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Keytaon Thompsons younger brother Kayden had a problem.

He had taken up chess, enjoyed the game and decided to compete against other young players in Louisiana, where the family lived.

Kayden needed someone to practice against, though, so his older brother Keytaon a star wide receiver at Virginia came to the rescue.

He wanted some competition, so he could get sharper, Keytaon Thompson said. I told him Id help, so I started reading a bunch of books.

Within a month, Thompson said, he had gotten good enough to beat his brother occasionally.

Thats the way I approach something new, he says.

And thats the way Thompson is approaching this season as a wide receiver with the Cavaliers.

Thompson is known as a multi-purpose player a quarterback at Mississippi State, and then a running back-receiver last season with the Cavaliers. New Virginia head coach Tony Elliott has said Thompson might run the ball on occasion this fall, but his primary role in the Virginia offense will be at receiver.

Thats what were focusing on, said Elliott, who coached wide receivers during his years as a Clemson assistant.

Thats all great with Thompson, a graduate student in his final year with the Cavaliers.

Im focusing on wide receiver, he said. And Ive been working on the kinds of things that are essential for a wide receiver to know.

Elliott said Thompson is an extremely talented player, a lock to have a career in the NFL. All thats lacking, according to Elliott, is the technical background something Thompson never really got when he moved from quarterback to receiver.

Ive seen him grow as a technician, Elliott said.

Can Thompson translate his growing acumen as a chess player to football?

Its a great game, Thompson said. There are a lot of moving pieces, a lot of strategy.

Thompson enjoyed learning the intricacies of chess. Hes approaching his wide receiver education the same way.

Im working on a lot of things that feel kind of unnatural, he said. But theyre part of being a wide receiver.

Virginia's Keytaon Thompson last season had 78 receptions for 990 yards and had five or more catches in each of the Cavaliers final five games. He was named to the all-ACC preseason team, at the all-purpose position. (University of Virginia T)

Some scouting analysts believe Thompson has an edge as a receiver because of his experience at quarterback. He understands the way routes work and how to beat defenses.

He could have turned pro after last season and would have been a likely NFL draft pick. But Thompson, like Cavaliers quarterback Brennan Armstrong, decided to come back for another season.

Thompson last season had 78 receptions for 990 yards and had five or more catches in each of the Cavaliers final five games. He was named to the All-ACC preseason team at the all-purpose position.

Now Elliott wants him to do even more.

He now understands that Coach Elliott will be on him every single day. Elliott said with emphasis.

I dont want him to just reach the NFL, Elliott added. I want him to stay in the NFL.

Thompson said of Elliotts pushing, Hes not lying about that. Hes on me every day.

Coach Elliott and I have a great relationship, Thompson added. Im having a ball at practice.

Elliott and the rest of the coaching staff are working to get him out of my comfort zone, Thompson said.

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Ive watched guys recently who went to the NFL and were successful, he said. Thats what I want. And I want a career there.

Virginia coaches want to ease the pressure on Armstrong and the receivers, and rely more this season on the ground game. Thats fine with Thompson.

We will use the running game a bit more, and that should help all of us, Thompson said, adding that defenses wont be able to focus on the receivers like they did at times last year.

I think people will like the offensive changes. Our offense should be harder to stop.

This will be Thompsons sixth season of college football, and he wants to make the most of this last campaign.

Ive been playing longer than just about anyone else, said Thompson, who turns 24 on Oct. 23. I guess Im an old guy, huh? Im trying to help the other guys, to share my experience with them.

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Keytaon Thompson, a budding chess player, is preparing for his next move in Virginia's new-look offense - The Virginian-Pilot

Monterey Car Week has been a hotbed of EV debuts this year with unveilings from Dodge, Acura, DeLorean and a host of other automakers. On Thursday, Lincoln revealed the Model L100, its futuristic foray into electrified mobility, which draws inspiration from the companys very first luxury sedan, the 1922 Model L.

Lincoln Motors

Like its pre-Depression predecessor, the Model L100 exhibits a shocking degree of opulence. Next generation battery cell and pack technologies, read the Thursday release, will deliver game changing energy density, while the steering wheel will be replaced with a jewel-inspired chess piece controller that captures light and depth by redefining the vehicle controls inside the cabin. That fancy yoke wont be much use for actual steering thanks to the vehicles theoretical autonomous driving capabilities taking care of the navigating.

Lincoln Motor Comapny

Concept vehicles allow us to reimagine and illustrate how new experiences can come to life with the help of advanced technologies and allow our designers more creative freedom than ever before, Anthony Lo, Fords chief design officer, in a statement. With the Model L100, we were able to push the boundaries in ways that evolve our Quiet Flight brand DNA and change the way we think about Lincoln designs of tomorrow."

Lincoln Motor Comapny

Other fantastical design details include animal-free interiors with front row seats that can flip to face the rear passengers (good thing the cars driving itself), a digital floor and canopy that can project realistic animated scenes onto the floor and ceiling, a full-length hinged glass roof and reverse-hinged doors that open up like a lily.

Lincoln Motors

There's no word yet on when the production vehicle spawned from this concept will arrive. Unfortunately many of the ideas presented here will inevitably be cut, going the way of Mercedes awesome, Avatar-inspired trunk hatch wigglers.

All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

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Lincoln replaced the steering wheel with a 'chess piece controller' in its Model L100 concept - Engadget

My father who is pretty good at chess tried to teach me when I was a girl. I was uninterested, while my brother stuck with it and became rather good himself. Flash forward 30 odd years to a few weeks ago, when a young man suggested we play. Suddenly, chess seemed fresh and exotic, and an opportunity to put one in the eye of boys who think girls cant do it. After all, I am one of millions who had binge watched Netflix's The Queens Gambit in 2020 and found that it gave being good at chess a gleam equal parts feminist and sexy. The only thing was that I needed to be taught from scratch. The young man showed me the basics, and off we went. Sort of.

My chess journey, as they say, has been engrossing and shocking: despite daily games with my father during my August sojourn at my parents' house in Massachusetts, I still get bogged down in complex eventualities that can never come to pass because of crippling blindness about immediate threats (my pawn blindness is one of my worst weaknesses, but it hardly stops there). I rewatched the Queens Gambit to see if I could pinch any moves from fictional world champion Beth Harmon but was repaid by being trounced by a six-year old, himself a beginner.

Ah well. The Queens Gambit was still a great rewatch, its extraordinary power stemming from its fictional prodigy being a girl she starts at 9 and then a beautiful woman before whom the very best male players simply quivered and keeled over, sometimes in tears.

If chess was entirely male dominated in the 60s, when the series takes place, one might have assumed things had improved. Puzzlingly, they don't seem to have much; mystifyingly, girls still play in their own tournaments. Still, I watched with admiration last week as eight-year-old Maksym Kryshtafor, a Ukrainian refugee and chess champion who, with his mother, has been offered refuge for six months by one Paul Townsend, a chess enthusiast from York, trounce all his opponents in a tournament in Durham. Mark Riding, the tournament organiser, compared the young Maksym to a Bobby Fisher: whats going on behind the eyes, its different from the rest of us, he said.

Disconcertingly, however, pictures of the event revealed a room full of boys and men, with nary a female in sight, though one assumes the odd mother hovered round the edges. Some may say there is something quintessentially male about chess's appeal, and about the obsessional excellence that makes for mastery, but I disagree. What is true is that girls are constantly told they are less logical than their male counterparts. Its just a question of when that tired and false canard finds itself well and truly check-mated.

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Chess still finds itself between a rook and a hard place - The Telegraph

"Lets be clear: This is a brazen weaponization of the FBI by Bidens DOJ against his political opponentwhile giving their political allies free passes."

Steve Scalise

U.S. House Minority Whip

"We've got a job as the Oversight Committee to push back on this and to really get to the bottom of what's going on and to help bring sunlight to the bad corrupt actions that are going on and then to work to get it out."

Michael Cloud

Member, House Committee on Oversight and Reform

"I didnt actually get to oversee the search, they wouldnt let anybody see what they were doing."

Christina Bobb

Attorney to Trump

"No person is above the law. Not even the president of the United States. Not even a former president of the United States."

Nancy Pelosi

U.S. House Speaker

"Because we're in a revolutionary cycle, or the left has now said, under the pretext that Donald Trump is so extraordinarily threatening to the Republic, that it requires any means necessary to end him."

Victor Davis Hanson

Classicist and Military Historian

"Theyre using the full powerillegally, I think, unconstitutionallyof the law to harass, intimidate, and try to push Trump out of the picture."

Louie Gohmert

U.S. Representative

"If theres anything negative about Trump or his allies, that gets accelerated, leaked, and used for political purposes."

Matt Gaetz

Member, U.S. House Judiciary Committee

"They see the support that he has all over the country. His rallies terrify them."

Marjorie Taylor Greene

U.S. Representative

"When Republicans take back the House, we will conduct immediate oversight of [the DOJ]."

Kevin McCarthy

U.S. House Minority Leader

"The security state complex and the complexity of the security state ... is now overtaking our system of government and our rule of law."

Michael Flynn

Retired lieutenant general

"[The raid] was the latest link a long series of operations starting six years ago with absurd claims that Donald Trump was the asset of a foreign country. That operation was called Russia gate."

Lee Smith

Author, The Plot Against the President

"This is the modern day version of Watergate. Except the only difference is it wasn't political operatives breaking in to their opponents headquarters. It was the FBI and DOJ."

Kash Patel

Former Chief of Staff to the Acting Secretary of Defense

"These are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents."

Donald Trump

Former President

"[The] raid on the home of a former U.S. president without explanation will only further erode confidence in the FBI and the Justice Department."

Chuck Grassley

Ranking Member, U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee

"[Russia hoaxers] have now been promoted into the Biden administration. ... Theyre definitely targeting [former] president Trump because they dont want him to run for president."

Devin Nunes

Former U.S. Representative

"DOJ must immediately explain the reason for its raid ... or it will be viewed as a political tactic and undermine any future credible investigation."

Andrew Cuomo

Former New York Governor

"[The raid represents] another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the Regimes political opponent."

Ron DeSantis

Florida Governor

"AG must explain why 250 yrs of practice was upended with this raid."

Mike Pompeo

Former Secretary of State

"Beginning in 2016, Americans began to have doubts when we began to unravel the Russia collusion reporting. ... Those doubts kept growing and you started to hear people say we have a dual justice system in America."

John Solomon

Editor-in-Chief, Just the News

"It seems like this was ... without buy-in or notification of higher levels of government. But literally no one will believe that."

Andrew Yang

Former Democratic presidential candidate

"Its all a coordinated attack with the FBI. Do you think that the FBI director is going to raid the former presidents house without getting the approval of President [Biden]?"

Eric Trump

Son of former President Donald Trump

"[Democrat Party attorney] Marc Elias is saying that the criminal statute could result in President Trump being barred from future office. And I think its clearly part of his plan."

Jeff Clark

Former lawyer, Justice Department

"I think for anyone who doubted that there was a swamp when Donald Trump was saying drain the swamp now I think theres true believers."

Warren Davidson

U.S. Representative

"Three FBI agents visited me and seized my cell phone. Im outraged ... [that the FBI] would seize the phone of a sitting Member of Congress."

Scott Perry

U.S. Representative

"Half the country believes that when it comes to President Trump there are no rules. They have lost faith in the system."

Lindsey Graham

Chairman, US. Senate Judiciary Committee

"The country deserves a thorough and immediate explanation of what led to the events."

Mitch McConnell

U.S. Senate Minority Leader

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Chess Pieces: Taiwan and the Great Game - The Epoch Times

At the end of the second round of the 44th FIDE Chess Olympiad, 43 teams have four match points, and nine teams won clean 4-0 victories and thus have eight game points. In the 44th FIDE Women's Chess Olympiad, 40 teams have four match points; 11 teams with 4-0 victories have eight game points at the end of this round.

In significant games of the open section, World Champion GM Magnus Carlsen debuted for Norway with a trademark endgame squeeze after a long-drawn battle of nerves, while GM Dieter Nisipeanu, on the German team, played a peach of a game. The 73rd-seeded Zambia created a significant upset when they defeated the 27th-seeded Denmark with a score of 2.5-1.5.

In the women's section, significant upsets occurred when 65th-seeded Ecuador defeated 26th-seeded Slovenia with a 2.5-1.5 score and former women's world champion GM Mariya Muzychuk of Ukraine was defeated by lower-rated IM Ekaterina Atalik of Turkey.

With such a huge sea of humanity, it is not just the chess on the board that you want to observeyou are also enthralled with the players' attires, contrasts, ages, and poses. As the players are engrossed in playing their games, the colors of the Olympiad showcased in their dresses and headgear command your attention.

Colors on her hat, a smile on her face, and chess in her soulEllen Kakulidis of Denmark. Photo: FIDE/Lennart Ootes.The foremost desire of every chess player, a rich and clean head during playIM Semetei Tologen tegin of Kyrgystan. Photo: FIDE/Stev Bonhage.That which brings a smile to all of us: the innocence of youthMazen Fandi of Syria. Photo: FIDE/Mark Livshitz.

Because GM Viswanathan Anand has a huge fan following in India, he has commanded a lot of attention at the Olympiad. On Friday, he interacted with a large group of enthusiastic young children. They are part of the "Chalo Chennai" ('Let's Go Chennai') initiative and were selected to attend the Olympiad as spectators from chess tournaments conducted all over the country by the All India Chess Federation:

Teams that scored complete 4-0 victories in both rounds are Ukraine, India 2, Uzbekistan, Turkey, Georgia, Argentina, Cuba, Montenegro, and Canadathus scoring four match points and eight game points. However, medal favorites the U.S., India, Norway, Spain, Poland, Azerbaijan, and the Netherlands also won their matches to gain four match points.

Carlsen, in a hallmark 80-move endgame squeeze against GM Georg Meier of Uruguay, employed his favorite methods of playing chess: consistently applying pressure even with limited material on the board, giving the opponent all the chances to go wrong, and demonstrating his famous reputation as a tireless "squeezer":

GM Dieter Nisipeanu of Germany, playing in his true style, unleashed complex tactics to finish with a checkmate in the middlegame. Our Game of the Day lasts just 28 moves:

The top-seeded U.S scraped through with a 2.5-1.5 margin against 47th-seeded Paraguay, with the former being superior by rating on all boards. The decisive win came from GM Leinier Dominguez who clinically outwitted GM Fernando Cubas on the third board. Birthday boy GM Fabiano Caruana started his campaign for the U.S. in this round, but he never had any chances during his game.

GM Wesley So's game was a curious affair, as the American grandmaster seemed to be consistently building an advantage, which was considerable at one point:

The U.S. suffered mildly anxious moments when GM Sam Shankland seemed to have difficulties in the endgame even though he outranked his opponent, FM Ruben D Zacarias, by 545 Elo points:

India scored a 3.5-0.5 victory over Moldova with GM Pentala Harikrishna leading the way and showing his famed endgame prowess. The game is a textbook example of efficient practical endgame play with Hari's fluent and effective play in a simple-looking position:

In addition to the top India team, the other two teams in the open section and all three women's teams of the host country also won their matches, thus pleasing the home crowd, which obviously showed massive support:

France, Azerbaijan, and Armenia are among the 11 teams that scored complete 4-0 victories in both rounds, thus scoring four match points and eight game points. However, medal favorites the U.S., India, Norway, Spain, Poland, Azerbaijan, and the Netherlands also won their matches to gain four match points.

For top-seeded India, GM Koneru Humpy, showing unusual hesitancy in her game against WIM Marisa Zuriel, got into difficulties in an advantageous position on the top board:

Humpy's timely draw offer in an inferior position prompted GM Arturs Neiksans on the Chess.com live commentary to quip, "Koneru just pulled the old trick!"

The major upset of the day was IM Ekaterina Atalik's victory over GM Mariya Muzychuk. Atalik seemed to conduct the game fluently, keeping a good grip on the proceedings throughout:

A surprise happened in the Lebanon-Syria match when veteran GM Pia Cramling won her game in just nine moves against WIM Knarik Mouradian who blundered early:

It was a special moment at the press center after the second round. The youngest participant of the Olympiad, eight-year-old Randa Seder (Elo 1442) of Palestine, who won her game against unrated Mohamed Fahima Ali Mohamed of Comoros, spoke to the press corps along with her teammates.

See full results here.

The 44th FIDE Chess Olympiad and Women's Chess Olympiad are over-the-board team events where national chess federations compete in classical games for gold medals, trophies, and the title of strongest chess nation in the world. The event consists of an 11-round Swiss tournament where each player from a national team plays against another player from the opposing national team. Teams receive "game points" for winning or drawing games and "match points" for winning or drawing a match. Teams with the most match points for each section become the champions of their section, with a third award going for the team with the most points from both sections combined.

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Favorites Continue With All Wins - Chess.com