Saturday, December 3, 2011

BADGERS BIG 10 CHAMPIONS ROSE BOWL BOUND!

WOOOOOO WOOOOOO!  I'm not sure I'm alive, darlings.  I mean, I'm sitting here typing but I'm not sure my heart has restarted - I may be dead and just don't know it.  That's what I get for watching such a game! 

WISCONSIN 42 - MICHIGAN STATE 39.  WE WERE DOWN BY MORE THAN A TD AT HALF TIME...

OHMYGODDESS!  Russell Wilson (Wisconsin quarterback) wins MVP award!  Maybe he'll give up baseball now...

BADGERS FANS HEADED TO PASADENA.  We travel well, I can already here the local businesses rubbing their hands together going ahhhhhhh, Wisconsin fans.  CHA CHING! 

From jsonline.com (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel):

Updated: 10:54 p.m. | Montee Ball scored four touchdowns, including the go-ahead score with 3:45 left, as Wisconsim came back to beat Michigan State in the inaugural Big Ten championship game and earn a trip to the Rose Bowl.

Lots of HEE-HAWWWS for the following (and rasberries, too):

Michigan State Will Beat Wisconsin by Three in the Big Ten Title Game Because...

By Deni Martin, Contributor
(Contributor) on December 2, 2011

Hmmmm, let's see, Wisconsin BEAT Michigan State by three - but who's counting....

Awonder Liang Makes The New York Times!

Prior posts about Awonder Liang:

http://goddesschess.blogspot.com/2011/11/2011-world-youth-chess-championships.html
http://goddesschess.blogspot.com/2011/11/awonder-liang-wins-gold-medal-at-world.html
http://goddesschess.blogspot.com/2011/11/awonder-liang-representing-usa-and.html
http://goddesschess.blogspot.com/2010/10/awonder-liang.html
http://goddesschess.blogspot.com/2010/10/wisconsin-scholastic-chess-federation.html

8-Year-Old American Wins a World Championship

Awonder almost ran away from the field, winning his first seven games before drawing his eighth and then losing in the last round.

He was not the only American to medal. In the under-10 section, Ruifeng Li of Texas took the silver, also on tie-breakers. And in the girls’ under-14 group, Sarah Chiang, another Texan, narrowly missed out on the bronze medal when she tied for third. But under the tie-breaker scoring system, she finished fourth.

One of Awonder’s best games was in Round 5, when he beat Matvey Pak of Russia. Awonder played patiently to win a pawn and then milked his advantage in a rook-and-pawn endgame.

Position after 27...Rc6. 
In the top diagram (if this works, click on start and you can play through the entire game), the game went 28 Rb5 Rc7 29 Rdd5 Ra6 30 Ra5 Rcc6 31 Ra6 Ra6 32 Rb5 Bg5 33 Bg5 hg5 34 Rb7 g6 35 Kg1 Kg7 36 Kf2 Kf6 37 Ke3 Ke6 38 Kd3 f5 39 c4 Ra8 40 h3 fe4 41 fe4 Rf8 42 Rg7 Kf6 43 Ra7 Rb8 44 Kc2 Rb3 45 Ra4 Rg3 46 b4 Rg2 47 Kd1 Rg3 48 b5 Rh3 49 b6 Rh7 50 Rb4 Rb7 51 a4 g4 52 a5 Kg5 53 Ke2 Rf7 54 b7, and Black resigned.

Great News! Brooklyn Power Company Donates to IS 318

This is wonderful news!  Thank you to the people of Brooklyn Navy Yard Cogeneration Plant for their generous donation to help the kids of Brooklyn IS 318 achieve more national championship titles. 

Brooklyn power company donates $25,000 to needy IS 318 chess team

Donation will help squad attend national championship in San Diego

Friday, December 2 2011, 10:10 PM

A nationally renowned Brooklyn middle school chess club threatened by budget cuts has been rescued by a white knight — in the form of a local power company.

Officials for the Brooklyn Navy Yard Cogeneration Plant donated $25,000 to Intermediate School 318 in East Williamsburg to help fund the school’s chess program.

“It’s like a dream come true that someone responded to our cry for help,” said assistant principal and team coordinator John Galvin.
After a rash of budget cuts and a lean economy, Galvin said the school had a daunting task of raising $60,000 to help their students trek across the country to compete for a national championship. Faculty at the school and the chess champs have been working overtime to raise the money by selling candy bars, running bake sales and reaching out to private donors.

Even though they’ve raised a good chunk of the money, Galvin still feared the deficit would be too much — especially with the team’s big trip to San Diego, to challenge for another national title, looming in April.

“Either the price would have been too high or we would have been unable to take all the students who earned the right to go,” said Galvin. “That was a dilemma that we were extremely fearful of.”

Officials for the power company said they called Galvin yesterday after they read the story in Thursday’s Daily News.

“We thought, ‘Three weeks before Christmas, what perfect timing,’ ” said company official Sean Lane. “It just seemed to us how could we not support this school.”

Lane said the company regularly donates their time to the school and when they saw the school needed cash, the decision was a no-brainer.

“We rely on New York to be successful so that we can be successful and that starts with the kids in our own community,” said Lane. “It’s a way for us to give back to the community we work in every day.”

Galvin said even though the team is still $15,000 short, he can now focus on getting his kids in prime position to checkmate the competition.
The team spent yesterday at Google’s offices in Chelsea wiping the floor with the search engine’s best and brightest on the chess board, cruising to an easy 45-9 win.

“It just reinforced our belief that our kids are the intellectual equals of anyone,” said Galvin. “They’re proud of what they’ve accomplished and they’re proud to show it off.”

A Family of Chess Players

How cool is this -- WISCONSIN SCORED AGAIN after a cool trick play with Monte Ball throwing the ball to quarterback Wilson to gain 32 yards!  A few plays later, Ball scored on a 6 yard run!  Now, after a fumble recovery, Monte Ball scores again!  It's now 21-7 Badgers.  Monte Ball:  105 yards, 13 carries, 2 TDs, first quarter.  Heisman Trophy, anyone???

From the Los Angeles Daily News
8-year-old Palmdale girl is already chess champion
By Christina Villacorte, Staff Writer
Posted: 12/03/2011 01:00:00 AM PST
Updated: 12/03/2011 08:11:51 AM PST
 
Giggling under a pink hat bedazzled with sequins, 8-year-old Gia Peterson scanned the chessboard, wiggled her fingers and declared triumphantly, "Checkmate."

Her opponent, a news photographer, never stood a chance. The Palmdale second-grader is a national chess champion, dominating the K-3 age group in the prestigious Susan Polgar World Open for Boys and Girls in 2010 and 2011.

She placed third in 2009, her first year of competition. She's also the youngest in the country to win a high school tournament at age 6. The previous record-holder was a 7-year-old boy in 1987 - who happens to be her half-brother.

"It doesn't matter how old you are," Gia said on a recent afternoon. "I can think up to 11 moves in advance."

During the last World Open, held near Chicago in October, she beat a rival whose coaches were both grand masters. The match lasted no more than half an hour. The year before, Gia took home a grand prize that included a college scholarship.

Her father celebrated the feat. "Gia has talked about becoming a doctor," said Richard Peterson, a former financial analyst and chess tutor who became disabled in 2003 after sustaining a brain injury when a trailer collapsed on him.

"In no way is chess the goal - it is just a tool for the kids to get to where they really want to go," Peterson added. "It trains their minds, gives them critical thinking skills, and that's something that's simply not taught in school."

The Peterson siblings, from left, Dante, 10, Gia, 8, Jayani, 6, and Michail, 12, love to play chess in their Palmdale home, as seen Nov. 28, 2011. (Michael Owen Baker/Daily News Staff Photographer)
Gia's siblings - 12-year-old Michail, 10-year-old Dante, and 6-year-old Jayani - also are accomplished players, even though the youngest is still learning how to read and write. They also have a half-brother and a half-sister, both adults who were national champions in their youth. All four of them won trophies during a scholastic chess tournament in Ridgecrest, Kern County, last month. Their combined record: 19-0.

"Chess is fun," said Dante, a three-time regional champion in his age group, whose signature strategy involves taking over the space in a chessboard until his opponent has nowhere to go.

Dwight Morgan, who has organized children's chess tournaments in Ridgecrest for 40 years, considers the Peterson kids - particularly Gia and Dante - among the best he's seen at their age.

"A couple of tournaments ago, Gia won the high school section and bested boys and girls from ninth grade through 12th grade," he said. "It was quite something to see these tall kids, 13 to 18 years old, holding small trophies while the petite Gia, who was only 8, had the biggest trophy of them all."
"To see a young girl doing so well is really great for the sport as far as encouraging other girls," he added, noting boys have tended to dominate the game.

Gia and Dante are the most competitive in the family. They partnered once and outscored rival teams with four players each. It was Dante who brought chess back into the household after his father's accident.

"I didn't want to play chess because the pain was just awful," Richard Peterson said. "Whenever I tried to concentrate, it would make my head throb."

Dante, then a kindergartner, pursued his chess passion on his own and eventually "dragged" his mother, Deepika, to local tournaments. Soon, she was taking the rest of the children as well. "Dante really wanted to go, but I remember when (then preschooler) Gia first sat down to play, she was so scared of all the people around her that she started crying," Deepika said.

The owner of a trophy-making business, Deepika tried to comfort the children if they got upset after a loss by telling them, "If you want a trophy, I'll make you one."

She never actually resorted to creating those consolation prizes though, because the children soon started winning regularly. They honed their chess skills by reading books, solving problems on an educational CD, and competing online with adults. Despite all that, the children are well-rounded, getting A's at school and playing tag and other activities with their peers.

Their family room has a huge collection of trophies and medals in one corner. More awards are stored in boxes inside the garage.

Peterson, who began to recover from his brain injury in 2008, hopes those accomplishments will ensure a bright future for the children, though he hopes the game will not be the sole pursuit of their adult lives. "We want chess to be an avenue to other things," he said.
************************************************

Well, I know that's a practical approach but if these kids are that talented perhaps they could rise to the top of the world rankings.  I hate to see talent cut off for practical considerations; unfortunately, that's the state of chess in the USA today.  There's just not enough opportunity to make a decent living playing chess to make it worthwhile to pursue as a full time career.  Sad sad sad.


OH CRAP.  Michigan State scored another TD at the start of the second quarter, Wisconsin now leads by 1 TD, assuming Michigan States makes the point-after.

Wisconsin Badgers, House Cleaning, Christmas Tree

It's been one of those days!  Trip to the supermarket in the rain (thank Goddess for that bright yellow hooded rain coat!) at 9 a.m., family tree work (BIG project that must be ready soon for assembly and copying for family for Christmas) until 3:30 p.m., laundry, housework -- the living room has now been vacuumed and dusted, the furniture rearranged awaiting placement of the Christmas tree.  I was just too tired to lug it out of the garage tonight.  That sucker is HEAVY, even in two parts!  Then I'll have to crawl around inside it (no doubt battling spiders along the way) in order to reconnect the inner sockets for the lights.

And, as every good Christmas tree decorator knows, arranging the branches before hand 'just so' takes nearly as much time as decorating the thing! 

From Love to Know Christmas --
Decorate a Tree with Ribbon
This year I'm going to try the French ribbon look - bought 120 yards of the stuff and if it's not enough, too bad.  This year will also see a proper tree topper for the first time -- bought two very large brass stars that will be wired to the top most branch and voila, topper!  This is how I would like my tree to look - now whether I can pull it off -- who knows?

Still need to do more dusting and polishing, furniture is looking dull; and the baseboards need to be wiped down, the glass on the curio and book cabinets cleaned, and the furniture vacuumed.  But now the game is coming on...

...and the red, green and blue light bulbs are now in the living room lamps, lending a festive air, I've set extra candles out and the white lights around the perimeter of the big arch-top window are on!

Badgers are odds favored to win this game, so I understand - by 10 points?  Well, that is what it was last night, at any rate :)  I don't bet, I just watch, scream and yell. 

JUMPING UP AND DOWN SCREAMING - SCORE SCORE SCORE!  TD WISCONSIN!

OH CRAP, MICHIGAN JUST SCORED A TD.  On a good note, we already sacked their quarterback once, ha ha!  And we're getting the ball back after the commercial break (now 7:40 p.m.)...

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Auction Watch: Chess at Christie's

Upcoming auction at Christies - I saw these pieces and fell in love :)

Sale Information
Sale 3515
Christie's Interiors
13 - 14 December 2011
London, South Kensington                                                                                                   

Lot Description

A NORTH EUROPEAN TURNED BONE CHESS SET
EARLY 19TH CENTURY
One side stained black, the knight as a horse's head and rook as a castle turret
The king -- 3½ in. (9 cm.) high
The pawn -- 2 in. (5 cm.) high
With a Victorian rosewood and marquetry box (32)

Dogs With Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome

What are we doing?

Article from yahoo.news

Military dogs taking Xanax, receiving therapy, for canine PTSD
By Eric Pfeiffer | The Sideshow3 hrs ago

Even the most hardened soldier can escape grievous wounds on the battlefield only to suffer deeply painful psychological traumas after returning home. And unfortunately, the same pattern of psychic trauma seems to apply for the dogs that help provide essential services for military men and women.
New York Times reporter James Dao has a heartbreaking story today, which reports that among the present corps of 650 military dogs, more than 5 percent deployed with American combat forces are suffering from canine Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). And of that group, about half are forced into retirement from service.
The relationship between military dogs and the service members who own them is a complex one. In fact, as recently as March, the military was highlighting the use of dogs to help treat human soldiers suffering from PTSD.
The study of canine PTSD is only about 18 months old, Dao reports, even though animal behavior has been studied for centuries:
Like humans with the analogous disorder, different dogs show different symptoms. Some become hyper-vigilant. Others avoid buildings or work areas that they had previously been comfortable in. Some undergo sharp changes in temperament, becoming unusually aggressive with their handlers, or clingy and timid. Most crucially, many stop doing the tasks they were trained to perform.

"If the dog is trained to find improvised explosives and it looks like it's working, but isn't, it's not just the dog that's at risk," said Dr. Walter F. Burghardt Jr., chief of behavioral medicine at the Daniel E. Holland Military Working Dog Hospital at Lackland Air Force Base "This is a human health issue as well."
Military dogs have reportedly become the most effective tool for detecting improvised explosive devices (IED's) in the battlefield. IED's are typically composed of chemicals, rather than metals--which makes them especially hard to detect via conventional electronic monitoring systems.
And as Dao goes on to explain, testing the dogs for PTSD is a complex process:
In a series of videos that Dr. Burghardt uses to train veterinarians to spot canine PTSD, one shepherd barks wildly at the sound of gunfire that it had once tolerated in silence. Another can be seen confidently inspecting the interior of cars but then refusing to go inside a bus or a building. Another sits listlessly on a barrier wall, then after finally responding to its handler's summons, runs away from a group of Afghan soldiers.
Once a military dog is diagnosed with PTSD, Dr. Burghardt works directly with veterinarians on treatment:
Since the patient cannot explain what is wrong, veterinarians and handlers must make educated guesses about the traumatizing events. Care can be as simple as taking a dog off patrol and giving it lots of exercise, play time and gentle obedience training.
More serious cases will receive what Dr. Burghardt calls "desensitization counter-conditioning," which entails exposing the dog at a safe distance to a sight or sound that might trigger a reaction—a gunshot, a loud bang or a vehicle, for instance. If the dog does not react, it is rewarded, and the trigger—"the spider in a glass box," Dr. Burghardt calls it—is moved progressively closer until the dog is comfortable with it.
Some dogs are even treated with the anti-anxiety drug Xanax. That regimen permits them not merely to recover from their trauma, experts say--it also helps them eventually return to active duty. Those dogs unable to re-enlist are allowed to retire, either with an adoptive family or an inactive service member. 

HOW THE FLYING F CAN A DOG 'RE-ENLIST?'  AS IF IT'S VOLUNTARY ON THE DOG'S PART?

Multiple Disciplines Combine in Project to Explore Slavery

Nature | News

Filling in the gaps in the slave trade

Diverse disciplines combine forces to study dark chapter in human history.
  • Jo Marchant

Belzoni: A Biography

Reviled by generations of archaeologists as a pillager and plunderer of antiquities (and Schliemann and Woolley weren't???), a new biography of explorer/amateur archaeologist Giovanni Battista Belzoni attempts a balanced view of the man and the times in which he lived.

Review at The Wall Street Journal
  • DECEMBER 2, 2011
  • A Pre-Digital Tomb Raider
    Sifting sand, opening crypts, raising fallen statues and scooping up anything marketable—and transportable—to Britain.
    By GERARD HELFERICH

    In the Egyptian gallery of London's British Museum stands a 3,400-year-old statue carved from polished black stone. Lifted from the city of Thebes, the figure depicts Amenhotep III, who ruled Egypt from about 1386 B.C. to 1350 B.C., when the kingdom was at the peak of its power and prosperity. Sitting erect but serene, his hands resting on his thighs, Amenhotep seems every inch the pharaoh. But one detail disturbs the regal impression: Beside the king's left foot, with all the subtlety of a Times Square billboard, appears the crudely carved name "Belzoni." How this Italian commoner came to be forever linked with an Egyptian pharaoh is now the subject of a lively, witty biography by Ivor Noël Hume.

    Belzoni

    By Ivor Noël Hume
    (University of Virginia Press, 301 pages, $34.95)
    Though Giovanni Battista Belzoni is not generally recalled today, he is still infamous among archaeologists. Born in 1778 in Padua, Italy, Giovanni worked in his father's barbershop until age 16, then left to study in Rome. After Napoleon Bonaparte captured the Eternal City in 1797, Belzoni wandered Europe for a time, ending up in London, where he hoped to secure work as a hydraulic engineer. But the only job the 6-foot-6 Italian could find was as a circus performer, billed as "the Patagonian Sampson" and toting a dozen lesser men about the stage.

    For more than a decade, Belzoni barnstormed Britain and the Continent, yet always longed to make his mark in a respectable calling. On the island of Malta he met an agent of Egypt's ruler Mohammed Ali Pasha, who hired him to design an irrigation system to distribute the waters of the Nile. With his Irish wife, Sarah, Belzoni arrived in Alexandria in June 1815. But when his waterworks failed to impress, the Belzonis found themselves broke and far from home.

    Then Giovanni met Henry Salt, England's new consul general to Egypt. Eager to curry favor with British aristocrats, who coveted the Egyptian antiquities that Napoleon had made fashionable, Salt hired Belzoni to provide the goods. The Italian took to the work with the mercenary zeal of a true showman and over the next three years dashed up and down the Nile, sifting sand, opening tombs, raising fallen colossi, and scooping up anything transportable and marketable.

    Belzoni didn't have the pharaonic fields to himself, however. His great rival in looting was another Italian, Bernardino Drovetti, the former French consul general, whose clients included the Louvre museum. Though their competition was usually limited to dirty tricks and subterfuge, the shenanigans occasionally flared into something more pointed, as when pistols were drawn over sacking rights to an obelisk from the island of Philae. (Belzoni prevailed.) To eliminate any question of ownership, Belzoni and Henry Salt took to incising their names directly on the relics.

    But the collaborators quarreled often and long about expenses, the rights to the loot and credit for their discoveries. By 1819, Belzoni was fed up; he and the long-suffering Sarah returned to England. He had excavated the fabulous tomb of Seti I at Abydos, and in London he hoped to exhibit a reproduction of the sepulcher. But he failed to pry Seti's sarcophagus away from Salt and the British Museum, and without that showpiece his exhibit failed to attract the hoped-for crowds. Belzoni's memoir sold briskly, though, and in London he was celebrated as an illustrious explorer and even "the Great Belzoni." To his bitter disappointment, however, his lower-class origin, Italian nativity, circus experience and patently mercenary attitude meant that he could never be accepted by English society as a gentleman scholar.

    Later generations were even harder on Belzoni. In the 19th century, as archaeology began to mature into a more rigorous, respectable endeavor, his smash-and-grab methods were abhorred; he was decried by the president of the Archaeological Association of America as "the greatest plunderer of them all" and by a writer for the National Geographic Society as "the most notorious tomb robber Egypt has ever known."

    Biographer Ivor Noël Hume hopes to rehabilitate Belzoni's reputation. The "Great Explorer," he argues, was no worse than his contemporaries or his predecessors. The looting of Egyptian tombs and temples was already rife in ancient Greek times, and the Egyptians themselves were eager accomplices (for a price) in the sacking of their cultural heritage. Into the 20th century, tourists could still buy antiquities directly from Cairo's Egyptian Museum.

    As for Belzoni, Mr. Hume says, "he was only doing his job." In that laissez-faire era, "there were no archaeological purists looking over his shoulder. All that mattered was finding something exciting." If there is blame to be ascribed, Mr. Hume suggests that it be cast on Belzoni's employer, Henry Salt, and on Salt's wealthy patrons, who craved Egyptian objets to display at their country estates and in the august institutions on whose boards they sat, especially the British Museum, which purchased many of Belzoni's discoveries.

    Despite Belzoni's unsavory reputation, the author says, he "showed more serious interest in the context of the tombs and temples" than others of his time. Mr. Hume, former director of excavations at Jamestown, Va., goes so far as to argue that Belzoni was "a bona fide archaeologist." Others may find that claim extreme, since the beginning of Egyptian archaeology is usually traced to about 1850, when Frenchman Auguste Mariette, the founder of Egypt's first national museum, began to preach the gospel of conservation. And some may not be so quick to forgive the desecration of Egypt's patrimony. Still, in this entertaining and graceful account of Belzoni's adventures, Mr. Hume opens a window on the raffish days of early Egyptology, when an Italian giant towered over his competitors.

    Mr. Helferich is the author of "Stone of Kings: In Search of the Lost Jade of the Maya," just published by Lyons Press.

    Brooklyn IS 318 Needs Help!

    It breaks my heart that the kids of IS 318's chess program have to face this - and not just them.  Chess programs all across the country are suffering because of massive budget cuts.  These are championship calibre teams too.  How sad, and pathetic.  We've got plenty of money to pay New Gingrich over a million dollars of taxpayer money in "consultation fees" to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. How many school chess programs would that money fund - please do the math.

    Brooklyn champion school chess team held in check by lack of funds

    Intermediate School 318 in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, running out of moves to raise money

    Wednesday, November 30 2011, 10:45 PM

    A Brooklyn middle school’s championship chess team is trying to avoid being checkmated by budget cuts.

    Students and faculty at Intermediate School 318 in East Williamsburg are frantically trying to raise as much cash as they can to keep funding their top-shelf chess team.

    School officials said budget cuts and the economic slide have made it nearly impossible to make ends meet. “It’s kind of like a double whammy,” said Assistant Principal and chess team organizer John Galvin. “We don’t have the money and \[parents\] don’t have the money, but somehow we’ve got to make it happen.”

    Galvin said he was able to use school funds to run the $100,000 program, which boasts 28 national championships, before the cuts started in 2008. Now, administrators need to come up with at least $60,000 to cover the costs.
    Nicholas Fevelo for News
    Yuxin Zhou plays chess at Intermediate School 318 in East
    Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on Wednesday. Her championship-winning
    team is struggling to raise funds to attend competitions.
    Student chess players have already raised $12,000 from selling chocolate bars, and administrators were able to scrape together an extra $10,000 from private donations. Money has gotten so tight for the team that Galvin said he ran up an $8,000 tab on his credit card two weeks ago covering the team’s hotel and airfare on a trip to Dallas for a national competition. The team won in the eighth-grade division.
    Galvin, who said he’ll be reimbursed from the fund-raising, said the chess program is important for his students who come from poor families. “The premise of the team is that if you work hard and you study, you can be the intellectual equal of any kid in the U.S.,” he said.

    “It doesn’t matter how much money you have or what language you speak — no one has an advantage when you sit across the board.”

    Seventh-grader Shanniah Wright said she’s sad the team cut back on its local competitions. “I don’t get as much practice playing different people as I would like,” said Shanniah. “I could get better at chess before the nationals.”
    “It makes me a little sad that I can’t do that,” said eighth-grader Isaac Barayev, 13. “You miss out on the experience and the fun of playing chess.”

    Galvin said his chess team has bigger things to worry about than team finances.
    The team is visiting Google’s Chelsea office to push around the firm’s executives on the chess board Thursday, and in the spring, it will be matching wits with students from Columbia University and NYU.
    In April, the team heads to San Diego for the National Junior High School Championship. Meanwhile, the team is also the subject of the forthcoming documentary “Brooklyn Castle.”

    “I don’t want the kids to worry about how they are going to afford the trip,” Galvin said. “I want them to worry about being good students and great chess players.”

    For more information on how to donate, visit www.is318chessteam.com

    Wednesday, November 30, 2011

    Haunted Lewis Chess Pieces?

    Judith Weingarten, author of the excellent blog Xenobia, Empress of the East, sent along the following, for which I thank her! 

    Haunted Chessmen
    November 25, 2011
    From Strange History.net


    [Excerpted]

    ***This post is dedicated to Invisible***
    Invisible writes in with the news that the Lewis Chessmen are about to go on exhibition in New York. And Beach took this as a prompt for one of his favourite archaeological stories. The unnamed Lewis farmer in the following account was one Malcolm ‘Sprot’ Macleod.

    In 1831 a high tide on the coast near Uig in the Isle of Lewis washed away a sand-bank and exposed a cave in which there as a small beehive-shaped building rather like the little domestic grinding querns to be found in the Highlands. A labourer working near found it, and, thinking it might contain some treasure, broke into it. He found a cache of eighty-four carved chessmen ranged together. They had an uncanny look, and he flung down his spade and ran, convinced that he had come on a sleeping company of fairies.

    [In] the narrative above, from the great Katharine Briggs, continues with poor Malcolm being sent back to get the chessmen by his furious wife.
    The greater part of them [67 of 78] are now in the British museum. Replicas have been made of them, but the originals, all mustered together, are much more impressive. A tradition has risen about them. It is said that the guards who take the guard-dogs round at night cannot get them to pass the Celtic [sic] chessmen. They bristle and drag back on their haunches. So perhaps the Highlander’s superstition can be excused.

    The chess pieces are actually Norse in origin and were probably made in Scandinavia, quite possibly in Norway, which ruled the Western Isles at this time. But in Gaelic legends chess games between mortals and fairies are a commonplace, perhaps because chess was seen as a ‘game of kings’.

    As to those poor dogs, Katharine Briggs is always reliable and she will certainly have come across this tale in her endless fairy hunting. It remains to be seen though whether it is just third-hand London rumour or a folk belief from the staff of the British Museum itself.

    ************************************
    I don't know who Katharine Briggs is -- but I too, wonder if there is anything more to the intriguing notion that the pieces might be "haunted."  It seems plausible to me that a simple laborer coming across the wondrously carved pieces for the first time, with those large bulging, staring eyes of theirs, might have been a little spooked by the sight of all of them lying there, seeming to stare right at him!  In the 1830s, away from the big cities, the legends of the land would still have been close in the hearts of the local people.  Who knows - perhaps the laborer at first mistook the pieces for fairies themselves -- you know, "The Wee Little People"...

    I looked through what resources I have in my library, but there was no mention direct mention of the "laborer" discovering the pieces and running away because they frightened him!  Indeed, accounts I've read online generally say that there is no report of how the pieces were first discovered other than the well known "facts" (the location of the discovery and the interesting fact that they were evidently "buried" in a sort of oven or stone cache of one sort or other).  But - read on for yourself, and check out Note 8 at the very end. 

    I did find some information about how the pieces first came to the attention of the public, in H.J.R. Murray's "A History of Chess" (pages 758-762, including hand-drawn illustrations of some of the pieces in the British Museum): 

    The Lewis chessmen were discovered in 1831 in a sand-bank at the head of the Bay of Uig, on the west coast of the island of Lewis, one of the outer Hebrides.  There is no circumstantial account of the discovery, but it appears that they were found in a small chamber of dry-built stone, resembling an oven, about 15 feet below the top of the sand-bank.  The chessmen were exhibited by Mr. Roderick Ririe at a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, April 11, 1831, but before the members had raised the money to purchase them Mr. Kirkpatrick Sharpe stepped in and bought 10 of the pieces, while the remaining 67 chessmen, 14 tablemen, and a buckle were bought for the British Museum.  On the dispersion of Mr. Sharpe's collection, the Lewis chessmen, now 11 in number, Mr. Sharpe having obtained another one from Lewis, were purchased by Lord Londesborough, and at the sale of the latter's collection in 1888 they were purchased by the Society of Antiquaries for the Scottish National Museum.  All the game-pieces, as well as the buckle, are carved of walrus-ivory.  The 78 chessmen comprise 8 Kings, 8 Queens, 16 Bishops, 15 Knights, 12 Rooks, and 19 Pawns, of which 2 Kings, 3 Queens, 3 Bishops, a Knight, and 2 Rooks are now at Edinburgh.  The Kings and Queens are carved seated, the Kings holding a half-drawn sword across the knees, the Queens usually resting the head on the right hand.  Seven of the Bishops (2 at Edinburgh) are also seated, the other 9 are standing.  All are represented with the crozier.  The Knights are on horseback with spear in the right ahnd and shield on the left arm.  The Rooks are armed warriors on foot, with  helmet, shield, and sword.  The Pawns are of various shapes and sizes, but most have octagonal bases.  Two of them bear some ornamentation.  A Queen of the same type as the Lewis Queens was found in County Meath, Ireland, in the first half of the 19th century.  It is now in a private museum in Dublin.(7)

    The carving of the Rooks as warriors on foot undoubtedly points to Icelandic workmanship.  La Peyrere, Lettre a M. La Mothe (1664), Paris, [1663, 56, describing the Icelandic chessmen, says:

    La difference qu'il y a de leu pieces aux notres, est, que nos Fous sont des Evesques parmy eux . . . Leu Rocs sont de petits Capitaines, que les escoliers Islandois que sont icy apelent Centurions.  Ils sont representez, l'espee au coste, les joues enfles, et sonnant du cor, qu'ils tiennent des deux mains.

    [Don't ask me to translate!] 

    Sir Frederick Madden, in his Historical Remarks (Archaeologia, 1852, xxiv; also separately printed, and in CPC., i), endeavoured to prove that these pieces are of Icelandic carving of the middle of the 12th century.  The latest authority, Mr. O.M. Dalton (Cat. Ivory Carvings . . . in the B. Mus., London, 1909), ascribes them to the 12th century, and thinks that they may be of British carving.  Wilson had already claimed a Scotch origin for them.  Both views depend upon the assumption that the chessmen are as old as the 13th century.

    If there were any truth in the tradition which Capt. Thomas discovered to be current in Lewis, they may be the work of Icelandic carvers of the beginning of the 17th century only.(8)

    The notes from Murray:

    (7)  A rough woodcut of it was given in O'Donovan's Leabhar na g-Ceart, Dublin, 1847, lxii.  Other Norse chessmen are depicted in Fabricius, Danmarkshistorie, 1861, i. 494 (a seated Bishop), in  Worsaae, Nordiske Oldsager i det kongelige Museum i. Kjobenhawn, Kjobenhavn,  1854, 160 (a King, Bishop, and Pawn) and in Engelhardt, Guide illustri du Musee des Antiquities du Nord, Copenhague, 1870, 57 (a Knight); - v. d. Linde, ii. 312.

    (8)  The tradition is to the effect that a shepherd employed by George Mor Mackenzie (who settled in Lewis, 1614-15) murdered a sailor, who had swum ashore from a wreck with the chessmen in a bag.  The shepherd buried the bag in the sand, and never prospered afterwards.  Capt. F. and W. L. Thomas, in Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scotl., 1863, iv. 411.  In addition to the works already mentioned, information respecting the Lewis chessmen is also contained in Wilson, Prehis. Annals Scotl., ii 341; and Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scotl., 1889, xxiii. 9.
    ********************************************
    This is some good stuff! A possible murder connected to the Lewis chess pieces?  Now that could be a capital haunting, indeed! 

    Imagine this:  what if the story is true; or at the least, a mangled version of the story (regardless of its truth) is talked about for years around the islands, enough so that it has passed into general folklore after some years (we don't know when the shipwreck occurred or when the murder of the sailor took place).  Given this background, in addition to an enduring belief in hauntings and ghosts and, of course, the Wee Little People, the laborer's reaction might not seem so silly to our modern eyes if he knew that tale of a long-ago murder and the burying of the unfortunate sailor's bagful of goodies...

    Woooooooo, sends chills down my spine, I have to say! 

    *************************************************

    I don't recall coming across in any of the accounts I've read about how the Lewis chess pieces ended up where they did the information contained in Murray's account.  Much more fascinating reading than bare-bones reports that the British Museum acquired 67 pieces and the National Museum of Scotland acquired the other 11 pieces!

    Here's the line of "descent" of the pieces after they surfaced -- no indication, unfortunately, of whether they were held for a period of time after their discovery before being sold to Mr. Roderick Ririe, or when he may have acquired them, or what he paid for them.  It is quite possible, of course, that Ririe was not the original purchaser, but as he exhibited the pieces at the Antiquarian Society I am assuming that he must have been an avid antiquities collector and I assume he may have been the first buyer.  How he came to know about the pieces, however, now that is something not known either.  Arghhh! 

    1.  Roderick Ririe exhibits the pieces to the Scottish Antiquarian Society on April 11, 1831.  They consist of 77 chess pieces, 14 "tablemen" (checkers? tablut pieces?) and an ivory belt buckle.

    2.  Mr. Kirkpatrick Sharpe buys 10 chess pieces directly from Ririe.

    3.  Ririe sells 67 pieces, 14 "tablemen" and one belt buckle to the British Museum. 

    4.  Kirkpatrick Sharpe acquires another Lewis piece - but it is not described how, or how the piece was identified as belonging to the Lewis cache.  In any event, either Sharpe or someone on his behalf or on behalf of his Estate sells 11 Lewis pieces to Lord Londesborough.

    5.  In 1888 the Society of Antiquaries acquires the 11 Sharpe pieces for the Scottish National Museum.

    It appears at least some record of these transactions were kept -- else Murray couldn't have tracked down the information he provided in his History of Chess!  Didn't 'gentlemen' of the period nearly always write diaries and letters and what not? Was nothing from their records saved that can be dug around in today that might contain further information or clues?  Inventories?  Estate records?  Attorneys' records?  Bills of Sale?  We know that the pieces passed through the hands of at least three gentlemen:  (1) Ririe; (2) Sharpe; (3) Lord Londesborough. 

    And what of Capt. Thomas?  Who was he, and why was he interested in the Lewis chess pieces?  How did he track down the old story about the shepherd murdering the sailor and burying the contents of the sailor's sack? What, exactly, were the contents of the sailor's sack?  It is assumed it was the Lewis chess pieces but - how do we really know...

    And why would the local people have been willing to talk to him?  We've all read tales from all over the world about how notoriously closed-mouth villagers are when it comes to outsiders - whether a thousand years ago or today.  So how did the Captain sniff out the murder story? 

    I do love a mystery, but I don't know if I have the time or resources to try and explore this any further.  Like the blogger who reported the original "haunted pieces" story (see above, from strangehistory.net) , I'm wondering if anyone out there has any information on this? 

    Another Article on the Lewis Chess Pieces

    From The Wall Street Journal:

    NOVEMBER 24, 2011
    Masterpiece: The Lewis Chessmen (12th Century)
    Lively, Ivory Warriors

    In the 2001 film "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," Harry and his pal Ron play a Christmastide game of "wizard chess" in the bedecked Great Hall of Hogwarts. To many film lovers the chess pieces' gnomelike appearance would seem another example of the film's masterly art direction. But connoisseurs of antique chess sets recognize the pieces as copies of what is arguably the most famous chess set of all, the 12th-century Lewis chessmen.

    Eighty-two Lewis chessmen reside in the British Museum, which purchased them between 1831 and 1832 (an additional 11 pieces are owned by the National Gallery of Scotland). The tangled history of this doughty little army—selections from which are currently on exhibition at the Cloisters, the Metropolitan Museum of Art's medieval treasury in upper Manhattan—is worthy of a Wilkie Collins mystery.

    According to the illustrated essay accompanying the exhibition, by the British Museum's curator of late medieval collections, James Robinson, they were part of a hoard of luxury goods unearthed in 1831 in a sandbank along Uig Bay, on the west coast of the windswept Isle of Lewis, largest of the Outer Hebrides west of Scotland. Suffice it to say that the Lewis chessmen eventually arrived at the British Museum via a chain of avarice, sharp dealings and, happily, dedicated scholarship.

    Soon after the discovery, stylistic inspection revealed that the multiple kings, queens, bishops and other pieces in the hoard represented pieces from at least four distinct but incomplete sets. Stylistic similarities to contemporaneous church sculpture point specifically to the Norwegian city of Trondheim.

    "These pieces represent the highest class of society," observes Mr. Robinson as we examine them together at the Cloisters. "And though they were by tradition thought to have been a merchant's hoard, they may well have been made for a Medieval Norwegian king and presented by him to one of his ambassadors as part of the wealth they were supposed to display, symbolic of their sovereign's power."

    Chess, which originated in sixth-century India and came to Europe by way of Persia and the Islamic lands, was truly the game of kings. Sovereigns and their courtiers played chess not only for amusement, but to exercise their skill at military strategy in an age when might often made right.

    Medieval European chessmen were fashioned from various precious materials, but virtually every one of the Lewis chessmen is a masterpiece ivory sculpture in miniature. Tough, though prone to splitting when worked or stored near heat, ivory has a satisfying heft when held, and can be polished to a buttery sheen. These animated little warriors were hand-carved using a variety of knives, saws, files and drills. Moreover the Lewis chessmen are distinctive because most are made of walrus ivory, a characteristic medium of maritime North Europe. Walrus tusks are much smaller than African elephant tusks, which dictates the size of objects carved from it. Walrus is also more yellow in color than elephant ivory, and because the smooth outer layer is also thinner than elephant ivory, carving often exposes the darker pulp beneath. Exposed pulp is often kept in less prominent places on the Lewis figures—under a carved fold of a costume, for instance—which shows how skillfully the anonymous craftsmen planned the carving of each piece.

    That carving itself is distinctive, especially in its visual strength. As chess is an abstract battle, so the chessmen, especially the pawns, are carved as lively abstractions of human figures. Their overall shape is dictated by the tapering shape of a section of tusk, and their features, physiques and costumes are worked with marvelous detail within this limitation.

    Certainly, the pieces bear distinct family resemblances within the different ranks, though their sizes vary, depending on the size of the original piece of tusk. Kings—some bearded, some not, all with long plaited hair under their crowns—sit on their elaborately carved thrones, swords in their laps. Their cloaks are meticulously detailed to show the right arm free to wield that sword. Queens, their veils falling from beneath their crowns, are carved to show their position as regal advisers. Though their right hands seem to be slapping their cheeks in consternation, the gesture was meant to signify thoughtful deliberation.

    To carve a queen's fully rounded right arm required consummate skill to drill through the ivory, shape the limb and finally polish it in the round without fracturing it. Similar pierce-work distinguishes the bishops, each of whom holds a crozier, the hooked staff of episcopal office.

    Kings, queens and bishops are all enthroned, and the exquisite scrollwork carved on the backs of each throne "recalls the marginalia of a manuscript" Mr. Robinson says. This intricate, sinuous visual language was an essential part of Northern European Medieval art, linking these chessmen to Romanesque and early Gothic stone carving and illuminations of the Book of Kells.

    Warder.
    The Trustees of the British Museum
    The helmeted knights break most vigorously from the conical form, each, replete with shield, sword and suit of mail, seated astride a sturdy little pony. The warders or rooks are carved as bearded, helmeted foot soldiers (castle shapes came later) with shields and swords adding to their fierceness. But several of them, called "Berserkers," are particularly fierce, their bared teeth literally chomping on their shields in their lust for battle. This frenzy was called beserksgangr in Norse and gave us the word "berserk."

    Finally the most abstract of all the chessmen, the little pawns, each worked from a tiny bullet-shaped tip of a tusk and carved only with a series of facets, or with incised flat sides, instead of human features.

    Superficially, the bulging eyes of those chessmen with faces lend them a comically lunatic stare. But as you compare these pieces, each reveals nuances—facial features, gestures and postures—that the master ivory carvers achieved within the limitations imposed by the walrus tusk. For example, one of the warders is carved with his face and even his eyes turned slightly off to the side in apparent thought. It is this essential humanity of the unknown carver's hand that reaches across to us over the centuries. Viewed this way, we can understand Mr. Robinson's comment that "these Lewis Chessmen are my Elgin Marbles."

    —Mr. Scherer writes about classical music and the fine arts for the Journal.

    Wrap Up of News Coverage: 2011 Women's World Chess Championship Match

    The New York Times:

    17-Year-Old From China Repeats as Women’s Chess ChampBy DYLAN LOEB McCLAINPublished: November 24, 2011

    In the growing rivalry between the emerging superpowers China and India, Beijing scored a symbolic victory on Thursday: a Chinese woman won a chess match.

    The woman, Hou Yifan, 17, easily retained the Women’s World Chess Championship title when she drew the eighth game of a match against Humpy Koneru, the best Indian woman to play the game.
    The final score of the best-of-10 match was 5.5 points to 2.5 points.

    Despite the lopsided score, the victory was not as easy as it appeared, Ms. Hou said in a telephone interview from Tirana, Albania, where the match was held. “Every game was interesting. Both of us had chances,” she said. The difference was that “in the middle games, I caught her mistakes.”

    Ms. Koneru said she was disappointed but not entirely surprised. “I’ve been struggling for the last year with my game,” she said by telephone, adding that her mistakes were caused by a lack of patience at critical points when she played too aggressively.

    Rest of article.

    From The Times of India:

    Humpy lost it in the mind

    Monday, November 28, 2011

    3,300 Year Old Leather Chariot Trappings Rediscovered (!)

    Unbelievable - the Cairo Museum doesn't even know what the hell it has in its own collections!

    As reported at nature.com:
    Ancient Egyptian chariot trappings rediscovered
    Forgotten drawers in Egyptian museum yield 'astonishing' leather find.
    Jo Marchant
     

    More Celestial Connections Found at Stonehenge

    From artdaily.com
    November 29, 2011
    Archaeological discovery provides evidence of a celestial procession at Stonehenge

    BIRMINGHAM.- Archaeologists led by the University of Birmingham with the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection have discovered evidence of two huge pits positioned on celestial alignment at Stonehenge. Shedding new light on the significant association of the monument with the sun, these pits may have contained tall stones, wooden posts or even fires to mark its rising and setting and could have defined a processional route used by agriculturalists to celebrate the passage of the sun across the sky at the summer solstice.

    Positioned within the Cursus pathway, the pits are on alignment towards midsummer sunrise and sunset when viewed from the Heel Stone, the enigmatic stone standing just outside the entrance to Stonehenge. For the first time, this discovery may directly link the rituals and celestial phenomena at Stonehenge to activities within the Cursus.

    The international archaeological survey team, led by the University of Birmingham’s IBM Visual and Spatial Technology Centre (VISTA), with the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology in Vienna (LBI ArchPro) have also discovered a previously unknown gap in the middle of the northern side of the Cursus, which may have provided the main entrance and exit point for processions that took place within the pathway. Stretching from west to east, the Cursus is an immense linear enclosure, 100 metres wide and two and a half kilometres across, north of Stonehenge.

    Professor Vince Gaffney, archaeologist and project leader from the IBM Visual and Spatial Technology Centre at the University of Birmingham, explains: “This is the first time we have seen anything quite like this at Stonehenge and it provides a more sophisticated insight into how rituals may have taken place within the Cursus and the wider landscape. These exciting finds indicate that even though Stonehenge was ultimately the most important monument in the landscape, it may at times not have been the only, or most important, ritual focus and the area of Stonehenge may have become significant as a sacred site at a much earlier date.

    “Other activities were carried out at other ceremonial sites only a short distance away. The results from this new survey help us to appreciate just how complex these activities were and how intimate these societies were with the natural world. The perimeter of the Cursus may well have defined a route guiding ceremonial processions which took place on the longest day of the year.”

    Archaeologists have understood for a long time that Stonehenge was designed to mark astronomical events, built by farming societies whose everyday concerns with growing crops linked their daily lives to the passage of the seasons and in particular the sun, on which their livelihoods depended. This new evidence raises exciting questions about how complex rituals within the Stonehenge landscape were conducted and how processions along or around the Cursus were organised at the time Stonehenge was in use.

    Professor Gaffney adds: “It now seems likely that other ceremonial monuments in the surrounding landscape were directly articulated with rituals at Stonehenge. It is possible that processions within the Cursus moved from the eastern pit at sunrise, continuing eastwards along the Cursus and, following the path of the sun overhead, and perhaps back to the west, reaching the western pit at sunset to mark the longest day of the year. Observers of the ceremony would have been positioned at the Heel Stone, of which the two pits are aligned.”

    Dr Henry Chapman, Senior Lecturer in Archaeology and Visualisation observes: “If you measure the walking distance between the two pits, the procession would reach exactly half-way at midday, when the sun would be directly on top of Stonehenge. This is more than just a coincidence, indicating that the exact length of the Cursus and the positioning of the pits are of significance.”

    Stonehenge, while certainly the most important monument in the later Neolithic and Bronze Age landscape, was surrounded by a dense concentration of other sacred sites, some of which were already ancient when Stonehenge itself was built. The team has also revealed a new horseshoe arrangement of large pits north-east of Stonehenge which may have also contained posts and, together with the henge-like monument discovered last year and a number of other small monuments, may have functioned as minor shrines, perhaps serving specific communities visiting the ceremonial centre.

    Paul Garwood, Lecturer in Prehistory at the University of Birmingham, comments: “Our knowledge of the ancient landscapes that once existed around Stonehenge is growing dramatically as we examine the new geophysical survey results. We can see in rich detail not only new monuments, but entire landscapes of past human activity, over thousands of years, preserved in sub-surface features such as pits and ditches. This project is establishing a completely new framework for studying the Stonehenge landscape.”

    These new discoveries have come to light as part of the Stonehenge Hidden Landscape Project, which began in summer 2010 as the world’s biggest-ever virtual excavation using the latest geophysical imaging techniques to reveal and visually recreate the extraordinary prehistoric landscape surrounding Stonehenge.

    Professor Wolfgang Neubauer, Director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute, adds: “The LBI provides the best academics, technicians and young researchers in a team of 20 people and uses multiple systems designed for use on projects where the scale of work was previously unachievable. The use of non-invasive technologies provides information for virtual archaeologies that can be disseminated to the public via the web, iPad or mobile phone.”

    Dr Christopher Gaffney, lecturer in Archaeological Geophysics at the University of Bradford, concludes:

    “Building on our work from last year we have added even more techniques and instruments to study this remarkable landscape. It is clear that one technique is not adequate to study the complexity of the monuments and landscape surrounding our most important archaeological monument and the battery of techniques used here has significantly increased the certainty of our interpretation.”

    2011 World Youth Chess Championships - Top Females

    Girls U-18:Classificação final após 9 rondas
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    WIMArabidze MeriGEO23298.040.00.0986.101.901528.5
    2
    WGMKashlinskaya AlinaRUS23777.540.00.097.56.700.801512.0
    3
    WFMEnkhtuul AltanulziiMGL21836.536.50.096.54.631.871528.0
    4
    WIMPapp PetraHUN22656.536.00.096.55.810.691510.4
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    WIMAbdulla KhayalaAZE22166.533.00.096.55.740.761511.4
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    Kurbonboeva SarvinozUZB21356.531.50.096.55.461.041515.6
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    WIMKazimova NarminAZE22416.035.00.0965.620.38155.7
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    WFMChumpitaz AnnPER22036.031.50.0965.870.13152.0
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    WFMAdamowicz KatarzynaPOL20826.031.50.0853.441.561523.4

    Girls U-16: Classificação final após 9 rondas
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    WIMZiaziulkina NastassiaBLR22727.540.00.097.56.331.171517.5
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    Klek Hanna-MarieGER21547.537.00.097.55.432.071531.0
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    Nandhidhaa PvIND21396.036.00.0965.240.761511.4
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    WFMOsmanodja FilizGER21276.033.00.0966.18-0.1815-2.7
    10
    WFMFataliyeva UlviyyaAZE21486.033.00.0966.49-0.4915-7.3

    Girls U-14:  Classificação final após 9 rondas
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    WFMGoryachkina AleksandraRUS23139.045.00.0997.691.311519.6
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    WFMStyazhkina AnnaRUS20637.538.00.097.55.681.821527.3
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    WIMKhademalsharieh SarasadatIRI22157.039.00.0976.850.15152.3
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    WCMChiang SarahUSA20567.037.00.0975.361.641524.6
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    WCMDerakhshani DorsaIRI19666.532.00.096.56.240.26153.9
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    WFMFelix Vega Aurora EdithPER18506.531.00.085.53.502.001530.0
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    Rodionova DariaRUS19776.529.50.085.55.95-0.4515-6.8
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    WFMSrija SeshadriIND19266.035.00.0853.801.201518.0
    9
    WFMMahalakshmi MIND19556.031.00.0966.14-0.1415-2.1
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    Coelho Ramyres SantanaBRA18006.030.00.0853.002.001530.0

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    WIMAbdumalik ZhansayaKAZ20918.043.00.0987.230.771511.6
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    WFMVasenina AnnaRUS20187.038.00.0865.400.60159.0
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    Tohirjonova GulruhbegimUZB18587.035.00.0975.521.481522.2
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    WCMDordzhieva DinaraRUS20287.035.00.0976.720.28154.2
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    Unuk LauraSLO17377.033.50.0862.783.221548.3
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    Oreshko MariyaUSA16946.535.00.0751.653.351550.3
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    Gueci TeaITA17546.534.50.085.53.052.451536.8
    8
    Bykovtsev AgataUSA06.529.00.096.5
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    WFMMammadzada GunayAZE18576.034.00.0854.660.34155.1
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    WCMHojjatova AydanAZE18996.033.50.0966.28-0.2815-4.2

    Under-10 Girls: Classificação final após 9 rondas
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    WCMObolentseva AlexandraRUS18538.042.50.065.54.261.241518.6
    2
    Radeva ViktoriaBUL17557.035.00.0543.290.711510.6
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    Arda Cagil IrmakTUR15477.032.00.021.50.530.973029.1
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    Shuvalova PolinaRUS15226.535.50.063.51.531.973059.1
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    WFMCaballero Quijano Mitzy MishelPER17706.534.50.063.54.03-0.5315-7.9
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    Sliwicka AliciaPOL16946.532.50.030.52.00-1.5015-22.5
    8
    Bidhar RutumbaraIND16786.531.50.0110.710.29154.3
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    WCMSerikbay AsselKAZ06.033.00.085
    10
    WFMWang AnnieUSA06.031.00.063

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    Assaubayeva BibissaraKAZ08.039.00.032
    2
    WCMTran Vuong Mai KhanhVIE17857.041.50.0100.91-0.9130-27.3
    3
    Salonika SainaIND13806.534.00.021.50.580.921513.8
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    Lakshmi CIND14106.533.00.0110.090.911513.6
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    Zhang TaylorCAN06.529.00.011
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    Solozhenkina ElizavetaRUS06.035.50.042.5
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    Bai XueCHN06.033.00.021.5
    8
    Ismayilzada ZeynabAZE06.032.50.052.5
    9
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    10
    Ramesh KaavyaUSA13956.031.00.0100.52-0.5230-15.6
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