Instructional Videos : Nakamura

For this edition of Video Friday I chose a clip featuring GM Nakamura talking about his tiebreak games against GM Vachier-Lagrave in the 2016 Gibraltar Open. By coincidence, the American GM is up next in the series of clips featuring each of the eight players in the forthcoming Candidates Tournament -- last seen in Instructional Videos : Karjakin -- so this post serves double duty.

Hikaru Nakamura Amazingly Wins Gibraltar Masters Chess Open 2016 (20:08) • 'Post game Review and Analysis'

If you would rather see a younger Nakamura struggling with the same wooden demo board used by Karjakin and the others, see Nakamura shows his win against Vachier-Lagrave, 2011 Tata, rd.10, part 1 and part 2.

Tag Maintenance

If you want to make sure that no one reads a certain post, just put the word 'maintenance' in the title, as in Blog Maintenance (January 2015). Why write about the topic at all? Because a blog is a personal diary as well as a public forum.

Tag: Blog Carnival • First I deleted the tag for carnivals; the relevant posts are easily found via a standard search tool. I use tags to group posts that are not easily identified as belonging together and this doesn't apply to blog carnivals. On top of that, the concept has fallen out of fashion and I doubt that we will see future carnivals for chess blogs.

Tag: Downloads • Then I looked at the posts under this tag, which covers both downloads for this blog and downloads from the web. After starting to collect downloads for this blog -- PGN Downloads (February 2011; could be my most-visited post) -- I never developed the idea. The six ZIP files available today are downloaded regularly, which tells me that there is some interest in providing more of the same. I'll pursue this in another post.

ACP Survey 2016

Yesterday the Association of Chess Professionals (ACP; chessprofessionals.org) issued an ACP Grand Survey 2016.

ACP is proud to present the ACP Grand Survey 2016 - the most detailed opinion poll related to the professional chess ever released. Everybody is invited to participate, whereas the answers of the ACP members will serve us as the very important indication for our further actions.

Since 'everybody is invited to participate', I took 15 minutes to answer the ~50 questions (something like that; I didn't take notes). Many of the questions were about topics that I had never considered, so I'm not sure taking the survey a second time would produce the same responses. I was a bit disappointed that I didn't receive an email confirmation with a record of my answers, but that's life.

The survey is a good initiative and I hope the ACP receives a decent and representative response (closes on 15 March 2016).

Instructional Videos : Karjakin

Continuing with the eight players in next month's Candidates tournament, alphabetical order dictates the successor to Instructional Videos : Giri. Here we see GM Karjakin demonstrating a win against the man that each of the candidates hopes to challenge.

Tata Steel Chess 2012 - Analysis (17:13) • 'Sergey Karjakin shows his game against Carlsen round 9'

To follow the complete game, see Magnus Carlsen vs Sergey Karjakin; Tata Steel (2012) on Chessgames.com.

As Seen on 'Mad Men'

The very first post in the series on Top eBay Chess Items by Price (March 2010) featured a chess set by 'Austin Enterprises for Aluminum Company of America (i.e. Alcoa)' along with the remark 'I noticed six [auctions] for aluminum chess sets by Austin Enterprises'. A few months later I posted on the theme in the same series -- Austin and Eames (January 2011) -- and asked, 'What's with all of these auctions for Austin Enterprises chess sets?'

I finally know why.

The composite image above shows the first six auctions (there were three more) returned by an eBay search on 'chess alcoa', i.e. sets sold over the past three months. The first auction was titled 'Vintage MCM 1962 Austin Enterprises ALCOA Aluminum Chess Board Set w/ Carry Case' and sold for US $1360 after five bids. The description said,

1962 Austin Enterprises ALCOA Aluminum Chess Board Set • With Wooden Carry/Display Case, Slide-off Plexiglass Cover • Vintage, Mid-Century Modern • Very RARE to Find, especially with Original Felt Board • Highly Collectible Item for any Chess Aficionado • Very Good to Excellent Vintage Condition • No Missing or Broken Pieces • A few minor blemishes on board's felt, barely visible • Some light scratches/scuffs on plexiglass • Board = 19 1/8" squared • Carry Case = 30 3/4" long, 6" tall, 2 1/4" wide • Pieces = 3 3/4" to 5" tall • Total Wt. 14 lbs. 8 oz.

In 1962, the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA) launched a marketing program to advance the selling of their aluminum products. Since everyone was obsessed with space in 1962, ALCOA figured what better marketing strategy than to make a really incredible, "space age" chess set. Each piece is cut from a formed bar of aluminum. From the face, the black and white pieces look the same, but the uncut sides of the black pieces are anodized black

That's the most detailed description I've seen about the set, but it doesn't explain its popularity. Moving to the second auction, it was titled '1962 Austin Enterprises / Alcoa Aluminum Chess Set "As Seen on Mad Men"'.

Mystery explained: Mad Men [Wikipedia]. In which season, on which episode was the set shown?

Giant Chess Pieces in Mandalay

Just like It's All About Pattern Recognition and Petrosian's 'Dining Room', this photo was tagged by the Flickr robot, this time for 'chess'.

Taxi to Mandalay Hill © Flickr user geoff dude under Creative Commons.

As for the photographer, he tagged the photo 'Mandalay, Myanmar'. Wikipedia informs,

Mandalay is the economic hub of Upper Burma and considered the centre of Burmese culture. A continuing influx of Chinese immigrants, mostly from Yunnan, in the past twenty years, has reshaped the city's ethnic makeup and increased commerce with China. • Mandalay

You say 'Myanmar'; Wikipedia says 'Burma'; and Rudyard Kipling (author of a well known poem titled 'Mandalay') says, 'Never the twain shall meet'.

No More Yahoos?

First, Yahoo shut down its comic section -- I think it was around the beginning of the year. I used to spend about five minutes a day reading my favorites and saving the occasional comic that had something to do with chess. Over the years it amounted to several dozen saved comics, many of them having to do with politics (usually someone playing chess vs. someone playing checkers). The last non-political comic I have on file is shown below.

In the Bleachers, 22 March 2015

Then Yahoo shut down its news carrousel. I'm not even sure if 'carrousel' is the right word for the technique. The last example I used on this blog was shown in Chess Is Awesome (September 2015). While the Yahoo news page still exists, it looks like I'll be limited to the basic Yahoo attention-grabbing lead shown in Thousands of Comments (January 2016).

Then I learned that Yahoo had shut down its game section: Yahoo Games Has Passed Away at Just 17 (wired.com).

Yahoo Games, the once-hopping online game hub best known for its simulacrum of classic board and card games, is shutting down. The news was buried amidst major changes for the company: As we reported Tuesday [see link], Yahoo will lay off roughly 15 percent of the company, downsize across the board, and shutter many offerings, including its TV efforts.

Why did the company shut down the games?

Its decline was inevitable as the niche it filled moved to the mobile market, and as Yahoo itself became less central to the modern internet. Now, Yahoo Games is largely forgotten.

Many years ago I reviewed the chess area of Yahoo Games in General Game Sites (October 2003; archive.org -> chess.about.com); 'A trio of well known sites offers you 24/7 chess play plus many other games'. A few months later I compared it to its peers in Online Chess Play Sites V (January 2004; ditto); 'The fifth in a series of online play articles compares 11 sites'.

At that time I gave Yahoo chess three stars out of four, calculated that it attracted 44% of online chess players (this was a few years before the advent of Chess.com), and noted, 'Good starter site'. I received more comments about the Yahoo review than about any of the ten other online chess play sites, most of the comments disagreeing with my assessment and giving thumbs-down to Yahoo. I haven't been back to the site since the time I did that survey, but I'm still somewhat downhearted to hear of its demise. Where do mobile players go to play chess now?