The Chess Village

For the past month I've been using one post per week to explore AI Comics (*). In the previous post, Father Time and the New Year Baby (January 2024), I wrote,

After a month experimenting with this technology, it's time to carry the idea one step further. • Next: The chess village.

A 'step further' means to develop a complete story using AI Comics to illustrate the story. The story is mine; the illustrations are AI Comics. This post is the first installment.

The story starts in the Catskill mountains, in a village where almost everyone plays chess. The village square is a chess board and on an average day, when the weather is good, any number of villagers gather there to play games of chess with each other.

(*) Images: AI Comic Factory (aicomicfactory.com)

In the Style of ...

In the ongoing series dedicated to chess on eBay Top eBay Chess Items by Price (March 2010), last month's post was Fischer - Spassky Top Items (December 2023). I wrote,

My short list for this post had a dozen items, any one of which could have been featured for the post.

This month the situation was the opposite; my short list had zero items. I looked at twice the number of eBay pages that I usually do, came up empty handed, then looked at a number of related ideas and again came up empty handed. What to do? I decided to look again at the page of the most expensive items, concentrating on chess sets, which I often exclude from the short list because there are so many of them.

The item I finally chose was titled, 'RARE 1960s Giacometti STYLE Brutalist Bronze Chess Set'. It sold for US $1500.00 'Best offer accepted or Best Offer', which appeared to be close to the asking price.

Why did I choose this chess set instead of one of the other dozen in the top results? I've posted a couple of times on the brutalist style, where the first time was Brutalism in Chess (July 2011), and where I asked, 'What exactly does 'brutalist' mean?' I still don't understand the term very well. The description of the chess set pictured above said,

32 unique ultra rare chess pieces cast by hand in the brutalist Giacometti mid-century style. The King is 6.5" high; see photos. 16 pieces are a darker bronze and the other 16 are a lighter bronze look.

Rook, Seahorse, Bishop with spear, tall Queen, lofty King and bow-tied warriors -- a truly unique inspirational ensamble of chess pieces that is one of a kind in the world and will fascinate and find its new owner. Each of these chess pieces is a work of art in its own right and owes this wonderfully beautiful patina to the fact that the chessmen had been forgotten in a wine cellar for decades.

The patina does not rub off on the skin or when touched. The chess pieces are playable. I do not have the original board. I am selling the set as it is.

The board is obviously too small for the pieces. The bases of the 'Seahorse' Knights on b1 and b8 are larger than the squares on the board. As for Giacometti, his Wikipedia page, Alberto Giacometti (wikipedia.org), says,

Giacometti was one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century. His work was particularly influenced by artistic styles such as Cubism and Surrealism.

The page doesn't mention Brutalism, but other pages do. For example, 'sculpture in the Brutalist style of Giacometti'. That's almost exactly what the description of our chess pieces said.

January 1974 & 1999 'On the Cover'

A new year means turning the page to the next twelve months of 'On the Cover' posts. This year will mark the tenth anniversary of the series, which started with March 1964 'On the Cover' (March 2014). In the last post for 2023, December 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover' (December 2023), I noted,

Last month's post about U.S. chess magazines 50 and 25 years ago, November 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover' (November 2023), had an arty portrait on the right. This month's post has a different sort of art.

This month we return to an 'arty portrait on the right'. More about that after we see the January covers from 50 and 25 years ago.

Left: '?'
Right: 'de Firmian Grabs Third Title'

Chess Life & Review (50 Years Ago)

President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines (left), presenting a check and winner's trophy to Bent Larsen. The Danish grandmaster has just won the greatest chess tournament ever held in the Asian and Pacific zones. Stories and games next month.

For once, I'm not going to use the 'On the Cover' time machine to preview next month's tournament story. A new column in January 1974, titled 'The Editor's Page - News & Views' by Burt Hochberg, gave sufficient details:-

The great Philippines International Tournament, the most important chess event ever held in Asia and the Pacific area, ended November 6. The significance of the event was highlighted by the ceremonial presence of World Champion Bobby Fischer and Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos.

Bent Larsen, the tournament's highest-rated player, won it with 12 1/2 - 2 1/2, losing only to Gligoric. Yugoslavia's most promising young grandmaster, Ljubomir Ljubojevic, was second with 11 1/2, and our own Lubomir Kavalek, one of the world's most active grandmasters recently, scored 11 points to take 3rd place. Other scores: [...] Lombardy won the brilliancy prize for his win against Quinteros. The prize was $1,000! First prize in the tournament was $4,000.

That mention of Fischer and Marcos deserves further exploration, but I'm worried it might lead me down a rabbit hole from which I won't return in time to finish this current post. Maybe later...

Chess Life (25 Years Ago)

Nick de Firmian won the 1998 U.S. Championship by defeating the defending champion, Joel Benjamin, 2 1/2 - 1 1/2. We again called on portraitist Steven Seward of Cleveland, Ohio, to work his magic for our cover.

Coverage of the championship, the Women's Championship (won by Irina Krush), and the U.S. Senior Championship (won by Arthur Bisguier), will begin next month.

And there we have our connection to the arty portrait of two months ago: November 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover' (November 2023; 'Steven Seward, a portraitist from Cleveland, Ohio'). That makes three arty covers in a row and there is more to come later in 1999. The cover introduction continued with news about two World Championships.

FIDE UPDATE: De Firmian, Benjamin, and the other semi-finalists, Dmitry Gurevich and Tal Shaked, qualified to participate in the FIDE World Championship, along with Boris Gulko and Sergey Kudrin, both of whom qualified by previous performance or rating; and Alexander Ivanov, who qualified by winning the 1998 Pan American Championship, which was held in Venezuela in October. Gata Kamsky has also been invited (by rating). His participation will hinge on whether or not the finalized dates for the event interfere with his medical studies.

Alisa Galliamova-Ivanchuk forfeited her match with Jun Xie. China was awarded the bid for the match; Alisa wanted to play at least half of the match in Russia, so she didn't show up at all. Jun Xie, the former women's world champion, will now challenge the current champion, Susan Polgar.

Once again, that news 'deserves further exploration'. I'll put this month's rabbit hole on the follow-up list.

Father Time and the New Year Baby

A week ago, in Foxy Christmas Chess (December 2023), I wrote,

This year Christmas falls on a Monday, which happens to coincide with a new series last seen in Chessman Comics (December 2023).

Christmas plus one week equals New Year's Day. Once again, our AI generated comics have something to say.

'Father Time plays chess with New Year baby.'
AI Comic Factory

After a month experimenting with this technology, it's time to carry the idea one step further. • Next: The chess village.

Happy 2^3*11*23!

https://cooltext.com/

Yahoos Set a New Low

So many problems, so little time. In last month's Yahoos post, Missing Yahoos (November 2023; see the footnote below for an explanation of 'Yahoos'), I wrote,

For the first time in the Yahoo series, Google News stopped including the names of all sources in its list of top stories, identifying those sources only with an icon, often unreadable. I had to add the names of many sources manually. [...] If this continues -- which it probably will -- I'll have to abandon the monthly Yahoo post.

Once again, this time for the month of December, the text names of many news sources were missing. I decided to quantify this.

The chart on the left is similar to those seen in past posts for the Yahoos series. The difference is that it counts the number of stories by all sources, not just sources with two or more stories. The numbers in the left column total to 99, which is the number of chess stories returned by Google News this month.

Of those 99 stories, 74 lacked the text name of the source of the story. Assuming that ˜30 of the stories were from Chess.com, that leaves 44 stories requiring further research to determine the source.

At this point I might have taken a deep breath and done the research, but there was a further complication. At the top of Google's list was a group of stories wuth the group headline 'Chinese chess champion stripped of title after cheating'. Chinese chess? No, I'm not interested. I'm sure it's a great game, but it's not the object of this blog.

On top of that, the stories were as disgusting as you'll find. Sample headline: 'Chinese chess champ banned for year after pooping in bathtub; rumoured to have used anal beads'. I counted all such stories and came to 27. That's 27 stories out of 99 ready to be flushed. The Google AI news bots obviously need toilet training.

The reference to 'anal beads' takes us back to a recurring story involving Western chess. It was last seen in the Yahoo series a few months ago: This Month Features a Bottom Yahoo (September 2023).

Of the other 72 stories, some were worth exploring. I might come back to these another time, but then again, I might not.

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

Foxy Christmas Chess

Merry Christmas to one and all! Last year's Christmas post was Not the Dickens Christmas Story (December 2022). This year Christmas falls on a Monday, which happens to coincide with a new series last seen in Chessman Comics (December 2023).

'Santa Claus plays chess with foxes.'
AI Comic Factory

For more chess-playing foxes, see A Chess Christmas Carol (December 2023). We'll also be seeing our furry friends in future posts for the same series.