Cheers for Chess

The Video Friday picks on this blog are always chosen from new Youtube clips uploaded during the two weeks preceding the post, but this time I'm making an exception. This is a film I've always wanted to see and I missed it when it first became available.

Knights of the South Bronx (1:29:08) • '2005 TV film : Inspiring Chess Movie for Kids; Published on May 23, 2013'

For more about the story, see:-

• Knights of the South Bronx (TV Movie 2005) - IMDb
• Knights of the South Bronx - Wikipedia

IMDb: 'On the chessboard it doesn't matter how much money you have or what clothes you wear or where you come from; it's only the moves you make.' • Wikipedia: 'Ted Danson received a nomination for a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a TV Movie or Miniseries.'

No Lobrow Category?

You mean there's no such thing as lowbrow? So says From Lowbrow to Nobrow (wikipedia.org):-

A book on literary culture written by Peter Swirski, professor of American literature and culture at the University of Missouri, St. Louis [...] Having gone through several printings, the book is by now a staple in American popular culture studies. It furnishes a series of analyses of the relation of popular fiction to high literary culture. In his work, Swirski challenges the highbrow vs lowbrow categorization of literary culture, and popular culture in general by focusing attention on what he terms the nobrow taste culture, whereby "authors simultaneously target both extremes of the literary spectrum".

What about these images?

Google image search on 'chess lowbrow'

The image in the bottom row, third from the left, is from Graffiti Pieces (May 2014) on this blog. The 'lowbrow' keyword is from How to Hold Chess Pieces (ditto; in fact, it's a video). It's just another example of Google applying a keyword to the wrong image; it happens all the time.

I wanted to make a new 'lowbrow' category for blog posts, but it looks like I'll have to settle for a 'nobrow' category instead. I can always change to 'lowbrow' later.

FIDE's Anti-Cheating Commission 2016

What's happened in the year since I last reported on the FIDE Anti-Cheating Guidelines (December 2015)? Continuing with Spectating the 87th FIDE Congress, let's look at the minutes:-

Annex 80 - Anti-Cheating Committee; MINUTES OF THE ACC CONGRESS MEETING - BAKU, 7 September 2016

1. Chairman’s report [Israel Gelfer] • 'anti-cheating rules for the 42nd Olympiad were [Baku 2016] not drafted by the ACC but rather by the people who are involved in the organization of the Olympiad'

2. ARB-ACC online seminar • 'almost 120 arbiters attended the webinars live (and many more offline)'

3. Finalized cases: Nigalidze, Sandu, Ricciardi, Tetimov, Valles

4. Becoming a Commission, a report from Constitutional Chairman Rivello

5. PGN screening tool development • 'no progress has been made in the implementation of the all-important web-based PGN screening tool'

6. ACC site development • 'in dire need of an efficient web-based front-office / back-office tool for everyday operation and for communicating with the public.'

For more about that first bullet, see Anti-Cheating Procedures for 42nd World Chess Olympiad (August 2016; fide.com). A few days after the committee meeting, how did the General Assembly react? From the minutes:-

5.18. Anti-Cheating Committee.

Mr. Makropoulos said he would not like to confuse guidelines with the regulations. There is a need to discuss how to solve this issue. Mr. Gelfer agreed that they will discuss how to use the guidelines when needed. About the report he said that there is one remark at the end stating that the budget is not sufficient for their work. This is not a complaint for the Treasurer, it is just describing the situation.

The General Assembly noted the change of Anti-Cheating Committee to Anti-Cheating Commission with Mr. Gelfer as a Chairman.

And that was that. After the rapid progress in previous years, has the group become bogged down in bureaucracy? For more about its members, see Anti-Cheating Commission (ACC; fide.com).

Engines, (Google), Korchnoi

It's time for a transition. For the last six weeks of Mondays, I've been following the 'TCEC Season 9 Superfinal':-

• 2016-11-14: Underway
• 2016-11-21: Week 2
• 2016-11-28: Week 3
• 2016-12-05: Week 4
• 2016-12-12: Followup • Tablebase Q:2B
• 2016-12-19: Openings • Busted(?) openings

What's next? Before returning to Korchnoi's Events (November 2016), I have to tackle a chore.

***

For the last few months Google has been bugging me to add 'Matched Content' to my m-w.com site. See, for example, Matched content: designed to engage your users and increase visitor duration (adsense.googleblog.com). I followed the instructions in About the Matched content feature (support.google.com; AdSense Help), and added a trial to my most popular page, How to Set Up a Chess Board. The result is shown below, where the matched content appears after the page's text and consists of links to eight similar pages on the site.

My first impression is that its appearance is not well coordinated with the rest of the page, so I'll come back to it later for a second look. I should also determine why the subtitles are inconsistent and fix that if possible.

Christmas Watch

So to speak. It's more like a chess watch -- as in a post from a few months ago, Skeleton, Marriage, Chess Watch (October 2016) -- but when the fortnightly Top eBay Chess Items by Price falls on Christmas, we make do. Last year we had Felican Kristnaskon! (December 2015), and this year we have the item pictured to the left.

Titled 'GV2 by Gevril Men's 9500 Scacchi Automatic Leather Chess Design Dial Date Watch', the watch was offered for US $2195 ('3 available / 1 sold'). The Gevril Group home page tells us, 'Luxury, Swiss and Fashion Watches and Watch Brands'. The item's eBay description added,

Quality and fun combine with this playfully designed exquisite Gevril men's watch. Encased in stainless steel, its chess designed dial is sure to bring a smile to your face, with its chess pawn indices and king shaped crown.

Featuring the convenience of a date window, second hand and minute track, the accuracy and convenience of this timepiece are unbeatable. Soft genuine black leather straps with an alligator pattern comfortably close with a tang buckle for safe and secure all day wear. Powered by Technosablier Swiss Automatic movement and water resistant to 50 meters, it is an ideal addition to any timepiece collection.

Have a Merry Christmas and please drive safely!

Dressing Up or Dressing Down?

So you thought 'chess dressing', as seen in FIDE's Journalist Commission 2016, wasn't serious? The laugh's on you!

Bradford Chesstival © Flickr user John Seb Barber under Creative Commons.

For the 2013 event, see Bradford Chesstival in the Park (yorkshirechess.org). The photo above is from the 2014 event. As far as I can tell, that was the last year the Bradford Chesstival was held.

Alekhine 1921

Let's take a short break from Spectating the 87th FIDE Congress, and go back to one of the last posts before the Carlsen - Karjakin match started. For some reason, Alekhine 1914-1920 (November 2016), received about ten times the number of views that my posts usually get.

After writing that post, I remembered that I had already touched on the subject more then seven years ago, in Alekhine's Record in Russia (July 2009) and Alekhine Leaves Russia (ditto). In that last post, I wrote,

Kasparov, in My Great Predecessors I, noted that Alekhine received permission to leave Russia at the same time that Capablanca was playing Lasker in their 1921 World Championship match. In his book Alexander Alekhine, Kotov noted that Capablanca's victory over Lasker, combined with Alekhine's first place finishes, also in 1921, at Triberg, Budapest, and The Hague marked the Russian as Capablanca's main challenger.

The following photo is from the tournament book isssued for the 1921 Hague event (Kagan, Berlin 1921?).

Chessgames.com's page on the event, 1921 The Hague, includes a crosstable (1st Alekhine, 2nd Tartakower, 3rd Rubinstein) and says,

In October of 1921, ten chess players of strength ranging from master to amateur met at The Hague (Netherlands) to particpate in a round robin tournament. Among the participants were veterans like Jacques Mieses and Georg Marco, and established masters like Alexander Alekhine, Akiba Rubinstein, and Savielly Tartakower. Max Euwe, an amateur, participated by virtue of having become the new Dutch champion earlier in the year.

October 1921 dates the photo to about six months after Alekhine left Russia. What struck me most was how gaunt he looked. Instead of a young man aged 28-29 years, we see a middle-aged man aged 50-55 years. The war years and the aftermath of the Russian revolution had evidently taken a toll on his health.