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CHESS

About the Ukraine matter, here is another explanation, by VOX, of why Putin invaded.  In short:

Putin believes that Ukraine is an illegitimate country that exists on land that’s historically and rightfully Russian. Zelensky’s willingness to move away from Moscow and toward the West is, in Putin’s mind, an attempt to legitimize the “false” regime in Kyiv. The existence of an anti-Russian regime in what he views as rightfully Russian territory populated by rightfully Russian people is unacceptable to him — so unacceptable that he is willing to wage a costly and bloody war over it.

I haven't been paying much attention to chess for quite a while, so with nothing better to do this sparkling (the view of Honolulu from where I sit is fabulous) Saturday morning, I will attempt to crystallize the essence of the field.  Click on this to see the world ranking:

  • #1 Magnus Carlsen of Norway is only 31 and has already been World Chess Champ for five years.  His peak rating of 2882 is the highest in history.  This has dropped to 2865.  At 15 won the Norwegian Chess Championship, and reached #1 in one of the world rankings at the age of 19, the youngest to ever do this.
  • Three of the top eight today are from the USA.

Then there is India's 16-year old chess grandmaster, Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, who beat Carlsen in an online rapid chess tournament.  Pragg became the youngest person to ever defeat him.  Carlsen did reveal that he was suffering the after-effects of COVID-19.

Said to be the greatest chess champion in history, Carlsen has admitted that he'd regularly lose to a computer.  Deep Blue, the IBM supercomputer, beat then world champ Garry Kasparov in 1985, and again in 1996.  Today there are several chess engines, with AlphaZero having a rating of more than 3000.  That you can't buy, but the next best is Stockfish, which is a free app.  AlphaZero beat Stockfish in a 100-game tournament.

How's this for gender inferiority.  There has never been a female world chess champ.  Currently, there is only one woman in the top 100, Hou Yifan of China at #89.  There is an argument, though, that this is because there are so few females playing chess, so the reason is not biological.  Yet, there are other opinions.

There are 39 female grandmasters, and only one from the USA, Irina Krush.  A check of the current status shows 1688 male grandmasters and only 37 female.

You might have watched last year the 7-episode Netflix series, The Queen's Gambit.  Anya Taylor-Joy became famous in this role.  Rotten Tomatoes reviewers gave this production a terrific 96 rating.

Nothing to do with chess, but I did say this was a sparkling morning in Honolulu.  Then a friend sent me this video of a mega tsunami inundating the city.  I have an upcoming posting on this subject.  About four years ago I wrote about a historical 1500-feet mega tsunami that struck Molokai and Lanai. 

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