Insane Chess

Put this down as a new variant. But, honestly, it looks like chess for the hipster crowd.

 

 And in case you're wondering if this guy is an Australian: he is. Here's more on Bennett Foddy.

AndroidGate

Well we've already had "Dunnygate", What would we call this, then: AndroidGate?

A row started after the Dublin schoolboy, who was said to have gone to the toilet “at least 20 times” during a game, was allegedly caught using an Android device to check his next move on a chess engine.

The teenager’s opponent, Gabriel Mirza (47), who was expelled from the tournament because of his reaction, admits he pulled the schoolboy from a toilet cubicle at the Metropole Hotel in Cork, but insists he never assaulted him.

From the Irish Times.

RIP Malcolm Tredinnick

I am just utterly, utterly shocked. One of the first people I ever knew in Australian chess, Malcolm Tredinnick, has passed away. It was at the 1996 Australian Chess Championships in Sydney that I first ran into Malcolm. He had always worn a bearded face and I actually thought that he was GM Ian Rogers (before I had met Ian, of course).

Malcolm was on Twitter. His last tweet was on 16 March. He tweeted: "Woke up late, afternoon nap and I still want to go to bed early. So tired; wasted the day."

BBC iPlayer: A Profile of Magnus Carlsen

Magnus Carlsen is getting quite a bit of publicity lately.

About a week ago The Independent dubbed him the Justin Bieber of Chess. I don't know about that. Bieber is an over-rated prick who now thinks that he's a man who can take on big boofy papparazi in a fist fight. Of course, there is nothing over-rated about Magnus.

And now this: a profile of Carlsen, available via the BBC's iPlayer.

Film: "Computer Chess"

The Sundance Film Festival in the US ended this week, but there is one "oddball" film that's continuing to attract attention and is currently doing the rounds of reviews. It is the film by Andrew Bujalski, "Computer Chess". Instead of highlighting the usual review from some film buff, I thought it more interesting to point to this instead - an article by Gordon Kindlmann, assistant professor of comp sci. at the University of Chicago, and who worked on the movie as a technical consultant and actually acted in it.

There were also philosophical questions in the air, such as whether a program was capable of creative or insightful play, and to what extent we could learn from the computer when it played a strong game. Brilliant and passionate people, with intellectual goals as well as complex emotional investments, populated all sides of these issues. Bujalski's characters live in this moment, working through the ideas and ambitions of that optimistic and fertile time.

By the way, here is Bujalski's fund raising page for the movie.

Learn Chess, Learn Some Grit

Here's another plus to encouraging chess. The game teaches life skills, grit, character. This interesting discussion isn't specifically about chess but about the broader subject of teaching "grit" to children. Hat tip to The Economist.

Anton: The "Supernova"

Blimey. I remember when his dad, international master and Sydney Uni academic Vladimir Smirnov, used to take him to Hyde Park to spar with the locals over a few rounds of lightning. He was fairly easy back then. But now, I think, not so. With a rating of 2161 (ACF), Anton Smirnov has significantly improved since the last time I saw him. And now he's a local superstar. At least to North Sydney local, Paul Glissan: "He's a Wolfgang Mozart. He's exceptional."

Chess Is Just Too Hard

It's official. The scientists have delivered their verdict. Chess is just too hard. The game is impossible to master. And if you thought of switching to poker, you can forget that, too.

Shut Up Patzer, Make A Move

Hat tip to the Nairobi Chess Club Facebook page for sharing this. A chess scene by director Stanley Kubrick from his film "The Killing". It is also a scene quite familiar to us all, I think, although less so for me in the last couple of years.

Brooklyn Castle

A doco. Looks like one to look out for.

Max Gives Up Uni for GM

It turns out that Australia's latest international master is a sort of local celeb in Manly. Here he is, again, appearing in the pages of The Manly Daily.

Dee Why's Max Illingworth aims for chess grandmaster title.

International Master Max Illingworth

It has been a long while since I did anything chess related. So long, in fact, that even the blogging platform that I use to publish this blog looks completely unfamiliar! I had to take a few moments to find my way around.

However over the last week or so I've been quite completely absorbed in chess, thanks to the Istanbul Olympiad. Rushing home after work to watch the games, re-signing up to Playchess and even reading Australia's numero uno chess forum again (same old, same old threads). It's been great.

While the 2010 edition in Khanty-Mansiysk passed over me, this year's event in Turkey had something special. Well, a few actually. The Aussie teams are filled with young debutantes. Good to see the ACF give some of these young guns a chance. And it looks to have paid off!

Max Illingworth is now an international master. I think those of us who have known this kid (I still think of him as a kid) for a long time will feel quite happy about this. Well done Max. I'm so happy about that, I thought it deserved a post. He can play with style, too. Check out his round 4 finish.

And a hat tip to ever intelligent and well-informed fellas over at Chesschat for bringing me this news.

Speaking of news, I do have a disappointment. The so-called "chess media", and we all know who they are (hint: bloody Europeans) are as dull as ever. They still apparently have not learned that there is far more to chess than who won, lost or drew; or that Kasparov is visiting. And that's if they can even be bothered to be timely with their so-called reports.

 Sayonara.

Occupy Sydney Grammar

So these two boys are getting the boot for doing what they love and what they're good at. In the spirit of the times, there's only one thing to do.

Occupy Sydney Grammar. And tweet #occupysydneygrammar.

Kevin Willathgamuwa, 8, and his brother Rowan, 9, have also been excluded from Grammar's chess team competing in the Australian Schools Teams Championships at Knox Grammar this weekend, despite missing only one day of the long competition. The boys were away from school for 10 days. In Brazil, Kevin placed 10th out of 90 boys in the under 8s, and Rowan won half his matches. The Australian grand master, Ian Rogers, who was at the competition, said Kevin was clearly the best player of his age in Australia.

Read more in the SMH.

Still Breathin'!

Still breathing over here. Thank God.

Before hauling my ass over to Japan, I was totally aware of their working habits: long hours, sometimes over 6 or 7 days a week. But since I work for a US firm I thought I'd avoid all that. Turns out, I was wrong!

It's not only the marathon feeling of everyday existence, but the sheer pace of it, too. And it is the reason why I've hardly posted at all. Everytime I think of starting a post, there's always work. Pretty damn crazy.

Surprisingly, I can actually keep up with the locals, even outlasting most of them. I didn't think I had it.

Anyway, I think perhaps an OS break should be in order. Peter Long dropped in a couple of days ago and mentioned something about the KL Open. If nothing else, I gotta try out some of that Laksa. As good as Japanese food is, it's pretty boring compared to other Asian cuisine.

Beautiful Problems

Canadian playwright Andrew Laurenson has a new play.

...follows one man’s personal journey into learning what it means to take responsibility for his life. The story is inspired by one of the most famous chess games of all time: The 1997 Man versus Machine showdown in which Garry Kasparov, thought by many to be the best chess player in history, lost a match to Deep Blue, an IBM supercomputer.

It was considered a watershed moment in technological advancement, the humiliating defeat spelling doom for mankind. But the more Laurenson thought about it, the more he realized the Kasparov match — and his own games — weren’t so much a competition against machine, but a showdown against man and beyond that, himself.

I have a problem with my work hours which is the cause of my quietness of late. And, of course, there's nothing much beautiful about it. Once I'm done, I should be back to normal schedule. I'll even post a link to what I've been working on.