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Geopolitical tensions have risen dramatically in Northern Europe. The root cause is energy, or rather the lack of it, and the refugees forced up against the Belarusian-Polish border are just expendable extras in a confrontation masterminded by Russias Vladimir Putin.

A functioning Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline will isolate Ukraine and give Russia effective control over Western Europe, whose political elite have aided Putins plans through their panicked attempts to save the planet by unilaterally ditching fossil fuels. Neither Putin nor Chinas Xi Jinping attended COP26. Northern Europe will have a difficult winter on several fronts.

The SA summer promises to be little better, with last weeks Eskom outages and concerted chorus for the removal of CEO Andr de Ruyter. Cable theft, suspected power station sabotage and multiple fires in KwaZulu-Natals rail and port infrastructure in the aftermath of the July insurrection, look more like destabilisation than just incompetence or mindless violence.

Could the Kremlins chess master be playing a similar game with SA? Former president Jacob Zuma has always had close Russian ties and the failed nuclear deal was a severe blow to Putins African plans. The two Davids, Mahlobo and Mabusa, have made pilgrimages to Moscow under various pretexts and are still in positions of political influence.

Was the intelligence fiasco behind Julys riots solely due to administrative malfunction, or a concerted effort to ensure Ramaphosa did not get wind of the preparations? Are the internal ANC struggles between the radical economic transformation and CR17 factions more sinister than just the contortions of a geriatric organisation?

Could agreement to construct at least some of the eight promised nuclear reactors suddenly make many of Eskoms problems disappear?I hope not, for while I back De Ruyter in a business sense, it is difficult to see how he could prevail if a geopolitical aspect was also involved, especially as Ramaphosa already appears to have been effectively neutered.

James Cunningham, Camps Bay

JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Send your letter by email to letters@businesslive.co.za. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.

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LETTER: Zuma, Kremlin chess and nuclear power - Business Day

Throughout our entire lives, we keep looking for the best. The best colleges, best workplaces, best vacation spots, etc. The list is endless. Of course, in our chess universe we also follow this same trend and search for the best games and best players of all time.

I wonder, why is no one looking for the worst? [Ed. Note: We are sometimes!] Well, there is no point to search for the worst chess player since he is well known. At least, it is if we trust U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1972, who called GM Bobby Fischer and introduced himself as "the worst chess player in the world... calling the best player in the world".

But what about the worst chess game ever played? You might wonder why we would even need to look for such a horrible game. Well, besides the obvious human curiosity, there is a clear utility such a game might provide. Say you are a beginning chess player: Which game would you rather prefer to analyze, one by two super GMs played with nearly 100% accuracy, or the following game, which I saw as a kid in one of my first chess books?

I don't know about you, but I smiled when I saw this game for the first time. Meanwhile, the near-perfect game played by two super-GMs would have just bored me at that time. Besides, learning that outrageous game, where Black got checkmated in just three moves, assured that I would never lose a game the same way, as happened in the Chess Olympiad not so long ago:

So, what criteria should we use to determine the worst game ever played? If it is just educational value that demonstrates what you should never do in chess, then the following "game" would be close to the top of my list of worst ever:

To be fair, these horrible king moves didn't lead to excessive damage (most of us would still lose to GM Magnus Carlsen even after he plays 2. Ke2??). Should we then consider the degree of damage caused by a bad move? If so, not many games can compete with such ultimate blunders as the following well-known examples.

We are all guilty of saying something like "I just played the worst game in the whole history of chess" after losing an especially painful game. GM Tigran Petrosian probably thought the same way after he made an outrageous blunder in a very important tournament.

I just don't think it is fair to call a game 'the worst ever" based on a single blunder, no matter how bad it was. For example, the Petrosian game above is actually an excellent example of constricting an opponent. As a matter of fact, if not for the tragic blunder, it would have been added to Petrosian's collection of positional masterpieces.

It is obvious that in order to be considered "the worst ever," a game should be played consistently badly, from beginning to end. Take the following game, for example:

When one of the world's best grandmasters performs like an amateur player, we know that the game is very bad. By the way, my apologies to amateur playersI know that many of you can play better than that!

Yet even games where truly bad moves were played from beginning to end might not always be good material for our contest. Take, for example, the following notorious game:

It is a well-known fact that this game was played under protest, as was this infamous contest:

And I don't even want to know what kind of events forced two masters to produce the following recent gem:

As you can see, it is not easy to determine the worst chess game ever played. Therefore, when IM Ali Mortazavi tweeted that he would like to nominate the worst game of chess I was quite skeptical. However, upon looking at the game, I think he has a valid point. Judge for yourself:

While blunders are an integral part of bullet chess, here it was a bit too much. Six consecutive blunders of checkmate in one within three moves, by players rated above 2400 must be the world record. Seven blunders like this in a game that lasted just 15 moves is also a tough record to beat!

So, is this indeed the worst game ever played or do you, my dear readers, have your own nominations? Let us know in the comments below!

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The Worst Chess Game Ever - Chess.com

We are happy to announce the 2021-2022 Bughouse World Championship! The beloved variant championship starts on November 8 and will extend through January 2022. The strongest bughouse players in the world will come together to fight for their piece of the $5,000 prize fund. With an open and a U2000 section, the event is sure to be entertaining for players of all levels!

Bughouse has always been one of the favorite and most popular chess variants in the world. Already a tradition in over-the-board tournaments, the variant also took the internet by storm after it became available on Chess.com. Since then, many elite players and streamers have enjoyed playing bughouse online, including incredibly strong GMs like Hikaru Nakamura and Yasser Seirawan.

The event is being organized by bughouse expert Chuck Moulton and members of the bughouse community on Chess,com. Moulton will be providing commentary throughout the event. He is a known streamer in the chess variants community and has vast experience in bughouse. Make sure you tune in to his Twitch channel as well as Chess.com's events channel to enjoy the live broadcast of the event!

You can fill out the official sign-up form below until November 5 if you want to jump in on the bughouse action. For more information about the event, check out Moulton's guide here.

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Announcing The 2021 Bughouse World Championship - Chess.com

A comparison of an original and deepfake video of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Elyse Samuels | The Washington Post | Getty Images

LISBON, Portugal Facebook is wrong to shut down its facial recognition system, according to Gary Kasparov, the former world chess champion and chairman of the Human Rights Foundation.

The decision, announced Tuesday, is "stupid" Kasparov told CNBC at the Web Summit tech conference in Lisbon.

"It's bowing to this public outrage," Kasparov said Wednesday, just days after Facebook rebranded itself to Meta. "Personally, I think it's stupid for a simple reason: Facebook can shut it down, the Chinese will not."

Facebook did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment.

Born into what was then the Soviet Union, Kasparov became the youngest ever undisputed World Chess Champion in 1985 at age 22. In 1997 he became the first world champion to lose a match to a computer: IBM's Deep Blue.

Today, he says he is pro-technology and against overregulation.

"Any technological feature that's available, for me, it doesn't make any sense to block it," Kasparov said. Privacy campaigners would strongly disagree.

He added: "It's insane to think that in the era of global internet, you can actually start forcing companies in America or in Europe to follow these rules and to abandon new features."

Former world chess champion Garry Kasparov speaks during 2018's Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal.

Pedro Fiuza | NurPhoto | Getty Images

The decision to shut down the facial recognition system on Facebook comes amid a barrage of news reports over the past month after Frances Haugen, a former employee turned whistleblower, released a trove of internal company documents to news outlets, lawmakers and regulators.

Facebook said in a blogpost that there are "many concerns" about the use of facial recognition technology in society, noting how regulators are still in the process of providing a clear set of rules governing its use.

"Amid this ongoing uncertainty, we believe that limiting the use of facial recognition to a narrow set of use cases is appropriate," the social media giant said.

Ending the use of the face recognition system is part of "a company-wide move away from this kind of broad identification," Facebook said.

In 2012, Facebook acquired Israeli start-up Face.com for reportedly under $100 million, snapping up a team of developers who focused on facial recognition for mobile apps. The deal came just months after Facebook acquired Instagram, CEO Mark Zuckerberg's biggest effort at the time to move the business to mobile.

In July 2020, the company agreed to pay a $650 million settlement after it was sued for collecting and storing biometric data without first getting user consent, which is prohibited by the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act.

- Additional reporting by CNBC's Salvador Rodriguez.

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Facebook should not have bowed to public outrage and shut down its facial recognition system, former world chess champion says - CNBC

Last weekends Scarborough congress attracted a bumper entry of 300, as tournament regulars greeted the resumption of a popular fixture. Competitive chess in the north-east is recovering well from the pandemic. The British championship and a GM tournament were staged in Hull. and an invitational in North Tyneside.

The 4NCL national league, played online last season, returns over the board shortly with 80 teams against 94 before Covid-19. There will be new champions, for Guildfords record breakers have retired after83 matches andeight years without defeat.

County teams plus local clubs and leagues, which have an older demographic, have beengenerallyless resilient, although a few havesuccessfullytapped in to the online chess boom inspiredby Netflixs Queens Gambit. Battersea, Camberley, Kingston, Richmond and Surbiton, all in a suburban belt, have booming memberships.

The Carlsen v Nepomniachtchi $2m, 14-game world championshipmatch which starts in Dubai on November 26 should be a further stimulus. How can an interested FT reader join in?

You can start a game online very quickly by logging on tolichess.org. For over the board chess, log on toenglishchess.org.uk, then click Find a Chess Club for one near you or Calendar for details of future one-day and weekend congresses open to players of all strengths.

Puzzle 2443

Roland Scott v Joseph Blake, Edinburgh1920.White (to play) is queen for bishop up, but can you find his only winning move?A century ago, Scott solved the puzzle and won the British championship.

Click here for solution

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Online chess booms while over the board play recovers from the pandemic - Financial Times