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Friday, 18 March 2022, 6:33 amPress Release: Sandra Roberts

CHESS MAKES ITS MOVE ON QUEENCITY!

Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre,Aotea Centre, Auckland16-19 June2022

TICKETS ON SALE VIA TICKETMASTER- FIVE SHOWS ONLY

Withmusic by Benny Andersson and Bjrn Ulvaeus (ABBA), book andlyrics by Sir Tim Rice, CHESS THE MUSICAL is arguably one ofthe most memorable scores ever heard. Featuring global smashhits I Know Him So Well and One Night inBangkok, this extraordinary semi-staged musical alsofeatures much-loved standards such as Anthem,Someone Elses Story, Heaven Help MyHeart and Pity The Child.

Thispowerful new production of CHESS THE MUSICAL features anall-New Zealand cast, the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestraand a 30-strong choir

Producers of CHESS THEMUSICAL are delighted to announce a stellar castfor the semi-staged series at Aucklands Kiri Te KanawaTheatre this June.

Playing the lead roles of Frederickand Anatoly fierce competitors on the chess board andfor the love of one woman are music chart-topping popartist Michael Murphy, and internationalopera star EdwardLaurenson.

Caught in their love triangleis Florence, played by Heather Wilcockwhose glorious soaring voice landed her the role of Elphabain Wicked in multiple New Zealand productions. Shehas also played Tracy in Hairspray and Eva Peron inEvita in both Auckland and Wellington.

Tryingto bring order and dignity to the game as Arbiter will beone of New Zealands favourite entertainers,Jackie Clarke MNZM. Jackies highlightsinclude performing in The Lady Killers with Tina Cross andSuzanne Lynch for 15 years, and starring in musical theatreshows such as Once, Mamma Mia!, Anything Goes, Joseph andthe Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, Porgy and Bess, andSweet Charity.

Television and theatre starStephen Butterworth (Ngati Porou) will beplaying the smarmy and sly American television producerWalter. Stephen achieved a cult following for his roles atPop-up Globe and has appeared in The Lord of theRings and Shortland Street.

PlayingAnatolys sidekick-turned-manipulator for the state,Molokov, is Matthew Cutts, a Kiwi whosestar has shone brightly on the West End in London and acrossEurope, performing in some of the worlds biggestproductions including Andrew Lloyd Webbers StarlightExpress, Miss Saigon, Mamma Mia!, Grease, Cats, SaturdayNight Fever, Joseph and His Amazing TechnicolorDreamcoat, and Jersey Boys.

PlayingAnatolys ex-wife Svetlana is RebeccaWright, who has enjoyed an illustrious career inthe musical theatre industry, most recently performing therole of Fantine in Les Misrables at The Civic inAuckland, to critical acclaim.

The production willalso feature an outstanding ensemble and masschoir.Ensemble: Ben Wombwell, EstherDawson, Jamie Cottingham, Jeremy Downing, Melanie Davys,Nomi Cohen, Patricia Bell, Sean MacFarlane, and SkylerJed.

Choir: Alice Merrall, CathyBetty, Chantelle Gerrard, Charlotte Carroll, Chiara vanBaarle, Christina Davies, Christine Wrightson, Emily Briggs,Jocelyn Scott, Katherine Cornish, Kathryn Cross, LeahEscondo, Liz Reilly, Mikaela Stroud, Nicola Murphy, RebeccaHubbert, Vanessa Preston, Trudy Price, Joanna Wood, AminRoberts, Andy Woodd, Craig Rodgers, Dave Torres, DavidWallace, Dwayne Mallo, Flip Hirst, George Keenan, GregMilner-White, Jack Chen-Sinclair, Jesse Reynolds, JonathanBishop, Kristoff Beens, Matt Bruce, and MylesWhittaker.

CHESS THE MUSICAL isproduced by the Amici Trust and G & T Productions, inpartnership with Auckland Live and the Auckland PhilharmoniaOrchestra at the Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre at the Aotea Centrein Auckland from 16 19 June 2022, for five performancesonly.

This semi-staged production, featuring ourincredible entertainers and the Auckland PhilharmoniaOrchestra, will be filled with sumptuous musicalarrangements set to a gripping story.

Written in 1984by ABBAs Benny Andersson and Bjrn Ulvaeus, and Sir TimRice (Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita)CHESS THE MUSICAL features hits includingIKnow Him So Well recognised in the GuinnessBook of Records as the biggest selling UK chart singleever by a female duo and the upbeat pop favourite OneNight In Bangkok.

CHESS THEMUSICAL tells the story of a complex love trianglecombined with dramatic political intrigue, set against thebackground of the Cold War in the early 1980s, where Sovietand American forces attempt to manipulate an internationalchess championship for political gains.

Two of theworlds greatest chess masters, one American, one Russian,are in danger of becoming the pawns of their governments astheir battle for the world chess title getsunderway.

Simultaneously, their lives are thrown intofurther confusion by a Hungarian refugee, a remarkable womanwho becomes the centre of their emotional triangle. Thismirrors the heightened passions of the political strugglesthat threaten to destroy lives and loves.

The musicaloriginally premiered in London's West End in 1986 (where itwas revived in 2018), starring the beloved Elaine Paige. Theseason ran for three years, resulting in a BBC listener pollranking CHESS THE MUSICAL seventh in a listof Number One Essential Musicals of alltime.

Chess the board game, however, is the worldsmost popular sport with 605 million fans and now enjoys evenmore popularity following the Netflix series TheQueens Gambit, which according to Netflix drew arecord audience of 62 million households. In the first threeweeks after the TV series debut, sales of chess sets inthe US jumped by 87% and sales of chess books leaped603%.

CHESS THE MUSICAL is producedby the makers of last years theatrical extravaganzaJERSEY BOYS and is directed by Jeremy Hinman(Jersey Boys, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert).Musical direction is by Penny Dodd (Chicago, Evita, Cats,Anything Goes, 42nd Street, and The Phantom of theOpera) and vocal direction is by Jane Horder (MaryPoppins, Miss Saigon, Jesus Christ Superstar - NZ /Australia tour, Chess NZ Tour, Into the Woods, Hair, HelloDolly)

Make your move quickly. Ticketsavailable from Ticketmaster.

Venue:Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, Aotea Centre,Auckland.Dates: Performances from 16June 2022.Times: Thursday 7.30pm;Friday 7.30pm; Saturday 2pm & 7.30pm;Sunday2pm.Tickets: Tickets from $49.10. Aservice feeapplies.

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Chess The Musical: Stellar Cast Announced | Scoop News - Scoop

It was a routine question from an interviewer at the FIDE Grand Prix 2022 in Belgrade, Serbia: How long does it take you to unwind after a chess game? But Alexander Grischuk, a Russian grandmaster who is one of the highest-ranked chess players in the world, ignored the softball.

Instead, Mr. Grischuk condemned his countrys attack on Ukraine, calling it extremely painful for me. As he spoke, he made a point of not using the word war, saying it was banned in the Russian media and he wanted to be quoted back home.

I was, and would, support Russia in 99 percent of international conflicts, but this time I cannot manage to do this, Mr. Grischuk said. In my view, what we are doing is very wrong, from both moral view and practical view.

Mr. Grischuks comments were emblematic of a sudden and jarring shift in the international chess scene, which has been moving swiftly to cut ties with Russia, where the game remains a popular source of national pride on par with ballet and hockey.

Just as the arts, sports and business worlds have moved to rebuke Russia, so, too, has chess, which is confronting questions over how far it should go to distance itself from a country with deep cultural and historical connections to the game.

Over the last several days, the International Chess Federation, the games global governing body, has criticized the war, cut ties with Belarusian and Russian sanctioned or state-controlled companies, and canceled events in Russia and Belarus, including the 44th Chess Olympiad, which was scheduled to begin in Moscow in July.

The federation, known as FIDE, also forbade Russian and Belarusian players from flying their countries flags at events and referred two Russian grandmasters who have supported the war, Sergey Karjakin and Sergei Shipov, to an internal disciplinary commission that could disqualify them from tournaments.

And FIDE moved to strip one of the worlds most famous chess players, the Russian grandmaster and former world champion Anatoly Karpov, of his title of FIDE Ambassador for Life.

As a member of the Duma, or Russian Parliament, Mr. Karpov supported President Vladimir V. Putins decision to recognize the independence of two separatist regions in Ukraine, which set the stage for Russias assault, FIDE officials said.

The moves surprised many because FIDEs president, Arkady Dvorkovich, is a former Russian deputy prime minister believed to have close ties to the Kremlin.

But Emil Sutovsky, FIDEs director general, said the organization had a responsibility to protect chess as a global game.

The message is very clear: Russia and Belarus as states have to bear consequences, but their citizens should be allowed to play under the FIDE flag as long as long as they refrain from making pro-war statements, said Mr. Sutovsky, an Israeli grandmaster who was born in Azerbaijan when it was part of the Soviet Union.

Many Russian players have forcefully denounced their countrys invasion, despite Russias crackdown on dissent.

March 4, 2022, 6:12 a.m. ET

On Thursday, more than 30 prominent Russian chess masters signed an open letter on a Russian sports website calling on Mr. Putin to end the war and reminding him that they have played dozens of matches and hundreds of games with the Ukrainian chess team, the reigning European champions.

Chess teaches responsibility for ones actions; every step counts, and a mistake can lead to a fatal point of no return, the letter states. And if this has always been about sports, now peoples lives, basic rights and freedoms, human dignity and the present and future of our countries are at stake.

Chess has a long and storied history in Russia and the Soviet Union, where the game was not just a national pastime but a strategic, state-sponsored endeavor embraced as a source of national prestige, said Maxim D. Shrayer, a professor of Russian, English and Jewish studies at Boston College.

Lenin and Trotsky were serious players, as was Nikolai Krylenko, Lenins supreme commander of the Soviet Army, who saw chess as a scientific weapon in the battle on the cultural front, according to The Immortal Game: A History of Chess, by David Shenk.

Between 1948, when the first FIDE world chess championship was held, and 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, Soviet players won every world chess championship save for one, in 1972, when the American chess prodigy Bobby Fischer took the title.

In the 1984-1985 competition, no winner was declared following the fight between the defending champion, Mr. Karpov, and the contender Garry Kasparov, who would win the next FIDE world chess championship and later emerge as a fierce Putin critic, Professor Shrayer said.

A Ukrainian city falls. Russian troops gained control of Kherson,the first city to be overcome during the war. The overtaking of Kherson is significant as it allows the Russians to control more of Ukraines southern coastline and to push west toward the city of Odessa.

He noted that Soviet players ruled during a period when Soviet troops brutally crushed an uprising in Hungary in 1956 and invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968 during a season of political and cultural rebirth known as the Prague Spring.

Throughout some of the worst periods of the Cold War, the Soviet Union remains victorious at chess, and you dont see this kind of movement that we see now, Professor Shrayer said.

This is a new development in how the international chess community is reacting to the national origins of the chess players from the Russian Federation and Belarus, and linking them with the Russian leader, Putin, and the whole military machine, he said.

He suggested that the decisions were a delayed reaction to the status of Soviet chess during the Cold War.

Its a story that is riddled with political tensions with Cold War politics, he said. I think part of it is the ghosts of the Cold War are now fighting their final duel.

Its not only grandmasters that have been drawn into the conflict. Millions of everyday players who compete online have flooded chess sites with comments opposing the war and have debated whether Russian players themselves should be shunned.

Chess.com, one of the most popular sites, denounced the invasion, although it said it would not restrict Russian or Belarusian players from tournaments or forbid them from using their countries flags, calling it a personal and complex choice.

Andrii Baryshpolets, 31, a Ukrainian-born grandmaster who lives in Los Angeles, said he does not believe Russian chess players should be rejected because many do not support the war and others may not be able to freely express their views.

But he said FIDEs president, Mr. Dvorkovich, should resign to protect chess from financial and reputational ruin and to fully separate it from the Russian military assault.

Chess is not related to war, he said. Lets stop the war and lets play chess.

Alan Yuhas contributed reporting.

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Ukraine War Disrupts the Quiet World of Chess - The New York Times

Anna Burtasova v Valentina Gunina, Russia, 2006 (See diagram)

From her home in Toronto, Anna Burtasova plays a key role for the Swiss-based International Chess Federation (FIDE).

The professional chess player turned journalist manages the website and social media feeds for the international governing body of the game. FIDE is one of the largest sports organizations in the world, with 195 national federations as affiliate members.

Burtasova was born in the former Soviet Union and began rapidly improving her chess game after starting to play at the age of six. She gained an international masters title and finally became a womens grandmaster in 2009 at the age of 22.

But Russia has many strong players, and Burtasova decided she would branch out by writing articles and engaging in chess broadcasting. When she moved to Canada, she scored a job with the biggest chess organization in the world.

FIDEs president is Arkady Dvorkovich, a former deputy prime minister of Russia, and sometimes the organization is seen as a microcosm of world politics. But Burtasova says Dvorkovich and other FIDE officials have one thing in common.

Hes a big fan, and thats what I like. They want to do something good for chess because they all love the game.

White played 22.Nf6+ Kh8 and then the pretty 23.Ba3 Qxa3 24.Qh5 gxf6 25.Qe8+ and it was soon over.

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Chess grandmaster in Toronto plays key role for international chess organization - The Globe and Mail

A mathematician from Harvard University named Michael Simkin has (basically) solved the n queens problem, a chess puzzle thats some 150 years old. The mathematical challenge was created by chess composer Max Bezzel in 1848 and essentially asks How many queens can you place on a chess board so that none are attacking each other? Using complex linear algebra, the puzzle has been solved for up to 27 queens, but beyond that mathematicians have been stumped. As Caroline Delbert writes for Popular Mechanics, Consider this: for eight queens, there are just 92 solutions, but for 27 queens, there are over 200 quadrillion solutions. Its easy to see how solving the problem for numbers higher than 27 becomes extremely unwieldy or even impossible without more computing power than we have at the moment. Simkin outlines his solution across 50 pages in a self-published research paper and although it offers an estimate, its impressive none-the-less.Read more about this breakthrough at Popular Mechanics.

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150-Year-Old Chess Puzzle Solved COOL HUNTING - Cool Hunting

By Ian Haupt

After sweeping Meridian in scoring with five out of five points, the Blaine High School varsity chess team booked a spot at the Washington High School Chess Associations state championship tournament in Stanwood this weekend.

Freshmen Carson Roesch and Shawn Waters, sophomores Maddy Reiss and Xander Hodges, and junior Owen Millsap will compete in Stanwood Friday, March 4 and Saturday, March 5.

First, I would like to say how proud I am of our entire team, coach Jeremy Roesch wrote in a community message. We started the season with a very young team, no returning students and pretty much our entire team was new to the game. The prospects of making the state tournament looked slim as we needed to build a strong foundation. We entered our final meet with the pressure on as we were just one point out of state contention.

Roesch said the team won three of five games against Sehome, forcing them out of the competition.

With their confidence boosted, the varsity then went on to sweep Meridian scoring an impressive five out of five points and solidifying a spot in the state championship! he wrote. Great job, go Borderites!

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Blaine varsity chess team sends 5 to state championship - Blaine Northern Light