The Eight and Kasparov

Of all the places to find "The Eight" - here at the India Times, in an article about cricket!

Impossible is nothing

TIMES NEWS NETWORK / Siddhartha Mishra

Every number has a story. And so with 15,000. For a cricketer still flush with the achievement of crossing that unprecedented and seemingly non-repeatable run-milestone in ODIs, that number is perhaps the worst measure imaginable for Sachin Tendulkar, blessed - yet ironically, cursed - as he is to turn everything he touches into a record-breaking statistic.

And yet, there is no escaping the eternal truth of sport. Sport is all about numbers. It is the numbers on scoreboards and clocks that define victory and defeat. When legacies are mulled over, a simplistic gauging of skill is insufficient. Eventually, in that great filing cabinet called history, it is certain numbers that symbolise achievements and heights once deemed unattainable.

Subsequent to May 6, 1954, when Roger Bannister ran the mile in 3 minutes and 59.4 seconds, thus becoming the first human to run the distance in under 4 minutes, the record was broken eight times over the next 12 years. But it was that man, that moment which defied a human limit, a psychological barrier.

A record establishes what a human being can do, what we can do. Each time a new bench-mark is established, one person's 'superhuman' achievement redefines what it means to be a human being. The instant a new record is set, that level of performance becomes the next mark on the sand. And with it grows our addiction to the thrill of seeing the word 'possible' redefined.

It is said that records are made to be broken. Possible. Most of the time.

With due respect to the human capacity for constantly-higher levels of sporting achievement, and while making allowances for changes in rules, conditions, or equipment that extend the scope for record-breaking, it would be logical to assume that every athletic activity has a limit. Unlike the cow in the nursery rhyme, man will never jump over the moon.

And indeed, certain numbers tell more than a story: they threaten to defy the test of time. 99.94, 100, 555... the numbers defining the likes of Donald Bradman, Wilt Chamberlain and Jahangir Khan tread so far into uncharted territory that even the most cynical are forced to be converts as their legend grows.

And yet. And yet... as immortal as certain achievements are, everything in sport is short-lived. Bar irony.

Cut to November 10, 1985. Rhona Petrosyan, widow of chess legend Tigran Petrosyan, told Garry Kasparov: "Garry, I am sorry for you." A stunned Kasparov who, just the previous day, had won the world title to become the youngest-ever chess champion in history at the age of 22, queried: "And what is there to feel sorry about?" Petrosyan replied: "I am sorry for you, Garry, because the best day of your life is already over." [Emphasis added]

Because, in sport, a record is never important in itself. Its significance lies in what it says about the performer - and about ourselves. And when a number, no matter how larger-than-life, does not say something about ourselves, its real story is lost in translation.

Because perfection does not end with Nadia Comaneci's 10.0 scores at the Montreal Olympics in 1976; it is only found in infinite possibilities. Infinity, of course, is not a number but a symbol.

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Darlings, the symbol this article is talking about - the symbol that means "infinity" is an "eight" laying on its side. Eight is the number of the Goddess. Eight is the number of Chess. Chess is the game of the Goddess.

A Human Chess Game

From "The Statesman.com"

BORDER PATROL
A human chess game plays out on border in South Texas
In tangled thornscrub on Rio Grande's banks, Border Patrol is vigilant, but so are the illegal crossers.

By Juan Castillo
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Saturday, June 30, 2007
HIDALGO — The Rio Grande twists and turns so severely in South Texas that it takes more than 320 miles to travel from Falcon Dam near Roma to Boca Chica Beach on the Gulf Coast — by straight shot, a distance of about 150 miles.

The river courses through snarly thickets of mesquite, huisaches, hackberry trees, cat claw, cactus and reeds.

This thornscrub jungle is the front line in the battle to stem the flow of illegal immigration in the Rio Grande Valley.

"Most of our apprehensions are here," Camilo Garcia, a Border Patrol spokesman, said of a roughly five-mile stretch along the steep riverbanks, just below the international bridges and the bustling port of entry.

To the south, about a hundred yards away, the sprawling city of Reynosa, Tamaulipas, crackles with symbiotic energy.

Those who successfully navigate the river change into dry clothes in the brush and then wait for the right time to sprint to a nearby strip shopping center, where they can blend in with the crowds.

The Border Patrol and the National Guard are vigilant, with an array of technology on their side.

At night, stadiumlike lights flood a field between the riverbank and the strip mall. In a booth high in the sky, Guard troops monitor a display screen capturing infrared images from cameras that sense body heat. On the ground, sensors record movement.

"We just try to deter them," Garcia said.

Another agent, S. De Los Rios, scours the riverbanks, looking for fresh signs that someone might be hiding.

De Los Rios says illegal crossers have scouts positioned on both the U.S. and Mexican sides and on the international bridge. They watch the Border Patrol's movements to time their crossings.

Garcia says it's not uncommon for smugglers to send two groups from points far apart, hoping that while Border Patrol agents respond to one, the other will make it safely across.

"It's like a big chess game out here," Garcia said.

Asked if agents sometimes feel outnumbered, he said: "Yeah, but what are you going to do?"

The Cherubim

I've always been fascinated by the biblical accounts of the Ark of the Covenant and the gold "Cherubim" that guarded it. It's popularly believed that the Ark, along with all the other Treasures of Solomon's Temple were taken by the Babylonians in 586 BCE when Jerusalem was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. Some of the Temple "implements" were restored to the Jews when the were sent back to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem by - I believe it was Darius - in about 537 BCE, but there was no mention of the Ark of the Covenant and/or the Cherubim being among those Temple implements.

Graham Hancock has theorized that the Ark was removed from the Temple a long time before its destruction, perhaps due to the apostasy of the Jewish kings, and that the Ark could be hidden in a church in Axum, Ethiopia. Now, Dr. Sean Kingsley has a new theory about the Cherubim that used to guard the Ark of the Covenant.

According to the Catholic Encylopedia, "the Jews at the time of Christ had completely forgotten the appearance of the Temple cherubim. Josephus (Antiq., VIII, 3) says that no one knows or even can guess what form they had." This obviously means that there were no Cherubim present in the reconstructed Temple at the time of Jesus or at the time of the Temple's destruction in 70 CE by the Romans.

The latest issue of Minerva magazine features new research by archaeologist and explorer Dr Sean Kingsley, who believes he has found evidence not only for the survival of replicas of the cherubim in Jerusalem in the Roman period, but also what they originally looked like...

According to Dr. Kingsley, in the sixth century AD the ancient historian John Malalas was sifting through the municipal archives in the city of Antioch in southern Turkey for material for his book, the Chronicle, when he chanced upon a centuries-old wrinkled report about the fate of Jerusalem's Cherubim. Malalas tells us that after pulling down a local synagogue in AD 70 and replacing it with a new theatre inscribed Ex Praeda Iudaea, 'From the Spoils of Judaea', the emperor Vespasian "built in Antioch the Great, outside the city gate, what are known as the Cherubim, for he fixed there the bronze Cherubim, which Titus his son had found fixed to the temple of Solomon. When he destroyed the temple, he removed them from there and brought them to Antioch with the Seraphim, celebrating a triumph for the victory of the Jews that had taken place during his reign."

"This was no tall story invented by John Malalas to spice up his Chronicle", confirms Dr Kingsley. "In fact, the area where the Cherubim were set up over the gates became so famous that the Temple statues lent their name to the entire city district. And there they stayed for over five hundred years. So the Life of St Simeon Stylites, who died in AD 597, describes how the saint saw a vision of Jesus Christ 'at the old wall called that of the Cherubim' and during a later visitation by the devil 'there arose from the so-called Cherubim. a great cry, and weeping and much lamentation'. The co-existence of references to the Cherubim district in different sources proves John Malalas was reporting fact not fiction."

Based on the prophet Ezekiel's biblical description of the 'divine presence', accompanied by hybrid guardians incorporating calf's feet, wings, and composite faces of a human, lion, ox and eagle, Dr Kingsley visualises the cherubim as sphinx-like winged creatures with a human head: "Sculpted ivories of the First Temple period excavated at Samaria in Palestine and Arslan Tash in Syria capture the exact confused form described by the prophet Ezekiel. The lion's body is inspired by the sphinx and the human head also wears an Egyptian headdress. However, the graceful wings are purely Near Eastern in inspiration, drawing on the tradition of winged animals like the demon Pazuzu and the Akkadian lion-demoness Lamashtu, which were so popular from Iraq to Palestine in the second and first millennium BC."

...Dr. Kingsley has identified two images which most closely resemble the physical form of the Temple Cherubim in the first century AD: a statue of a rearing woman with outstretched wings and sphinx-like lion body excavated in a bath-house at Ephesus in Turkey in 1896, and a sphinx-like cherub sculpted on to a basalt disc dug up in a house at Antioch itself and now in the Hatay Archaeological Museum.

From the Daily Grail (posted June 28, 2007)

So - was Josephus full of baloney about no Cherubim being in the Second Temple?

The Eight

Excerpts from "The Eight" by Katherine Neville in 1988 (eat your heart out, Dan Brown):

(Page 143-paperback edition): Nim went to the woodpile stacked against the fireplace wall and broke up a bed of kindling, swiftly piling heavy logs on top. After a few minutes the room glowed warmly with an inner light. I pulled off my boots and curled up on a sofa as Nim uncorked some sherry. He handed me a glass and poured another for himself, taking a seat beside me. After I'd peeled off my coat, he tipped his glass toward mine.

"To the Montglane Service and the many adventures it will bring you," he said, smiling, and took a sip.

"Yum. This is delicious," I said.

"It's an amontillado," he replied, swirling it in his glass. "People have been bricked into walls still breathing, for sherries inferior to this one."

"I hope that's not the sort of adventure you're planning for me," I told him. "I really have to go to work tomorrow morning."

[Spoken like a true JanXena...]

(Page 145): Nim had located his jacket draped over a chair and pulled out the cocktail napkin from the fortune-teller. He looked at Llewellyn's printing on the napkin for a very long time. Then, handing it to me, he got up to stir the fire.

"What do you notice that is unusual about this poem? he asked. I looked at it but didn't see anything odd.

"Of course you know that the fourth day of the fourth month is my birthday," I said. Nim noddded soberly from the hearth. The firelight turned his hair a brilliant reddish gold. "The fortune-teller warned me not to tell anyone about that," I added.

"As usual, you kept your word at all cost," Nim observed wrily, throwing a few more logs on the fire. He went over to a table in the corner and pulled out some paper and a pen, returning to sit beside me.

"Take a look at this," he said. Printing in neat block letters on the paper, he copied out the poem into separate lines. Previously it had been scrambled across the napkin. Now it read:

Just as these lines that merge to form a key
Are as chess squares; when month and day are four;
Don't risk another chance to move to mate.
One game is real and one's a metaphor.
Untold times this wisdom's come too late.
Battle of white has raged on endlessly.
Everywhere Black will strive to seal his fate.
Continue a search for thirty-three and three.
Veiled forever is the secret door.

"What do you see here?" said Nim, studying me as I studied his printed version of the poem. I wasn't certain what he was driving at.

"Look at the structure of the poem itself," he said a little impatiently. "You've a mathematical mind, try to put it to some use."

[Patience, Mister, patience!]

I looked at the poem again, and then I saw it.

"The rhyming pattern is unusual," I said proudly.

Nim's eyebrows went up, and he snatched the paper away from me. He looked at it a moment and started to laugh. "So it is," he said, handing it back to me. "I hadn't noticed that myself. Here, take the pen and write down what it is."

[Spoken like a true male chauvenist - always the boss, even when he's not...]

I did so, and wrote:

"Key-Four-Mate (A-B-C), Metaphor-Late-Endlessly (B-C-A), Fate-Three Door (C-A-B).

"So, the rhyming pattern is like so," said Nim, copying it below my writing on the paper. "Now I want you to apply numbers instead of letters and add them up." I did so beside where he'd printed the letters, and it looked like this:

ABC 123
BCA 231
CAB 312
666

"That was the number of the Beast in the Apocalypse: 666!" I said.

"So it was," said Nim. "And if you add the rows horizontally, you'll find they add to the same number. And that, my dear, is known as a 'magic square.' Another mathematical game. Some of those Knight's Tours that Ben Franklin developed had secret magic squares hidden within them. You've quite a knack for this. Found one your first time out that I hadn't seen myself."

[The truth comes out - he's disgruntled because she saw something he didn't, tsk tsk].

"You didn't see it? I said, rather pleased with myself. "But then, what was it you wanted me to find?" I studied the paper as if searching for a hidden rabbit in a drawing from a child's magazine, expecting it to pop out at me sideways or upside down.

"Draw a line separating the last two sentences from the first seven," said Nim, and as I was drawing the line he added, "Now look at the first letter of each sentence."

I traced my eye slowly down the page, but as I moved toward the bottom a horrible chill had started to come over me, despite the warm and cheery fire.

"What's wrong?" Nim said, looking at me strangely. I stared at the paper, speechless. Then I picked up the pen and wrote what I saw.

"J-A-D-O-U-B-E/C-V," said the paper, as if speaking to me.

"Indeed," Nim was saying as I sat, frozen, beside him. "J'adoube, the French chess term meaning I touch, I adjust. That is what a player speaks when he is about to adjust one of his pieces during a game. Followed by the letters 'C.V.,' which are your initials. It suggests that this fortune-teller was sending you a mesage of some sort. She wants to get in touch with you, perhaps. I realize...what on earth is making you look so dreadful?" he said.

"You don't understand," I told him, my voice limp with fear. "J'adoube...was the last word that Fiske said in public. Just before he died."

[Cue spooky music...ooooohhhhwhhhooooooohhhhoooooo...]

Blast from the Past - Judit Polgar - Batumi

Chess By Robert Byrne
January 16, 2000

Polgar, Just One of the Boys,Hems In a Russian's Queen

Terms that no longer have any application sometimes persist in a vacuous afterlife. One such is the locution ''men's tournament,'' when what is really meant is ''not exclusively for women,'' or ''open to both sexes.'' It would be reasonable to call such a competition an ''open tournament,'' but few sponsors make the effort to reach this level of verbal precision.

In the European Teams Championship in Batumi, Georgia, we get the anomalous report that the best result on Board 2 of the ''Men's Tournament'' was achieved by Judit Polgar of Hungary. You can take my word for it that Judit Polgar, a grandmaster, is a woman, the strongest in the history of the game. Her score of 6�-2� and her gold medal were also not in dispute.

She gave a taste of her skill in her third round game with the grandmaster Sergei Volkov of Russia.

The capture with 4...de defines the Burn Variation of the French Defense. Black relinquishes his main center pawn, thus avoiding a cramped position, but after 5 Ne4, White has an advantage in space.

After 5...Be7, a retreat with 6 Ng3 would lack punch, and 6 Nf6 Bf6 7 Bf6 Qf6 would oversimplify and create too many chances for a draw. The favored method is 6 Bf6, when 6...Bf6 7 Nf3 gives Black problems arranging a counterattack on the white center, and the best continuation, the recapture with 6...gf, leaves Black with doubled f pawns.

After 9 Qe2, Volkov disdained the stodgy, defensive 9...c6, to be followed by 10...Qc7 and 11...Nbd7, in favor of Qd5, by which he prevented Polgar from castling queenside, the more potent of her two options.

No sooner had Polgar taken the first step of a mating attack with 12 a4! than Volkov erred with 12...f5? and found after 13 Nc3! that his queen, cut off from h5, was in trouble. He should have defended by 12...a5.
After 13 Nc3, he became rattled and blundered again, this time with 13...Qa5? instead of doing the best he could with 13...Qd6. However, that could not be expected to save him from 14 a5 Kb8 15 ab ab 16 Ra7! Bc6 17 Rea1, threatening the quietly crushing 18 Bb5! or 18 Nb5!

Polgar's 15 c3 threatened to win material with 16 b4, thus forcing Volkov to loosen his king position with 15...c5. After 16 g3!, her king knight was released to do deadly damage. If 16...f4, then 17 Nd2 fg 18 hg Bd5 19 Bc4 Bc4 19 Nc4 Qa6 20 Ne5 Qb7 21 Nf7 Nf8 22 Nd8 Kd8 23 Rad1 will win easily.

Volkov judged that 16...a6 17 Nd2! ab 18 ab Qa1 19 Ra1 cd 20 cd Bd6 would let him put up maximum resistance.

After 22 Qc2, Volkov should have tried 22...Kb8, which would offer more resistance than losing a pawn by 22...Nf6? 23 Nb6 Kb8 24 Qc5.

After 27 Ra4, Volkov had no defense against 28 Qa7 Kc8 29 Rc4, so he gave up.

The Queen Who Became King

No, this isn't about Judit Polgar, although come to think of it, perhaps there is a slight resemblance... :) Queen/Pharaoh Hatshepsut has been in the news a lot recently, with Supreme Antiquities Director of Egypt Zahi Hawass saying that the Queen's mummy has been positively identified by virtue of a tooth, although DNA testing is also underway.

The Smithsonian online magazine featured an extension article about Hatsepsut in September, 2006, and it's fascinating. A lot of things that we were taught about this female Pharaoh were colored through the eyes of 19th century white male historians who were HORRIFIED that this Queen allegedly usurped the throne of the young Thutmose III. And, it turns out, a lot of those things were WRONG! Hmmm, a familiar theme...

Here's the link to the Hatsepsut article - it's too lengthy to reproduce here.

2007 U.S. Women's Chess Championship - Final Line-Up

USCF posted a story with the final line-up for the 2007 Women's Championship to be held in Stillwater, OK next month, along with a link to a dedicated website for the Championship. I really like the idea of having a website just for the event - there was no separate website for the "Men's" event.

2006 Women's championship Zatonskih will be competing, so the final field is:

Player USCF Rating FIDE Rating
Krush, Irina (WGM, IM) 2497 2479
Zatonskih, Anna (WGM, IM) 2491 2462
Baginskaite, Camilla (WGM) 2361 2328
Rohonyan, Katerine (WGM) 2304 2332
Tuvshintugs, Batchimeg (WIM) 2275 2236
Abrahamyan, Tatev (WFM) 2258 2237
Battsetseg, Tsagaan (WIM) 2234 2241
Melekhina, Alisa (WFM) 2168 2104
Airapetian, Chouchanik (WFM) 2157 2162
Vicary, Elizabeth (WFM) 2155 2148

Prior posts on the Championship may be found here, here and here.

Thanks to Frank K. Berry for bearing most of the expense for this Championship and for being a big fan and supporter of women's chess. We need more people like you, Mr. Berry. Everyone please read Mr. Berry's website (I assume it is sponsored by him, it doesn't appear to be the work of USCF) and please read here for my scintilating commentary when the Championship begins :)

Prison Chess 2

As a follow-up to Prison Chess, what should I find tonight but an article about Karpov playing chess with Russian inmates!

Karpov to play online chess with prisoners
Posted online: Wednesday, June 27, 2007 at 0000 hours IST

MOSCOW, JUN 26: Former World Champion Anatoly Karpov will play online chess with inmates of the Russian prisons on Wednesday. Russian agency Novosti on Tuesday reported that the prison inmates would be able to log on to Karpov's website and play online chess with him. The Federal Prisons office feels the exercise will help them check about the welfare of the inmates. "This online chess tournament would also give us a unique opportunity to test the integrated automated information system for the welfare of the prison inmates," the office said.
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Well, I guess I'm just an old Democrat reactionary after all -- what the **** - an opportunity to test "the integrated automated information system for the welfare of the prison inmates?" Do they have microphones in the urinals?

The Lady, the Canadian and the Viking

By Frank “Boy” Pestaño
Chessmoso
(From the Cebu Sun-Star online - Philippines)

A LADY member? So what’s the fuzz all about? A lady chess player is not something extraordinary. There are probably hundreds of professional women out there who play chess. However, in all my years of involvement in the game, I have observed that women are very shy and are afraid to compete against men. The Cebu Executives and Professionals Chess Association (Cepca) was established in June 1990 and there has never been a lady member. That is 17 long years! And to think that we had a peak of more than 130 members in the early 90s.

True, we have women who sometimes play in our tournaments, but they only play as invited guests. Noteworthy among the lot was Therese Gonzales, who was able to win a monthly title, not with her charms, which she has plenty of, but with her true chess talent.

This brave young lady is 29-year-old Marylou Pagarigan, who is presently connected with Cebu International School as a teacher in computer science and information technology. She learned to play the game when she was six years old and has been quite active in competing in big tournaments. She was the best female player in the Cagayan leg of the Shell Active Chess Championship in 1996 and competed in the Palarong Pambansa games in Cebu (1994), Pangasinan (1995, board 2 champion), Socsargen (1996), Naga (1997) and in Bacolod (1998). She also joined the Philippine National Women’s Championship in Iligan City in 1995, the National LGUlympics in Iloilo in 1998 and the Far East Bank’s regional tournaments from 1995-97 in Iligan City.

She joined our monthly tournament last Sunday, when she won over another new member, Harry Doyle and drew with Surigao’s Manie Yuson, another potential new member, who played as a guest for the meantime. Yuson had expressed her intention to upgrade to full member soon.

Doyle is a Canadian, who obviously enjoyed the exercise and who has a lively sense of humor. He wrote in the information sheet, “My name is Harry Doyle and I lived in the East Coast of Canada on the Atlantic Ocean. The big cities of Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver produce our best players. In 2000, I suffered a stroke and was advised by my doctor from the Philippines to play an hour of chess everyday. Seven years later, all the symptoms of the stroke are gone. My chess, however, has not improved much, but I do have fun. I am happily married to a Filipina who gave me a beautiful son, Joseph, who is now seven.”

Another new member is a Viking from Demark, Per Stentejerg-Hansen. Hansen is the strongest foreigner to ever become a member of Cepca. He has an Elo rating of 2240 and that should make him a National Master. Not surprisingly, he won the tournament, the first foreigner to do so. Hansen defeated the great Bent Larsen in 1996 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Larsen was obviously on the decline as he was one of the best players in the 1960’s and ’70s and was once called the strongest player never to become a world champion. To beat the great Larsen, who visited Cebu I think in 1973, is certainly a great achievement.

Hansen is married to Crispina Limpot from Baclayon, Bohol since 1994 and they have two daughters aged nine and 11 years old. He is an accountant by profession. He wrote, “Chess helps me find new friends. It is a game about fight and strict analysis and it is nice to relax with.”

Another new member is Randy Cabuncal, 27, who is connected with Fast Logistics Corporation. Cabuncal was a board one varsity player of the University of San Carlos Boys High School.

Here are the results of last Sunday’s June tournament at five rounds; first placer, Hansen (4.5), second and third placers, Mandy Baria (4.0) and Joe Atillo (4.0), fourth and fifth placers, Ramon Pangilinan and Maggie Dionson (3.5).
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Well, for goddess' sake, the least he could have done was give Marylou Pagarigan's score too!

The Tomb of Firuzan (Abu-lolo) in Kashan Destroyed

A horrible thing has occurred in Iran. To the Iranian people, who are rightly proud of their past (pre-Islamic) and their culture's contributions to the world, this is probably akin to the world's loss of the Bamiyan Buddhas blown up by the barbarian Taliban. CAIS (The Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies) issued a press release today:

Mohammad-Ali E. from Isfahan

LONDON, (CAIS) -- The tomb of Firuzan commonly known as Emāmādeh Abu-lolo (or Abu Lulu) in Kashahn, Isfahan province is being destroyed by the order of the Islamic Regime.

A large crowd of Iranians have gathered outside the governor's office on Tuesday, June 26th, to voice their objection regarding the destruction of the Iranian heritage, and a shrine which was one of the symbols of Iranian resistance against the Arab invaders in 7th century CE, and to some, a Shia and a revered Sufi.

Umar al-Khattab, the second Moslem Caliph was put to death by Firuzan in 645 CE. It is said that Firuzan was a POW captured after the fall of Ctesiphon in what is today known as Iraq, and sold as a slave. A parvenu Arab leader called Mughira ibn Shu’ba bought him and took him to Medina in Arabia for slavery work.

Most probably Firuzan was a Zoroastrian (by some accounts he was a priest), as the majority of Iranian were at the time of Arab occupation of Iran in 7th century.

“His [Firuzan] action was in response to atrocities that were committed by Arab-Muslim invaders in Iran, which resulted in massacre, rape, looting of our country – we Iranians never forgot nor forgive their crimes against us”, said one of the protestors.

Some Arab, as well as committed Muslim historians, in order to undermine Firuzan’s bravery and heroism have claimed (ultimately all derived from Ibn Shihab account) that he murdered Umar, and an argument over the tax levy.

During the Safavid era and the rise of Shia Islam to power, the dynasty named him Bābā Shojā ul-Din (the one who is brave in the cause of religion) and claimed that he was a devout Shia and a martyr.

Another angry protester said: "they say he is not buried here - or some say he wasn't Muslim at all - so what? - as far as we concern this edifice represents him, our faith and resistance against the uncivilised invaders" - and another one added: "if Abu Lolo was an Arab, they would have erect a golden dome on top of his shrine, rather than destroying it - but no, no - they destroy his shrine, just because he was an Iranian - a noble Iranian - this is an insult to Iranian nation".

Mohammad Salim Al'awa, the Secretary-General of the International Union for Muslim Scholars (IUMS), who believes God have "created women for pregnancy and childbirth" purposes speaking to Al-Arabiat New-agency said: "the request for its destruction was delivered to Iran by a group of Arab representatives a few months ago, after the Doha assembly at the beginning of the year. At the assembly a large number of Sunni scholars asked Iran for the destruction of the tomb".

"Imagine the Germans asking Britain to destroy the graves of the brains behind the British plan to kill Hitler [Operation Foxley] during WWII, sine it is considered an insult to Protestants - would the British accept that? - the murder of Omar by Firuz[an] wasn't to do with religion, it was simply removing a despot and a tyrant from the face of the earth - as the British wanted to do the same with Hitler", said N. one of the protestors outside the governor's office in Kashan.

Firuzan mausoleum located on the road from Kashan to Fins consisted of a courtyard, porch and conical dome decorated with turquoise coloured tiles, and painted ceilings. The Original date of it's construction is unknown, but in second-half of fourteen century it was fully restored and a new tombstone was placed over his grave.

There are what I believe to be "before" and "after" photos of the tomb at CAIS.

The 2006 Women's World Chess Championship

I was curious about what’s going on, if anything, with respect to the Women’s World Chess Championship. The "other" event that no one calls the "men’s" championship has been so much in the chess news lately, what with FIDE doing yet another change of the rules or whatever so that Topalov will be able to play – well someone – it’s all very confusing to me, even after I read through the posts at the Daily Dirt on the subject. So the guys who are playing in Mexico City in a few months now are basically just playing for a check and not the right to play – well – whoever? Something like that. The Mexico City sponsors should pull their money out and tell FIDE to go shove it while also taking them to Court for breach of contract. But that won’t ever happen, folks, too much money’s already changed hands for that!

FIDE has a Women’s World Chess Championship listed on its 2008 calendar but no dates or venue have been penciled in yet – perhaps sponsorship is a problem, or perhaps 2008 will be the year FIDE pulls the plug on the separate Women’s Championship once and for all.

I seem to have contracted amnesia when it comes to who the current Women’s World Chess Champion is! The last one I remember is Stefanova, but the actual Champion is Xu Yuhua of China, who won the event in Ekaterinburg in 2006 – yes you’re going WHO? Thing is, through April, 2007 she hasn’t played a single FIDE rated game since she won the Championship! I didn’t remember who she was/is either! Not a good sign.

I dug up some old gossip at Mig’s Daily Dirt to the effect of press reports that she was pregnant during the 2006 event and she was 30 at the time. Subsequent reports confirmed the birth of a son on August 23, 2006. Certainly 31-32 isn’t old for a chessplayer (Judit Polgar is the same age), but perhaps the demands of motherhood and the fact that she’s won the Championship once may mean that personal inclination and the possibility that the Chinese government wants the women’s crown to pass to a younger player (such as 13 year old Hou Yifan) may be coinciding. My guess is that Xu won’t be defending her title, although how one can defend in a knock-out event is beyond me!!! Unless she starts playing soon and training real hard (or is already doing so behind the scenes), it doesn't seem likely she'd be in chessly shape to compete.

I wonder if she made any money through endorsements at home in China? Xu WON the 2007 China Laureus Award for best "non-Olympic" sportsperson title on May 12, 2007 at the Chinese Laureus Sports Awards held in Changsha, Hunan Province. The article incorrectly states that she has won several world chess championships; she has only won one title, that in 2006. However, she won the Women's World Cup in 2000 and 2002, so perhaps that is what was meant.

Mark Weeks has a website entirely devoted to the world chess championships (regular and women’s). Here is a list of women’s champions:


2006 Ekaterinburg (Xu Yuhua 1st)
2004 Elista (Stefanova 1st)
2001 Moscow (Zhu Chen 1st)
2000 New Delhi (Xie Jun 1st)
1995-99 Kishinev Groningen Xie Jun - Z.Polgar (forfeit)
1993-96 Jakarta Tilburg Z.Polgar - Xie Jun
1991-93 Subotica Shanghai Xie Jun - Ioseliani
1990-91 Azov Borzomi Xie Jun - Chiburdanidze
1987-88 Smederevska Palanka Chaltubo Chiburdanidze - Ioseliani
1985-86 Havana Malmo Chiburdanidze - Akhmilovskaya
1982-84 Bad Kissingen Matches Chiburdanidze - Levitina
1979-81 Alicante Matches Chiburdanidze - Alexandria
1976-78 Roosendaal Matches Chiburdanidze - Gaprindashvili
1973-75 Menorca Matches Gaprindashvili - Alexandria
1971-72 Ohrid Matches Gaprindashvili - Kushnir
1967-69 Subotica Gaprindashvili - Kushnir
1964-65 Sukhumi Gaprindashvili - Kushnir
1961-62 Vrnjacka Banja Gaprindashvili - Bikova
1959-60 Plovdiv Bikova - Zvorikina
1958 Bikova - Rubtsova
1955-56 Moscow Moscow (3 players; Rubtsova 1st)
1952-53 Moscow Bikova - Rudenko
1949/50 Moscow (Rudenko 1st)
1939 Buenos Aires Menchik 1st
1937 Stockholm Menchik 1st
1937 Semmering Menchik - Graf
1935 Warsaw Menchik 1st
1934 Rotterdam Menchik - Graf
1933 Folkestone Menchik 1st
1931 Prague Menchik 1st
1930 Hamburg Menchik 1st
1927 London Menchik 1st

Prison Chess

Some players are so desperate to play in a local rated tournament they will do just about anything - even go to prison :)

Inmate, cellmate, checkmate!
(The Barre Montpelier Times Argus)
June 25, 2007
By Wilson Ring Associated Press

NEWPORT — When a doctor, a lawyer, a software tester and three other people were buzzed through the heavy metal doors into the Northern State Correctional Facility one day recently, they weren't there to serve sentences.

They were there for the competition — in chess.

In a four-hour tournament recognized by the U.S. Chess Federation, the six civilians and 10 inmates from the prison chess club squared off in an event welcomed by players from outside and in.

"One of the coolest things about this, is to play a rated game around here, I'd have to go to Foxwoods (the Connecticut casino) or Boston," said Bob Sassaman, of Calais, a veteran tournament chess player.

While it's not uncommon for inmates to pass their time playing chess, what makes quality tournament chess in prisons is the influence of players from the outside. "Whether it's a prison club or regular club, they draw a variety of players. They don't differ much," said Joan Dubois, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee-based U.S. Chess Federation. "They will have their good players and their bad. The problem in a prison is you do not draw in outside people, the pool of players gets stagnant. They really need to play against new blood."

And that's what the tournaments at the Newport prison accomplish. The prison chess club was formed in January by Bill Storz, a chess buff who teaches at the Northern State branch of the Community High School of Vermont, an education system run by the Vermont Department of Corrections. It held one tournament in April and another on June 15. "What you get out of it is what you put into it," said Storz, who founded the club as an extracurricular activity for the students. "I help guys pick up on some of the life lessons: ... Thinking through a sequence of events, what are the possible outcomes? If I do this for short-term benefit, without thinking of long term results, what really is the benefit of that?"

Inmate Rick Doner, 32, of Rutland, said he and others play on their own, even when the club isn't meeting on Friday afternoons." The competition in here is actually better than I thought it was going to be," said Doner, who is serving 1-to-10 for grand larceny. The U.S. Chess Federation lists seven affiliated clubs in prisons, from Maryland to Massachusetts. (The Northern State club isn't on the list because it's listed through its connection to the school rather than the prison). In New Hampshire, inmates at the men's prison in Concord have a chess club, Corrections Department spokesman Jeff Lyons said. They play among themselves, not against outsiders.

At Northern State, games are played in a small room in the school section of the prison, with the only sound coming from clicks when players hit their time clocks. Some games move quickly and are over within a handful of moves and a few minutes. Others take longer, the pieces staying on the board as each player maneuvers for advantage. Charles Aronowitz, a retired attorney from Montreal who teaches chess in an elementary school and has played in both of the tournaments at the Newport prison, finished second in April and 12th in the June 15 tournament. "These guys have improved in only two months," said Aronowitz. The top-rated player in the event was Newport urologist Armando Lopez, an "expert" under the chess federation's rating system. Not that the rating guaranteed a win; he lost in the title match to Sassaman, a software tester with a "B" rating.

The prison's top-rated player, Al Hennessey, 28, of Burlington, who's serving a 2-to-10-year sentence for burglary, won the first tournament held at the Newport prison, in April. He finished fifth in the most recent one, and he says he looks forward to playing in more. He says he spends a good deal of his time studying chess strategy. "I have a lot more time on my hands," he said.

On the Web:Community High School of Vermont: http://www.chsvt.k12.vt.us/
U.S. Chess Federation: http://www.uschess.org/

Hmmmm, there is something about this that really bothers me. I don't think the USCF should be promoting chess among convicted criminals. I don't have a problem with people in jail playing chess - but I wonder - if the benefits of chess are as touted by the scholastic people and assuming these criminals don't have atrophied brains - is chess teaching them how to be better criminals in the future, when they have served their time and/or get out on parole??? You know - learning how to plan ahead, foresee consequences, and execute both short-term tactics and long-term strategy?

One might also wonder what might happen if, say, a jailed pedophile learns chess inside and - under the auspices of these USCF authorized tournaments, learns about the popularity of scholastic chess either through chatting with outside chessplayers and/or being exposed to USCF's magazines and promotional materials; and after he gets out, he becomes a "volunteer" at a local scholastic chess outreach program or involved in a grade school chess club.

Well, maybe I'm just being paranoid. Maybe.

2004 U.S. Women's Olympiad Chess Team in Budapest?

BUDAPEST, June 22 (Xinhua) -- After a 10-year interval, the chess Olympic champion Polgar sisters - Zsuzsa, Zsofia and Judit -will once again play together in a simultaneous chess exhibition in Budapest on Sunday, local media reported.

Judit agreed to play 34 games while her elder sisters will meet 33 opponents each in the Corinthia Grand Hotel, starting at 1500 hours local time.

Meanwhile, members of the U.S. Olympic team, for which Zsuzsa played in the last Olympics, will play 30-minute rapid games with young Hungarian talents during the meet.

The Polgar trio triumphed in two chess Olympics, winning in Thessaloniki in 1988 and in Novi Sad two years later. Each of the three has two children, with Zsuzsa living in the United states, Zsofia in Canada and Judit in Budapest.

Judit is way out ahead in first place on the women's world ranking list and is 13th on the men's global list.
*****************************************************************************************
This was interesting, not because of the simul by the Polgars in Budapest (Susan Polgar posted photographs of the event on her blog, the sisters looked very glamorous and quite lovely, the shot above is my favorite, they all look absolutely spectacular), but the mention of the U.S. Olympic team that Susan Polgar played on in the last Olympics - meaning the 2004 Olympics as she did not play on the 2006 Team - is playing 30 minute games with Hungarian children.

Okay - so does this mean that Jennifer Shahade, Irina Krush and Anna Zatonskih are in Budapest? Anna Zatonskih who may not play in the upcoming U.S. Women’s Chess Championship because she had a baby in March? Did Judit arrange for Aquaprofit to fly the ladies over for such an event? I sure haven’t seen any publicity about it – maybe this is a mistake???

Alisa Melekhina and "The Eight"

It’s all Katherine Neville’s fault that I ever got involved in the old message board at the Art Bell website (long defunct, but we saved all of our posts from there and call it "The Weave", stored at Goddesschess) – all because of her book "The Eight," which I have read twice and now feel a hankering to read yet again, it’s that good of a story.

I don’t want to give too much away – I recommend you read it for yourselves, darlings – it’s a great read, on many levels. I was first struck by the fact that the main "heroes" in the story are two women! They are amply supported by male characters but – that’s the point – the men are helpful and romantic interests – but they are subsidiary, usually the role reserved for females in novels – except romance novels written mainly by and for female readers, but this ain’t no romance story. It’s a rip-roaring adventure with a mystery that grabs you by the throat right from the beginning of the story, and I sure as hell didn’t figure it out until the very end when it was like WOW – WHAT AN ENDING! And it revolves around a chess set – the mythic Charlemagne chess set, rumored to have been a gift to him from the powerful and learned Muslim ruler ar-Rashid. Fascinating stuff – lots of history and lots of adventure and action, more twists and turns and surprises than you can shake a stick at. Neville wrote a female character, Catherine "Cat" Velis, the equivalent of Indiana Jones.

It’s probably not going too far to say that Katherine Neville’s novel literally changed my life in ways I could not have foreseen when I first settled down to read the book. I should not have been surprised then, when I started to do research on Alisa Melekhina, that – sure as shooting – "The Eight" showed up!

At 15, Alisa is the youngest player in the upcoming U.S. Women’s Chess Championship, and I wanted to learn more about her. I learned that Alisa and her parents emigrated to this country when she was just a few months old; that Alisa is a dancer, a writer and published author as well as a chessplayer, and that she is an all around great young lady. And this is one of the things that showed up in my Google search:

Alisa and The Eight
by Steve Goldberg
columnnist, "Scholastic Chess"
February, 2005

It's part of a larger story about youthful "Chess Queens"

You can also read the full story here. And if you’re interested in learning more about Katherine Neville and her writing, check out her website.

Long live The Eight and good luck to Alisa in the upcoming Championship.

Synchronicity at Work – The White Horse

It was yesterday I stopped by and checked out The Daily Grail website. You’re saying “whaaattt?” What is the rational JanXena doing visiting SUCH a website? The truth is, I visit there a couple times a month to see what the “other side” is talking about on the internet, on the radio, and in print. I can always count on the Grail to give me some interesting news; sometimes we publish a piece in our “Random Roundup” at Goddesschess. Although I try to focus on rationalism in most things, I hope I’m not such an intellectual snob that I don’t like to have a little hoodoo voodoo in my life every now and then! After all, it’s that very hoodoo voodoo that led me to my interest in the Great Goddess – and chess - for that matter.

Anyway, I found a very interesting story at the Grail about a recent crop circle that cropped up (pun!) in Wiltshire, England – a crop circle that looks like a three dimensional pyramid when shot from the air – see the photo above.

Now ordinarily I don’t pay a lot of attention to crop circles, although they are fascinating, aren’t they. How DO they make them, anyway – overnight in most cases. Amazing – well, I don’t want to get us all distracted by such musings! This crop circle caught my attention because it is “pointing” to a “white horse” carved out of the underlying chalk on a neighboring hillside. This particular white horse is not ancient – but of course the worship of the white horse IS very ancient. In Britain, she was worshipped as Epona by the Celts, who brought horse worship with them from the European mainland. Horse worship is extremely ancient – and has been intimately connected with the Goddess. The horse is also intimately connected to ancient chess – both in the form of the “knight” (warrior on horse) and the rook, which used to be a chariot pulled by one or more specially trained horses and “manned” by one or more warriors.

Now, believe me, I did not PLAN this to happen but early this morning I sat down and wrote the post from earlier today about the “Holy Grail,” the vulva/chalice symbolism and how it cropped up in the Yakut culture in the form of the sacred choron, a carved wooden vessel that is used to hold the sacred kumis (fermented mare’s milk). And I came across a reference to – can you guess? – a white horse:

The horse is a central symbol of Sakha (Yakut) culture; the white horse represents the sun whose light energizes plant and animal life. At the ysakh festival, in the spring, a sacred brew of fermented mare's milk is drunk from special wooden vessels called choron.

Well, knock me over with a feather, darlings! Or maybe I should say – mare’s tail…

• white horse seen in a photograph of a recent crop circle in Wiltshire, England, found at the website “The Daily Grail” – I like the photograph, so I pass it on to Don for inclusion in a future edition of “Random Roundup” at Goddesschess
• coming across a totally unconnected essay about feminine symbols in ancient history, and learning about the choron of the Yakut (a carved wooden vessel used in sacred ceremonies to hold kumis -–fermented mare's milk)
• writing about Dan Brown’s “Da Vinci Code” and his theory that the “Holy Grail” chalice is actually a symbol for a woman’s womb and the connection of the “grail/cup” symbolism to the Yakut choron
• the Yakut connection to one and possibly two chess variants
• the Yakut connection to the white horse
• the horse connection to two chess pieces
• the horse connection to the Goddess (Epona is not the only horse/goddess link in antiquity)
  EQUALS
• chess is the game of the Goddess
  

This sort of thing happens to me (to the Goddesschess people, actually) a whole lot! Am I the only one to see a circle here??? So, perhaps now you see why some folks out there think this Goddesschess person is just a wee bit crazy…

The Call of the Goddess

For years I resisted the lure of Dan Brown’s mega-hit "The Da Vinci Code;" the buzz continued to build, passed on mostly by word of mouth at first, and then things reached a critical mass and poof – the world had a "hit". From time to time Isis would suggest - for what seemed ages – that I read the book – you’ll like it Sis, she said. Nah, I said. As a joke, I went so far as to book us into the "Da Vinci Hotel" in New York during our 2005 Goddesschess anniversary trip, one of my more quixotic decisions that (except for the tub faucets that would NOT work in my bathroom) turned out perfectly delightful and were really cheap digs. (Image: modern choron).

I finally broke down and purchased the book when it came out in paperback. I read it quickly, nodding my head through much of it because, I have to say, the man certainly did do his research (although he was way off on some points, he was right on regarding others). Then I shipped it off to Don, who dutifully read it but I don’t think he cared for it very much :). Maybe one has to be a woman to fully appreciate – well, that’s a really sexist comment, isn’t it! Ha!

Now darlings, I’ve not paid particular attention to the legend of the Holy Grail nor to Da Vinci Code’s assertion that the Holy Grail was not a chalice, but was actually a metaphor for the womb of a woman – in particular, the womb of Mary Magdalene. I can appreciate the truth about the often brutal and vicious suppression of the so-called "divine feminine" by patriarchal-biased religions without going overboard and swallowing Brown’s story hook, line and sinker. And I am probably more familiar with so-called "goddess" symbolism than an average member of the public, having been studying such things since I first got hooked into the unlikely Goddesschess Partnership way back in December, 1998. So yes, I know about the "delta" and the "V" being symbols for the vulva, being symbols for the womb, etc. etc. etc. and how Brown (and others) drew the comparison to the chalice (grail). But I cannot recall that I’d ever read anything specific linking the symbolism of the chalice/cup (grail) to a woman’s vulva/womb. Lots of supposition and suggestion, but nothing concrete.

Well then, imagine my amazement early this morning when I read this, while checking out a totally unconnected research subject:

[images of] Megalithic women with hands clasped around a large vulva are found in the Bada valley of Sulawesi in eastern Indonesia. They too have abstract mask-like faces, somewhat concave with upturned edges, and no mouths. Menhirs known as bülbül ("grandmother") are scattered across the central Asian steppe, from Mongolia to Ukraine. Some place their hands over the womb; others hold a chalice there. The Yakut people still make carvings of women holding a ceremonial choron in this manner; in their religion, it is women who preside over the great spring festival in which people gather in great circles to dance around chorons elevated on pillars. (Excerpted from Max Dashu’s online essay "Icons of the Matrix.")

Hit me over the head with a hammer, hey – "some place their hands over the womb; others hold a chalice there." Well, Jan, duh! The symbolism is obvious. I think I need to dive back into Gimbutas, Jean Kimball and others and read with more attention…

Choron – a goblet for koumiss. A sacred vessel of our ancestors – choron – has come to us from time immemorial. And today the Sakha people take choron filled with invigorating drink koumiss with deep respect and trepidation. See also here and here.

I haven’t found any specific images of a carved Yakut image showing a female holding a choron, but the vessel at the beginning of this article is an example of a 3-horse leg choron used to serve the kumis (fermented mare’s milk) that was carved by the modern Yakut artist Ammosov. I find it extremely interesting that according to DNA evidence the Yakut may be traced back to northern India! And check this out for a very good synopsis of Yakut history and some images.

Just before the turn of the 20th century, the Yakut and Aleut (living on both sides of the Bering Strait) played (perhaps still play?) one and possibly two variants of chess, one of which Waldemar Jochelson wrote about in 1933, the other of which was described by Frederica de Laguna in later work. I’m working on articles on both of these games – hopefully they’ll be ready for publication at Goddesschess soon. It seems I've been working on them forever, but actually it's only been off and on for the past eight months or so...

It seems to me that the three "hitching posts" depicted in the 1993 school wall painting from Zhigansk look a lot like chess pieces. And there is an image of several people, including one "lady," holding a choron in front of her. The ancient traditions live one – perhaps in a somewhat garbled manner, but they still live...

Blast from the Past - Shahade 2006 Interview

GAMES
March 12, 2006
The queen speaks!

Provocative U.S. women's chess champion Jennifer Shahade on why the thinking person's game isn't just for geeks -- or guys.
By Gary M. Stern

On the cover of her book last year about women in chess, top-ranked competitor Jennifer Shahade wears a strappy pink tank top, a pink wig and a come-hither look. Make no mistake: At 25, the New York City resident is a two-time national women's champion. Although men may get more attention, Shahade wants to encourage greater respect for and involvement by women. Next up: Her students will compete in the All-Girls National Chess Championship, for ages 5 to 18, March 18 and 19 in Chicago. We spoke to her:

Can you make a living at chess?

There isn't enough money from winning. You earn $12,500 from winning the U.S. Women's Championship.

Only 7.5% of competitive chess players are female. Why?

Role models. ... Since there are so few girls involved, it can be alienating.
Why choose chess? Chess can boost a woman's confidence in her intellectual endeavors and raise her self-esteem. You also can gain a Zen type of concentration.

What does chess teach you about life?

You have to submit to failure and keep going. I lost many times before I won the women's championship, and sometimes it was difficult to pick up the pieces and play again.

To earn extra money, you play many exhibitions. How do those work?

I've played up to 45 people at a time in "simuls," as in simultaneous. They're not as difficult for the professional, because chess is more a game of skill than of thinking. A great player sees the correct move instantaneously. It's about experience and intuition.

Any pre-game rituals?

I usually go for a 30-minute walk to clear my head. Chess is physically grueling. Many chess players lose 10 pounds during a tournament.

When did you start playing chess?

I knew the rules at 6, played a tournament around 9, but didn't get serious until 13. My dad is a chess master, so once I started to show motivation, he took me to tournaments.

What has been a major change in chess?

Chess players use computers to prepare for the game. The computers tell us where we went wrong and help us prepare defenses.

What's your favorite piece?

The queen!

Why are we not surprised?

The queen is the most powerful piece.

What do you see in the game's future?

We're going to see chess on TV. TV will help popularize it, like poker.

Best thing about chess?

Its fairness. It has nothing to do with what somebody else thinks about you or how much money you have. It's based on what you bring to the board.

Old Chinese Chess Commentary

Hola darlings! Whew - it's Friday night (finally), and I'm feeling all right! Hot as hell here, and the weekend is jam packed with yard work, an investment club meeting (remind me to tell you about the investment club some time), and a Sunday afternoon at a St. Martin's Fair - dodging thunderstorms, of course!

I came across this information in an article the other day and thought it was interesting - I've never heard of the "book" it mentions and probably most westerners have not. It's not quite clear from the article, but I assume it is about Chinese chess (xiang qi). As far as I can tell, all Chinese scholars think that the west got its chess from xiang qi via transmittal by Persian merchants, and most western scholars follow H.J.R. Murray's school of thought that chess was invented in India and travelled east to China along the Silk Road. Only a few brave voices from the west, such as Joseph Needham and Pavel Bidev, believed chess came out of China but, unfortunately, they're not around anymore to develop their theories further. I'm not aware of anyone else who has chosen to pick up the gauntlet, except perhaps Peter Banaczak, and I have not been able to get in touch with him for at least five years (he probably put me on a "do not receive list" - I can be a pest. Drat!) The last I know, Banaczak was working on his PhD, one of the few western chess historians who can actually read Chinese and has knowledge of ancient Chinese classics that mention a game that might very well be chess or a form of proto-chess.

It seems pretty obvious to me that the "standard history" of chess that we in the west accept as true is steeped in 19th century racism and few have bothered to "call" Murray's progeny on their implicit, unspoken assumptions of "western" cultural superiority. You know, the "Aryan invasion" and all that crap! There's a reason I call some of these people the chess Nazis. Ah, but that's an argument for another day, I don't feel like fighting tonight, I just want to soak my feet and have a glass of wine on the deck while the sun goes down.

The English translation of the article is somewhat quirky. This is the gist of it: a Qing Dynasty collection of chess games and - I think - chess problems - has been declared a "national folk treasure" by the Chinese government and now resides in - I think - a museum in Bejing. It's a bit unclear from the article, but it appears that only a portion of the actual games and/or problems has ever been published. It's also unclear whether what's being exhibited at the Bejing museum is just the published portion of the text, or the whole thing. So, without further adieux, here's the excerpted information from the article:

"The chess manual scripts collection, "the Deep Pool and Infinite Sea," has been cited as the "rarest and most valuable works" highly revered and esteemed among top Chinese chess game players for almost two centuries.

"These folk national gems have kept intact through centuries in spite of vicissitudes they have gone through from generation to generation. So people have taken interest in anecdotes about them and in particular titbits or sidelights of interest.

"The Qing Dynasty (Chinese) chess manual scripts represent a huge collection of the cream or quintessence of ancient chess games and well-known, knotty chess games collected and sorted out by author Chen Wenqian for 17 consecutive years, and he finally completed the copying in 1808. The entire works is divided into 16 volumes with a total of 371 famous chess games. But to date, there is one works only extant, as Chen was too poor and much in need to have it printed at that time.

"The collection of chess games emerged abruptly in 1933 after having had sunken into oblivion for over a century. Then, an ace (Chinese) chess game player in north China's Hebei province, Qian Mengwu, chanced on it but he failed to get it as its owner offered too higher a price that he could pay. Through the maneuvering of his friend, however, he succeeded to borrow it and got his chess pals to hurry through its copying overnight.

"About 30 years later, another chess star Liu Guobin on July 30, 1964 found the chess manual scripts collection with the introduction of an acquaintance at the China Bookstore. Then, he pawned a Swiss-made watch and bought the chess manual scripts with 150 yuan (some 20 dollars) he got from the mortgage. And, grand chess master Qian Mengwu confirmed it afterwards as the very works he had borrowed and had it copied with the help of his chess pals three decades earlier."

2007 U.S. Women's Chess Championship - Players' List 2

I'm so glad that the players' list has been released today - actually I think we've received this information much earlier before the beginning of the actual event than when the players' list for the "Men's" Championship was released from its start date. I checked the USCF website again a few minutes ago and did not see the list published there.

While I recognize most of the names on the list, I am most familiar with Krush, Baginskaite and Vicary, who have been fixtures in U.S. women's chess for many years. The players range in age from 15-16 (Melekhina) to 39-40 (Baginskaite). Here is their FIDE information:

IM Anna Zatonskih (2468) dob 1978 (28-29 years old)
IM Irina Krush (2478) dob 1983 (23-24 years old)
WGM Camilla Baginskaite (2328) dob 1967 (39-40 years old)
WGM Katerine Rohonyan (2362) dob 1984 (22-23 years old)
WIM Batchimeg Tuvshintugs (2229) dob 1986 (20-21 years old)
WF Tatev Abrahamyan (2268) dob 1988 (18-19 years old)
WF Chouchanik Airapetian (2180) dob 1975 (31-32 years old)
WIM Tsagaan Battsetseg (2241) dob 1972 (34-35 years old)
WF Alisa Melekhina (2104) dob 1991 (15-16 years old)
WF Elizabeth Vicary (2148) dob 1975 (31-32 years old)

I'm looking forward to this championship, not only because Goddesschess is sponsoring a brilliancy prize!

2007 U.S. Women's Chess Championship - List of Players

Posted at Susan Polgar's blog early this afternoon, the list of acceptances and pendings for US Women's Championship:

"According to Mr. Frank K. Berry, the following players have accepted their invitations for the 2007 US Women's Championship in Stillwater, Oklahoma:IRINA KRUSH 2512
CAMILLA BAGINSKAITE 2361
KATERINE ROHONYAN 2304
BATCHIMEG TUVSHINTUGS 2263
TATEV ABRAHAMYAN 2258
CHOUCHANIK AIRAPETIAN 2157
TSAGAAN BATTSETSEG 2234
ALISA MELEKHINA 2168

ANNA ZATONSKISH Undecided due to the recent birth of her baby

and/or ROZA EYNULLAYEVA 2122
ELIZABETH VICARY 2155"

According to a post by SP, Rusa G. is due to give birth very soon so that why she isn't playing. And we don't known if Zatonskih will decide to play or not (she had her baby in March). I would expect that she is physically recovered by now but her baby is very young and she may opt out of the event this year.

I checked the USCF website twice today and did not find this news there - so perhaps the Berry brothers contacted SP and/or Paul Truong directly with the information - or else they have an inside line that gets the news up faster than the USCF webmaster :)

TIC Blast from the Past: Judit Polgar and the 2000 Najdorf

Hola! I thought you might enjoy the following, which originally appeared in the October, 2000 edition of The International Chessoid, that late, great, sadly departed chess spoof ezine. Unfortunately, I no longer had the actual photograph referred to in the article saved on my hard-drive, but I found something similar online - it's not from the 2000 Najdorf, though, it's from an event in 2004, and it's not as form-fitting as I remember the original to be...

Ahem - you'll have to visualize scrolling text spelling out

JUDIT...JUDIT...JUDIT...JUDIT KICKS CHESS BUTT...

NAJDORF SUPER TOURNAMENT 2000
NEWLY WED JUDIT POLGAR OFFENDS MACHO SENSIBILITIES!BOLOGAN FILES DISCRIMINATION COMPLAINT WITH FIDE POLITICALLY INCORRECT COMMITTEE!!!!!

September 27, 2000
Dateline Buenes Aires, Argentina
Alpheta Patton, Ace Girl Reporter

She came, she saw, she conquered, and so shocked the sensibilities of a GM Victor Bologan that he filed a complaint with the FIDE Politically Incorrect Committee alleging sexual discrimination! Other South American males on hand to watch the Super Tournament, the crowing (we mean, of course, crowning) event in this year's Najdorf Chess Festival, were appalled by Ms. Judit's easy victory over her male opponents, as well as her very chic form-fitting leopard print top.

Allegations of sexual hi-jinks surfaced in the local press when Judit first appeared the leopard print blouse when she played impressionable teenager MF Diego Flores in a key Round 6 game. Judit easily defeated the up-and-coming teen and a firestorm from South American Macho Male types followed in the pressroom and in the local press. This phenomenon, also known as Stupid Goat Man Syndrome, stems from long-entrenched cultural attitudes that a woman must never appear in public in a skin tight leopard print top. The Syndrome, which takes its name from "Macho", meaning "Stupid Goat Man" in Spanish vernacular, has been studied by sociologists from around the world for a number of years.

Judit weathered the press assault with nary a toss of her long tawny hair and concentrated on her sweetheart (by some accounts, her husband), Gustav Fonts, a Hungarian veterinarian, and the tournament. Judging by Gustav's smiles, she was successful in the one endeavor, while simultaneously kicking male goat chess butt in Buenes Aires.

The controversy continued when the by now infamous leopard print blouse reappeared in Round 9, in her game against GM Victor Bologan. Judit breezed through the game with a disconcerting grin. It was a draw in only 24 moves, and by virtue of tie-breaks Judit won the event by half a point over a visibly upset and tearful Bologan.

I caught up with Judit at a Vegetarians Only eatery in a suburb of Buenes Aires, where she and her honey, Gustav, were enjoying a local patiste known simply as "salad" (the accent is on the second syllable in Buenes Aires).

Patton: Yo, Judit!

Polgar: Oh Alph, I am so glad to see you! Where have you been?

Patton: What do you mean? I've been here since the beginning of the tournament! I even went to that disastrous debut of your Rock Band.

Polgar [shuddering]: Oh Korchnoi! Don't remind me of that! Those people threw beer bottles at us! Can you imagine! I thought that was something that only happened in B level American movies like "Blues Brothers"! I was so insulted!

Patton [patting Polgar's hand consolingly with one hand while hiding the other behind her back with her fingers crossed]: Now, now. Remember the audience! These fellas down here don't appreciate a true artiste! A bunch of sanctimonious horny goat-men, that's what they are!

Gustav: Amen, Alph!

Polgar: Now Alph, aren't you being a little bit too hard on them? After all, they're just Macho Men!

Patton: Now isn't that just like you, Girlfriend, to think up excuses for these [deleted on orders of the Editor. The Editor's Henchman]! You're just too forgiving, that's your problem! Why, just look at your history with the Dark One!

Polgar: Honestly, Alph! Sometimes you are so naive! I was paid very good money for those appearances at Kasparov's floundering website. In fact, those appearances paid for our honeymoon trip around the world, didn't they, darling (Polgar flutters her eyelashes at Fonts).

Gustav: Whatever you say, darling!

Patton: Oh gag me!

Polgar: What was that, Alph?

Patton: On the rag me! That's what PMS will do to a gal, Jude. Now listen, I didn't come all this way just to watch you play chess and listen to your stinky rock band!

Polgar: It is NOT stinky!

Patton: Judit, that group of chess sell-outs couldn't collectively sing their way out of a paper bag!

Polgar: Oh Alph, now you're being ridiculous! They're not chess sell-outs, even if they all do work for KasparovChess.

Patton: [Bleep].

Polgar: Anyway, what do you think about Victor, who I thought was my friend, filing a complaint against me with FIDE! Holy Khalifman!

Patton: Totally bogus, Girlfriend!

Gustav: Amen, Alph!

Polgar: I was so shocked! I cannot believe that in this day and age a fully grown woman can't wear a simple skin-tight leopard print body suit to a chess match without causing off-colour comment and claims of foul play! He said that I sexually enticed him, Alph, and he lost his concentration and that's why he drew in only 24 moves! Can you imagine?

Patton: Isn't that just like a Stupid Goat Man, to think you're coming on to him when all you're trying to do is be fashionable! Faux-leopard prints are all the rage right now, after all! And you've got the nice body to show off the lines. You were only trying to be chic!

Gustav: Amen, Alph!

Polgar: Shut up, Gustav, you're getting on my nerves.

Patton: Judit!

Polgar: Well, you'd be bitchy too, Alph, if you'd been what I've been through these last four days. Honestly!

Patton [Once again patting Polgar's hand with one hand, while holding the other behind her back and - you know the schtick]: Now, now, Girlfriend. It's all right! Here, have a garlic capsule, I hear they're good for your blood pressure. [Polgar takes a capsule and gulps it down with half a glass of Scotch]. Now, there! Don't you feel better?

Polgar: I do, I do!

Gustav: Amen -

Polgar and Patton [simultaneously]: Shut up, Gustav.

Patton: I wouldn't worry about that harassment complaint if I were you, Jude.

Polgar: You wouldn't?

Patton: Nope! If it gets that far, all you have to do is show up at the adjudication hearing in the leopard print body suit. Those chess hommes won't know what hit 'em! Blinded by the Light, and all that. Bologon's complaint will be dismissed. Mark my words.

Polgar: Well, if you say so, Alph. You're the one with the law degree, after all.

Patton: Don't remind me! Now let's get down to brass tacks here, Girlfriend. I didn't chase half-way around the world just to hear your off-key singing of "Sweet Mystery of Life" with that half-baked band of chess nerds!

Polgar [shocked]: You didn't!?!

Patton: Nope. I came because during our last interview in that airport bathroom you made mention of wedding plans with a certain homme of your acquaintance.

Gustav: Amen, Alph!

Patton: Geez, Judit, did you really marry HIM?

Polgar: There's no need to take that tone of voice with me. Alph. Gustav is a perfectly respectable man, of good family and fortune, young and virile, he has a steady job with a good income, and will make me many fine children when I go off birth control pills. And he's cute! Which is more than I can say for your latest amore!

Patton: Judit, I don't HAVE a latest amore!

Polgar: Exactly!

Gustav: Amen, Alph!

Patton: Oh for goddess' sake, shut UP, Gustav! Now Girlfriend, tell me true. Are you - or are you not - married to this cottonhead?

Polgar: Well, Alph, I never!

Patton: Okay, let me rephrase the question. Are you - or are you not - married to this idiot?

Polgar: Well, since you put it that way, I'll tell you -
[Remainder of interview deleted on orders of the Editor. The Editor's Henchman. Oh oh, now Alpheta will be mad at me!]
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Judit won the event on tie-break with 6.5/9.

Chess 'n Math in Montreal

I saw a news article online this morning about various shops in Montreal that serve up games, puzzles, craft and hobby supplies and lots of other goodies, for the young and the young at heart. It mentioned the shop sponsored by the Chess 'n Math organization.

It's hard to believe it's been four years since I was last in Montreal. I wonder if Pi is still there - its a sort of chess pub/club stationed in a long narrow building on the ground floor on St. Laurence, with stark white walls and local paintings hung for sale, where you can't get alcohol or beer but you can get bad coffee and cold soft drinks and snacks, ask for a board and pieces (they come rent-free with a purchase of a beverage) and while away a couple of hours at tables built for two. The serious chess players congregate near the front door where it and the windows are opened during the summer to let out their cigarette smoke. Cross-ventilation is provided by an open back door. Don and I have passed several pleasant hours at Pi.

One June night after a couple of games at Pi we were rambling around late night Montreal and we came across the Chess 'n Math shop - it was closed. We didn't get back during the day to check it out, but it sure looked intriguing from what we could see through the large plate glass windows. It's probably a good thing for my pocketbook that the shop was closed; I tend to go all soft and sentimental for stores that support good causes!

Boutique Strategie, 3423 St. Denis St. at Sherbrooke St. 514-845-8352. www.strategy
games.ca. Hours: Monday to Wednesday and Saturday
10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Thursday and Friday 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., Sunday noon to 5 p.m.

The Chess 'n Math Association (www.chess-math.org) runs this gaming shop, which has sets priced from $2.95 to $1,500 (a carved wooden set that sits on an electronic board), including ones using themes from Peanuts, The Simpsons, Alice in Wonderland, Star Wars and more. There's a wall of chess books, CDs, puzzles, and mind challengers like Risk, Cranium, Axis and Allies, Scotland Yard and Settlers of Catan. Proceeds go to the non-profit association, which offers camps, chess clubs and lessons.

Ahhhh, I see they have an online catalog - oh oh, I can see those dollars flying out of my pocket already...

Dast-i-khun (The Hand of Blood)

We've got a newly published article at Goddesschess by Charles K. Wilkinson, written back in 1943, within a relatively short time after the Nishapur chess pieces were discovered in Iran. It's called "Chess and Chessmen," which gives absolutely nothing away, lol!

The Nishapur pieces are a big deal to chess historians because they are, I believe, the oldest yet discovered abstract chess pieces after the Arab style, dating to around 760 CE.

Wilkinson's article is geared toward the more general reader, as it was published in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Bulletin. And so he gives a rather standard chess historian's overview of the history of chess from the traditionalist point of view (sticking close to the script, as the saying goes), but enlivens his article with several nice graphics depicting scenes from the Shahnameh and chess pieces 1,000 and more years old. We've livened things up even more by adding our own set of footnotes and commentary, some "food for thought."

Dast-i-khun - the hand of blood. The phrase comes from the practice, in the early days of chess, of players wagering their own body parts as a bet in a game of chess. Wilkinson added it as a footnote to his article, almost as an afterthought. I was absolutely intrigued by the reference and appalled by the practice, so I tracked down some further information on it. We provide a reference from H.J.R. Murray to the practice and more description that you won't find anywhere else online (until the copyists find the article, that is). I'll bet there are a lot of chemists and pharmaceutical companies out there that would love to know what kind of herbs and other things went into that red "ointment" Murray describes as instantly cauterizing a wound!
I am intrigued by the possibility of a "blood" connection to one or possibly more rituals of the ancient Persians from the days of their worship of the fire god and a sort of secrete society meaning for or mystical use of chatrang in either the ritual and/or in the religion; as I understand it, in certain rituals the blood of a sacrificed wolf was drunk by the worshippers.

Hmmm, after having read through the above, I guess it's no wonder most men are scared to death of me. Bwwwwwwaaaaaaahhhhhhaaaaaaa.....

The Chessplaying Hughes Family (and Dog)

This article caught my eye because of the mention about "training up the dog" to play chess – he’s black and white too, just like my Spencer was. But the story is about a chessplaying family and one in particular, Rhian Hughes, who played on the Scotland Women’s Olympiad Team in Turin in 2006. The dog, as far as I know, does not play.

Living Scotsman.com
Saturday, june 16, 2007

'We were going to train up the dog'
FAMILY MASTERS
Parents Jeremy and Brenda Hughes, with Lloyd, 17, Owen, 14, and Rhian 13.

LAST summer in Turin, Rhian Hughes, then 12, became the youngest player ever to represent Scotland at Olympiad level. She already has a host of chess trophies to her name, but her best supporters are her first opponents: her family.

The chess board on the coffee table of the Hughes' Edinburgh home is clearly not just for show. Jeremy Hughes, an academic renal physician, is also Chess Scotland's director of youth events. His wife Brenda has coached children's chess, and Lloyd, Owen and Rhian make up three-quarters of the chess team at James Gillespie's High School.

"I knew there was a reason why we should have had four children," Jeremy laughs. "To have a chess team!"

"We were going to train up the dog," Brenda adds. "He is black and white, after all!"

Although it looks as though chess is in the blood for the Hughes, Lloyd was actually the first member of the family to play seriously. "I'm dyslexic and we were advised that chess might help my concentration," he says. "We moved to Seattle and I carried on playing there, it was a real hotbed of chess."

Rhian was just five when she won her first tournament. Brenda says: "We had taken her brothers to a tournament and she asked if she could play along with the little ones. And then she won the big trophy."

By the time she was 11, she was representing her country in international events. Brenda was astonished, when she went with Rhian to a competition in Montenegro, to see the upper echelons of female chess: players who could double as models, sporting the latest fashions.

At Olympiad level, however, pressure on players is intense. Jeremy says: "It's not cold and calculating, it's an emotional game, incredibly tense and nerve-racking. There are moments when it's high pressure, like a poker game, suddenly the stakes are very high. People deal with it in different ways."

"I get nervous for Rhian, but she's as cool as a cucumber," says Brenda. Rhian shrugs. "I get nervous before the game, but once I'm in it, it doesn't really bother me. But if I've been playing for ages and I make a stupid mistake where I throw it all away in one move, I get annoyed."

She practises regularly, doing chess puzzles, learning theory and improving her tactics. Lloyd says: "Dad and I test new things with her. She normally beats us, but she can learn something new, and it's easier playing a person than a computer."

Lloyd still enjoys playing, but stopped competing seriously in the last three years in order to concentrate on his school work. He helps organise tournaments and coaches younger players. "It's great helping them to surpass my own standard," he says. Owen tends to prefer practising with his band.

Jeremy and Brenda emphasise that they are anything but pushy "chess parents". "We've always said to Rhian it's up to her. We've said that to all three of them. Owen does play but it's not a passion."

Here are Rhian’s results from Turin:


Hughes Rhian 0 SCO Rp:1703
Rd. SNo Name Rtg FED Rp Pts. Res. Bo.
1 138 WGM Igla Bella 2288 ISR 2238 6,5 w 0 3
2 411 Stolarczyk Anna 2036 POL 1670 2,5 w 0 3
3 419 Arosemena Bethania 0 PAN 1548 3,5 s 1 3
4 376 WFM Franco Beatriz 2048 COL 2053 2,5 w ½ 3
6 364 Mokgacha Keitumetse 0 BOT 1778 5,0 w 0 3
8 71 WFM Zepeda Cortez Sonia Guadalupe 2036 ESA 1985 3,5 s 0 3
11 143 Chierici Marianna 1922 ITA 2022 7,0 s 0 3

Blast from the Past – Soviet Chess Intrigues

This is a new column by Larry Evans at the Sun Sentinel (online) – all I can say is WOW. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

It's your move
Posted June 17 2007

The Vladimirov flap: The first edition of Gary Kasparov's book Child of Change (1987) appeared in England, exposing some of the nasty tricks by FIDE and Soviet chess officials to deprive him of a shot at the title held by his nemesis. His main target was FIDE President Florencio Campomanes, who is mentioned 197 times in 242 pages.

The book was panned in the prestigious Dutch magazine New in Chess by Tim Krabbe, who attacked Kasparov as an egomaniac and wondered, "how a person can drown so naively in his own ego?" Kasparov was taken to task for his "shabby" firing of his longtime aide GM Evgeny Vladimirov, who was suspected of being a mole after some secret opening analysis missing from a safe was found in his room.

Krabbe denounced the charge: "In 1986 when he was three points ahead in the third match against [Anatoli] Karpov, Kasparov lost that whole lead in three games. How can such a thing happen? Without any proof, as Kasparov himself admits, the reputation of a colleague is murdered. I really hope Campomanes has not let himself be intimidated by the champion to the extent where he will not at least symbolically suspend Kasparov one day for this."

GM Raymond Keene, chess columnist for The London Times, was appalled: "I certainly hope that Krabbe's suggestion was a joke. It leaves a very bad taste in the mouth in the current climate of assault on freedom of speech by FIDE."

The American magazine Inside Chess, now defunct, renewed its attack on Kasparov. "It is difficult for this reader to buy the picture painted of Karpov as the epitome of all that is regressive and evil in Soviet life or the equally unlikely portrait of Kasparov as the avatar of progress and light ... Chapter 13, entitled "Knives in the Back," contains Kasparov's version of the ridiculous Vladimirov affair which cost the world champion much credibility and respect throughout the chess world."

Kasparov was derided for blaming some of his losses on a spy in his camp. Yet did he not have a right to dismiss an aide he no longer trusted, which happens routinely in the business world?

When I mentioned these charges in an interview with Kasparov, he said: "I realize that I have been criticized for banishing Vladimirov from my camp. Many people in the West find it difficult to believe that he passed analysis to Karpov's camp during the third match. But the world saw me change my entire opening repertoire except for the Gruenfeld Defense in the next match. I had to discard old luggage because Karpov knew everything about my opening preparation. I admit that I cannot prove my case beyond all doubt. But I have one question: `What was Vladimirov doing at Karpov's training camp in Odessa before our fourth match in 1987?'"

Larry Evans is a five-time U.S. chess champion and nationally syndicated chess writer. Write to him at P.O. Box 1182, Reno, NV 89504.

The Copper Scroll - Treasure Map

The Case of the Copper Scroll
SUMMER 2007 TOPICS: Arts, Music, Alumni, Diversity-->
By Christine Cole

They only survived because they were buried, intentionally, beneath the driest soil on earth. Since they were found-almost 2,000 years after they were hidden-they have been sensationalized, fought over and blamed for conspiracies.

They contain clues about a past unknown, and one of DU's own is part of a select group of scholars who study these mysterious relics, known as the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Of these scrolls, there is one in particular that catches attention, as it is said to lead the way to a fortune worth $1 billion. It is known as the Copper Scroll.

For the past several years, DU Assistant Professor Alison Schofield has been translating these relics, looking for new meanings and clues into a hidden past and possible treasure. But she does more than just study antique texts.

As an undergraduate student at the University of Utah in 1996, she went on her first archaeological dig-an excavation of an Iron-Age city in Bethsaida, on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee. "During the dig, I realized that to understand the modern Middle East situation, one must delve deeper into its rich ancient history," Schofield says.

Since knowing modern Hebrew and Arabic wasn't enough, she upped the number of her foreign languages to 13. Given the region she was focusing on, she also studied religion. "In studying the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, I was excavating the origins of Judaism and Christianity," Schofield says.

In 2002 she received an MA in Hebrew Bible/northwest Semitic philology from Johns Hopkins University, where she studied with P. Kyle McCarter, a Copper Scroll expert. She completed her PhD in 2005 at the University of Notre Dame, focusing her research on the Hebrew Bible and early Judaism.
Today Schofield holds a joint appointment with the Center for Judaic Studies and the religious studies department at the University of Denver. For the last two years she's been the University's Old Testament/Hebrew Bible and ancient Judaism expert.

And during this time, she has continued her research on the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Copper Scroll. "There has always been mystery surrounding the Dead Sea Scrolls. They've been sensationalized, as in The Da Vinci Code," she says.

The first Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 1947 in 11 caves near Qumran, near the north shore of the Dead Sea. "It took nearly 50 years to publish these scrolls," she says. During this time, questions started swirling and conspiracy theories started to form, including those related to whether the scrolls contained damaging information about Judaism or Christianity.
Schofield says there is no evidence that information from the scrolls has ever been suppressed. But, because an original team of seven scholars monopolized the scrolls for decades, it wasn't until the 1990s that many of the translations were completed. Thanks to a Hebrew University researcher who made the scrolls available to scholars around the world, more text was translated in nine years than in the previous decades of work combined.
After studying the scrolls herself, Schofield-one of only a few scholars who approach them from a Judaic perspective-was intrigued by the scrolls and what they say.

"They are the most important manuscripts found in Biblical archaeology," says Schofield, noting that the scrolls include biblical texts 1,000 years earlier than any previously existing copies of the Bible. "The scrolls show us that the boundaries between Judaism and Christianity are more fluid," as their Jewish authors speak of theological concepts of redemption, repentance and baptism-type rituals in water before their Christian counterparts, she says. "The importance of studying the Dead Sea Scrolls is that through working with them one learns much more about the particular group associated with the scrolls but also about Judaism in general during the last century B.C.E [before the common era] and the first century C.E. [common era]," says theology professor James VanderKam, who advised Schofield at the University of Notre Dame.

"Learning more about Judaism at that time is important for several reasons," VanderKam says. "One, it is wonderful to be able to learn more about Judaism at a crucial time in its history and to see what issues were important to the writers and how they interpreted the scriptures. Two, for Christians, learning about Judaism at that time is important because it provides valuable information for understanding Jesus and the other New Testament individuals in their Jewish context. Three, by studying the copies of scriptural books found among the scrolls, one can examine the development of the text of the books that would become parts of the Bible."
"We have very few texts surviving from this time," Schofield adds. "The scrolls illuminate the Bible; they are the greatest window into biblical text ever. They also illuminate a Judaism of the time that most people don't know existed."

During the time the scrolls were supposedly written, 200 B.C.E to 68 C.E., there were numerous sects of Jews. Schofield notes that most people are familiar with the Pharisees (today's Rabbinic Jews are their descendents), but it was likely a group known as the Essenes who wrote the scrolls.
Most manuscripts of the time-including the Dead Sea Scrolls-were written on skins and papyrus and didn't last. But the Dead Sea Scrolls survived the ravages of time because the Essenes buried them in the arid caves near the Dead Sea.

What would make a population go to this extreme? The Essenes fled into the desert because of corruption within the Temple of Jerusalem, and they created a holy community on the shore of the Dead Sea, Schofield explains. Given the destruction that was about to take place in Jerusalem, the Essenes prepared for the destruction that was also likely to come their way.
While most of the other scrolls were copied during the century prior to the destruction, the Copper Scroll was one of the last, written in 68 C.E., two years before the Romans destroyed the Temple of Jerusalem. Given the timing, the Copper Scroll probably refers to treasures the Essenes buried before the Romans came, Schofield says.

Yes-buried treasure. Schofield counts herself among the school of scholars who believe that the Copper Scroll details the whereabouts of a real treasure of gold, silver and bronze-hidden in 63 hoards-that today would be worth $1 billion. "From a scholar's perspective, the real treasure is the window it gives us to otherwise unknown aspects of Judaism," says Schofield, who was featured in a recent History Channel episode about the scroll.

The 800 Dead Sea Scroll fragments can be divided generally into three main categories, she says, noting that the scrolls pick up where the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament end, right after the Book of Daniel. One third of the scrolls are copies of the Bible; one third are the Essenes' theological texts, such as the "Community Rule"; and one third are copies the Essenes made of Jewish literature of the time-basically "the items that didn't make it into anyone's Bible," she says.

The content of the Copper Scroll doesn't fit into any of the three categories. Nor does anything else about it. While the other scrolls were written on skins and papyrus, the Copper Scroll was actually written on more valuable and durable copper, signifying its importance. The Copper Scroll also was written in the vernacular Hebrew of the day, while the other scrolls were written in a liturgical, biblical Hebrew, Schofield explains. Once scholars began translating it, it not only gave clues about buried treasures but also gave them insight into the time that it was written.

"The primary drive for me is the anomalies," Schofield says. The Essene priests used general names and place names when giving clues to the treasures' whereabouts, so there is no definitive way to determine where the map starts, Schofield says. One must have knowledge of the landscape and geography of the time, and even then, no one really knows where it begins.

Although Schofield believes the Copper Scroll is a real treasure map, she doesn't know whether or not the treasure still exists. It's possible that the Essenes moved it at a later date or that it was found by another group years later. Although some scholars believe that the treasure is too great to be real, Schofield and others disagree. "First, it's written on an expensive medium-it's valuable. Second, it's not written in a fairytale fashion; it doesn't sound like fiction," she says. "It's boring, very dry, almost in a bookkeeping style."

The person who transcribed it likely was illiterate, she says, noting that the transcriber confused letters throughout the scroll. The author or authors would have used an illiterate scribe because they didn't want him to know what he was transcribing, Schofield explains. Although the scroll has been completely translated, as have most of the Dead Sea Scrolls, new computer technology and digital photographs allow scholars to review and revise particularly difficult passages and words, Schofield explains.

Working with themes she sees in the scrolls, Schofield is writing an upcoming book, Community and Identity in the Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Synthesis. She also is starting another book, Wilderness as Place and Experience in the Hebrew Tradition, about the concept of wilderness and the desert in early Judaism, both literally and symbolically. "The scrolls are tangible pieces of evidence about a group that saw the desert as a sacred place," as the wilderness is symbolic and very holy, Schofield says. Some of the questions she is still investigating are why the Essenes felt compelled to go into the desert, and why they hid the treasure. Schofield also is interested in understanding the role the Copper Scroll may have played in maintaining the Essenes' identity in the face of extinction.

And, Schofield says, another important mystery remains: The Essenes seem to have broken away from the Jerusalem temple. If that's the case, how did they gain access to its treasure? In December 2006, Schofield conducted an archaeological survey in the Judean wilderness near the site where the scrolls were found. But, she says emphatically, she's not part of the "treasure-seeking wacko camp."

It's likely the desert is still hiding many other undiscovered items and that with one find, she says, "all the theories built on the scrolls could be wiped out." Or maybe, just maybe, the Copper Scroll treasures will be found.
***************************************************************************
You can find more information about the Copper Scroll here.

I Hate Chess, I Love Chess, I Hate Chess...

Hola darlings!

At last, the weekend is here. Ahhhhh, I live for my weekends. So what if it's hot as hell outside and I'm running up a monstrous electric bill because the central air has been on non-stop since I got home from the office last night? It was hot enough in the house to fry an egg on the kitchen counter, yech!

I hate chess! Actually, I love chess, when I don't hate it, that is. Right now I'm in my third game with Crusader Scott and it's at the point where I can see things turning - I'm losing the game with the white pieces, sure as shootin', and I can't figure out what to do to try to turn things around or even if I can turn things around. Arrrrgggghhhh!

I stare at the board - and come up blank. Every move that I think I might make now doesn't seem good enough; moves I thought were good about 5 moves ago turned out to be yechy stupid moves. So much for trying to "visualize" what my opponent might do 3-4-5 moves out. Ha ha ha!

Now it's my turn to move, and I believe I've developed a mental block - rather like one trying to pull one's own tooth, I just can't do the final yank on the pliers, so to speak. Ouch! I'm paralyzed.

Here are the moves in our game thus far - mind you, I'm not looking for help - I could do that much easier by getting a chess program and cheating in private, lol! I used to have a bootlegged copy of Chessmaster 4000, and I loved playing the "Bobby Fischer" persona; I could actually get up to around 19 moves before losing to "him" - once I even got up to 25 moves. But when I got this new computer a few years ago the program wouldn't work on it anymore, or I couldn't figure out how to get it to work. Anyway, I recently purchased Chessmaster 10 for my three grand-nephews (yes, darlings, I am that old to have grand-nephews, eek) and I'm thinking of buying it for myself, because I miss playing against Fischer.

Oh yeah - those moves, arrrgggghhhh: (1) e4 c5; (2) Nb1c3 e5; (3) Qd1e2 Ng8f6; (4) Ng1f3 Nb8c6; (5) h4 d5; (6) d3 Bc8g4; (7) Nc3xd5 Nf6xd5; (8) exd5 Qd8xd5; (9) Qe2e4 Qd5xe4; (10) Qe2e4 Qd5xe4; (11) dx34 O-O-O; (12) Bc1e3 Bf8e7; (13) Bf1c4 Bg4h5; (14) O-O Bh5g6; (15) Bc4d3 f6; (16) c3 Rd8xd3 (17) Ra1d1 c4; (18) Nf3d2 Rh8d8; (19) Rd1a1 b6; (20) a4 Be7c5; (21) Nd2xc4 Bc5xe3; (22) Nc4xe3 Bg6xe4; (23) a5 Nc6xa5; (24) Ra1a4 f5; (25) c4 Rd3d4; (26) Rf1c1 Kc8b7.

Don't laugh (well, at least, don't let me hear you)! I'm not going to proofread them - I had to write them all down by hand and then type them in, I could not copy and paste from the redhotpawn site where we play - I already see a few real bonehead moves - what was I thinking?!

I'm working on the follow-up about why UTD dropped sponsorship for the Denker Tournament - not sure how to approach it yet; I figure the best way is to just let people speak for themselves rather than trying to summarize everything, but that will make for one big long blog post. I don't know if it will be finished today though; I'm going shopping with one of my friends later this afternoon and then we're going out for dinner and drinks and some partying, oh yeah!

2007 Denker Tournament of High school Champions

I don't generally follow scholastic events but recently became interested in the Denker Tournment of High School Champions after reading about the withdrawal of support for the 2007 Denker by the University of Texas at Dallas after several years of awarding 4-year scholarships to the Denker winners.

To make sure I had my facts straight, I did a little googling and, while information was scarce particularly as I went back in time, I was able to find the following information about prior years' prizes for winners of the Denker:

(1) At the University of Texas at Dallas website, I found a list of 4-year full tuition and fees scholarships awarded to Denker Tournament winners from 1999 through 2005:

1999:
-- Andrei Zaremba - Denker Tournament of State High School Champions
-- Karen Birkedahl - Denker Tournament of State High School Champions

2000:
--Nat Koons - Denker Tournament of State High School Champions
--John Cole - Denker Tournament of State High School Champions
--Yelena Gorlin - Denker Tournament of State High School Champions

2001 – none listed for Denker Tournament

2002:
--Joshua Friedel - Denker Tournament of State High School Champions

2003:
--William Aramil - Denker Tournament of State High School Champions

2004:
--Pieta Garrett - Denker Tournament of State High School Champions

2005:
--Trevor H. Jackson - Denker Tournament of State High School Champions

(2) I was able to confirm the following information at websites other than UTD:

2003 Denker
Two 4-year scholarships from UTD, one to the top male finisher and one to the top female finisher (must be a minimum of 2 females playing in the event), plus $1,000 a year housing allowance for each scholarship.

2004 Denker
4 year scholarship from UTD; also, scholarships totaling $1,200 to the top four finishers from other sources

2005 Denker
4-year scholarship from UTD

2006 Denker
4-year college scholarship from UTD, valued at $40,000; also $1,000 Ursula Foster Memorial Chess Gift - $500 to each of the Top 13 and under winner from the Denker High School Tournament of Champions and the Susan Polgar National Invitational for Girls; also, through the generosity of GM Denker’s son, Mitchell and the U.S. Chess Trust, scholarships totaling $2,200 will be awarded between the top ten finishers.

That’s a minimum of ten (1999 through 2006) scholarships that I could find information on, about $400,000 worth of sponsorship. (UTD may have awarded more scholarships during the 1990's, but my internet searches didn’t turn up any concrete information). This is in addition to the money that Mr. Denker and, after his death in 2005, his family contributed to help Denker players offset some of the costs of attending the event, in addition to funding several scholarship prizes.

And then we come to 2007. Here is an announcement about the 2007 Denker from the USCF website:

The U.S. Chess Trust will award $2200 in Scholarships ($500-300-250-200-200-150-150-150-150-150) (a total of 20). Scholarships are designated for college expenses and will be sent to winners only upon proof of college enrollment (copies of paid bills, or official letters, etc.) There will also be a $500 Ursula Foster scholarship awarded to the highest finisher who is under the age of 14 on the first day of the tournament. If no participant is under 14 then the scholarship will go the under 15, etc.

That’s it. No mention of a UTD scholarship. UTD had funded Denker scholarships for years, adding a great deal of luster and financial reward to the title "winner of the Denker," and then poof – no more sponsorship.

Now, one may reasonably ask "what happened – why did UTD pull its funding from the Denker?" Why, indeed? I’ll get to that – but there’s more to this story – a happy ending! I’m so American – I just love happy endings where the guys in the white hats triumph!

On June 14, 2007 it was announced at Susan Polgar’s blog that Texas Tech would award a 4-year full tuition scholarship to the winner of the 2007 Denker! Hooray!

I checked the Texas Tech website to see that their full-time tuition for resident students will be about $7,100 a year for the 2007-2008 school year The press release did not mention non-resident tuition; the 2006-2007 non-resident tuition was $14,709 (30 credits, 15 a semester). So, conservatively, the Texas Tech scholarship for the 2007 Denker could be worth anywhere from $28,400 to $58,800.

I'll be posting more about this story later.

Chess Hustlers - New Orleans (Pre-Katrina)

Hola, darlings. A hot, muggy night here at home. New Orleans is far away down the mighty Mississippi from where I live but (except for the bugs and floods), our weather tonight is probably similar. I wrote the following back in 2004, intending it to be part of an article I eventually did for Goddesschess, but this didn't make it into the final version. Since that time, Katrina happened...

The following was written by an unnamed Cannuck who was visiting Sin City during a convention in 1995. (Things have not improved since then...)

Learning of INFORMS the Hard Way!

In anticipation of the marketing track of the Fall INFORMS Conference in Atlanta, some odd people, who are also tall, reminisce about last Fallin New Orleans [Asst. Ed.]
Returning from New Orleans' French Quarter the night before the Fall '95 INFORMS conference, I stopped to watch a grizzled chess hustler collect winnings from his last chump, when a thirty-something challenger stepped up.

Clocks were set at 5 minutes. With bewildering speed, the game evolved, each move punctuated with the bang of a chess-clock (switching one player's clock off and the other player's, on). Suddenly, the hustler paused. He picked up a piece, tried out a spot for size, thought better, and moved elsewhere. The hustler's subsequent tempo became erratic: lightning quick, one move, precious seconds expiring the next. Meanwhile, the challenger's prompt rhythm only varied when he called out, "Time." Dazed, the hustler picked up the clock and eyed it an inch or so from his face in an expression that seemed to say, "I'll be damned."

For the next game, the right-handed hustler now sat with the clock to his right. Unlike the first game, the hustler endeavored to keep an even pace. But a massive exchange unexpectedly gave the challenger a pawn ready to become queen for his second victory. The hustler paid $10, shook hands, and suggested a rematch the next evening. "In a longer game, I'll have a better chance," he said.

I approached the challenger and asked his Chess Federation Rating. "2300." A world master--only 1% of all competitive players are rated above 2200. I then watched the challenger make his way, with a similarly conservatively-dressed comrade, to the conference hotel.

INFORMS had arrived in New Orleans, and a local chess-hustler had learned this fact the hard way.

The Chess Show

I think I first discovered "The Chess Show" website sometime in 2001, when I was putting The International Chessoid together. I thought the website was the most wacky, wonderful and original approach to chess I’d ever seen. It made chess FUN. The show, an original production, ran on public television (local cable access) once a month between 1990 and 1998 in Portland, Oregon. I still visit "The Chess Show" website on occasion, but over the years a lot of the links that used to work are no longer current and/or relevant. There was also this song that used to play over and over again - it was sort of a catchy tune but after awhile it started to grate on one's nerves...in my current browser it doesn't play anymore, or perhaps it just got old and died, or perhaps someone killed it!

Through the wonders of modern technology, some video clips of the show are available for viewing at u-tube. I got tickled more than a pink pawn last night while watching some vintage footage from "The Chess Show" - check it out (heh heh). "The Chess Show" also offers DVDs for sale.

The production values weren’t the greatest, the level of chess "teaching" was basic, the musicians were deliberately hokey (part of the bigger joke of the show in general) and the really cheesy "special effects" – ohmygoddess! But the show was so zany, so antic, and so full of energy and good-hearted humor – I fully understand why the show developed a loyal fan base and continues to attract fans to this day, even after being off the air so many years. The people behind the shows weren’t chess masters, but they were incredibly creative and funny. I also discovered last night that I could actually answer their quiz questions! Whooowee, baby!

My favorite character is the resident chess femme, Cybele. I love her skintight dresses and other over-the-top costumes, her different "characters," and her larger than life Marilyn Monroe wannabe persona (wink, wink).

I wonder if anyone else out there has ever tried doing a chess show on public access tv? I wonder if a show like "The Chess Show" could succeed today?

Burials with “Substitute” Heads Discovered Half a World Apart

In 2004 Christina Conlee, an archaeologist at Texas State University, found a rare headless skeleton in a tomb sitting cross-legged with a ceramic "head jar" placed to the left of the body

The decapitated body was found in the Nasca region, named for the ancient civilization that thrived in southern Peru from A.D. 1 to 750.

The age and condition of both the body and the jar, which is painted with two inverted human faces, suggests that the victim was killed in a rite of ancestral worship, Conlee said.

The burial site, called La Tiza, contains only the third known Nasca head jar found with a decapitated body.

Head jars have been found at other Nasca sites and are often associated with high-status burials, though scientists know little about their function.

The archaeologist also noted that the head jar is painted with the reversible image of a human face that can be seen right-side up or upside down, suggesting that the jar might have been meant as a substitute for the victim's missing head. Full story here.

Half a world away, in China, in May, 1987 at the archaeological site at Jiahu (discovered in 1962), archaeologists opened Grave M344, and saw an adult male whose head was missing. Where his head would have been were eight sets of tortoise shells and one fork-shaped bone artifact. Full story here.

Unfortunately, I could find no further development of the Jiahu "substitute head" burial online; the 2003 article in devoted mainly to a discussion of the possibility that the Jiahu "signs" are a precursor to or possibly even proto-writing, some 5000 years before it is generally accepted that Chinese writing first appeared during the Shang period.

Tortoise shells and animal scapula have been used by diviners in China since before the Shang period, so my guess is that the "substitute head" burial using eight pairs of tortoise shells (which may have contained pebbles of various colors and shapes) was of a very important diviner whose head was retained as an oracle, much like the Druids did thousands of years later. The number eight, of course, has long been significant in Chinese divination (i.e., the I Ching).

More information was provided in the article about the 2004 Nasca "substitute head" burial, but much of it was speculation. Just not enough is known yet about the whys and wherefores of these rare burials in South America. My suggestion is that this burial, too, is of an important personage (not a sacrificed prisoner of war) whose head was kept as an oracle.

Yes, I know – these burials are half a world and thousands of years apart. But human nature has remained stubbornly static since the dawn of time despite our spreading out across the globe in the intervening millennia. Rite and ritual are as old as we are, and probably older. There is evidence, for instance, that the "not human" Neanderthals buried their dead and, in one grave of a child, someone left a small bouquet of flowers on top of the body before it was buried. Despite cultural differences that it suits some folks to play up these days, we all come into the world the same way, we all die and, in between, we are primarily concerned with pursuing our survival and satisfaction, to the best of our ability.

Oftentimes, the simplest explanation is the correct one. It makes more sense to me that these burials, strikingly alike in the use of a "substitute head," were done for the same reason – the head was taken and used as an oracle.

Chess Tales

I often don't know from day to day what I'm going to write here. Today I was all set to post some interesting information about possible buried treasure and a "mysterious" Dead Sea Scroll (cue spooky music, wooohooowoooh....) but then it occurred to me - duh - that I should write instead about the two interesting conversations I had today about chess!

The first one was over lunch with a friend, Karryn. As often happens in a conversation, I don't recall how exactly how the topic of chess came up. I found myself talking to Karryn, who is nearly 20 years younger than I, about Alina Markowski, who began playing tournament chess back in the 1950's, and the incident at the unnamed chess tournament that took place in Milwaukee (our home town) in 1973, where a male player objected to playing against a woman. When told he would be disqualified from the event if he did not play Ms. Markowski, he showed up for the game, played one move, and then left, ceding the point to Ms. Markowski.

Karryn was shocked by the blatantly sexist behavior that Ms. Markowski experienced, and wanted to know more about women chessplayers. I gave her some background on the history of the dominance of the Soviet chessplayers, and that led to the history about the Cold War confrotation between Fischer and Spassky, and that led into the Polgar sisters and their eventual "connection" with Fischer after Fischer became a "persona non grata" in his own country.

She hadn't heard about any of this and, amazingly enough, I could tell she was fascinated and very interested in what I was telling her (guess I'm a good storyteller). She was particularly interested in the Polgar sisters. At the time the Polgars were making headlines in New York in the 1980's, Karryn (who is the same age as Susan Polgar) was in high school and caught up in all the social life and activities of the typical teenager of that era with the advantages of an upper middle-class upbringing. New York and its news coverage of chess events, and even the Polgar sisters on the covers of nationally distributed news magazines may as well have been on the other side of the moon as far as Milwaukee was concerned!

I gave Karryn a little background on the sisters and the problems and issues that Susan Polgar faced as she grew up and wanted to play in "men's" tournaments under the closed Communist system that ruled in Hungary that wanted her to be the next great women's champion, and about Judit Polgar; I told her about Gata Kamsky and about watching Judit's last Candidates' Match game on the computer a week ago Saturday morning, the one she lost, the one that sent her back home to Hungary $40,000 richer (we had a laugh about that).

Karryn was surprised to learn that Judit Polgar is the only woman player among the top players in the world - why aren't there more, she wanted to know. She was also surprised to learn that the Polgar sisters are all mothers of young children! As we rode up in the elevator and walked to our respective offices, she mentioned that her oldest daughter, who is 11 and a soccer nut (and very good player), learned how to play chess recently when she accompanied a friend to the local YMCA where a chess club meets, and was taught the game. She liked it, but as her daughter's friend has moved away and Karryn's family does not have a membership at the Y, her daughter probably won't play chess again. As I ducked into my office, I said that many schools now offer after-school scholastic programs. I could tell by the look on Karryn's face that she was thinking "oh yeah, great, just what I need, one MORE activity to shuttle the kids around to..."

Later in the afternoon, Judith dropped by to rummage in the dish of snack-size chocolate bars and "Nips" I keep available for anyone in need of a chocolate and/or sugar fix, and we chatted. Judith is an elegant woman about 11 years older than I. She dresses "just so," is perfectly coiffed and speaks with a precise mid-eastern seaboard accent that has not quite disappeared even after all these years. When we aren't discussing the bain of conservative politics, or laughing over the latest silliness of The Wall Street Journal editorial board, we talk about museums, art, opera, and the latest best-sellers on The New York Times list. My goddess, I sound like a horrid snob, don't I.

Again, I don't recall precisely how the subject came up, but seemingly all of a sudden I was talking about the Goddesschess website, and Chess Femme News, and this blog, the research we do, the online chess I play, the chess that Don and I have played and how I've been teaching my grand-nephews to play chess, - I half-jokingly called it "My Secret Life."

For just for a nano-second, Judith looked taken aback. And then her eyes lit up and she said "oh my" and waved her hand "just so" and laughed. She asked me if I had ever seen the movie "Searching for - oh, what's his name" and I said "Bobby Fischer," and she said "yes!," and that unleashed a torrent of discussion about the charming movie, about the back-drop of the entire Cold War "confrontation" in the Fischer-Spassky match (something with which Judith was perfectly familiar, having been an adult at the time); then I mentioned the book, and that led to another 10 minutes of discussion, and then to a whole set of remembrances on her part - things we'd never discussed before in our five years of working together.

Judith's father taught her (and all her siblings) to play chess when she was 4 or 5 so, as she put it, "he would have someone to play with." He used the same method to teach them that I'm using to teach my grand-nephews how to play (probably the wrong way to teach chess) - teaching how the pieces move and then allowing generous "take back" of moves until they reach a certain level of what passes for "chess competency" in patzers like us. She knew exactly what I meant when I explained that I am not a good player because, in order to become good at chess, one must devote time to studying, unrelenting study...

Judith attended college at the University of Minnesota, majoring in musical studies. As part of this major, she spent two months every summer at New York's Julliard School of Music. One semester, as part of an "inter-cultural" exchange with the Russians in 1958, while I remember standing in the yard with my daddy, who was pointing up into the night sky trying to show me what "Sputnik" was, Judith and a small group of her fellow students were freezing their butts off at a "dormatory" at the University of Moscow. In the evenings, she and her fellow exchange students would play chess with the locals at a small chess club close by.

We had a good laugh about that because of course the Russians were so much better players than the bourgeoise capitalist Americans (Pigs). Judith said she played and played in that unrelenting cold, and didn't win a single game. Until one night. She didn't remember his name, and she barely remembers what he looked like, and she thinks he was about 20. She pulled a checkmate out of "nowhere" and in her last move triumphantly called out at the club "MATE!"

The player gave her such a look. A split-second later, she realized she had made a terrible mistake in calling out her triumph so.

Judith said that afterward, she was so unnerved by the experience that she didn't win another game and shortly thereafter, she didn't play another chess game. Shocked, I said "Judith, you've never played another game of chess since Moscow?" She said "oh, I got over it eventually," and she waved her hand "just so."

Judith took another piece of chocolate out of the candy dish and headed down the hall and I turned back to my computer screen. It was time to get back to work.

I have to laugh now, recalling the expression on Karryn's face when I was recounting the Markowski story, and my own internal reaction to hers - the truth is I was shocked by her shock! Has she experienced so much less sexism and discrimination than her contemporary, Susan Polgar? I graduated from high school the year SP and Karryn were born (1969). Could the 17 year gap in our ages account for such a difference in Karryn's and my perceptions - in our experiences? We didn't get into that (we'd already talked an hour and 15 minutes and had to get back to the office), but after thinking about it on the ride home tonight, I believe I found at least a partial answer to what seems to be such a gap between Karryn's and my generations, and why I knew that Judith understood exactly what I was talking about, almost without the words coming out of my mouth, and why I understand exactly what it was Judith was conveying, without she ever saying it.

Kamsky Disappoints

Kamsky was sent home today from Elista after having lost Game 5. The USA's best hope for a shot at the world championship this time around seemed like a different player in the second half of the Candidates' Matches. For whatever reason, he couldn't get a decent position out of any of his openings and his play just wasn't up to snuff. To be honest, though, he showed some signs of trouble in the first half.

Will Kamsky retire from chess now and join a law firm somewhere? Will he decide to go for broke and get a second to help him with his opening prep and make a big push for the World Cup next year? I think he needs to compete against more top level Grandmasters and he's not going to get that kind of test playing the World Open!

He Wants to Buy a Chess Board

I love stories like this. I sure hope this gentleman is able to hold onto his money and won't end up like so many other big lottery winners - suckered, broke and bitter.

From cnews June 11, 2007
$37M lotto winner wants a chess set
By LISA ABEL

TORONTO (CP) - He's 55 years old, single, with no children, lives in a rooming house, and has been on disability since October.

Oh, and Graham Gelineau is also $37 million richer after winning Saturday's whopping Lotto 6-49 jackpot - the largest single-ticket prize to be claimed in Ontario.

The Toronto man doesn't drive, so he took the subway to the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp.'s downtown office Monday afternoon to pick up his winnings. "Apart from the money, my life's going to stay pretty much the same," Gelineau said. "That's what I think, but who knows what the future holds. ... I want to reflect on it and take my time. It's a big responsibility."

Gelineau said he would share the money with family and friends, and donate some to charities. He also said he no longer plans to work and will move out of the rooming house into an apartment. But aside from that, he mostly refused to offer details on how he plans to spend his winnings. I'll buy a new chess set," he said - but made of wood, not anything elaborate.

Gelineau found out he was a winner when he checked his ticket early Sunday morning. "When I woke up, the first thing I thought, bizarrely, was to check my numbers," he said.

When he phoned the lottery corporation's automated service to hear the winning numbers, he couldn't believe it. So he hung up and called again just to make sure. "I checked the numbers again, that's what I did - several times, to be frank."

Gelineau has been buying tickets at the same west-end convenience store for a couple of months since he moved into the area, although he has been playing lotteries off and on for the past 30 years. When he had his ticket validated at the store where he purchased it, Gelineau said there was a moment of panic when the terminal shut down and special music played to indicate a win exceeding $10,000.

"The owners thought somehow the ticket had destroyed the machine," Gelineau said. "Then they got a call from the lottery office and they explained the situation. "Never in a million years did I think I'd win this much money. Never. I had a good feeling, but then I do every draw."

Gelineau said he didn't have a system or a set of lucky numbers.
"Just random good guessing, that's all," he said. "No science, no inside knowledge, just random luck. "You think about it, you envision, you have all kinds of daydreams that you entertain, but to actually win this kind of money and then ... it's a whole different ball game, believe me. A whole different reality."

Dogs Are Smarter Than We Think

I'm a dog lover, raised from a long line of dog lovers. I already had two canine companions when we moved into this place, and I adopted a third in 1991. The four of us happily rattled around the house and garden, until one by one, they succumbed to old age and went off to the Happy Hunting Ground. It broke my heart each time I lost one of my doggies, so these days I'm dogless.

As any dog owner knows, some dogs are very smart. Spencer, who died in May, 1999, was a small peekapoo with a temperamental disposition who let me know he suffered my role as master of the house only to keep a roof over his head and food in his dish. He was smart as a whip and he loved sitting on my lap while I played OTB chess. He would sit very still, his head just peeking up above the edge of the table, and stare intently at the board. He never went so far as to shove a piece forward with his paw or pick one up in his mouth, but I swear he knew the game better than I!

It seems scientists are finally learning just how smart dogs are. This news story hit the wires earlier in the week - I saw it today in my local newspaper:

What Were They Thinking? More Than We Knew.
By Rob SteinWashington Post Staff WriterMonday, June 4, 2007; Page A05

Dog owners have long maintained that their pooches have a lot more going on between their furry ears than scientists acknowledge. Now, new research is adding to the growing evidence that man's best friend thinks a lot more than many humans have believed.

The provocative new experiment indicated that dogs can do something that previously only humans, including infants, have been shown capable of doing: decide how to imitate a behavior based on the specific circumstances in which the action takes place.

"The fact that the dogs imitate selectively, depending on the situation -- that has not been shown before," said Friederike Range of the University of Vienna, who led the study. "That's something completely new."

The findings come amid a flurry of research that is revealing surprisingly complex abilities among dogs, chimps, birds and many other animals long dismissed as having little intellectual or emotional life.

"Every day, we're discovering surprises about animals and finding out animals are far more intelligent and far more emotional than we previously thought," said Marc Bekoff, an animal behaviorist who recently retired from the University of Colorado. "We're really breaking down the lines between the species."

The study was inspired by research with human infants. Fourteen-month-olds will imitate an adult turning on a light with her forehead only if they see her doing it with her hands free. If the adult is clutching a blanket, infants will use their hands, presumably because they can reason that the adult resorted to using her forehead because she had no choice.

To determine whether an animal could respond similarly, Range and her colleagues trained Guinness, a female border collie, to push a wooden rod with her paw to get a treat. A dog generally does not use its paws to do tasks, preferring to use its mouth whenever possible. So the key question was whether dogs that watched Guinness would decide how to get the treat depending on the circumstances.

After making sure the owners could not influence their pets' behavior, researchers tested three groups of dogs. The first 14, representing a variety of breeds, did not watch Guinness. When taught how to use the rod, about 85 percent pushed it with their mouth, confirming that is how dogs naturally like to do things.

The second group of 21 dogs watched Guinness repeatedly push the rod with her paw while holding a ball in her mouth. In that group, most of the dogs -- about 80 percent -- used their mouth, imitating the action but not the exact method Guinness had used. That suggested the dogs -- like the children -- decided Guinness was only using her paw because she had no choice.

The third group of 19 dogs watched Guinness repeatedly use a paw on the rod with her mouth free. Most of those dogs -- 83 percent -- imitated her behavior exactly, using their paws and not their mouth. That suggested they concluded there must be some good reason to act against their instincts and do it like Guinness.

"The behavior was very similar to the children who were tested in the original experiment," said Zsofia Viranyi of Eotvos University in Budapest, who helped conduct the experiment, published in the May 15 issue of the journal Current Biology. "Whether they imitate or not depends on the context. It's not automatic, insightless copying. It's more sophisticated. There's a kind of inferential process going on. "

Viranyi and her colleagues said more research is needed to confirm the results and to explore what the findings say about the canine brain."Do they use the same cognitive process as the infant? Or is it something different?" Range said. "We have no way of knowing that right now."

The findings stunned many researchers.

"What's surprising and shocking about this is that we thought this sort of imitation was very sophisticated, something seen only in humans," said Brian Hare, who studies dogs at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany. "Once again, it ends up dogs are smarter than scientists thought."

The experiment suggests that dogs can put themselves inside the head of another dog -- and perhaps people -- to make relatively complex decisions. "This suggests they can actually think about your intention -- they can look for explanations of your behavior and make inferences about what you are thinking," Hare said.

Others go even further, suggesting the findings indicate that dogs have a sense of awareness. "It really shows a higher level of consciousness," said Stanley Coren at the University of British Columbia, who studies how dogs think. "This takes a real degree of consciousness."

Others were more skeptical, saying it's too far a leap to conclude from the study that dogs possess conscious awareness. "It's so easy for the human mind to look at a dog doing something like this and force our human way of thinking about it on the dog," said Daniel J. Povinelli, a cognitive scientist at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. "This ability might happen automatically without any conscious reflection on the dog's part."

The findings could simply be yet another example of the well-documented ability of dogs to interpret subtle physical cues that stem from their long, close relationship with humans, several researchers said. "Dogs are really keen observers of the world around them," said Bruce Blumberg, who teaches classes on dog behavior at Harvard University. "They use simple but reliable rules that capture just enough of a problem to be able to just do better than guessing. This may just be another example of that."

Regardless of the interpretation, the research reflects a renewed interest in dogs. "There's been an extraordinary explosion in research on dogs," said Stephen Zawistowski, an animal behaviorist at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. "What we're seeing really for the first time is incredibly serious and important work on dog behavior and dog genetics. The really important work will be when the canine cognitive work meets the canine genome work. It's going to give us information about where these capabilities come from."

Blast from the Past - Krush, Shahade, Tsai, J. Polgar

From: The Salt Lake Tribune
Sept. 13, 1998

When Miguel Nadjorf gave his legendary blindfold exhibition of 45 games in Sao Paolo in 1947, he lost twice, drew four games and won the remaining 39. Three of the four draws were granted to women.

The courtesy draws were conceded according to the canons of gallantry prevailing at the time. Today, Nadjorf's gesture would be embarrassingly sexist. It would also be unrealistic in light of the increasing prowess of women players.

A few recent events illustrate the point.

The first was a match between 14-year-old Irina Krush and 68 year old Arthur Bisguier who wondered beforehand whether "experience, trickery, and guile would prevail over youth and talent.'' The contest between teen-age girl and veteran grandmaster ended in a 2-2 standoff.

The second was a first-place finish in the 1998 U.S Junior Championship by 18-year-old Jennifer Shahade in a field that was largely male.

And most recently, 22-year-old Judit Polgar of Hungary tied for first in the U.S. Open Championship with American grandmaster Boris Gulko.

Only a decade ago, the achievement of the American teen-agers Krush and Shahade was inconceivable. But a groundswell of scholastic chess programs for both boys and girls, the emigration of talented Soviet women players and the appearance of outstanding role models like Polgar have created a new era in women's chess.

Below is a win by the under-14 girl's champion -- Cindy Tsai of the United States -- from the 1998 Pan-American Youth Championships.

Nadia Escheveste Tsai
1. e4 c52. Nf3 d63. d4 cxd44. Nxd4 Nf65. Nc3 a66. Be3 e57. Nb3 Be68. f3 Be79. Qd2 N (b)d710. g4 O-O11. O-O-O b512. h4 Nb613. g5 Nh514. Qg2 Qc715. Rg1 R (f)c816. Qd2 b417. Nd5 Nxd518. exd5 Bxd5!19. Be2 (a) Be620. Bd3 d521. Kb1 a522. R(d)f1 a423. Nc1 d424. Bf2 b325. cxb3 axb3 26. Bg3 bxa2ch27. Ka1 Nxg328. Rxg3 e4!White resigns(a) Not 19. Qxd5 allowing . . . Qxc2 mate.Solution to Beginner's Corner: 1. g4 Rf6 2, pinning and winning the bishop.

© Copyright, 1998, The Salt Lake Tribune

Brilliancy Prize for 2007 U.S. Women's Chess Championship

Goddesschess is pleased to announce that it is sponsoring a $300 brilliancy prize for the 2007 U.S. Women's Chess Championship to be held in July, 2007. The prize will be awarded at the conclusion of the competition to the game judged the best.

We are big fans of women's chess and this year we decided to - as the saying goes - "put our money where our mouth is."

We hope this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Chess Scholarships Announced

Hola everyone! It's a gorgeous day here today - about time! I need to get outside and start the clean-up after the latest storm that blasted through here Thursday night - I think the branches from my mini-forest are finally done raining down! Then it's cut the grass time and after that, I'll put my feet up on the deck and drink a large glass of wine and read some more of David Shenk's book about this history of chess.

Susan Polgar announced some scholarships at her chess blog and I think it's great news, so I'm publishing it here too, just in case someone out there doesn't read her blog but does read here (lol! - as if)

• Full scholarship to the winner of the Susan Polgar National Invitational for Girls (2007)
• Full scholarship to the winner of the Denker Tournament of HS Champions (2007)
• Scholarship (not designated as a "full" scholarship) to the winner of the 2nd annual Susan Polgar World Open Championship for Girls (2007)
• Scholarship (not designated as a "full" scholarship) to the winner of the 1st annual Susan Polgar World Chess Challenge for Boys in Las Vegas (2007)

In addition, SP announced that starting in 2008: "The University has also agreed to host the Susan Polgar National Invitational for Girls. Besides having a permanent home for the prestigious Polgar event at a magnificent university setting, players and their parents will have a chance to save up to $50,000 or more each year in lodging and meal expenses!"

I take this to mean that Texas Tech will make dorm space available to the participants of this event and their parents, etc. and provide meal service.

What's the Oldest Evidence of Chess? - Part 2

The archaeologists' conclusion that the Butrint artifact was a chess piece drew gasps of horror from most traditionalist chess historians. The Butrint artifact cannot be chess, they say, because chess may not have even been invented at the time; furthermore, they say, since there is only one such piece, it could be anything - it is probably a "finial."

It's doubtful that anyone will ever be able to pinpoint an exact date when chess was invented. However, that hasn't stopped people from trying! In the late 19th and early part of the 20th centuries, it was practically stated as fact that chess was invented in what is now part of Pakistan (pre-partition historians refer to this area as "northern India"), sometime during the 6th century CE. This date is used in H.J.R. Murray's work "A History of Chess," which is basically a chess historian's bible, and has been repeated ad nauseum on the internet. Since Murray's time, though, the possible date of the invention of chess has been pushed back a bit and most chess historians now accept a date somewhere in the middle to late 5th century CE. Well, guess where that puts the invention of chess - between 450 to 500 CE. According to news reports at the time of the discovery, the Butrint king is securely dated to 465 CE because of a distinctive type of Roman pottery found in the same level of ruins and some recovered coins.

What does current published archaeological and literary evidence reveal as to how old chess is?

The earliest "unambiguous" written reference to chess is, according to the traditionalists, in the Pahlavi (middle Persian) work Wizârišn î chatrang ud nihišm î nêw-ardaxšîr (The explanation of Chess and the invention of Nard), also called "Mâdayân î chatrang" or simply named "Chatrang nâmag" (The Book of Chess, per Murray), dating to about 600-620 CE.

Other than the Butrint piece, currently the earliest known chesspieces (chatrang pieces) were found at Afrasiab, near Samarkand in Uzbekistan. Those pieces are a king, chariot, vizier, horse (knight-image above), elephant, and two soldiers, all made of ivory. The Afrasiab discovery is significant because the number of pieces found and their configuration allowed chess historians to unequivocally declare that they were, indeed, chess pieces, albeit of the "figural" kind. That the pieces were figural and not abstract could reasonably suggest that the pieces are pre-Islamic, because of Islam's emphasis on not making "images" of living things.

The Afrasiab pieces are dated to about 760 AD because a coin, dated to 761 CE, was found with the chesspieces. The chess pieces could not, therefore, be any younger than the coin, but they could be older than the coin. This assumes that the excavated layer had not previously been disturbed, so that there is no possibility that the coin could have been introduced into a much earlier (or later, for that matter), layer of archaeological deposit.

H.J.R. Murray said that northwest India (ancient "Hind") was where chess originated, and for the better part of the 20th century, most agreed with him. However, there are other possibilities. A strong case can be made that proto-chess first arose in ancient China. There are literary references to such a game that predate the "Chatrang namag" by a couple hundred years. The great scholar Joseph Needham was of the opinion that chess was a Chinese invention. See his comments at Goddesschess (a large PDF file, will be slow-loading for dial-up users).

And our Chief, the late Ricardo Calvo, suggested that Persia itself might be the home of chess. See his comments at Goddesschess. I have been researching rather obscure and esoteric matters Persian that might support this hypothesis for the past several years. A woman's work is never done...

THE WEAVE

A DIALOGUE ON CHESS AND CHESS HIS/HERSTORY, FROM THE ART BELL WEB-SITE.

Mark Borcherding - 04:31am Apr 6, 1999 MST (#503 of 505) dare to dream upon your own star

Leonardo & Chess,
If you take Leonardo's diagram of a person the popular one with arms & legs in positions. The outer arms and legs touch a circle and the inner arms and legs touch a square. If you turn the square unto a chess board then the center four squares of the chessboard (a,b,c,d) (2nd pyramid giza) go from stomach area to right above the knee. The very center of the chessgrid would be directly on penis or vagina. The center of the circle would be around the belly-button "navel" about where E&F meet A&B.
"ABCDEFGHIJLK" = 51 + 12 letters + 1 = 64
What happens when we mirror our numbers: 15 + 21 + 1 = 37
37 + 27 = 64
Jan Newton - 10:47am Apr 6, 1999 MST (#504 of 505)
Mark, was there a particular reason why you put the letters into the chess grid in the way you did?
Mark Borcherding - 01:13pm Apr 6, 1999 MST (#505 of 505) dare to dream upon your own star
Ref 504 ... Jan, I placed the letters in that order because that is how they were in the digram in a "Flower of Life" book I just recently got. It did not mention a chess board but I counted the squares in their grid and it was 8x8.
Did the order have any significance to you?
Notice the pattern forms a Celtic cross or mandala and there are two sets of 8 squares one set top to bottome and the other set left to right and this means the 4 center squares are used twice. This would be where the 2nd pyramid is on the chessboard that Philip pointed out.
Vickie Ramirez - 03:26pm Apr 6, 1999 MST (#506 of 517) O Music! In your depths we deposit our hearts and souls. Thou hast taught us to see with our ears, and hear with our hearts.
Hi Jan, RE post 498: I am a Gemini. I am curious to see how we balance out, too. Neat info about the other chess history group you have contacted. Synchronistic! Just finished reading both of Katherine Nevils Books; The Eight and The Magic Circle. Just could not put them down. Ilumani
Mark Borcherding - 06:08pm Apr 6, 1999 MST (#507 of 517) dare to dream upon your own star
Ref 506 Ilumani & Jan
"Katherine" = 46
"The Eight" = 46 [mirrored] = 64 = 8x8
"The Magic Circle" = 71 [mirrored] = 17 and 71+17=88
Guess I have a couple more books I need to read :)
Jan Newton - 08:30pm Apr 6, 1999 MST (#508 of 517)
Mark, until I read Neville, other than learning the fundamentals of the game, that was the only contact I'd had with The Game and its Herstory. I recently re-read "The Eight", and had even more appreciation for the depth of Neville's research than before, when I was a "Chess Ignoramus"! Vickie, thanks for the info. I left the little chart I was making up with our "match-ups" at the office; I will post on it tomorrow, I think. Mark, when I looked at the chess grid/letter post, I got a "funny" feeling about it, but I can't explain what it is or what it means; only that I tried to figure out a different way to put the letters into the grid that makes sense to me, but I haven't been able to do it yet. The letters aren't "comfortable" with where I'm putting them, or something like that. I was doing it at the office to boot, not conducive to "mental" endeavors (this is not a joke!). By the way, what is the story involving a horse and Set and Horus? I don't think I'm familiar with that one.
One last thing, this may not mean anything, but then again, you never know. While I was researching the Mittani, the Hurrians, and Urartu, I came across an entry in a encyclopedia about the Hyksos. I vaguely remember learning about them eons ago in high school sophomore Ancient History. According to this entry, the Hyksos, whose origins are apparently yet unknown with any precision but suspected to be "from Palestine and Syria, ... were a Semitic people with a nomadic life style", had a temporary but lasting influence in Egypt in founding the 15th dynasty (1674-1567 BCE). They were later overthrown by a revolution of native Egyptians. The entry goes on to say that the Hyksos "came to have lasting influence on Egyptian military technique, as horse and chariot were introduced".
Well, knock me over with a feather. This is a much later date than what was put forth in the 1990 Scientific American article I sited a few posts ago, which set forth the domestication of the horse and use of the horse in wheeled vehicles for agricultural purposes as early as around 4000 BCE!!! I can't imagine that it would have taken over 2000 years before the "jump" was made from using horses for agricultural purposes to using them for warfare purposes. So, somebody is wrong on their dates. However, that's not the primary reason why I mentioned the Hyksos. It's the similarity in the name "Hyksos" and "erkhos" that struck me right off the bat, especially because one of the few things I did remember about the Hyksos was their association with horses and chariots. I wonder if the Hyksos were actually peoples from the region (or descendants of people from the region) that encompasses modern-day Armenia, and not a Semitic people at all? Anyone an historian on ancient peoples out there?
Jan Newton - 08:56pm Apr 6, 1999 MST (#509 of 517)
Sorry folks, very tired tonight. I misspelled the proto Indo-European word for horse. It should be "ekhos", not "erkhos". Looked up "horse" in the venerable Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary circa 1977, and this is what it says:
[ME] hors, fr. OE; akin to OHG hros horse]... and then it goes on to explain what a horse is and different usages of the word. ME means Middle English; OE means Old English, and OGH means Old High German. I found it interesting in light of the 1990 article I'd read.
However, I also checked the definition of chess, which referred me to "check", and under check it says: [ME chek, fr. OF eschec, fr. Ar shah, fr. Per. lit., king; akin to Gk ktasthai to acquire]. I found that entry interesting too, because I thought the ancient Greek name for chess was zatrikion, played on a round board, but I could be wrong about that.
Philip Mistlberger - 11:41pm Apr 6, 1999 MST (#510 of 517)
Mark, re 503, the link between the 2nd pyramid and that part of the grid is interesting as this hits exactly on the location of the kundalini (serpent) base in the Indian yogic system. And, since the 2nd pyramid has been linked to both Isis and the planet Venus, its tie in with the Skakti/kundalini serpent force is natural, as Shakti is a form of Isis/Venus. Thus, the 64 grid plotted on Leonardo's "man" verifies one of the symbolic meanings of the 2nd pyramid.
I don't know if this has been mentioned here, but both Georgia and I were born on the same day (both Pisces). A couple of fishes for the chess BBQ.
Jan, tell me the truth. You must be hiring someone to do all this research. You seem to have enough material for a trilogy, never mind one book.
Mark Borcherding - 06:03am Apr 7, 1999 MST (#511 of 517) dare to dream upon your own star
Philip and Georgia that is neat, Pisces the fish. I was reading last night that the symbol for Christ was the Dolphin and was changed to the Fish by the Greek Orthodox Church.
On the chess - giza grid:
1 Great Pyramid
Earth orbit 3
Balance (Male+Female)
2 2nd Pyramid
Venus orbit 2
Female
3 3rd Pyramid
Mars orbit 4
Male
"earth venus mars" = 58
58 + 1+2+3 = 64 = 8x8 Chess connection
Interesting that Venus is called the "Morning Star" and people feel this relates to Christ as well.
"Christ" = 32 so if we have a male and female then: "Christ Christ" = 64
"Chess", "Love", "Venus" all equal 18
5 + 18 + 18 + 18 + 5 = 64
Notice we have three 18's one for each pyramid and two 5's one 5 for male and one 5 for female. The 5 symbolizes the pyramid 4 base points + 1 capstone and it also symbolizes the 4 directions (east,north,west,south) and 1 center (balance). Note as well 18 = 9+9 so there is a male and female 9 and look what happens when we add the 5+9 = 14 which refers to 1 center/capstone & 4 directions/base points again. 9 = 4 + 1 + 4 (144)
Jan Newton - 10:03am Apr 7, 1999 MST (#512 of 517)
Pisces!?! I thought you were both Aquarians!!! Are you sure you're Pisces? I know, you're both cuspers! You realize, of course, that that screws up my entire estoric theory about our "signs". Oh well, back to the drawing board. Philip, I have been obsessed. I have been a researching maniac. I have been everywhere. Wait until I post about the Indus Valley connection I found, it will knock your socks off! Got to run but while I have it right in front of me I wanted to post the following information from Gerhard Josten:
The next meeting of the IGK will be held in Hamburg, Germany during November 99. If you want more information and about membership e-mail me and I will give you the particulars. (I don't know if it would be against the rules to post that info here, and I don't want to get into trouble - that's a switch, hey?) Going off to the bookstore to see if I can hunt down a copy of "The White Goddess" by R. Graves, which R. Calvo was kind enough to turn me on to...


"The Weave" has an enormous wealth of research from scholars from all over the world. The Weave is a journey guided by the words of many fasinating and intelligent people. This is also a fun journey. The humorous, and often cleaver, play between friends makes it a pleasure to read. Wonder through the labyrinth of The Weave and enjoy.

Isis

Goddesschess' Showgirls wisdom: Brain Teasers, puzzles, inigmas, end-game chess problems, and play-time, are good for your mental health.

The Mutilated Chess Board

We have a chessboard with the two opposing corners removed,so that there are only 62 squares remaining. Now we take 31 dominoes shaped such that each domino covers exactly two squares. The question is: is it possible to arrange the 31 dominoes so that they cover all 62 squares on the chessboard?

There are two approaches to the problem: To find the answer to this puzzle go to: FORTUNE CITY

What's the Oldest Evidence of Chess?

There’s an old saying "If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it is probably a duck."

That’s why some of us Goddesschess folks believe that this little piece (approximately 1.5 inches tall) is a chess piece, probably a king. It was identified as a chess piece (a king or queen) by the archaeologists who excavated it in July, 2002 during an ongoing dig at the cultural heritage site of Butrint, Albania, and dates to approximately 465 CE.

The assertion that this piece was a chess piece caused quite an uproar within the insular and sedate world of chess historians. More about this tomorrow.

Desperately Needed - Just For Men...

Oh, I know I shouldn't do this, I know I shouldn't. I'll probably be really sorry for this tomorrow morning.

Time and chess wait for no man - well, something like that. I know only too well the sad truth of that maxim whenever I accidentally look in the mirror at myself these days - of course, I'm not a man, but the sentiment is the same, alas... My goddess, to see super hunk GM Vladimir Akopian reduced to such straits - well, perhaps it's time I hung up my chess pieces, darlings.
(Photo upper left: VA at the 5th Gib-tel Masters, January, 2007; photo upper right: VA circa 1998)

It seems just a few years ago, back in August, 1999 when VA was one of the hottest properties in Las Vegas during the 1999 FIDE World Chess Championship at Caesar's Palace. I was there, panting after him - discreetly, of course. He was SO gorgeous - thick black hair, flashing dark eyes, slim, lithe, powerful, dangerous - and those fingers - oh my, those fingers when he picked up a pawn and moved it forward ever so gently yet firmly, just so...be still my heart.

Perhaps we could take up a collection and buy VA a year's supply of "Just for Men," the hair coloring agent that pretends not to be a hair coloring agent - oh, and a year's supply of Gillette razors - whatever the latest whiz-bang model is (I think it has five blades now, it shaves you all at once...)

2007 U.S. Women's Chess Championship 2

Okay, here is the June, 2007 top 20 women in the USA. The top 10 women (who, I assume, accept an invitation to play) will play in the 2007 U.S. Women's Chess Championship:

1 Polgar, Susan Zsuzsa NY USA 2597
2 Zatonskih, Anna NY USA 2491
3 Krush, Irina NY USA 2488
4 Goletiani, Rusudan NY USA 2392
5 Baginskaite, Camilla CA USA 2361
6 Rohonyan, Katerine MD USA 2304
7 Tuvshintugs, Batchimeg CA USA 2275
8 Abrahamyan, Tatev CA USA 2265
9 Battsetseg, Tsagaan MD USA 2234
10 Marinello, Beatriz NY USA 2211
11 Zenyuk, Iryna NY USA 2204
12 Airapetian, Chouchanik WA USA 2188
13 Epstein, Esther MA USA 2165
14 Melekhina, Alisa PA USA 2163
15 Eynullayeva, Roza MA USA 2138
16 Groberman, Elina NY USA 2137
17 Vicary, Elizabeth NY USA 2127
18 Kitagami, Show CA USA 2124
19 Sagalchik, Olga NY USA 2121
20 Shiber, Julia NY USA 2098

We know Susan Polgar won't be playing, so out of the remaining 19 women, who will play?

Chess Life to Female Chessplayers – You’re Invisible

The June, 2007 Chess Life has a nicely-written article by Macauley Peterson about up and coming young chessplayers, among whom Nakamura (born 1987, ELO 2663), Robson (born 1994, ELO 2293), Carlsen (born 1990, ELO 2693) and others are profiled – all males. Now I realize that females make up only a small percentage of chessplayers in this country, but really - are you actually implying (by omission) that there wasn’t one – NOT ONE? – female chessplayer good enough to consider profiling as the "next generation?" I have a few candidates – (hint: I looked up the "Girls Top 20" List at the FIDE website):

1 Koneru, Humpy g IND 2575 8 1987
2 Hou, Yifan wg CHN 2513 22 1994
3 Harika, Dronavalli wg IND 2476 42 1991

Koneru is 20; Hou just turned 13; Harika is 16. I’d say these girls qualify as up and coming young chessplayers, irrespective of their gender.

Hey, Chess Life, way to go to appeal to the female chessplayers out here - highlighting ONLY male players. Geez! Female chessplayers DO exist, even if our numbers are small relative to male chessplayers. Can’t you be just a little more aware of us, too? We play in tournaments and support chessclubs and institutions just like you do with our entry fees and dues. We volunteer at local events to do whatever needs to be done and teach kids how to play chess just like you do. Some of us are (and have been) great players, and can kick male chess butt OTB just about any time. Are you just totally oblivious to the fact that there ARE up and coming female chessplayers, or are you deliberately blind to their existence out of sexism - or chicken-heartedness? Who runs the marketing department at USCF? Ha, what am I saying? USCF doesn’t HAVE a marketing department listed in Chess Life! Geez!

It’s USCF Election Time!

Today I received my June edition of Chess Life in the mail – wrapped in a ballot on which, as a member, I can vote for up to four members of the United States Chess Federation Executive Board. The ballot will be mailed to Taylor, Bilyeu and Company and I sincerely hope it is never shown that this company, which I assume is a firm of accountants, has any connection whatsoever in any way, shape or form to any member of the USCF Executive Board or any of its officers, past and present.

I’ve previously reported that I had let my USCF membership lapse in, I think, 2004. I renewed my membership around the end of March this year after I started regularly reading Susan Polgar’s chess blog and a few other blogs and chess news sources, and re-acquainted myself with some of the issues affecting USCF and, in particular, this election for EB members. I renewed my USCF membership specifically for the purpose of voting in this election. I would have been inclined in any event to vote for Susan Polgar because she is an icon of chess for all women and is a tireless ambassador the game and promoter of the game among our young people, girls and boys. She is honest, sincere and gutsy and it is because of her fighting the fine fight that today women and girls can play chess in all open tournaments and participate in championship events without regard to their gender. Not so long ago it wasn’t so. All women owe her a debt of gratitude for being one of the trailblazers that has made it easier for the rest of us in so many ways today.

Normally chess politics gag me – but I became actively engaged and enraged by the absolute BS I was reading on the internet about SP and the other candidates she supports that was spewed out by gutless wonders hiding behind anonymous identities and the openness of the internet to protect them. I would not have necessarily voted for any of the other candidate SP supports – but after having read so much sexist and racist garbage and trash aimed at SP, Truong and Korenman, I determined to also vote for the three other candidates SP recommends: Paul Truong, Randy Bauer and Mikhail Korenman. So much venom, filth and hatred by those anonymous posters could only be triggered by immense fear that SP and her slate will be elected by ordinary chess people like me who are fed up with the bumbling incompetency and never-ending back-biting politics of the people who have run the USCF for the past several years. And, true to their cowardly hearts, the spineless anonymous jerks have resorted to the lowest of tactics to support their vested interests in seeing that SP and her slate are NOT elected to the Executive Board.

When SP and her slate are elected, I do not expect them to work miracles – the USCF is sunk too deeply in debt and has burned so many bridges with potential sponsors that it may take years of concentrated effort and hard work by EVERYONE on the EB and ALL officers of USCF to repair the damage. I do believe that SP, Truong, Bauer and Korenman and other honest-hearted members already sitting on the EB who will support them will stop the slide of our federation which, after all, was founded to promote chess in the United States, and begin the turn-around to a sounder future. I believe that SP and her newly formed association with Texas Tech can only bode well for the future of scholastic and college chess under the auspices of USCF; and, speaking pragmatically, I believe that SP and Paul Truong can attract the kind of big corporate and individual sponsorship for adult and professional level that we desperately need.

I ask you to please for Susan Polgar, Paul Truong, Randy Bauer, and Mikhail Korenman to the Executive Board of the USCF.

Want to Buy an Ancient Chess Piece?

I envy collectors who have the funds to buy the things they want. Sigh. There are beautiful chess sets available at auction. I look through the catalogs and see things I’d love to buy for $1,000 to $2,000. If only! Then, of course, there are the rare pieces that fetch $60,000 USD. You can find these at Sotheby’s and Christie’s. For great lot sales, though, check out Bloomsbury.

The question is why I feel drawn to these antique pieces? Part of it is because of my great love for history, especially ancient history. I’ve been fascinated by ancient cultures since I first learned to read. Part of it is the "story" I imagine behind each and every piece I see. Well, that’s always been the tension – tell stories and starve, or work for a living. I should have gone for a Ph.D in history and become a professor. Oh well.

One of my favorite places to visit from time to time is BC Galleries in Australia. I haven’t purchased anything from them but – maybe some day.

These are two lovely affordable pieces circa 1000 year old pieces, described as:
Two early Islamic bone game pieces, most probably chess pieces, each with concentric circle designs.
Origin: Circa 10th-12th century CE Afghanistan.
Dimensions: Height of each 3.7 cm
Price: AUD $575 USD $479

Maybe someday.

Chess and Squirrels 2

Hola!

Psst, don't tell the boss, but I took a sick day today and it was glorious to get the front yard grass cut first thing this morning, before the rain came, and take that looonnnngggg nap from 10:30 to 1:30. Now I feel fresh as a daisy and ready to go; it's a wonder what getting enough sleep can do for a gal.

We added a new link to Goddesschess - it's "Chess Boss" and among other things you can do there is play chess for money. Well, I'm not sure how that's going to work out, but there could be a market for such a service. The site is crisply designed and they can't be all bad - I clicked on the "blog" page to see what was there and lo and behold, there's a picture of a squirrel on a tree trunk, just like I see from my kitchen window every morning! Anyone who puts a picture of a squirrel up at a chess website is all right with me :)

Vietnamese Redux

It seems the Vietnamese chess community has something of a battle going on regarding state funding of promising (versus "already there") chessplayers. What is it to be? Funding many promising young players at a low rate of support every month, or funding fewer, more mature players with higher ELOs at a higher rate of support every month?

Is the immediate controversy at all related to the relatively poor showing of the Vietnamese Women in the recently concluded First World Women’s Team Chess Championship? Unfortunately, no. That event wasn’t mentioned in the article – and perhaps the author doesn’t give a rap about women’s chess in Vietnam. All the players the article mentions are males:

GM Le Quang Liem: 2541 (born 1991)
GM Dao Thien Hai: 2543 (born 1978)
GM Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son: 2542 (born 1990)
GM Nguyen Ahn Dung: 2528 (born 1976)
GM Tu Hoang Thong: 2472 (born 1972)
Tran Duc Hoa Khanh: 2183 (born 1974)

Here is the article:

Investing in sports talents needs thorough change
14:21' 03/06/2007 (GMT+7)

VietNamNet Bridge – Chess player Le Quang Liem is a rare talent but the total State investment in this great master is only VND43 million ($3,000) a year or only VND3.5 million ($215) a month – too little for a great talent.

Le Quang Liem is the first player who has held all three national championships for traditional, rapid and blitz chess tournaments within a given year, according to Vice Chairman of the HCM City Chess Federation Nguyen Phuoc Trung.

Mr Trung also said that in early July, when the World Chess Confederation (FIDE) announced the Elo and the new rankings for chess players worldwide, Liem had passed Thien Hai and Truong Son to become the top chess player of Vietnam.

At the age of 16, Liem has proven his talent in overcoming great masters like Thien Hai, Anh Dung, Hoang Thong and Truong Son. Is there any special investment for Liem to develop his talent?

“Liem currently ranks 372nd in FIDE’s ratings and if he is invested in properly, Liem can enter the top 50 of the world,” Mr Trung said.

What is proper investment? It is participating in around ten international contests and being trained by a good coach who is paid US$5,000 a month. That’s an unreachable dream for a Vietnamese chess player, even a rare talent like Liem.

It is sad to know that the above investment level is a dream but it is much sadder to know the current investment in Liem, because it is too low. Each year Liem receives VND21 million of salary from the HCM City Department of Sports and Physical Training, VND2.5 million for being a national sports great master and around VND20 million for being a member of the national chess team, totaling VND43.5 million (less than $3,000).

Changes are needed

Hoa Khanh, a former member of the national chess team, said: “Irrational investment mechanism has held back the development of sports in general and chess in particular. It’s absurd when a pupil who has just played chess for a short period of time and shows a little talent is immediately selected for the team of key chess talents and enjoys State support of several hundreds of thousands dong a month.”

This amount of money is small but it becomes a big number when the payment for hundreds of players of this kind is added up. In addition, there are many other kinds of talented players who also receive State money. If this whole sum of money is invested in a small number of big talents the results would be much better.

The viewpoint of Hoa Khanh is the way that developed countries perform. An overseas Vietnamese in Australia said that his family must pay everything for their 7-year-old daughter who has won a gold medal at a state swimming contest for students. If this girl becomes a member of the state team she will receive huge investment from the state and her future will be very bright.

Irrational investment has hindered the development of many talents of Vietnamese sports, for example chess players Dao Thien Hai, Truong Son or Anh Dung, who have shown signs of stagnation since they lack opportunities to play in international contests.

Le Quang Liem’s future will be the same when he can’t devote his mind and life to chess but has to study at school to prepare for his future life.

“People like Quang Liem, Truong Son and Thien Hai are rare in Vietnam. We now have only five great masters of chess. Those transcendent heads, if they focus on studying at school only, will easily find a good job to earn a high salary. If they pursue the career of a chess player, after they stop playing chess, they can only work as a chess coach and earn a low salary. So who dares to let their children pursue such a sports career?” Khanh asked.

So, a thorough change for investment in sports is a must.

(Source: Tuoi Tre)

Here are prior related posts:

A Different Perspective
Dragon Capital – Trying a Queen’s Gambit?

It seems to me we have our own "war" going on right now in the USCF, between the supporters of "adult" and the supporters of "scholastic" levels of membership. That chess wag Sam Sloan recently "made a motion" (not, of course, to the actual Executive Board of the USCF, but as a post on an online message board that he can always disclaim as "not serious") to fund increased prizes in USCF-sponsored adult championships by increasing the membership fees of scholastic members by $3 per member per year. Basically, SS wants to stick it to the kids (who now are a majority of USCF paying membership) to benefit a relatively small number of above 2600-rated U.S. players who play the rather anemic tournament circuit in the US every year rather than travelling overseas where the events are more numerous but the competition is also more fierce (and they would probably, but for Nakamura, Onischuk, Krush, and a few others) lose their butts.

Hint: The way to improve chess in the USA isn't by sticking it to the scholastic players.

Polgar at the Candidates' Matches 2

Hmmm, I think I'm over the worst part of my disappointment that Judit Polgar didn't make it into the second round of the Matches. But if I start sobbing uncontrollably while I'm writing this post I promise not to spot up your screen with my tears.

Oh darlings! Things seemed to start out so promising yesterday morning. Not only was the weather here great (although with the constant threat of thunderstorms because we are centered under an unstable air mass), I was able to watch Judit's game taking place on my computer screen with virtually no problems - although sometimes a bunch of moves would suddenly show up all at once. Fortunately, I figured out how to back-click on a move to figure out what had happened. I'm not a college graduate for nothing, heh heh. Well, to tell the absolute truth - since I don't have any deep understanding of the kind of chess that people like Polgar and Bareev play, I often had no idea why they moved the pieces where they did. But - see below...

I was also trying to follow along with Susan Polgar's annotations of the game, and her comments gave me the necessary background to appreciate what was taking place on the screen.

Amazingly, I actually guessed a few of Judit's moves correctly - that is - I screwed on my thinking hat and stared hard at the screen, and said, okay, this is where I would move, generally without being able to come up with a good reason for doing so, other than to take a piece or move into what seemed a better position (of course, isn't that what all the really good players say? LOL!) And - lo and behold - sometimes she would move her piece there. This only happened a few times, and it was scary, man! The implications could be staggering for the future of my non-existent chess-playing career.

Oh no! Maybe Judit lost because I was filling the ether with my crappy chess moves and somehow, some way, she picked up on my brain waves out of the millions that were bombarding her from all over the world. Oh goddess! I sure hope that's not true!

Oh, Judit. How sorry I am that you did not advance. You would have had hundreds of thousands of women and even men chess fans rooting for you from all over the world. As it is, you get $40,000 less what I assume is FIDE's customary 20% off the top "take," and you go home to Gustav and the kids. Somehow, that doesn't seem right. But you'll be happy to see them, and happy to let your hair back down, until your event, whatever it is.

Shirov, who used to be so cute but who has let himself go terribly the past few years (weight and looks wise), made it through! Somehow, it seems like a "sign" to me - if you know what I mean (well, you probably don't; actually, not many people do, and most think I'm just a nut case). How well I remember that 1998 match in Germany between you and Shirov. You were both so cute back then - it was a sort of "battle of the sexes." If Shirov makes it through to the final four of the Candidates' to play in Mexico in the fall, I perceive that as a good sign for you. Yes, I know, it doesn't make much sense. But the Goddess works in very mysterious ways.

I guess all I want to really say is please don't retire any time soon, Judit. I love Humpy, but she's not ready to step into your shoes yet, and there doesn't seem to be any other woman behind her who can meet and beat the chess hommes on a regular basis. Not like you.

Wow, talk about pressure...

Senet and the Promoted Pawn

Here is an example of a senet board, this one from the tomb of Amenhotep III (c. 1386 – 1349 BCE). Senet was a game of 30 squares, and although the rules of the games are not precisely known, intact games recovered from tombs consisted of either five or seven pieces of the "spool" and "reel" type, as in the photograph, and several squares on the board were marked with either hazards or blessings. Some of the marked squares can be observed in this example and notice the checkered pattern on the drawer end. The game dates back possibly to c. 3500 BCE, and in later years during the long Egyptian civilization it took on religious and mystical significance. Some tomb paintings depict the senet board as a red and black checkered board. One of the most famous depictions of this type of board is from the Theban tomb of Nebenma'at (c. 1250 – 1100 BCE), where he plays Senet with his wife, Meretseger, on just such a board (click on view 9). Another view here.

As shown by the ancient Egyptians' use, the two-colored checkered gameboard goes way back in history. During the Egyptian ceremony of the judgment of the dead, the gods stood on a checkered floor, thus associating it with Egyptian religious ritual. In senet, which developed mystical and religious associations connected with the journey of the deceased through the underworld, the game was won by a player successfully moving all of his pieces off the board. At that point, the literature says, the pawn (decedent) becomes an imperishable star. In the latter years of Egyptian religious practice, this transformation was not restricted only to Pharoah, but could be achieved by anyone. Could this tradition, perhaps, be the ancient root of the concept of "pawn promotion?"

Has Anything Changed?

I finished reading Jennifer Shahade's book Chess Bitch today. It was a great read - I was disappointed to get to the end of the book! I especially appreciated the section where she talked about women who played chess in the "early days" in the United States ("Playing for America.")

As I was reading, I was very much struck with this story from the career of U.S. player Mary Bain, and I take the liberty of quoting from Ms. Shahade's book:

(p. 229) It was not until 1951 that Bain managed to capture a single title from the Gresser and Karff duo [U.S. Women's Chess Champion title holders]. This enabled her to take another stab at the world crown. She was thrilled to travel to Moscow, along with second-place Karff, to participate in the 1952 World Championship Candidates. . . .

(p. 230) She was livid that the American Chess Federation offered her neither financial nor psychological support. "My sendoff was cruel. I was told that I was not going to represent the USA and USCF but Zone Number Four. No use complaining..." She also had no second to help her analyze adjourned games, which ususally resumed the following day: "When I have an adjourned game I stay up all night and then make the worst move." Ideally, Mary would be sleeping soundly, while her trainer would work through the night, and then supply her with a thorough analysis in the morning. British Master Golombek sympathized with Bain, pointing out, "It is very sad that a great country like the USA should have such a weak chess federation." Perhaps the worse insult was that the Soviet Federation had been willing to pay all expenses for her second, but Bain had not been told this until it was too late to arrange.

Does this sound familiar? We have the same kind of treatement of our women chessplayers going on over fifty years later. Two recent examples are the way the USCF treated the Women's 2004 and 2006 Chess Olympiad Teams - the same way they treated U.S. Women's Chess Champion Mary Bain - like dirt! It is well known and publicized that the USCF tried its best not to fulfill its contractual obligations to the 2004 Women's Olympiad Team, including waiting several months to pay them the bonus money the team members earned by bringing home the first ever Women's Team Olympiad Medal (Gold) and promptly cancelling the Women's Olympiad Training Program that Susan Polgar had been asked to spearhead just a few years before!

I have written in this blog about the inability of the USCF to keep the 2006 Olympiad team together - they finished in fourth place and had earned a spot to play in the recently-concluded First Women's World Team Chess Championships. But we couldn't even field a team of players. Botswana sent a team of four players to the Championship, which didn't win a single match. Wouldn't our "B" team have done better? Of course, the USCF probably didn't have a contingency plan for a "B Team" - or the money to send the team to Russia to compete even if we did have a "B Team." Geez! The richest country in the world - so we claim. But we can't afford to send four women to Russia to compete in a chess tournament. Pathetic, absolutely pathetic.

The Weave revisited:

The WEAVE Discussion group archive:

"Is chess the game of the goddess?"

The Weave began on December 6th, 1998 as a Wild Card discussion in Art Bell's old C2C message board system. Evolving into a cooperative survey, The Weave contains articles wrapped in the cloth of chess and chess history. During the course of discussion, it became apparent that an archive of messages should be gathered and preserved with a view towards future reference, study and speculation. We continue to build on the past with ongoing interactions at Delphi, as well as via private content submissions delivered to this site.

The WEAVE continued at Delphi Forum...there are many many posts that are fasinating, and filled with history, archaeological, and submissions from chess historians.

Why Do I Play Chess?

Why do I play chess?

I have no idea why that question occurred to me today while I was sitting here at the office desperately trying to find some commentary on Judit Polgar's win against Bareev at the Candidates' Matches. The question gave me pause because - no answer came to mind! Gee - am I dead???

So then I thought "oh for goddess' sake, Jan, you have to come up with some answer. Preferably something profound and thought-provoking, something that will give any readers who stumble upon this blog a sit-up-and-take-notice moment - aha - I feel exactly like that myself. I shall become famous, I might even win a Pulitizer prize...the first for a blog..."

I am still waiting for inspiration to strike my fingers, which are patiently poised over the keyboard; it seems the Chess Goddess' mojo went out to lunch after seeing to it that Judit won her "must win" game today. Will She see to it that Judit win's her second "must win" game tomorrow? (Note to self: email Isis and see what the current line is, maybe it's worth a $5 bet). And will She get Judit safely through the tie-break so that she moves into Candidates' Matches, Part Deux? Does the Goddess' mojo have mojo, or will she need to boost some extra caffeine tomorrow??? Thank Goddess that I'll be able to watch the game online - oh and Chess Goddess - can you also make sure there are no technical or transmission difficulties tomorrow while I'm watching the game?

Back to my question - why do I play chess? I'm thinking about it but I'm coming up blank. I don't play well, I have no deep (well, to be honest, none at all) understanding of positional play or tactics, I'm lucky if I can think three moves ahead on a good day and usually I'm busted by my imagined second move anyway because the other guy NEVER does what I thought he might do, I don't know a Ruy Lopez from a Queen's Indian, I'm not interested in improving my game by doing any kind of studying (yech) and I hate to lose. Doesn't sound very promising, does it. I could say it's because I love the game, but it sure doesn't sound like I love the game very much, does it! So I guess I'll just have to settle for "I play because I'm an eternal optimist." That line of reasoning goes perhaps some day I'll wake up and I'll be a chess genius, and I'll blow away anyone who plays chess with me, showing no mercy and without regard to race, color, creed, age or gender. I shall zoom up to the top of the ratings charts faster than I can lose 20 pounds, enter all the big name Opens and win them all, make a kajillion dollars from endorsements (wow, that middle-aged woman sure can play chess. And do you know why - it's because she uses [insert name of product]), and win the world championship - not only being the first woman to do so, but the oldest player ever even when I knock 10 years off my age.

Then I'll move to Seattle, become a recluse, ask Robert J. Fischer to marry me and we'll clone a chess genius together who lives happily ever after spending all the money we made while we were great chessplayers.

Ah, to sleep perchance to dream - well, I know it's something like that, that line from Romeo and Juliet? Well, from one of (as Candi Kane calls him) Spearshaker's plays. Okay - time to get a large glass of wine and settle down with Chess Bitch out on the deck.

Polgar at the Candidates' Matches

Judit pulled out the stops and won with white today, yippee! Susan Polgar published an interesting photo of a smiling Judit snuggling a baby lion on her shoulder in front of a bookcase filled with chess sets. Hmmm.... She also provided analysis of the game and practically a blow by blow description. So, the score is now Bareev 3, Judit 2. Judit still has to win behind the black pieces tomorrow in order to force a play-off. Can she do it? My goddess, the woman is causing me to go prematurely grey...