Chess on Network Television

It just gets better and better. A few months ago we had Chess Broadcasting Gets Professional (February 2017). Now we add network television to the mix.

Paris Grand Chess Tour: How To Broadcast Chess On Television? (4:38) • 'The Paris Grand Chess Tour is being broadcast on French TV by Canal+. IM Malcolm Pein and IM Almira Skripchenko discuss the topic of broadcasting chess successfully on TV. '

See also Vivendi sponsors the Paris Grand Chess Tour (vivendi.com; June 2017):-

For the second year in a row, Vivendi sponsors and hosts the Paris Grand Chess Tour, the first stop of the most prestigious chess tournament with the world’s best players. The tournament will be shown live on Dailymotion from June 21 to 25, from 2pm to 6:30pm. The highlights will also be broadcast each day at 11:30pm on Canal+ Sport. The first three days (June 21-23) will be dedicated to “rapid” games (approximately 1 hour) and the two following days (June 24-25) to “Blitz” games (approximately 15 minutes).

The Canal+ Sport highlights don't seem to be available on the web, but we might eventually see an example.

Fischer: 'I'm not seeing people'

Along with the Sports Illustrated (SI) reports on the World Championship -- documented in my recent post on another blog, Spassky: 'The Dr. Zhivago of Chess' -- I discovered another 40 or so SI articles dealing with chess. The most popular of the chess sub-topics was undoubtedly Bobby Fischer. The most unusual article about the 1970s American cultural hero appeared in the mid-1980s.

Sports Illustrated, 29 July 1985

Curiously, the person pictured on the lefthand page looks more like Tobey Maguire, who played Fischer in the movie 'Pawn Sacrifice' (2015), than it looks like Fischer himself. The 1985 article started,

About six years ago, sportscaster Dick Schaap was visiting Wilt Chamberlain in Wilt's celebrated California mansion when Schaap got the idea of trying to get in touch with his old friend Bobby Fischer. Schaap had known him since the 1950s, when Fischer was a rising chess star in New York and Schaap was a young magazine reporter assigned to cover him. So Schaap called Fischer's closest friend and confidante, Claudia Mokarow of Pasadena, and asked her to tell Bobby to contact him at Chamberlain's home. Soon afterward, Bobby rang back.

"Are you really at Wilt's house?" an astonished Bobby asked. Schaap assured him he was. "I'd really like to see that house!" "Would you like to join us for dinner?" Schaap asked. "I'd like to," Bobby Fischer said, "but I'm not seeing people."

A partial list of SI's Fischer articles is given below. It doesn't include the articles on the World Championship already given in the 'Dr. Zhivago' post. Bobby would have insisted that the 1992 Fischer - Spassky Rematch was also a World Championship title match, but he is no longer with us and there is no need to humor him.

• 1961-01-23: The Genius from Brooklyn • 'The best young chess players in the world are Americans, and the best American is 17-year-old Bobby Fischer.'
• 1964-01-13: The Amazing Victory Streak of Bobby Fischer • A two-page article with nothing but game scores from the 11-0 win in the 1963-64 U.S. Championship.
• 1965-09-20: A chess expert studies the moves in the life and games of young Bobby Fischer • Frank Brady's 'Profile of a Prodigy'
• 1985-07-29: Bobby Fischer • 'While conducting a search that turned into an obsession, the author discovers a great deal about the chess genius who drifted into seclusion after winning the world title.'
• 1992-09-14: The Fischer King • 'In the surreal setting of war-torn Yugoslavia, reclusive chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer emerged to meet Boris Spassky.'
• 2008-01-18: SI Flashback: Bobby Fischer • Issue date: 29 July 1985
• 2008-01-28: Checkered Genius • 'His chess mastery is but one element of Bobby Fischer's curious legacy'

That last article starts,

When chess master Bobby Fischer died of renal failure in an Icelandic hospital last Thursday, at age 64, he left trailing in his thickly bearded wake a legacy as confusing and mixed as it was memorable and even magical.

Confusing, mixed, memorable, magical -- yes, that was Bobby Fischer.

Deep Blue 'On the Cover'

Twenty years after IBM's Deep Blue beat World Champion Garry Kasparov, people are still talking about it, not the least among them GM Kasparov in a book released last month: Deep Thinking (amazon.com; May 2017), 'Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins' by Garry Kasparov. Two earlier books by computer chess experts covered the IBM - Kasparov match and surveyed its aftermath.

Left: Feng-hsiung Hsu, 'Behind Deep Blue'
Right: Monty Newborn, 'Beyond Deep Blue'

Behind Deep Blue (amazon.com; October 2002), 'Building the Computer that Defeated the World Chess Champion' by Feng-hsiung Hsu.

Preface: This book recounts my view of the adventure to create Deep Blue, the first computer to defeat the World Chess Champion in a serious match. I started the project in 1985. Twelve years later, the adventure ended with Deep Blue setting a major milestone in human history and forever altering our view of how we would live with the computer.

Beyond Deep Blue (amazon.com; April 2011), 'Chess in the Stratosphere' by Monty Newborn.

Preface: Thirteen years have passed since IBM’s Deep Blue stunned the world by defeating the human world chess champion at that time, Garry Kasparov. The purpose of this book is to initially reconsider Deep Blue’s achievement and then to survey subsequent milestones in the world of computer chess. Following Deep Blue’s retirement, there has been a succession of better and better chess engines, that is, computing systems programmed to play chess. [...] Each of the 21 chapters in the book — except the final one — covers a milestone of some sort. [...]

Feng-hsiung Hsu has already appeared twice in this blog:-

• Scientific American's Computer Chess (January 2010)
• Deep Thought/Blue in the Early 1990s (July 2015)

Monty Newborn has appeared once:-

• Audemars Piguet & Class-parov (June 2011)

I expect we'll be seeing more of both.

Adsense Stats Year-Over-Year

A few weeks ago I started this current series of posts with an observation on my m-w.com domain, as documented in Chess Stats Year-Over-Year:-

In the past few months I've noticed a big drop in the number of daily visitors and I would like to know why.

Since it's always useful to get a confirmation of a trend from a second source, what does Google Adsense say? In the past I've noticed that the absolute numbers on my server log don't match the numbers in Adsense, but the trends should be similar, shouldn't they? Here's a chart showing Adsense stats from the first half of 2016 compared to the first half of 2017.

Although I've juggled the ad units over the 18 months covered -- as documented in the second post in this series, Site Stats and Adsense -- and although there is some noise in the 2017 portion of the chart due to the ads on my blogs, the totals are showing a definite upward trend year-over-year. That makes a downward trend on the server log and an upward trend on ad impressions.

This is not what I expected to see. How to explain this?

'Mystery Painting' on eBay

In this long running series on Top eBay Chess Items by Price, I try to avoid repeating featured items, but sometimes it can't be helped. If the painting pictured below looks familiar, it might be because it's been the basis for two previous posts:-

• Mystery Painting (December 2007)
• 'Mystery Painting' Still a Mystery (January 2017)

This latest appearance of the painting was titled 'Vintage C.W.Towin, Genre Oil Painting, French Cavalier Men Playing Chess'. It sold for US $455 after 33 bids from eight bidders.

The description said,

After a Google [image] search we found that this mid-20th century oil painting on stretched canvas is a very well executed copy of the famous painting “Chess Players” by the Belgian artist, Alex de Andreis (1880-1929). It depicts two French cavalier men in the middle of an intense chess match. The gentleman to the left is holding a clay pipe in one hand and stroking his beard as he contemplates the next move. His opponent is [sic] a glass of liquor and has a very confident look on his face.

The quality of this 24” by 20” oil painting is excellent and with the exception of some stable craquelar to a few areas, there are no problems or any restorations. The artist has signed the lower right hand corner “C.V.Towin”. This circa 1950s Oil Painting comes in its original 22 3/4" by 26 3/4" gilded frame.

Although the composition is the same as the variations shown in the 'Still a Mystery' post, the details are different. I found this latest variation in another recent auction C. V. Towin (American, 20th Century), 04.06.17, Sold: $153.40 (aspireauctions.com) along with the further explanation,

50. C. V. Towin (American, 20th Century) • 20" x 24" • Chess players. Oil on canvas, signed lower right, framed in carved and gessoed wooden frame, overall 23" x 27". • Condition: Slight craquelure surface, some losses to frame, otherwise very good. • Estimate: $250/500 • Sold with Premium: $153.40 • Closed: Apr 6, 2017

With each new post, the painting becomes less of a mystery. It was probably painted by Alex de Andreis (aka d'Andreis), variously identified as (take your pick):

British, 1880-1929; Belgian, 1871-1929; Belgian, 1871-1939; Belgian/British, 1880-1929

The painting was first copied by the Taber Prang Art Co. (not 'Tabor Prang' as my December 2007 post recorded) and later copied by other artists. The main mystery remaining now is -- where is the original painting?

Chess Emotions Run High

At the beginning of the month I wrote a post Award Winning Chess Photos, about the 2017 Photo Contest (worldpressphoto.org). The photos below are from the same contest. I've cropped out the museum label, which started,

Sports; 2nd prize stories • Michael Hanke; Czech Republic

The photographer's description of the photo explained,

This exhibition was at the BCCC [Barcelona Center of Contemporary Culture] near where we were staying, and one of the festival sites, so we spent a good two hours looking at it. [...] This series of photos from a chess tournament caught my eye. Particularly the expression on the little boy's face - it reminded me of how James gets when he's intensely involved in a game.

The little boy's face reminds me more of a primal scream and I have to wonder if he's winning or losing.

World Press Photo © Flickr user Clare Griffiths under Creative Commons.

The museum label also had a short description of each photo (there are two in the center).

A father gives his son advice in Zdice. • The moments before the start of a new round in Zdice. • Parents and trainers watch the course of a game in Slany. • Emotions run high at a tournament in Kamenice.

'Advice in Zdice'. Does that rhyme?

Sports Illustrated 'On the Cover'

On top of learning More About Thomas Emery, in that previous post I discovered that an influential American sports magazine was a source for in-depth feature articles about chess.

Here's a long article from Sports Illustrated about the first Armed Forces chess tournament.

Back to that old question, The Graffiti Wall - Is Chess a Sport? (December 2013), if SI thinks it's a sport, then the matter is settled. The magazine has even featured chess on its cover.

Left: 'U.S Chess Champion Lisa Lane'
Right: 'Bobby's Chessboard Mastery'

7 August 1961: QUEEN OF KNIGHTS AND PAWNS • 'Once tolerated as a good-looking girl who played chess, Lisa Lane is now a champion who wants the world title' • seven page article by Robert Cantwell

Lisa Lane is an ardent and optimistic girl who won the U.S. women's chess championship soon after she learned how to play chess and now expects whatever she is involved into work out as well. If Lisa hears of a tournament that may possibly be held at some time in the future she takes it for granted that she will play in it, she naturally believes that she will win, and from that it is only a logical step for her to buy a new dress in anticipation of her victory.

14 August 1972: HOW TO COOK A RUSSIAN GOOSE • 'First, catch a Russian -- and at long last Bobby Fischer apparently has, dominating Boris Spassky so completely that only a sharp reversal can keep the young American from becoming world champion' • four page article, also by Robert Cantwell

On summer evenings in Iceland the sun barely sinks below the horizon. There is a joke going around that Bobby Fischer demanded it set three hours earlier, but so far the Icelandic Chess Federation hasn't been able to arrange it. In any case, it is daylight most of the time, and the only real darkness in the land these days has been in the cavernous interior of Reykjavik's Exhibition Hall, where the World Championship Chess Match is going on, and possibly in the heart of Russia's Boris Spassky.

The last photo in the Lisa Lane piece looked familiar and I found it in an eBay post, Two American Champions (March 2016).

***

At no.2, behind Serena Williams (Tennis)...

7 March 2017: Sports Illustrated's best portraits of women athletes • 'In honor of International Women's Day, Sports Illustrated showcases portraits back through the years on our outstanding women athletes.'

...Photo by John G. Zimmerman.