Archive for the ‘Chess’ Category

The best of AB de Villiers, Carlsens chess genius and Chelsea v Man Utd – The Guardian

1) Chelsea and Manchester United meet on Sunday at Stamford Bridge having had very different seasons so far. There are plenty of previous classics between the two sides to delve into, so lets start back in 1965 with a Reds side featuring Law, Best, Charlton et al hammering Chelsea 4-0 on Match of the Day. Another TV-featured meeting of the two, in 1973, saw Chelsea win through a Peter Osgood goal at the Bridge. In the Premier League era weve had Chelsea thrashing Sir Alex Fergusons recent treble-winners in October 1999, Jos Mourinhos Blues securing the title in 2006 and a 4-0 win over Mourinhos United in 2016. On a more heartening note for those in red, heres an eight-goal FA Cup victory in 1998, Uniteds comeback in a 3-3 thriller in 2012, and their last win in this fixture, in 2020 just before lockdown.

2) AB de Villiers announced his retirement from all forms of cricket last week. The South African has been one of the most destructive batters of the modern era, so lets relive his record 31-ball ODI hundred against West Indies in 2015, and his incredible 162 against them at that years World Cup. And here he is nonchalantly hammering a 19-ball domestic Twenty20 half-century. He was no mug in the Test arena either feast on his 278 against Pakistan 11 years ago, or just enjoy this overall career showreel.

3) The World Chess Championship gets under way this week, pitting the defending champion, Magnus Carlsen of Norway, against Russias Ian Nepomniachtchi. Its the first edition of the showpiece since before the pandemic when, in 2018, Carlsen saw off Fabiano Caruana. Heres Carlsen beating this years opponent in 33 moves at a rapid game. This documentary about the chess legends childhood shines some light on his upbringing, and this is why hes known as the Mozart of chess. His opponent is formidable too though take a look at his five best moves.

4) Tefimo Lpez defends his lightweight world titles at Madison Square Garden on Saturday against George Kambosos Jr. He claimed the title just over a year ago with this impressive win over Vasyl Lomachenko, while heres his victory over Richard Commey to take the IBF world lightweight title two years ago. Lpezs top five knockouts can be seen here.

5) Time for some more under-the-radar goals of the week. A 94th-minute winner is always to be savoured, and one as memorable as this, from Morecambes Cole Stockton, away from home at local rivals Fleetwood, doubly so. Just look at those away fans! And has this University of Central Lancashire goal been bettered in student football?

6) Englands women are back in action on Saturday, hoping to extend their 100% record in World Cup qualifying when they take on Austria. England have won all of their previous four meetings; their first, in 2010, featured Ellen Whites debut goal for her country, which she talks about here. England also won this 2017 friendly comfortably and another meeting in Austria a year later.

1) This week the 49ers had this magnificent butt-interception wiped by a penalty, but last year the Jets Marcus Maye got a clean one. Of course, as Giants fans will tell you, theres nothing wrong with using your head in the NFL, and Julian Edelman proves that using other people to catch the ball is perfectly viable.

2) A sleeper smash of the autumn sporting calendar has been Guadalajaras hosting of the WTA Finals. Anett Kontaveit met two-time major winner Garbie Muguruza in the final.

3) Getting out of trouble at the Open.

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The best of AB de Villiers, Carlsens chess genius and Chelsea v Man Utd - The Guardian

The woodland chess game: How to overcome a whitetail’s keen sense of smell – Hornell Evening Tribune

By Oak Duke| Outdoors Columnist

Sportsmen hunt for ammo this year

Like many items across the United States, ammunition for shooting sports is in short supply this year.

Brian Whipkey, Erie Times-News

A whitetails sense of smell is all but beyond our comprehension.

Dogs, too.

My bird dog would lock up on point while retrieving a downed bird.

Somehow that dog was able to smell a woodcock through all that heady grouse scent swirling around his muzzle. His nose was buried in hot feathers!

How could that dog smell a hidden bird with another bird in its mouth?

And how are bomb-detecting dogs able to identify human scent on a tiny exploded bomb fragment?

Older, experienced deer, are quite able to tell when a tree stand is being used. And they often will shy away, especially in the daytime.

A couple of inches of snow on the woodland leaves showed that a deer had walked straight to the base of the tree holding my tree stand. Deer prints on top of boot tracks at the base of the old White Pine tree.

And it was obvious that the whitetail had stood for a little while, shifting its feet back and forth. Every cleft hoof print seen there next to the tree was actually a snapshot of a fleeting emotion of that wary animal.

Our scent hangs like fog, not dissipating for days to a whitetails nose.

Some younger whitetails have also learned to be wary of a spot in the woods, supersaturated with a hunter's odor.

Scent acts a lot like a colored smoke cloud.

The smoke metaphor helps us imagine what it must be like to have a whitetails sense of smell.

So lets say that scent could be colored like a rainbow, the oldest scent to the freshest scent mirrors the colors of the spectrum.

Therefore on one side, old scent, could be represented by blue smoke, maybe up to one-week old. Any older and it would turn to gray and dissipate, being almost undetectable.

Newer scent would be yellow smoke, maybe say, only three days old, and orange smoke would be just two days old. And red smoke was fresh scent, laid down within 24 hours, on the other side of the visible spectrum from blue.

Now take a tree stand that has a hunter in it each day for a week. Throw down a smoke bomb of each color, red, orange, yellow and blue around the base of the tree to represent those days of old scent. That gives us a visual representation of what a whitetail smells.

Now if you were an older whitetail, and wandered even close to a tree with various colors of smoke whirling around by wind currents and thermals, it would be enough to make you at least stop and stamp your foot.

Most hunters believe that the only way to successfully hunt whitetails is from a stand, whether it is a tree stand or a ground blind.

Hunting from a stand seems easy, logical and simple. And it must be the best way because most hunting experts on TV hunt that way.

But time was when we could wander from ridge to ridge, before portable tree stands and videos, playing the wind, still-hunting.

Many of us know that hunting is most productive the first time or two in a stand. We often save choice stands until the rut peaks.

When we hunt multiple days from the same stand, we often see a drop-off in activity.

And forget about it on the fourth, fifth, 10th, and 15th consecutive days.

Visualize the smoke metaphor. Our scent builds up and lasts for days in the vicinity of a stand. If we use it, day after day, whitetail will pattern us better than we pattern them.

And it follows then when we take the same stand day after day, we see fewer and fewer deer.

The more tree stands and ground blinds in different locations a hunter has, the better the chances for seeing deer because we allow our scent to dissipate, not to mention playing the wind in the deer hunters chess game.

And deer hunters who make different stand site moves have better odds of fooling the whitetails nose and getting a checkmate.

Oak Duke writes a weekly column for the Hornell (NY) Evening Tribune.

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The woodland chess game: How to overcome a whitetail's keen sense of smell - Hornell Evening Tribune

Where chess reigned as a spectator sport – The Hindu

Chess is a lonely battle. Not in Kolkata, though.

The Tata Steel Chess, which concluded at the National Library on Sunday, attracted big crowds on all the five days. Not even the pandemic could deter the enthusiasm of chess fans, as they came out to support their favourite players and watch them in action from close quarters.

They would greet the players with loud cheers and would applaud their efforts when the games are over. Some of them could be seen waving Indian flags, too.

For someone playing at the Tata Steel tournament for the first time, it could be a strange experience. It was so strange that I didnt know how to react, says D. Harika, the World No. 12 in womens chess. Then I got used to it and it felt great to play a tournament in front of a crowd. It is nice to connect with the fans.

That rarely happens in chess. The tournaments are often played in halls, with hardly any chess fan turning up to watch.

But right from the first edition of the Tata Steel event in 2018, people have been coming to the venue in large numbers. In fact, they paid for the ticket in the first two years of the tournament; admission was free this year.

The only other occasion one could recall of chess attracting so much attention from the local people was the World chess championship match between Viswananthan Anand and Magnus Carlsen in 2013. But, then, Chennai is Anands hometown and is also the chess capital of India with so many Grandmasters and so many kids learning the game.

I think the passion the people of Kolkata have for chess is something you may not find anywhere, says Woman International Master Saheli Dhar Barua, who is now a coach. As someone who lives in the city, I felt so happy to see so many fans coming to the venue to watch the tournament.

People far away from Kolkata too have come to the city for this elite tournament, like Ruchika Kaushik, who flew down from Delhi. My daughter Siya is learning chess and we wanted to watch his event, she says. I could see the citys love of chess. We have been to the Gariahat flyover, under which people play chess regardless of the noise all around.

Kolkata, of course, is known for its love of sports, especially cricket and football. Looks like chess too is fast making some popular moves.

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Where chess reigned as a spectator sport - The Hindu

The strongest move – Morgan Stanley Hungary head and Chess Federation board member Norbert Fogarasi discusses the power of teamwork, AI, and coaching…

BBJ

Thursday, Nov 25, 2021, 00:00

Image by Shutterstock.com

Head of Morgan Stanley Hungary and member of the board of the Hungarian Chess Federation Norbert Fogarasi discusses the power of teamwork, artificial intelligence and coaching in chess and at Morgan Stanley Hungary with CBI co-hosts Theodore S. Boone and Kristf Csords.

The episode isnow available on Spotify.

Corvinus Business Intelligence is dedicated to learning about, and from, todays and tomorrows business leaders and to understanding the cutting-edge issues on which they work.

The podcast is produced by the Budapest Investment Club of Corvinus Universitys School of Business in Budapest, andhosted by Corvinus faculty member Theodore S. Boone and Corvinus School of Business students.

The Budapest Business Journal is a media sponsor.

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The strongest move - Morgan Stanley Hungary head and Chess Federation board member Norbert Fogarasi discusses the power of teamwork, AI, and coaching...

In the latest round of budgetary chess, Progressive caucus leader Jayapal played a shrewd gambit – NationofChange

Rep. Pramila Jayapal has never made any bones about the fact that her vision for economic transformation goes far beyond President Bidens. As the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, shes been a leading champion of Medicare for All, a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, a wealth tax, living wages and union rights for all workers, student debt cancellation, and many other policies left out of the presidents Build Back Better plan.

At the same time, Jayapal recognizes the potential in the BBB negotiations to win whatshe callsa down payment on that much bolder agenda. And shes been willing to take tremendous heat to secure the biggest down payment possible.

Twice in September and again in October Jayapal stood up to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and blocked votes on a narrow bipartisan infrastructure bill, insisting that the House approve the bill in tandem with the much bigger Build Back Better Act.

Then she upset some on the left by turning around and leading most Progressive Caucus members to vote for the bipartisan bill as a stand-alone in early November. Shed secured a verbal promise from conservative Democrats to support the BBB at a later date, but could they be trusted?

Last Friday, Jayapals gambit paid off when House Democrats virtually unanimously passed the Build Back Better legislation. And about those two months of delay tactics? She says they created the leverage toreinsert key provisionson paid leave, prescription drug pricing, and immigrant work visas.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rep. Nydia Velazquez, Rep. David N. Cicilline, and Rep. Pramila Jayapal on the House floor after passage of the Build Back Better Act, Nov. 19, 2021. Credit: @NydiaVelazquez

In acelebratory video, Jayapal highlights several of the other significant reforms in the bill, including universal preschool, a cap on child care expenses of no more than 7 percent of income for most families, extension of the expanded child tax credit, and significant investments in home-based care, affordable housing, and clean energy jobs.

And did I mention, Jayapal asks, that this is all paid for by making large corporations and the wealthiest Americans begin to pay their fair share?

Indeed, as my fellow tax expert colleague Chuck Collins and Iwrote recently, while the House bill doesnt go as far as it should to address skyrocketing wealthy inequality, it will collect more than $1 trillion from the rich and big corporations to invest in children, seniors, and workers.

Of course its far too early to declare victory and go home. The Senate must pass their own version of the bill without a single Democratic vote to spare. If they make changes, the House will need to vote once again on a final version before it heads to Bidens desk. But the Progressive Caucus has clearly demonstrated their expanded power on Capitol Hill.BBB TAX PROPOSALSLearn more

In her memoir,Use the Power You Have, Jayapal wrote that when she arrived in Congress in 2017 she was surprised to see how little power was really leveraged among progressives.

Then-Congressman Bernie Sanders and others formed the Caucus in the 1990s as what she describes as a relatively informal social group where progressive congressmembers could come together and discuss ideas.

After Jayapal and Rep. Mark Pocan were elected Caucus co-chairs in late 2018, they raised dues to hire additional staff and rebuilt an independent nonprofit organization called theCongressional Progressive Caucus Centerto help drive a more strategic and aligned progressive movement.

The CPCC brings together a wide array of groups across issue areas to develop progressive policy agendas and share analysis of legislative developments. The Institute for Policy Studies and the Economic Policy Institute co-lead a CPCC policy and research council, and the Centers action arm publishes a weeklyDC Downloadnewsletter that has been a go-to guide to the insanely complex reconciliation negotiations.

In 2020, Pocan and Jayapal also led an internal review to identify ways to further enhance the power of the Progressive Caucus. That led to decisions to move to a single chair leadership model and new rules to allow all of the nearly 100 Caucus members to jointly endorse signature bills.

The Progressive Caucus cannot win everything we need through the chess game that is the current budget process. To achieve an equitable and sustainable economy, much more needs to be done, particularly to address climate change and wealth inequality. For insights into that bigger, bolder agenda, see theThird Reconstruction ResolutionJayapal, Rep. Barbara Lee, and other progressive leaders endorsed earlier this year.

But having Jayapal in the center of this high-stakes game means we have a much better chance at securing real progress for people and the planet.

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In the latest round of budgetary chess, Progressive caucus leader Jayapal played a shrewd gambit - NationofChange