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Monocle 24 is Monocles global radio station, featuring live shows and podcasts covering news, foreign affairs, business, culture, design, urbanism, food and drink, print media and more.

Monocle magazine was launched in 2007 to provide a briefing on global affairs, business, culture, design and much more. Today, Monocle is published 10 times a year out of their HQ at Zrichs Seefeld and theirr editorial base at Midori House in London. Monocle has an extensive network of correspondents in cities such as Milan, Bogot and Paris, as well as bureaux in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Los Angeles and Toronto.

Presented by Andrew Mueller, Monocle 24s flagship global-affairs show features expert guests and in-depth analysis of the big issues of the week. Winner in the best current affairs category of the 2018 British Podcast awards.

Sometimes art imitates life; sometimes games do too. And parallels between chess and the political arena have existed for centuries. But are there really any similarities? How was the game used as a pawn in the cold war? And could the chessboard once again become a soft-power battleground? Andrew Mueller speaks to Judit Polgar, David Edmonds, and Dana Reizniece-Ozola.

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David Edmonds (born 1964) is a radio feature maker at the BBC World Service. He studied at Oxford University, has a PhD in philosophy from the Open University and has held fellowships at the University of Chicago and the University of Michigan. Edmonds is the author of Caste Wars: A Philosophy of Discrimination and co-author, with John Eidinow, of Wittgensteins Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers and Bobby Fischer Goes to War: How the Soviets Lost the Most Extraordinary Chess Match of All Time.

Dana Reizniece-Ozola, born in the town of Kuldinga in 1981, began to play tournament chess in her early childhood.In 2001, Dana Reizniece-Ozola became Woman Grandmaster. After completing her studies, she became the director of a technology hub specializing in space engineering. At the same time, she got involved in politics, joining the conservative Latvian Union of Greens and Farmers and being elected as a Member of Parliament in 2010. From 2010 to 2011, she served as Parliamentary Secretary in the Latvian Ministry of Transportation. From 2014 to 2016, Dana Reizniece-Ozola held the position of Minister of Economics. In 2016, she was appointed Minister of Finance.

Dana Reizniece-Ozola is the currentManaging Director of FIDE.

Master Class Vol.1: Bobby Fischer

No other World Champion was more infamous both inside and outside the chess world than Bobby Fischer. On this DVD, a team of experts shows you the winning techniques and strategies employed by the 11th World Champion.

Grandmaster Dorian Rogozenco delves into Fischers openings, and retraces the development of his repertoire. What variations did Fischer play, and what sources did he use to arm himself against the best Soviet players? Mihail Marin explains Fischers particular style and his special strategic talent in annotated games against Spassky, Taimanov and other greats. Karsten Mller is not just a leading international endgame expert, but also a true Fischer connoisseur.

In Bobby Fischer Goes to War: How the Soviets Lost the Most Extraordinary Chess Match of All Time, BBC journalists David Edmonds and John Eidinow detail the match and its high-stakes geopolitical context.

National Public Radio (NPR), an internationally acclaimed producer and distributor of noncommercial news, talk, and entertainment programming, has interviewed the authors of the book.

Edmonds and Eidinow tell the station's Liane Hansen how the Fischer-Spassky contest was custom-made for the modern world media. What it lacked in excitement, the match easily made up for in Cold War hype as a cerebral battle of superpower talent. Extensive television and newspaper coverage ensured that citizens of both nations tuned in and read up on every game.

With a cast of behind-the-scenes characters worthy of a U.S.-Soviet summit, the Fischer-Spassky match is revealed in the book as one of the defining moments in Cold War history.

Bobby Fischer Goes to War: How the Soviets Lost the Most Extraordinary Chess Match of All Time- Publisher: Ecco Press, Publication Date: March 2004, Binding: Hardcover, Language: English Pages: 368 Dimensions: 956x578x118 125, ISBN: 0060510242.

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Judit Polgar on chess and politics at Monocle's 'The Foreign Desk' - Chessbase News

Chess experts are known for their remarkable ability to recall configurations of chess pieces on a board. For decades, neurological experts have investigated how this memory functions and whether it can be applied to information beyond the gameboard.

To further probe this topic, researchers from The University of Texas at Dallas Center for Vital Longevity (CVL) turned to the UTDallas chess team. Since the chess programs inception in 1996, 24 Grandmasters and International Masters have played for the UTDallas team, which has competed in the Presidents Cup known as the Final Four of College Chess in 17 of the last 21 seasons.

Dr. Chandramallika Basak

The researchers tested 14 chess team members, along with 15 chess novices, on rapid-fire processing of visuospatial information in working memory.

Their findings, published June 14 in Memory and Cognition, help pinpoint the strengths and limitations of the subjects recall framework and how that framework can be applied to human cognition in general.

Prior studies have shown that chess experts advantage in visual memory is limited to chess pieces on chess boards, said corresponding author Dr. Chandramallika Basak, associate professor of psychology in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. We wanted to see whether the expertise generalizes beyond chess pieces to unfamiliar, new stimuli, and where does this expertise break down for immediate memory.

Chess masters visual short-term memory for arrangements that can occur in chess has been of particular interest to cognitive scientists, said Basak, director of the Lifespan Neuroscience and Cognition Laboratory.

Its almost like chess experts have snapshots of these positions they demonstrate remarkable visuospatial working memory, given that the information is presented for less than half a second, she said. But is it driven by the visual aspects or spatial aspects of what they saw? Or a combination of both?

Evan T. Smith, a UTDallas cognition and neuroscience doctoral student, is the papers lead author. He described the difference between working and long-term memory as analogous to the gap between whats on top of your desk and whats filed away in a cabinet.

Evan T. Smith

The existing theory is that chess players have so thoroughly memorized and categorized board configurations that their long-term memory for this information functions like working memory, he said.

The researchers collaborated with Jim Stallings, director of the UTDallas chess program, to bring test subjects on board from the team.

Dr. Basaks study varies from other chess studies done with youngsters, Stallings said. This study goes directly to chess expertise and working memory. I look forward to sharing the results with the chess community.

The control group included UTDallas students of similar age and education level to the chess players who had never formally learned how to play chess.

In each test, participants saw a two-dimensional chessboard with a number of pieces displayed for three-tenths of a second. After a one-second pause, they saw a second chessboard and had to decide if there had been a change.

The tests were conducted with standard chess pieces and with novel, unfamiliar symbols. Basak said that this switch helped to determine if the chess players memory abilities were domain specific to chess or domain general to a wider range of objects.

One series of tests asks about changes in location; the second asks if the objects the pieces themselves have changed, Basak said. A third test incorporates changes in location or changes in object, or both, or no change at all. Finally, the grid of the board is removed.

The researchers found that while both chess experts and novices performed better with chess stimuli than with the unfamiliar symbols, the experts, for the most part, outperformed the control group for both chess stimuli and for the new objects particularly when detecting positional changes.

Section A of this figure from the Memory and Cognition article shows how each trial works: An initial configuration appears for three-tenths of a second, followed by a one-second pause. The three different trial types then could change an objects identity, location, or both. Section B shows the chess stimuli and novel stimuli used. Section C shows a trial with the grid removed.

When changing the identity of the objects, however, but not location, the chess players advantage was limited to the chess pieces. They performed no better than the control group at remembering when the identity of the novel symbols changed.

You would expect that this advantage that chess players have is related to a familiarity with the chess pieces or the chess players expectation of what they are about to see, Basak said. But results from our study say otherwise. It seems like the chess players can rapidly process a chessboard-like layout in a very holistic manner, like the brain does with faces. The next step in our research may be to do a functional MRI study to see if the face-processing regions of the brain are also used for chess.

The experiments also were split into tests using fewer than four pieces which is within the normal limits of an average persons focus of attention and five to eight pieces. With the larger number of pieces, long-term memory should come into play. The chess experts performed better than the controls in the tests with more pieces.

We observed an eight-item working-memory capacity for chess experts, Basak said. We assume that ties back to the idea that chess players are viewing the board and the set of positions as a single object, as they would recognize a face.

The grid-versus-no-grid portion of the study something that Basak said has not been examined before produced some of the more striking results.

The grid is the linchpin that supports the scaffolding of this memory structure, Smith said.

Basak added: Any expertise-related advantage disappeared in the absence of the chessboard display. It appears to be essential, acting as a road map, a familiar framework to aid the memory.

Collectively, the results indicate that visuospatial memory advantages associated with chess expertise extend beyond chess stimuli in certain circumstances, particularly to position changes with between five to eight items. But the grid appears to be necessary for experts to leverage these advantages.

We cannot generalize our findings beyond what we tested, so we cannot claim, based on our data, that chess experts will be better at studying for school, Basak said. But their advantage does go beyond chess pieces, provided the grid remains. We believe this indicates that experts are automatically encoding spatial-relational information.

Other contributors to the research were Dr. Daniel Krawczyk, UT Dallas professor of psychology, holder of the Debbie and Jim Francis Chair in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, deputy director of the Center for BrainHealth and associate professor of psychiatry at UT Southwestern Medical Center; and Dr. James Bartlett, a distinguished scholar in cognitive neuroscience and cognitive psychology and a longtime UTDallas faculty member who played a key role in the beginning of the project. Bartlett died in 2019.

Jim Bartlett played a big role in designing the experiments and in bringing Jim Stallings and the chess team on board, Basak said. He was a mentor, friend and valued collaborator, and we dedicate this publication in honor of his memory.

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Where Is the Endgame in Chess Experts' Visual Memory Abilities? - University of Texas at Dallas

Anticipation was in the air that bright October afternoon in 1987 at Pala, a bustling town in central Kerala known for its rubber plantations. Some 40 young chess players had come from across Kerala for the State junior championship.

For some of us, it was our first big tournament. So, the fact that we were playing at such an event was cause for excitement.

But there was another reason why we were so excited that afternoon: we were to meet Viswanathan Anand, who had recently been crowned the world junior champion in the Philippines. The States chess association was felicitating him.

Anand had come along with his mother, who used to accompany him for tournaments those days. He also took part in an exhibition event called simultaneous display, a term that has now become familiar because of a recent controversy following an online fundraiser.

In simultaneous chess, a strong player takes on several less talented opponents, ranging from 15 to 50 mostly, at the same time. There have been instances of Grandmasters playing against hundreds, too. In fact, Irans Ehsan Ghaem Maghami set a world record in 2011 when he took on 604 players at Tehran (for the record, he won 580 of them, drew 16 and lost eight).

Usually the number is much lower. The player makes a move on one board and then goes to the next one. While the multiple participants get plenty of time, the strong player has to make his calculations quickly. But as the statistics from Maghamis simultaneous display suggest, the Grandmaster wins most of the games. Grandmasters can defeat a large number of opponents even while playing blindfolded.

At Pala, if I remember correctly, Anand won all games but two.

He did, in due course, go on to win games more important than that in a career that has had few parallels in world sport.

As a reporter of The Hindu, I have written on some of his finest moments over the years. I have also been privileged to interview him on several occasions, including a memorable one at his residence in Chennai three years ago. He greeted me with the same friendly smile which I first saw in Pala three decades ago.

It was a pleasure listening to him talk for well over two hours. Anand is one of the greatest minds of our time. The entire chess world and those who have come across him anywhere would agree that he is an incredibly nice, polite, humble gentleman, on whose head sit lightly five world championships and the credit for single-handedly revolutionising chess in India.

It is little wonder then everyone felt bad when news emerged earlier this month that some of Anands celebrity opponents had cheated, using the computer, during the simultaneous display organised by chess.com to raise funds for COVID-19 relief.

It would count among Indian sports great fiascos. Anand didnt deserve to be treated like that. The celebrity event featuring film stars, singers and businessmen was supposed to gain publicity for chess, which isnt as popular in India as other sports like cricket or football. It generated publicity alright, but of the negative kind.

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Of Anand, simultaneous chess and the cheating controversy - The Hindu

While others have come close, GM Anton Korobov became the first player to score 10.5/11 in Titled Tuesday, earning him a full-point tournament victory on June 22. GM Aryan Tari came in second with 9.5/11 on a tiebreak over GM Oleksandr Bortnyk. Rounding out the top five was GM David Howell in fourth with 9/11 on the tiebreak over GM Aleksandar Indjic.

583 titled players participated in this week's Titled Tuesday, the exact same number as last week. The tournament was the typical 11-round Swiss with a 3+1 time control.

The live broadcast of the tournament, hosted this week by GM Aman Hambleton.

Korobov started with 9/9, including wins over GM Hikaru Nakamura in round six, GM Daniil Dubov in round eight, and Tari in round nine. He was finally held to a draw by Bortnyk in the 10th round.

Korobov's win over Dubov in the battle of 7/7 scores was perhaps his best game of the event. He obtained a strong position out of the Exchange Grunfeld and found a Puzzle Rush-like checkmate, which he got to play on the board for a 31-move win.

In the 11th and final round, Korobov only needed a draw to clinch outright tournament victory. His opponent, GM Vladimir Onischuk, needed a win to move up in the standings, however. Korobov won as Black from a drawish position to set the Titled Tuesday scoring record.

Also in the final round, Tari defeated Dubov and Bortnyk took down Nakamura to lock up their top-three finishes. Bortnyk's win was particularly impressive, as he built up up a winning attack without much time on the clock.

There was also an interesting positional game in round six that Hambleton called a "really, really nice game" on the live broadcast. Argentina's GM Federico Perez Ponsa defeated FM Roman Yanchenko.

June 22 Titled Tuesday | Final Standings (Top 20)

(Full final standings here.)

Korobov won $750 for first place, Tari $400 for finishing second, Bortnyk $150 for third place, and Howell taking $100 for fourth. GM Aleksandra Goryachkina, who scored 8/11, took the $100 prize for the top female player.

Titled Tuesday is Chess.com's weekly tournament for titled players. It begins at 10 a.m. Pacific time/19:00 Central European every Tuesday.

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Korobov Wins June 22 Titled Tuesday With Record-Setting Performance - Chess.com

Sometimes even a shooting star can leave a permanent mark in the sky.

John Jarecki had a brief but notable chess career in the 1980s, holding the record for a time as the youngest American player to earn the title of master. But as so often happens, Jarecki decided against the life of a full-time chess player and decided to pursue other career paths.

But he would have a major impact on the game in an unexpected way through his mother. Carol Jarecki, who died June 13 at the age of 86, went from toting her kid to weekend Swisses in New Jersey to becoming one of the premier organizers and international match arbiters of the past four decades. (A nurse, a licensed pilot and with her late husband, Richard, a notable student of how to win at the roulette table, a nice summary of her remarkable life can be found at Chess Life Online).

Jarecki was an invaluable resource for this columnist at the 1995 PCA world title match at the top of the World Trade Center between Garry Kasparov and Viswanathan Anand, oversaw numerous Olympiads and U.S. national events, and was the arbiter for the celebrated second Kasparov-Deep Blue match in 1997. Her storied career is another useful reminder that our game could not exist without the people who rent the playing halls, police the boards, and update the wallcharts.

John Jarecki played some notable games in his too-brief career, and even represented the British Virgin Islands in a number of Olympiads. His best performance was at the 26th Olympiad in 1984 in Thessaloniki, Greece, going 11-3 on Board 2. He scored a nice win against Paraguayan master Alejandro Bogda, a taut Sicilian Scheveningen in which young Jareckis tactical acumen wins out in the end.

White tries to get his kingside attack rolling, but Black beats him to the counterpunch: 18. g4?! (already restraining lines such as 18. Rd1 Bf6 19. Rd3 were in order) Bf6 19. Nd1 Bh4! (alertly switching gears to exploit some combinational opportunities) 20. Nf2 d5 (the classic Sicilian freeing move, though also good was 20e5 21. g5 exf4 22. Bxf4 Nde5, with a clear edge) 21. Rd1 Bxf2, and after a series of more or less forces moves, Jarecki winds up after 26. Qf3 Qd7 with domination of the open d-file.

With a positional plus, Black does not fear the tactical complications on 27. Nd2 (a5 Qd1+ 28. Rf1 Qxf3+ 29. Rxf3 Rd1+ 30. Kg2 Nxa5) Qxa4! 28. b3 Qa1 29. Nxc4 Qxc1+ 30. Kg2 b5 31. Ne5 Nd5, emerging a clear pawn to the good. Whites desperate attempts to gin up an attack predictably backfire: 37. Ne4+ Kh8 38. Nxf5 (see diagram) Ne5! 39. Qf4 (Rxe5 Qxh2+ 40. Qh3 Qxe5), and Bogda resigned not needing to see 39Ng6+ (also cute is 39g5+! 40. Qxg5 Nf3+ and wins) 40. Kh5 Nxh4+ 41. Kh4 g5 mate.

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The COVID-19 shutdown of the global chess scene came at a particularly bad time for U.S. GM Sam Shankland. Shankland had a breakthrough year at the board in 2018 including his first U.S. national championship and a dominating win in the Capablanca Memorial but has had trouble building on that success as the tournaments dried up and the game moved online.

Happily, we can report that the California GM looks to be back on track to judge from his convincing 51/2-11/2 win at the recent Prague International Chess Festival over a quality field. Its a result that will put him comfortably above the 2700-rating mark once more.

Shankland combined accuracy and aggression in a fine Four Knights English win at the event over Czech GM David Navara.

The fight for the center breaks out in earnest with 16. Nd2 Rad8 17. d4 c6 18. f4 exf4 19. gxf4 f5 20. e5 c5, and Black emerges with a slight pull given the unhappy state of Navaras bishop on b2. White compounds his problems with 25. dxc5 Bxc5 26. Qb5? (either 26. a5 or 26. Bc1, going into a defensive crouch, was indicated) Be3! 27. Rxd8 Rxd8, when 28. Bc1?? Rd1+ exposes the clumsiness of Whites set-up.

After 28. a5 Nc4 29. a6 bxa6 30. Qxa6 Bd5, Whites big pieces on the queenside are a sorry spectacle as Blacks kingside pressure builds. Shankland doesnt miss his chance: 31. Rd1 Bd2 32. Bc1 (Nxd2 Qxd1+; 32. Rxd2 Nxd2 33. Nxd2 Bxg2+34. Kxg2 Rxd2+ 35. Kg3 Qg4 mate) Kh8! (a nice bit of housekeeping to avoid any annoying checks ahead of the final assault; the tempting 32Qg4?! is bad because of 33. Rxd2 Nxd2 34. Qa5 Rd7 35. Qc5!, defending because of the threat of 36. Qc8+) 33. Rxd2 Nxd2 34. Qa5 Rd7, and White resigns as his position collapses; e.g. 35. Nxd2 (Bxd2 Bxf3 36. Qa2 Bxg2+ 37. Kxg2+ Qe2+; or 35. Qa6 Nxf3 36. Qc8+ Bg8 37. Bxf3 [Qxd7 Qxh2 mate] Qxf3+ 38. Kg1 Rd1 mate) Qd1+ 36. Nf1 Qxf1 mate.

Bogda-Jarecki, 26th Olympiad, Thessaloniki, Greece, November 1984

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 e6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 d6 6. Be2 Be7 7. O-O O-O 8. Be3 Nc6 9. Kh1 Qc7 10. f4 Na5 11. Qd3 a6 12. a4 Rd8 13. Rae1 b6 14. Bf3 Nc4 15. Bc1 Bb7 16. Nb3 Rac8 17. Qe2 Nd7 18. g4 Bf6 19. Nd1 Bh4 20. Nf2 d5 21. Rd1 Bxf2 22. Rxf2 dxe4 23. Bxe4 Bxe4+ 24. Qxe4 Nf6 25. Rxd8+ Rxd8 26. Qf3 Qd7 27. Nd2 Qxa4 28. b3 Qa1 29. Nxc4 Qxc1+ 30. Kg2 b5 31. Ne5 Nd5 32. f5 exf5 33. Nc6 Ne3+ 34. Kg3 Qg1+ 35. Kh4 Nxg4 36. Re2 Rf8 37. Ne7+ Kh8 38. Nxf5 Ne5 39. Qf4 and White resigns.

Navara-Shankland, Prague International Chess Festival, Prague, June 2021

1. c4 e5 2. Nc3 Nf6 3. Nf3 Nc6 4. g3 d5 5. cxd5 Nxd5 6. Bg2 Bc5 7. O-O O-O 8. d3 Re8 9. Bg5 Nxc3 10. bxc3 f6 11. Bc1 Be6 12. Bb2 Bf8 13. Qc2 Qd7 14. Rfd1 Qf7 15. e4 Na5 16. Nd2 Rad8 17. d4 c6 18. f4 exf4 19. gxf4 f5 20. e5 c5 21. Nf3 Be7 22. Kh1 Nc4 23. Qe2 Qh5 24. a4 Nb6 25. dxc5 Bxc5 26. Qb5 Be3 27. Rxd8 Rxd8 28. a5 Nc4 29. a6 bxa6 30. Qxa6 Bd5 31. Rd1 Bd2 32. Bc1 Kh8 33. Rxd2 Nxd2 34. Qa5 Rd7 White resigns.

David R. Sands can be reached at 202/636-3178 or by email at dsands@washingtontimes.com.

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Carol Jarecki: From chess mom to one of the game's greatest referees - Washington Times