick photography featuring a chess game isn't unusual -- see Photoshopped Chess (January 2014) for another example -- and having nothing else to say about the photo, I passed it by. Before signing off from blogging for the day I browsed through my recent Flickr favorites and discovered a second, similar photo: March 8, 2015, MCA, Chicago. Lorna Simpson’s three-channel video installation Chess (2012). So there was a story here and the common link was 'Lorna Simpson'. A web search showed that the photos were related to a video: Lorna Simpson (2013) on Vimeo.
Whether for still or moving picture productions, Lorna Simpson (b.1960) uses her camera as catalyst to question identity and gender, genres and history, race and class, fact and fiction, memory and meanings. Assumptions of photographic “truth” are challenged and qualified -- indeed redirected -- by the images she creates that are inseparable from the texts she writes to accompany them, by the soundings she chooses for videos, or by her pairings of vintage photographs with newly made renderings. The Jeu de Paume presents Lorna Simpson’s first large-scale exhibition in Europe beginning with her earliest photo-text pieces of the 1980s through her newest video installation, Chess, 2013, which makes its debut in Paris.
The Jeu de Paume reference leads to Lorna Simpson - Jeu de Paume (jeudepaume.org)
Lorna Simpson from 28 May 2013 until 01 September 2013 Concorde, Paris • For her first European exhibition, the Jeu de Paume presents thirty years of Lorna Simpson’s work. For this Afro-American artist, born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1960, the synthesis between image and text is profound and intimate. [...] Lorna Simpson became known in the 1980s and 90s for her photographs and films that shook up the conventions of gender, identity, culture and memory.
Old timers might remember that the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume (wikipedia.org), once housed the world's greatest collection of impressionist works, a collection that moved in the 1980s to the Musée d'Orsay (ditto). Now it is an 'arts center for modern and postmodern photography and media' and undoubtedly a prestigious place for an artist to exhibit.
Getting back to Lorna Simpson's work, I wonder how she created the film. That investigation will have to wait for another time.
When it comes to chess history, it takes some discipline to stay on topic. A simple exercise like Searching for Fritz invaribly leads to other subjects, which lead to others, and before you know it, there's no more time left for the original topic. I try to keep this under control by making a note on the side-topic, then coming back to it when I'm done with the first.
Fritz led to many topics which are worthy of a post, but right now I'm going to concentrate on two: the Aegon tournaments and rating lists. What was Aegon? The page Aegon Tournaments [chessprogramming.wikispaces.com] explains,
The Aegon Man-Machine Tournaments, were initiated and organized by members of the CSVN, Cock de Gorter et al., and hosted by the Aegon insurance company in The Hague, the Netherlands. An equal number of human players and computer chess programs were playing six (1986 seven, 1989 five) rounds of a swiss system, with the constraint of man playing machines only. The Aegon tournament started almost with local chess players and anti-computer chess specialists. Later more and more International Masters and Grandmasters were invited, with increasing costs for the sponsor. Apparently due to the 1997 Kasparov versus Deep Blue match, the 1997 Tournament was the last edition.
A related table lists 12 events played from 1986 to 1997. Here is a sample of the many posts from the rec.games.chess (rgc) newsgroups:-
The concept of rating lists doesn't require much of an introduction. I started by looking for references to the SSDF [chessprogramming... again] list where,
The SSDF - Svenska schackdatorföreningen, the Swedish Chess Computer Association, is an organization that tests computer chess software by playing chess programs against one another and producing a rating list.
Some early rgc references:-
That first link starts with a discussion of Computer Chess Reports [chessprogramming...], which largely predates rgc:-
An American computer chess periodical published quarterly from 1985 until 1996 by Computer Chess Digest Incorporated associated with ICD Corporation, as successor of the annual Computer Chess Digest, released in 1983 and 1984. Computer Chess Digest was primary edited by Enrique Irazoqui, CCR by Robert Sostack and from 1987 by Larry Kaufman.
From all of the above I noted other topics worthy of a future post. Twenty years ago people still had a fighting chance against a chess playing machine, but that would soon change.
I ended my previous post, Chess Curriculum Inventory, saying,
That makes four posts, seven resources, eight documents. What chess wisdom do the documents contain? I'll look at that in my next post.
Two of those eight documents stand out because of their brevity:-
No.3: Think Like A King - A Curriculum Guide for Scholastic Chess • David MacEnulty • 21 pages • school chess curriculum guide.pdf
No.4: CURRICULUM FOR BEGINNERS AND INTERMEDIATES, Highland Park Scholastic Chess • Jerry Neugarten • 36 pages • HighlandParkCurriculum.pdf
Is it possible to teach chess with so little guidance? Let's look at what the two contain. The 'Think Like A King' curriculum, copyright 1998, starts,
About the Author • Six years ago David MacEnulty became the first full-time New York City public school teacher to teach chess as an academic subject. Working in a large elementary school in the South Bronx, his team has won first place trophies at the New York City Scholastic Chess Tournament for four consecutive years, and is one of the top five elementary chess teams in the nation. From 1994 to 1997, his students won more than 500 individual and team trophies.
The table of contents lists 12 chapters, called 'phases'.
A: Beginning Curriculum
01 Pre-Chess Skills
02 Basic Moves & Rules
03 The King
04 Special Moves
05 The Value of Pieces
06 Beginning Tactics
07 Opening Principles
B: Advanced Curriculum
08 Strategic Thinking - Getting Beyond the Basics
09 Creating Opportunities
10 More Checkmates
11 Endgame Strategies
12 Specific Openings
How is it possible to cover all of this in a few pages? It turns out that the document is marketing material for related software. Another section of the document, titled 'Basic Equipment & Teaching Materials', informs,
Food for Thought Software’s Think Like a King™ School Chess Software System was designed specifically for schools, to provide the necessary Educational, Motivational and Management tools for a successful chess program.
If I had realized that at the beginning of my survey, I might not have included the document on my short list. But there it is and I'll leave any further investigation for another time. The Highland Park curriculum, dated 2010, starts,
This curriculum dates to 1995, when I began teaching chess. It began as a list of topics to be taught in a sequence that I thought made sense. Over the years I fleshed it out and added new sections. This year Phillip Yontez, one of our coaches, gave it a careful edit, added some additional sections and improved the diagrams. We have tried to keep it as short as possible while still covering the basics. Combined with game reviews, it contains enough material for approximately fifty 45-minute lessons aimed at grades K-8, sufficient to fill a school year for a club meeting twice a week. - Jerry Neugarten
The table of contents lists five chapters.
The rules of the game and a few basics (5 pages)
Basic strategy (5)
Basic tactics (11)
The endgame (10)
Playing in tournaments (3)
Once again, 34 pages are not enough to cover chess in any depth, and we quickly see that the document is a list of topics to be covered in a certain order. The two longest chapters consist mainly of diagrams giving examples in basic tactics and endgames. This is obviously not a standalone document, but is more of an outline to be supplemented by other material. It assumes that the instructor is already fairly knowledgeable about how to play chess.
While reviewing the two documents, one curiosity caught my attention. Food for Thought Software, the company behind MacEnulty's 'Think Like A King', is listed with a PO box in Highland Park IL. Is there a connection with Neugarten's Highland Park Scholastic Chess or is this just a coincidence?
The first time we saw this statue of Jan Karski playing chess, Chess and the Polish Underground, it was located in Washington, DC. Here it is located in New York, NY.
Chess in front of the Polish Consulate
© Flickr user Nano Anderson under
Creative Commons.
Maybe the statues are twins.
What? No cover for Chess Life? Like the April 1965 'On the Cover', the cover of CL looks more like the first page of a newspaper. Including front and back covers, the issue had only 20 pages, of which three and a half were 'How the Chess Openings Got Their Names' by John W. Collins.
Left: 'Tal, Larsen Win'
Right: 'Fischer Returns'
Chess Life
Only three of the original eight challengers are still in the running for a match with World Champion Tigran Petrosian. Ex-champion Mikhail Tal and Danish grandmaster Bent Larsen have won their quarter-final matches and will soon play one another to determine which of them will advance to the final match of the Candidates' series -- against Boris Spassky.
Chess Review
Robert J. Fischer played 21 United Nations Chess Club members and 5 other experts in a simultaneous in June at the U.N. [...] On the cover, Fischer is interviewed by Joan Parr of CBS-TV.
'The Unknown Bobby Fischer' by IM John Donaldson & IM Eric Tangborn (International Chess Enterprises, 1999) has more about the U.N. event.
Simul at the United Nations, 1965 One of Bobby's more unusual exhibitions was held at the Church Center of the United Nations on May 21, 1965. Results for the event are contradictory. Chess Review has Bobby facing 26 players with a score of 23 wins plus losses to Vladimir Vakula of the USSR and club secretary Luis Loayza of Peru and a draw with Evgeny Zhukov of the USSR. Chess Life and Zhukov have it +18=1-2. Neither of these may be right, as the two games from the event which have surfaced are both draws! It doesn't make things any clearer to know that Chess Life gives Ivan Grischenko, not Vakula, as a winner.
The event was sponsored by games manufacturer TAG, Inc., and its newly designed Manchurian chess tables and chessmen were used. From the look of the photo published on page 196 of the July 1965 issue of Chess Review, Bobby must have finished the exhibition with an aching back: the tables were less than two feet off the ground! His eyes might also have been sore -- the Manchurian pieces were definitely not based on the Staunton design.
Re 'Fischer Returns', had he left?
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