SPRAGGETT ON CHESS
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Just a short note to my readers that blogger has had maintenance problems this week and that everything since Wednesday has been temporarily ”erased”.
Hopefully this weekend this problem will be solved!
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University cancels popular sex-ed class; professor’s future in doubt
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PROFESSOR BEING INVESTIGATED
Best ever college sex ed class canceled after sex toy demonstration with naked lady
“Sticks and stones may break your bones, but watching naked people on stage doing pleasurable things will never hurt you.”–Prof Bailey
Northwestern University has canceled the rest of Prof. John Michael Bailey’s popular Human Sexuality course and placed the teacher under investigation following a scandal over an after-class, optional sex toy demonstration in February. The toy involved was an “adult power tool” called a FUCKSAW and was demonstrated with a live naked lady and her boyfriend, neither of whom were students at the college.
Bailey’s course will not be offered during the next academic year, said Northwestern U spokesman Al Cubbage on Monday. Bailey has also apologized.
A fucksaw; a perfect X-mas gift for the liberated couple
More than 100 Northwestern students watched as a naked woman was penetrated by a sex toy wielded by her boyfriend during an after-class session of the school’s popular “Human Sexuality” class. The demo was an optional feature of the class.
More than 600 students take the class, which the course description says “will treat human sexuality as a subject for scientific inquiry.”The woman involved in the demonstration was not a student, according to the Daily Northwestern, NU’s student newspaper.
Faith did the live sex demonstration
“Her boyfriend did the penetration on her,” said Ken Melvoin-Berg, who narrated what was happening for the class. He operates the Weird Chicago Red Light District Sex Tour
“It is probably something I will remember the rest of my life,” said senior Justin Smith, 21, one of the students who stuck around voluntarily after class when students were told about what they were about to see. “I can’t say that about my Econ 202 class and the material that I learned there,” Smith told The Chicago Tribune.
From the professor’s website:
”My book, The Man Who Would Be Queen, is about male femininity. You will get a good idea of the specific ideas it addresses if you read the preface .
My Book has provoked a firestorm of controversy among some (but by no means all) transsexuals, who dislike the third section of the book, about male-to-female transsexualism. You can buy my book from the publisher or from Amazon. (Note that the negative reviews reflect the controversy I have alluded to.)”
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Libya’s chess game
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Libya’s chess game
Has everyone glommed onto stalemate to describe the fight against Qaddafi because quagmire is already taken?
By Ruth Walker
May 9, 2011
The late management guru Peter Drucker used to advise hiring managers that, whenever consensus formed too quickly or too solidly around a particular job candidate, they should revisit their settled ideas about what the job really is and who should fill it.
I find myself remembering this counsel with regard to an open position that needs to be filled, not by a person, but by a word.
The word is stalemate. It’s striking that so many people are using it to describe the situation in Libya. My Drucker-influenced impulse is to ask, “Are we sure about this?”
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, observed the other week that Libya is “moving towards stalemate.” About the same time, Sen. John McCain (R) of Arizona spoke of a “significant degree of stalemate” in Libya. (That sounds like “a little bit pregnant.”) And earlier, President Obama said, “You now have a stalemate on the ground militarily,” although he added that Muammar Qaddafi “is still getting squeezed in all kinds of other ways.”
Mr. Obama may be practicing a little “inoculation” here. By calling the situation in Libya a stalemate, he minimizes the chances of his opponents’ being able to use the term to attack him over the issue.
Stalemate is a term from chess, arguably an early “war game.” Chess came into English in the 13th century from the Old French esches, chessmen, plural of eschec, which referred to the game, the chessboard, or checkmate, “the move that wins the game by checking the opponent’s king so that it cannot be protected,” as Webster’s New World College Dictionary, Fourth Edition, puts it.
Checkmate comes from an Old French expression, eschec mat, from the Persian shah mat, “the king died” – a reference to one of the game’s two main pieces. Another idea, though, cited by the Barnhart Etymological Dictionary, is that someone confused words for “to die” with those for “to be astonished,” and that shah mat is really Persian for “the king is left helpless,” or “the king is stumped.”
Be that as it may, checkmate still carries a secondary meaning of “total defeat.” No wonder another chess term, stalemate, meaning a standoff or impasse, seems more attractive. It certainly beats “quagmire.” Stalemate suggests pursed-lip frustration, not fists banged on tables.
The stale of stalemate is not quite the stale of days-old bread – but it’s not completely unrelated either. Stale, from a root meaning “to stand,” referred originally to ale or wine that had “stood” long enough to settle – free of lees or dregs. Later stale referred to bread that had “stood” a while: not a good thing. The stale of stalemate probably comes from an Anglo-French word estale, meaning “standstill.”
Webster’s New World defines the chess meaning of stalemate as “any situation in which it is impossible for one of the players to move without placing his or her king in check: it results in a draw.”
The Online Etymology Dictionary, however, includes this passage, which cites the Oxford English Dictionary: “A misnomer, since a stale is not a mate. ‘In England from the 17th c. to the beginning of the 19th c. the player who received stalemate won the game’ [OED].”
If the Libyan rebels can pull victory out of the present situation, it won’t be just the “king” – Qaddafi – who would be astonished; it would be all of us.
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A poem for Bobby Fischer
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“When the Pawn hits the conflicts he thinks like a King;What he knows throws the blows when he goes to the fight and he’ll win the whole thing ‘fore he enters the ring.
There’s no body to batter when your mind is your might; So when you go solo, you hold your own hand and remember that depth is the greatest of heights and if you know where you stand, then you know where to land and if you fall it won’t matter, cuz you’ll know that you’re right.”
— Fiona Apple (singer-songwriter; born 1977)
Blast from the past….
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George Harrison and Patty
Sofia Loren. Any photo of her is a work of art worth staring at…
MM. Nice package
Rachel Welch. Almost XXX-rated…
Bridget Bardot. A view from below…nice lips
Jane Mansfield. Long legs and much,much more.
Anti-Viet Nam war propaganda
Alberto Vargas sketches Irish McCalla late 1940’s. Alberto often slept with his models..but can you blame him? Vargas was world famous for his girlie posters….he died in 1982.
Liza Minelli when she was young, thin and so, so sexy
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Steve McQueen. Died of cancer in his early 50’s…
Ronald Reagan. Profession: actor. Hobbies: president of the USA
Salvador Allende on September 11,1973. The last known photo of him and his body guards…he was dead 15 minutes later….they say he committed suicide. Does this look like a man who is afraid? The Nixon administration was behind the coup that got rid of the democratically elected government of Chile. Kissinger might still be tried for war crimes, as he masterminded the entire operation thru the CIA. Soon after this coup, tens of thousands of Chilean intellectuals fled Chile, some went to Canada. Carlos Jauregui was one of them, a very strong master who once defeated Bobby Fischer. Carlos played in a number of Canadian championships
Bob Dylan and Suze Rotolo. Early ’60s. Where has the time gone?
Douglas Kirkland photographing Marilyn Monroe
Marlon Brando as a young artist. He became corrupted by money and fame…he died fat, ugly, rich and very sad.
Self defence for women.
James Joyce and his muse Nora Barnacle; while in self-imposed exile. They never returned to Dublin
I like this photo. A cigarette, a drink and some fun with the camera…
The Clintons as a young couple. They lived the dream…
Eddie Mercury. When he died he left his considerable fortune to this cat (something like 45 million pounds). Rich Cat!
Spielberg joking around with Jaws….1974
The greatest!
Candidates Matches (1st phase completed)
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They first leg of the matches began last Wednesday and this afternoon all of the i’s were dotted and t’s crossed as the playoffs were held. Going thru to the 2nd phase are Kamsky, Gelfand, Grischuk and Kramnik. Eliminated were Topalov, Mamedyarov, Aronian and Radjabov. Here is the match schedule:
A video of the final games of today’s playoffs can be seen at this link: http://video.russiachess.org/view/275
My readers will recall that I had picked Topalov, Grischuk, Gelfand and Kramnik to go thru to the 2nd phase of this year’s candidates matches. So 3 out of 4 is not perfect, but it is still pretty damn good! Kramnik now will play with Grischuk and Gelfand will play with Kamsky.
Today’s playoffs between Radjabov and Kramnik (left) and Grischuk and Aronian (right)
I picked Topalov as favourite over the American champion. But as Artur Yussupov said in an interview before the matches began, predicting winners in 4-game matches is more roulette than chess! Topalov was better prepared than his opponent and came out of the openings (with White) with better chances. In his 1st White he simply screwed up the move order and went immediately downhill. The experts thought that had Topalov played the right move order then he had excellent winning chances. In his 2nd White he was always better but did not take advantage of the opportunities that came his way: at one point Kamsky even blundered in 1-move but Topalov allowed him to escape!
And that is all folks….
So congrats to Kamsky! As for Topalov, there werre a number of other factors that might have played significant roles in his loss: he was recently married and was not as focused (dedicated) on the game as he normally is. And perhaps Topalov was thinking too much about a re-match with Anand and taking it for granted that he would defeat the American.
Though he is out of this tournament, this is not the last we will hear from the Bulgarian superstar.
Aronian and Grischuk produced some pretty poor chess in the regular-time games! With White Grischuk did not even try to win, having 2 colourless draws. With Black he threw away a good position in the 1st game and was very lucky not to have lost (Aronian missed several forced wins). And the second game also required some careful play.
The playoffs today saw Grischuk emerge as the overall winner, somewhat of a surprise as Aronian is considered by many to be a better rapid and blitz player than Grischuk.
Call it luck or what ever you want, Aronian no doubt must be hurting right now, especially since the chess press wrote that he was a really big favourite not just to win against the Russian but also to win the overall Candidates cycle.
Will the next world chess champion also be a champion poker player?
As for my view of Grischuk, I had hoped that he would win. I think that Grischuk is the most under-rated player in the world at present. He has been having a personal crisis in recent times and his results have been lack lustre…however, I now declare that Grischuk is the favourite to win the Candidates cycle and become the official challenger for Anand’s world title sometime next year. (However, I am unwilling to bet any money on this!)
Kramnik and Radjabov played very correct and very boring chess in the 4 regulation time games. Neither side took any risks and as a result they had few–if any–chances to win. Today’s playoffs saw a mixed bag of results and there was some controversy in one of the games when the clock malfunctioned! I am awaiting clarification on what exactly happened, but in the end Kramnik qualified by a thread.
This match turned out to be much easier for Gelfand than I had predicted (I thought it would be a boring match decided eventually by the playoffs). Mamedyarov took too many chances with his 2nd White game and allowed Gelfand to show what an amazing tactician he is able to be when provoked. In the 4th game all Gelfand needed was a draw, and he accepted it when he was a pawn up and had every prospect to win. All in all, an easy week for the Israeli superstar.
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So the next elimination phase begins on the 12th. Kramnik vs Grischuk and Gelfand vs Kamsky. While I think that Grischuk is the favourite, Kramnik is a very tough opponent for him. I expect Kramnik to take more chances than he did against Radjabov. And I am hoping that the match will be decided in the regular time games than in the playoffs…it seems to me that if chess is to become more popular, we have to move away from casino-style rules and regulations.
And I pick Gelfand as winner over Kamsky. Not only is Gelfand a better opening theoretician than Kamsky (who isn’t at the top?) but Gelfand is not the type of player who lets go unpunished some of the ‘bullshit-style’ positions that Kamsky likes to swim in. By this I mean that Kamsky often tries to imitate the great Lasker by playing 2nd best moves and is willing to go into inferior positions too willingly….but Kamsky is no Lasker, in my opinion. What worked for Lasker probably only is good for Lasker!
However, it will be a tense match. Gelfand 3 vs Kamsky 1
SPRAGGETT ON CHESS
Intuition
SPRAGGETT ON CHESS
“Don’t think; feel. It’s like a finger pointing away to the moon. Don’t concentrate on the finger, or you will miss all the heavenly glory.” Bruce Lee in Enter The Dragon (1974)
Wear some chess!
SPRAGGETT ON CHESS
ENDGAME T-SHIRTS!
”Hi Kevin,
Loyal reader, John O’Brien here. I also own the indie chess clothing company, Endgame. We just released 2 new designs and thought this is something your readers may enjoy hearing about.
Being a chess player most of my life and growing up on Southern California, I needed some chess t-shirts…but there simply were none worthy of being worn. So I started making them myself. This was also a way for me to promote our game…since there was no way I was ever going to make a contribution over the board
I first played around with the shirts in 2001, but got serious about them in 2008. They are now worn by players and patzers all over the world…including Nakamura, Carlsen, Hess, Shankland, as well as your Canadian hopefuls Eric Hansen and Raja Panjwani.
Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura wearing “Pieces Fall.” Nakamura is currently ranked number 1 in the United States, ranked in the world’s top 10 and one of the greatest blitz chess players the world has ever known!
”Pieces Fall”
I have attached pics of the latest 2 designs and would love for you to consider writing a post on your blog. Further, your readers can receive a 15% discount by using the coupon code CARNIVAL during the month of May.
The 2 new designs are called The Turk and Fool’s Mate.
1. The Turk was one of the greatest hoaxes of all time. Built in 1770, the Chess Playing Automaton, nicknamed The Turk, was said to be a machine that could best any man at chess. While in fact, The Turk was an elaborate mechanical illusion that swindled people on both sides of the Atlantic for nearly 100 years before being destroyed in a warehouse fire in 1854. The Turk’s victims included both Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin. Edgar Allen Poe even tried to debunk the machine, but was wrong with several of his assertions.
2. As most players know, Fool’s Mate is the shortest possible checkmate in the game of chess.
Please let me know if you have any questions about the shirts or Endgame. Full website can be found at: http://www.endgameclothing.com/. You can also see a selected list of Endgame fans on our Who wears engame? page.
I also threw in a pic of Endgame supermodel, Jazmin, for good measure.
Hope to hear from you!
John.”
Endgame Clothing – The Original Chess Apparel
http://www.endgameclothing.com/
Jazmin
Actress Shannah Barrett
Endgame designed the Karpov 2010 election campaign t-shirt!
SPRAGGETT ON CHESS
Saturday’s humour
SPRAGGETT ON CHESS
My wife and I were sitting around the breakfast table one lazy Sunday morning. She said, “If I were to die suddenly, I want you to immediately sell all my stuff.”
“Now why would you want me to do something like that?” I asked.
“I figure that you would eventually remarry and I don’t want some other bitch using my stuff.” she replied.
I looked at her and said, “What makes you think I’d marry another bitch?”
(Thx Roots!)
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TODAY’S BIN LADEN JOKES
Obama leading the raid that killed Bin Laden
“Osama bin Laden is in the ocean. How ironic. Once again surrounded by seals.” –Jay Leno
“How about those Navy Seals. We’re getting our money’s worth there. They broke into Osama bin Laden’s compound with 12-foot walls topped by barbed wire, and fired a warning shot into his head.” –David Letterman
“By the way, ‘buried at sea’? means ‘dumped in the ocean.’ That’s what they did with him. They dumped him in the ocean. Now I won’t feel so guilty about peeing in the water anymore when I go to the beach.”? –Jimmy Kimmel
Canadian Zonal underway
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The 2011 Canadian Zonal started yesterday in Guelph, Ontario with 29 eager participants . The event is a 9 round swiss tournament that ends next Wednesday. Top seeded is GM Bator Sambuev (who is playing for the first time in a Canadian Championship). The winner of the Zonal goes on to represent Canada at the World Cup to be held later this summer in Khanty Mansiysk (Siberia).
Top seeded GM Bator Sambuev is originally from Russia. His current FIDE rating is 2513 He now plays for Canada, the details of his federation transfer are below
The time control of the Zonal is 90 minutes for the first 40 moves followed by 30 minutes for the rest of the game (plus 30-sec per move). Although the tournament does not have its own website, MonRoi is carrying the games live (http://www.monroi.com/) and seems to be doing an excellent job, despite a shaky start. Pairings, result and round by round classifications are also available at the site.
PLAYERS LIST
In recent years the CFC has designated the Canadian Championship a low-priority event and as a result the quality and strength of Canada’s premier event has dropped. Unlike most Canadian Zonals before 2002, the CFC no longer budgets or contributes anything for the tournament (in the past, up to $6,000 was allocated for each Zonal, to help cover prizes, accomodation and organizers’ expenses).
Today the CFC tries to attract organizers with the high entry fee that it charges the players and by making the players pay their own accomodation; as an extra incentive, the organizer can take a large share of the entry fee for himself. And if there is any sponsorship, the organizer usually now just pockets it (case in point was Hal Bond finding sponsorship of $25,000 for the Canadian Championship in 2007 –a non-zonal year–and the prizes were simply entry fees!)
The net result of this change of policy is that now the zonal organizers have become fat and lazy, rarely showing motivation or enthusiasm for their craft. Mediocrity reigns. This year there are no sponsors; no guaranteed prizes other than entry fees (which are based on a minimum of 30 paid-entries); no website or media-kit and neither has there been any promotion of the event to the general public. However, in the organizers’ favour, a large contingent of eager players rated below 2200 FIDE (approximately half the tournament) have been enticed to play by an IM title that zonals offer to the best player scoring 66% or higher.
Another consequence of this change of priorities, few of Canada’s elite players want to participate in the national championships anymore. As we can see from the list of Canada’s best players (FIDE-active at some time during the past 5 years), only 2 of Canada’s 10-highest FIDE-rated players have decided to play :
This writer has already expressed his disappointment at the CFC for neglecting Canada’s premier tournament, and you can see my earlier blogs on this topic. I have nothing new to add here. I wish all the players a very good tournament and may the best man win!
For those interested in more information about the Zonal, please visit the ChessTalk message board. The last time I checked, the CFC executive was bragging about its achievement in organizing a national championship at zero cost! A lively exchange between former Canadian champion Jean Hebert (defending the interests of Canada’s best players) and members of the present CFC executive might also be worth checking into.
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