2010 Women's World Chess Championship - Koneru Humpy Knocked Out of Running

Koneru v. Hou, R5 G2.  From official website.

GM Koneru Humpy could manage only a draw against GM Hou Yifan today in their second game of R5, and Koneru is out of the tournament, falling to Hou Yifan 0.5 to 1.5.  The other two Chinese players who - slap me for saying so - just aren't very important - drew their second game and go into tie-breaks tomorrow.  So what?  The finale of this event will only be news if Hou Yifan somehow manages not to win it.  Do I think that's possible?  I just made a most unladylike snorting sound, similar to the sound I made last Sunday when the Packers managed to lose against the Detroit Lions. 

Here is a summary from the official website:

The first finalist was determined today after the second game in semifinal matches. Hou Yifan, playing black, drew the second game against Humpy Koneru and promoted to the final. A Chinese player sacrificed 2 pawns but received a good compensation. In order to protect her king Humpy Koneru had to give the extra material back. The Indian player had already lost her match to Chinese prodigy two years ago during the World Championship in Nalchik. At that time she also lost the first game of the semifinal match but succeeded to equalize the score and, unlike today, the match was decided only on tie-break. Zhao Xue and Ruan Lufei drew the second game today and decided to try their luck in tie-breaks tomorrow.

The official site has an interview with IM Harika Dronavalli, who was eliminated in the last round by one of the Chinese players.  As always, she was very gracious.

Round 5

Name

FED

T

Rtg

G1

G2

Rp1

Rp2

Bz1

Bz2

SD

Total

Round 5 Match 01

Ruan, Lufei

CHN

WGM

2480

½

½

1

Zhao, Xue

CHN

GM

2474

½

½

1

Round 5 Match 02

Koneru, Humpy

IND

GM

2600

0

½

½

Hou, Yifan

CHN

GM

2591

1

½

1½

I feel absolutely awful for Koneru Humpy.  She is, I believe, the better chess player.  But, let's face it, India doesn't exactly drown their star chessplayers in funds for training and seconds.  It's well known that the All India Chess Federation (which is being challenged by an "upstart" chess federation with some success, evidently) wants to direct Koneru's chess career, while Koneru wants to direct her own chess career.  This has led to clashes and a loss of crucial support as "punishment" for Koneru being an uppity woman.

On the bright side, perhaps now Hou Yifan will be able to afford to go to a decent hairdresser and get something - anything - done with that awful hairstyle she's been wearing since she game out of the womb.  Some new clothes would not be amiss either, with some much-needed advice from a stylist as to age-appropriate cool fashions for a 16 year old who is Women's World Chess Championship.  I will pray to the Goddess for this to happen, please!.  Perhaps Yifan could consult with the stylish Skripchenko and Cmilyte, or the more avant-garde Paetz.  But perhaps "Mother Hou" has a reason for wanting to keep Yifan looking like an overgrown 7-year old.  Aww shucks, now I'm being mean.

Koneru and Hou will perhaps face off against each other again at the 2011 Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival, scheduled for January 24 - February 3, 2011.  They are both on the accepted list of the top female players in the world.  BOTH Kosintseva sisters will be playing in Gibraltar, too.  In fact, the female line-up for that event is the most impressive - ever!  Wow.  That's going to be some event.  It merits its own post. 

Early coverage after Koneru's exit from the WWCC from around the net:

Susan Polgar - Despite Koneru's "valiant effort" there will be a new Chinese "Chess Queen"

And on yesterday's Koneru loss:

The Hindu:  Humpy Loses First Game
The Times of India: Humpy Slips with Black

Has Amelia Earhart At Long Last Been Found?

From Associated Press reported at Yahoo News
Bones found on island might be Amelia Earhart's
By SEAN MURPHY, Associated Press Sean Murphy, Associated Press – 1 hr 50 mins ago
NORMAN, Okla. – The three bone fragments turned up on a deserted South Pacific island that lay along the course Amelia Earhart was following when she vanished. Nearby were several tantalizing artifacts: some old makeup, some glass bottles and shells that had been cut open.

Earhart and one of her Electra aircraft c. 1937(I do not know if this is the Electra)

Now scientists at the University of Oklahoma hope to extract DNA from the tiny bone chips in tests that could prove Earhart died as a castaway after failing in her 1937 quest to become the first woman to fly around the world.

It could be months before scientists know for sure — and it could turn out the bones are from a turtle. The fragments were found near a hollowed-out turtle shell that might have been used to collect rain water, but there were no other turtle parts nearby.

Earhart's disappearance on July 2, 1937, remains one of the 20th century's most enduring mysteries. Did she run out of fuel and crash at sea? Did her Lockheed Electra develop engine trouble? Did she spot the island from the sky and attempt to land on a nearby reef?

Last spring, volunteers working at what seemed to be an abandoned campsite found one piece of bone that appeared to be from a neck and another unknown fragment dissimilar to bird or fish bones. A third fragment might be from a finger. The largest of the pieces is just over an inch long.

The area was near a site where native work crews found skeletal remains in 1940. Bird and fish carcasses suggested Westerners had prepared meals there.

"This site tells the story of how someone or some people attempted to live as castaways," Gillespie said Friday in an interview with The Associated Press. "These fish weren't eaten like Pacific Islanders" eat fish.

Read full article.

Mexican Mother Killed for Demanding Justice in Daughter's Death

Hey, American companies doing business in Mexico - you know, you - the ones that created the great sucking sound of our manufacturing jobs going south of the border to get away from having to pay a living wage and support a decent standard of living for the average working person in the formerly good ol' USA, this is the country you deliberately chose to support when you turned your back on US. 

Report from Associated Press at Yahoo News
Mexico mom killed demanding justice for slain teen
By OLIVIA TORRES, Associated Press Olivia Torres, Associated Press – 1 hr 11 mins ago
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico – Gunmen killed a mother who had been protesting for three days in front of a governor's office in northern Mexico to demand justice for her slain daughter, authorities said Friday.

The brutal killing of activist Marisela Escobedo Ortiz stunned people across Mexico, and a group of women angrily demanding justtice gathered outside the state prosecutors' office in this border city, where the victim's daughter was killed.

Escobedo's slaying "shows that in Mexico, it is the victim who suffers," anti-crime activist Alejandro Marti said.

The vicious nature of the killing — which was caught on a security camera and broadcast repeatedly on national television — added to the anger. The video shows masked men pull up in a car Thursday night in front of the governor's office in Chihuahua city, the capital of Chihuahua state, where Ciudad Juarez is located.

One man appeared to exchange words with and Escobedo Ortiz, who tried to flee by running across the street. The gunman chased her down and shot her in the head, said Jorge Gonzalez, special state prosecutor for crime prevention.

A spokesman for the state attorney general's office, Carlos Gonzalez, said investigators believe one of the gunmen was Sergio Barraza, who had been the main suspect in the killing of Escobedo's 17-year-old daughter. He was absolved by a court in April for lack of evidence.

Escobedo was taken by ambulance to a hospital, where she died within minutes.

She had been campaigning for a conviction in the killing of her daughter, Rubi Frayre Escobedo, whose burned and dismembered remains were found in a trash bin in the border city of Ciudad Juarez on June 18, 2009. She had been missing for nearly a year.

Escobedo had staged numerous marches, once wearing no clothes, wrapped only in a banner with her daughter's photograph.

"This struggle is not only for my daughter," Escobedo said then through a megaphone, her voice breaking. "Let's not allow one more young woman to be killed in this city."

Three days ago, Escobedo planted herself in front of the offices of Gov. Cesar Duarte and vowed not to move until investigators showed progress in the case. In an interview with the newspaper El Diario on Sunday, Escobedo said she had received death threats from Barraza's family.

Duarte said state security officials had been assigned to protect Escobedo, although from a distance. He said their failure to protect Escobedo on Thursday would be investigated. [Oh yeah, right.]

Prosecutors said Barraza, Frayre's live-in boyfriend, admitted murdering her and led police to the body. But during the trial, he proclaimed his innocence and claimed he had been tortured into confessing. A judge ruled in April that prosecutors failed to present material evidence against him.

The case exemplifies the problems of the judicial system in Chihuahua state, one of the first in Mexico to adopt oral trials instead of the system of closed-door interrogations and filings of documents used for most Mexican trials.

Despite training, Chihuahua police and prosecutors have struggled to adapt to a system that puts the burden of proof on prosecutors. Many homicide cases have been thrown out for lack of evidence or never make it to trial. Often, police rely solely on confessions that suspects later claim were made under duress. Newly captured suspects in much of Mexico are often displayed to the press with bruised faces.

Duarte, however, accused the court of wrongly releasing Barraza. He said he has requested that the Chihuahua judiciary fire the three judges who presided over the case and that the state legislature strip the judges of their immunity from prosecution so they can be charged with abuse of power.

In Ciudad Juarez, where Frayre was killed, police have [been] overwhelmed by drug gang battles that have made city one of the world's deadliest. More than 3,000 people have been killed in the city of 1.3 million this year alone.

Records obtained by The Associated Press show that last year, when 2,600 people were killed in Ciudad Juarez, prosecutors filed 93 homicide cases and got 19 convictions.

Chihuahua's judicial deficiencies go back years before the new system was implemented, or before drug-gang violence soared to unprecedented levels.

In the 1990s, hundreds of women were killed around Ciudad Juarez, with about 100 sexually assaulted and dumped in the desert.

New World Bones Suggest Wolf/Dog Cross-Breeding

From redorbit.com
Evidence Suggests Ancient Wolf-Dog Crossbreeding
Posted on: Thursday, 16 December 2010, 08:50 CST

Captive Mexican wolf, Smithsonian National Zoological Park, 2007.

Jaw bones discovered in pre-Hispanic ruins are the first evidence that wolves and dogs were intentionally cross-bred by ancient Mexicans, the Associated Press (AP) reported on Thursday.

The remains, which were discovered by archaeologists at a Teotihuacan pyramid burial chamber, are the first physical proof that wolf-dogs were intentionally crossbred "as a symbol of the city's warriors," the AP reported. The bones were found by the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) in 2004 and analyzed that the National Autonomous University (UNAM).

"In oral traditions and old chronicles, dog-like animals appear with symbols of power or divinity," INAH spokesman Francisco De Anda told the AP. "But we did not have skeletal evidence ... this is the first time we have proof."

"Several jaw bones were made into a sort of decorative garment found on the warrior's skeleton at the 2,000-year-old site north of Mexico City," the news agency reported. "The wolf-dog apparently served as a symbol of strength and power."

Eight of the bones discovered by the researchers were from wolf-dogs, three were from dogs, and two were said to be a mix of wolf-dog and coyote.

According to the INAH's official website, the organization "investigates, conserves and divulgates the national archaeological, anthropological, historical and paleontological heritage, to strengthen the identity and memory of the society that holds it."

"INAH is an institution with plenty regulating and ruling faculties in regards to protection and conservation of tangible and intangible cultural heritage, at the forefront thanks to the level of excellence of research in anthropology, archaeology, history, restoration, museology and paleontology, as well as in professional training within the sphere of its competence," the groups homepage also says. "Its activities have great social impact since the Institute cooperates with the different levels of government and society in the… the design and execution of strategies for conservation and knowledge of the national heritage and memory."

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

Keep in mind, the dogs that the settlers to North and South America brought with them were already domesticated from wolves, domesticated beginning some 17,000 to 16,000 years ago, in the Old World. 

All-Girls Doncaster Gardens Primary School Team Wins Honors

From the Manningham Leader
Doncaster Gardens girls take out chess championships
17 Dec 10 @ 07:00am by Shaun Turton

THE girls’ chess team from Doncaster Gardens Primary School has been crowned junior Australian and New Zealand champions.

The team won first prize at the Chess Kids National Interschool Chess Championship held last month at Monash University in Clayton.

The invitation-only, seven-game tournament included 278 of the best Australian and New Zealand primary and high school chess players.

Team member Zhi Lin was also awarded a silver medal for being the second highest scoring player at the two-day contest.

The school’s open team finished sixth.

Teacher Sue McLelland said the school’s success was a reflection of the popularity of chess among students.

There were 160 students in eight lunch time chess clubs at the 540-student school so competition to be part of the teams was tough, Mrs McLelland said.

“The students that play chess strive to be a part of that team,” she said.

Mrs McLelland said teachers were thrilled about the surge in students learning chess.

“It’s a great game to pass time but it also contributes fantastically to the students’ maths and problem-solving skills,” she said. “Teachers really value it.”

2010 Women's World Chess Championship - Semi-Finals G1

Humpy lost today behind the black pieces to Hou Yifan.  The other two Chinese players drew their game (of course they did).

Game Board Mystery

Medieval Mystery From The UK
By Stephen 13/12/2010 04:02:00

Archaeologists working through the Victorian spoil heaps at Creswell Crags in 2006 uncovered a stone with a familiar carved geometric pattern, it opened yet another aspect of the ever-developing story of the important prehistoric caves.

Creswell Crags located in Worsop, UK, represents one site among a significant cluster of cave sites inhabited during the last Ice Age in Britain. Archaeological and environmental evidence excavated from the caves show how the area witnessed dramatic changes in climate at the edge of the northern ice sheets and was populated by Ice Age animals such as hyenas, mammoths, woolly rhinoceros, and migrating herds of reindeer, horse and bison.

Archaeology investigations at the caves have uncovered stone, bone and ivory tools which date occupation to the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic era. In, addition archaeology have discovered 13000 year old engraved rock art figures of deer, birds, bison, and horse.

What makes this recent discovery at the caves so important is the piece of rock art discovered dates from the medieval period.

Experts from Sheffield University have identified the piece as an medieval example of the strategy board game Nine Men’s Morris, which had been popular since Roman times.

Each player has nine pieces, or "men", which move along the board's twenty-four spots. The object of the game is to leave the opposing player with fewer than three pieces or, as in draughts, with no legal moves left.

This discovery provided a glimpse into medieval activity at the Crags. But it also opened up a medieval mystery; how did the game get there and who had made it?

8000 Year Old Sun Temple Found in Bulgaria

Wed, Dec 15 2010 13:35 CET by The Sofia Echo staff
The oldest temple of the Sun has been discovered in northwest Bulgaria, near the town of Vratsa, aged at more then 8000 years, the Bulgarian National Television (BNT) reported on December 15 2010.

The Bulgarian 'Stonehenge' is hence about 3000 years older than its illustrious English counterpart. But unlike its more renowned English cousin, the Bulgarian sun temple was not on the surface, rather it was dug out from under tons of earth and is shaped in the form of a horse shoe, the report said.

The temple was found near the village of Ohoden. According to archaeologists, the prehistoric people used the celestial facility to calculate the seasons and to determine the best times for sowing and harvest. The site was also used for rituals, offering gifts to the Sun for fertility as BNT reported.

This area of Bulgaria was previously made famous because remnants of the oldest people who lived in this part of Europe were found.

Archaeologists also found dozens of clay and stone disks in the area of the temple.

"The semantics of the disks symbolise the disk of the Sun itself, which means that this is the earliest ever temple dedicated to the worship of the Sun God, discovered on our lands," archaeologist Georgi Ganetsovski told the BNT

Chess Femme News!

Women's World Chess Championship
Chessbase R3 Report (always worthwhile for the photos and they do sometimes provide valid analysis, too)
December 12, 2010

GM Alexandra Kosteniuk, who was not successful in defending her Women's World Chess Champion title in the 2010 knock-out event, will once again be conducting a Christmas charity goodwill simul - somewhere.  We don't know where yet!  She is considering requests.  Her first simul, last year, was conducted in Tucson, Arizona, for 9 Queens. 

From the official website for the 2010 Women's World Chess Championship, some interviews:

GM Alexandra Kosteniuk
IM Yelena Dembo (may have already posted this)

Coverage of the 2010 Women's World Chess Championship at europe-echecs.com (in French):
1/4 de finale
Rounds 2 - 3

From The Times of India
Humpy faces Chinese hurdle
Hari Hara Nandanan, TNN, Dec 16, 2010, 01.41am IST

From The Hindustan Times
Koneru Humpy of India reaches semifinals of the World Women's Chess Championship
Press Trust Of India
Hatay, December 15, 2010

2010 Women's World Chess Championship - R4 Playoff Results

Dronavalli is out.  It's three Chinese players and Koneru Humpy of India.  Koneru will play against the highest rated of the Chinese players, Hou Yifan, tomorrow.

World Chess Championship Women 2010 (Antakya) TUR Thur 2nd Dec 2010 - Sun 24th Dec 2010 Round 4 Results:
Name	FED	T	Rtg	G1	G2	Rp1	Rp2	Bz1	Bz2	SD	Total
Round 4 Match 01
Ruan, Lufei	CHN	WGM	2480	½	½	1	½				2½
Harika, Dronavalli	IND	IM	2525	½	½	0	½				1½

Summary from official website.

There is no day off until this coming Sunday, before the final four games start between the last two women standing.

Mig Greengard at the Daily Dirt Chessblog has a valid take on what happens to promising female players who end up in the female ratings ghetto by playing in women-only events.  ELO suffers, and development suffers too.  I don't necessarily agree, though, that talented players like Lahno and others who are in their late teens/early 20's are over the hill and can no longer develop.  But they have to stay away from women's only events and that is difficult when competing in those events promises a paycheck whereas playing in Opens against 2600-plus ELO GMs promises probably a lot of empty pocketbooks for their efforts.  Women are very rational creatures when it comes down to it.  They will play in events that promise a pay-off.  And I can't say they are wrong for doing so.  And, keep in mind that even Judit Polgar competed on female teams for Hungary in the Chess Olympiad.

I like reading the comments.  Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of them.  Dudes just are not interested in some women playing what they consider second-rate chess (unless it's to bitch about women earning money for playing that chess).  They pretend, instead, to understand the chess of Carlsen, et al.  Yeah, right, LOL! The macho man mystique lives on :)

More coverage and more comments at Chessvibes. 

Chessbase as per usual has a report on the first part of R4 with lots of photos of the pretty ladies. 

British Museum Brings Together Newark and Sedgeford Torcs

This is tres cool, darlings!  One example is intact and gorgeous. The other example, of the same era, was smushed and torn-apart, but is still gorgeous.  Now the workmanship of both can be compared, side-to-side, and archaeologists (and jewelers too, no doubt), have learned very much from this.

Blog entry at Past Horizons
December 13, 2010
Newark and Sherwood District Council have agreed to loan the Newark Torc to the British Museum, where it is now on display

The Department of Prehistory & Europe has arranged a case in the Britain and Europe (800BC – AD43) gallery to display the Newark Torc alongside the British Museum’s own ‘Sedgeford Torc’, found in 1965. Both torcs date to the pre-Roman Iron Age and are composed of twisted gold wire strands attached to hollow terminals, embellished with ‘La Tene’ decoration. This design allowed for a natural flex in the band to accommodate the twisting action necessary to slip the decoration around the wearer’s neck. [more...]

She Lost Her Head, EEK!

Gales unearth Roman-era statue on Israel's coast
ASHKELON, Israel

Tue Dec 14, 2010 5:56pm GMT
(Reuters) - A Roman statue that had been buried for centuries has been unearthed by the winter gales that have raked Israel's coast.



A Roman statue stands on the shore of the
Mediterranean sea in the southern city of
Ashkelon,  December 14, 2010.

Credit: REUTERS/Amir Cohen

 The white-marble figure of a woman in toga and sandals was found in the remains of a cliff that crumbled under the force of winds, waves and rain at the ancient port of Ashkelon, the Israel Antiquities Authority said on Tuesday.

"The sea gave us this amazing statue," said Yigal Israeli, a researcher with the authority.

He said the statue, which lacks a head and arms, is about 1.2 meters (4 feet) tall, weighs 200 kg (440 pounds) and dates back to the Roman occupation of what was western Judea, between 1,800 and 2,000 years ago. It will be put on display in museums.

Also recovered at the site were fragments of a Roman bath-house and mosaics.

But long-established Israeli archaeological sites such as the ruins of coastal Caesarea suffered serious damage in the storm, so the statue's find brought the Authority little joy.

"We don't see this discovery as such good news," said another Authority official, who declined to be named. "Better that relics remain hidden and protected, than that they be exposed and damaged."

(Writing by Dan Williams)

Oh, those gales of November. I didn't know they roared in the Mediterranean the way they roar on the Great Lakes, particularly on Superior and Michigan.  Nice to see some good has come of them, the recovery of this interesting sculpture.

Chess Femme News!

From The New York Times, Dylan Loeb McClain's chess blog:
December 14, 2010, 5:50 pm
Asian Players Fill Semifinal Slots at Women’s World Chess Championship
Three of the four semifinalists for the Women’s World Championship tournament are set. Humpy Koneru of India and Hou Yifan and Zhao Xue of China won their quarterfinal matches on Tuesday.

The other quarterfinal match between Dronavalli Harika of India and Ruan Lufei, another Chinese player, will be decided by tie-breaker games on Wednesday.

Koneru will play Hou in one semifinal, regardless of the outcome of the undecided match. That will be a reprise of their 2008 semifinal, which Hou won. It is an unfortunate pairing as Koneru is the highest-ranked player in the field and Hou is the second highest. If the tournament’s seedings had not been skewed to make Alexandra Kosteniuk, the defending champion, the No. 1 seed, then Koneru and Hou might have met in the final, which would have been an ideal match-up. Now the winner of their semifinal match will be a clear favorite as the winner of the other semifinal will be a much lower ranked opponent.  [ More...]

[And this is exactly what I have been bitching about -- how knock-out events skew outcomes, so that the best players don't necessarily make it to the games they should be playing.  Not a single Russian or Georgian player made it to the semi-finals, and yet they are among the best players in the world.  There is something not right here.  Was a fix in? Is this a resounding arivedecchi from Kirsan to the Russians, who kicked him out of the much more lucrative post of President of Kalmykia but fixed the election so he'd get the FIDE Presidency as a consolation prize?  Heh heh heh.  The final will be China v. India or if you want to be more politically correct about it, India v. China, the two rising future "super-powers."  How fortuitous.]

Susan Polgar and SPICE In the News
From myfoxlubbock.com
Texas Tech, LISD look to add chess to UIL
December 14, 2010 Last Update: 9:12 am
Texas Tech and the Lubbock Independent School District are plotting to pilot a new statewide UIL competition.

The program was proposed by Texas Tech's Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence, known as "SPICE." Now it's a UIL competition.

Next year , Lubbock elementary and middle school students will be given 30 minutes to solve 20 chess puzzles designed by Grandmaster Polgar.

Vice President for Institutional Diversity at Texas Tech, Juan Munoz, said, "It teaches critical thinking, planning, strategizing. It teaches patience, focus, mathematical computation. One has to estimate the number of moves to achieve a certain objective. So there are a number of academically transferable skills in chess."

Munoz says Chess has such wide appeal because anyone can play anywhere, adding that he hopes the UIL level competition will spark students' interest in Texas Tech.

Yearning for Spring

Photos taken April 17, 2010, views of my back yard.  The Newport plums were coming into blossom.  The daylilies around the house were already up a foot high, but so early in the season, most of the other trees had barely begun to leaf-out and the grass was rough and showing signs of a long, hard winter.  Hadn't been through it's first cut yet.  In the lower photo, two squirrels' nests are clearly discernible in the tree to the left.

I'm trying to hang on for December 21st, Solstice.  It was sunny out today and since I was home (new furnace installation) I was able to open the front door when the sun rose up high enough in the far east/southeast to hit the front porch and spill some warmth into the front room through the glass storm door.  It felt so good.

I don't like this new furnace.  The house is cold.  The thermostat says it's 65 in here, but I don't believe it.  I'm cold, cold, cold.  Sitting here typing with a doubled-up afghan wrapped around me, and my hands are like ice-cubes, but I can't wear gloves and type at the same time.  It's like zero degrees F outside.  For those of you on the Celsius scale, that's about 32 degrees below your zero. 

The good news is that I've got my new-fangled wireless printer/fax/copier/scanner set up and actually got it to work after entering my WEP code about 12 times (not kidding).  I couldn't type it in on my keyboard - NNOOOOOOOOO.  I had to punch it in on a 2 by 2 inch screen on the printer by clicking on an arrow to move a "pointer", one letter (or number) at a time until I hit upon the correct one, and then punch OK.  LOL!  I'm laughing now, but it wasn't frigging funny when I was doing it, let me tell you. 

Wondering what the house would feel like with the thermostat turned up to 80.  Would it be warm enough, finally?  Would my hands work again?

2010 Women's World Chess Championship - R4, G2

Three of the four players going into the semi-final have been decided!  Oh no. Oh yes!  Summary from the official website:

After the second game 3 participants of semi-final matches were determined. Hou Yifan and Humpy Koneru will meet at the board in semi-final as it happened in Nalchik in 2008. Both of them confidently drew their games today and thus won their matches against Katerina Lahno and Ju Wenjun accordingly. Almira Skripchenko was eliminated today by Zhao Xue. The French player simply blundered a piece in a good position. She was playing for 11 days without any pause and won three previous matches on tie-breaks. Her opponent Chinese Zhao Xue will meet with the winner of the match Harika – Ruan which will be determined on tie-breaks tomorrow. The classic part of Indian-Chinese encounter ended with two draws. Both participants proved to be good rapid players and it`s not easy to give prognoses.

GM Kateryna Lahno: wife, mother, World Blitz Chess Champion (Women's).
Against GM Hou Yifan, couldn't pull out a win today to force a play-off.



Round 4

Name

FED

T

Rtg

G1

G2

Rp1

Rp2

Bz1

Bz2

SD

Total

Round 4 Match 01

Ruan, Lufei

CHN

WGM

2480

½

½

1

Harika, Dronavalli

IND

IM

2525

½

½

1

Round 4 Match 02

Koneru, Humpy

IND

GM

2600

1

½

1½

Semi Final

Ju, Wenjun

CHN

WGM

2524

0

½

½

Round 4 Match 03

Hou, Yifan

CHN

GM

2591

1

½

1½

Semi Final

Lahno, Kateryna

UKR

GM

2522

0

½

½

Round 4 Match 04

Zhao, Xue

CHN

GM

2474

½

1

1½

Semi Final

Skripchenko, Almira

FRA

IM

2460

½

0

½

Cha-Ching!

I should have seen the handwriting on the wall last year, and a few years before that, and a few years before that, when my furnace balked during the coldest night of the year (I am still astonished how that happened, almost as if it waited for just such a night) and each time it cost me some $700 to have it repaired.  It was that, or cough up money I didn't have for a brand new furnace.  Not that I have such money just waiting in a drawer right now.

Guess what - it happened again last night.  I went to bed nice and toasty and since I sleep with a feather blanket on top of a quilt, I was quite comfy although I did notice a few times in the middle of the night that my nose seemed cold.  But hey, it was way below zero wind chill wise last night, with constant winds pounding the house from the north/northwest.  I expected it to be cold.

So I didn't think too much of it when the house seemed to be creaking and groaning more than usual early this morning.  And then the alarm blasted off at 6 a.m. and I stuck my arms out from under the blankets and brrrrrrr!  It was fricking cold in the house!  As if on cue, I heard a beam somewhere in the attic make an ominous snap-crackle-pop sound and I bounded out of bed and ran downstairs to check the thermostat. Sure enough.  Sometime during the night or wee hours of the morning, the furnace gave up the ghost.  It was 50 degrees F in the house.  The windchill was 20 below zero outside.

So, who the hell do you call at 6 in the morning - come fix my furnace?  I scrambled around getting  dressed and started the fireplace going in the living room to for at least some heat in the place, and pulled out the local newspaper. As I shivered over my coffee, I fixed upon a contractor and called.  It was too much to expect to get a live person at 6:20 a.m. on a Monday morning.  I left a message.  It took awhile, but a repairman did arrive at my door about 8:40 a.m.

He was able to get my 21 year old Carrier (that has given me trouble since day one) going again, and the house was warm when I got home tonight, and the furnace is still working because it has been cycling per usual, and it is now 10:46 p.m.  But enough is enough.  I was probably pushing my luck with that furnace at 15; now at 21 it's time and past.  So, CHA-CHING, a new furnace goes in tomorrow.  That I will get a $900 credit on my income taxes for it does not lesson the considerable pain of an expenditure I had hoped to postpone until summer of 2011.  Perhaps five years from now I will be more comforted by the fact that it is a 95% efficient and dual action something-or-other that promises to save me loads of money on my gas bill each season. (Yeah, right).  For $200 less I could have gotten a new furance similar to the one I have now.  Only 200 lousy bucks?  NO THANKS. 

While I was frantically wondering how the hell I'm going to pay for a new furnace, my 24 year old refrigerator gave one mighty chugging heave and died.  The compressor finally expired.  Yep, I knew it was coming.  The fridge has been making strange glug-glugging noises of increasing scale for over a year now.  I just didn't expect it to die on the same day as the damn furnace!  What next, I thought - will my 24 year old gas stove explode and put me out of my misery?  So when the doorbell rings and the furnace man shows up, I'm packing the contents of my fridge into boxes to stash into the ice-cold garage. 

Tonight after work (yes, I ran to work after the furnace man left at 9:30 a.m. - and on the ice-glazed streets of my subdivision and the non-salted sidewalks, it was quite an adventure getting to the bus stop nearly a mile away in the relatively balmy temperature of 10 below zero F),  my friend Ann and I went appliance shopping.  While the contents of my deceased fridge are resting in the garage in various states of dress (I don't want my milk to freeze, for instance) tucked inside several boxes, I have to wait until Saturday for delivery of a new fridge and a new gas stove.  No matter how I pleaded and even attempted a bribe, delivery could not be made tomorrow, when I will be home during furnace installation.  I did not want to push my luck and take another day off on Wednesday, the earliest possible delivery date, claiming a deceased fridge as an excuse, even though it's the damn truth!  LOL!

Can you imagine?  Geez.  I emailed Ann tonight that I hope I don't wake with an icicle hanging from my nose in the morning. 

Pachisi-Patolli-Parcheesi

From The National Geographic
Prehistoric Parcheesi?
Photograph by Kenneth Garrett, National Geographic

Mexican archaeologist Rodolfo Cid sits near mysterious circles carved into stone not far from the pyramids of Teotihuacan, Mexico (file picture). The circles may have been surveyor's marks, calendars, or scoreboards for a Parcheesi-like game of chance called patolli, according to National Geographic magazine.

Though Voorhies will likely never know the purpose of the Chantuto circles [see earlier post], the new theory has already changed how she sees the prehistoric foragers, she said.

"I've spent a great deal of my life thinking about these particular people," she said, and the unexpected insight into their amusements "makes them seem more real to me."

Published December 13, 2010

Here is a modern American parcheesi board, from Wikipedia:

Here is a 19th century Pachisi cloth board with playing pieces, Sri Lanka, from the British Museum:

A graphic from 1569
Codex Florentinus from Historia de las cosas de Nueva España by Bernardino de Sahagún showing the board game Patolli
from Wikipedia

Korean Nyout, a "circle and cross" game
(Yut Nori - at Boardgamegeek.com)

Nahua God of Games

From The National Geographic:

Gaming God
Image courtesy Barbara Voorhies

A deity of games for the Nahua, an Aztec people of central Mexico, is pictured in a 16th-century illustration.

The Aztec played games of chance and skill, including bowling and checkers.

"The Indian casino thing, in a way, is not anything new—this has always been a popular activity," noted John Johnson, curator of anthropology at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History in California, who was not involved in the Chantuto-holes research.

Published December 13, 2010

Ancient Games and Gaming Boards - National Geographic

Mystery Holes
Photograph courtesy Barbara Voorhies

Workers clean a 4,300-year-old clay floor at the Tlacuachero archaeological site in Mexico's Chiapas state (see map) in February 2009.

Mysterious semicircles of holes (center and lower right) in the floor may be dice scoreboards, archaeologist Barbara Voorhies, a professor emerita at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said recently. (Full story: Prehistoric Dice Boards Found—Oldest Games in Americas? New theory for mysterious 5,000-year-old semicircles in Mexico.)

If so, the circles are the oldest known evidence of games in Mesoamerica, a region that stretches from Mexico to Costa Rica.

In 1988 Voorhies found the buried floor under a mound created by the Chantuto people, foragers who lived along the coast of what's now southern Mexico between about 3,500 to 7,500 years ago.

In 2009 she found another clay floor just below the pictured floor—as well as portions of nine other semicircles. A historical account Voorhies discovered in 2009 revealed that the circles have a "striking similarity" to other Native American gaming boards.

"There's no absolute proof that my interpretation of these strange features [is right]," she said. "But it's a very strong analogy, and that's about as good as it gets for archaeology."

Voorhies received funding for her research from the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration. (The Society owns National Geographic News.)

—Christine Dell'Amore

Published December 13, 2010

More:

Evolution of the Game?
Image courtesy Barbara Voorhies

Tarahumara people of northern Mexico used a scoreboard and stick "dice" to play games (as seen in a 1907 illustration).
When Voorhies read the 1907 book Games of the North American Indians, she discovered the Tarahumara scoreboards resembled the strange Chantuto semicircles.

After that, her previous ideas about the Chantuto holes' purpose—for example that they may have been marks left by an animal pen's fenceposts—became "preposterous," she said.

Published December 13, 2010

Japanese Royal Tomb Discovered

From The Mainichi Daily News:
Tomb believed to have held 7th-century empress's granddaughter discovered in Nara
ASUKA, Nara -- Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a tomb here thought to have been the burial place of the granddaughter of Empress Saimei (594-661), the local board of education has announced.

The tomb was discovered during excavation work around the nearby Kengoshizuka tomb, which is thought to be the burial site of Saimei. According to the Asuka Village Board of Education, the newly discovered tomb was likely constructed at almost the same time as the Kengoshizuka tomb, in the latter half of the 7th century.

The newly found tomb is thought to be the resting place of Empress Saimei's granddaughter Princess Ota, which would match with the Nara-period historical document Nihon Shoki, which records Princess Ota as being buried in front of the Empress in 667.

The discovery lends further evidence that the Kengoshizuka tomb was the burial place of Empress Saimei. This will press the Imperial Household Agency to revise its records, which designate a different tomb as Saimei's resting place.

Archaeologists began the excavation work around the Kengoshizuka tomb in October. While investigating the southeastern side of the tomb, they found the remains of another stone tomb. To archaeologists' knowledge, the tomb's name is not mentioned in any extant historical records or at any other discovered archaeological remains. The board of education decided to name the tomb "Koshitsukagomon," after the name of the area where it was found.

The opening of the tomb faces south, just as the one at Kengoshizuka does. It measures 2.4 meters deep, 90 centimeters wide, and 60 centimeters tall. It appears to have been made by laying a flat base stone on top of the soil of the Kengoshizuka mound, and putting a large stone that had the inside carved out into a dome shape on top of the base stone. The estimated weight of the tomb in its complete form is around 80 metric tons. It is believed to have held a lacquered wooden coffin used for people of high standing.

Located only around 20 meters from the tomb at Kengoshizuka, the two tombs are nearly adjacent to each other.

Based on factors such as the fact that the stone used for the tombs at both the new site and Kengoshizuka are made of quartz diorite -- used for tombs until around the time of Kengoshizuka's construction -- the board of education believes that the two sites were constructed as part of the same set.

A path of inlaid stones, over four meters long and about one meter wide, was found in front of the Koshitsukagomon tomb. However, it is off-center from the tomb, and it is thought that instead of being built at the same time, it may have been added during repair work. That repair work is mentioned in another historical record, the Shoku Nihongi, as having occurred in 699.

The tomb at Kengoshizuka is divided into two rooms. That fits with the Nihon Shoki, which states that Emperor Tenchi buried his mother Saimei and his sister Princess Hashihito together. However, the grave of Tenchi's daughter Princess Ota, which based on the Nihon Shoki should have been in front of the Kengoshizuka burial, had not been found -- until perhaps now.

The Imperial Household Agency currently records the Kurumagi Kenno tomb and a tomb 80 meters south of it, both located in Takatori, Nara Prefecture, as the burial sites of Empress Saimei and her granddaughter Princess Ota. The agency says it is not planning to revise its records.

There will be a briefing at the excavation site from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Dec. 11 and 12.

(Mainichi Japan) December 10, 2010