Mediaboss Marketing

The festival is to become a permanent institution, following the example of the tournaments in Wijk aan Zee. Due to the Corona pandemic, however, the 2021 edition was postponed by a few months and will now open with a Masters, a junior tournament, a rating tournament, an Open and a few other tournaments.

The Czech number one David Navara, Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Sam Shankland, Nils Grandelius, Jorden van Foreest, Radoslaw Wojtaszek, Nihat Abasov and the young Czech grand champion Ngyuen Thai Dai Van take part in the Masters and play a seven-round round robin tournament.

In round one three of the four games ended in a draw. Jan-Krzysztof Duda who played against David Navara, was the only one to win.

The chances in this complicated endgame are about equal though White is slightly more active.

25.Nf5 Ba6?! Aimed against d3. But Black now gets under pressure. 25...f6!? or25...g6!? 26.Nd6 Re7= might have been better alternatives.

26.Bd6 Threatening to win the exchange with Ne7.

26...Kh8 26...Ng5 27.Rf2

27.Bb4 Rec8

28.Kd1 Nc5 The start of a forced sequence. The passive 28...R6c7 29.Nd6 Rb8 30.Rf2 f6 31.Rf5 did not appeal to Black.

29.Ne7 Nb3 30.Nxc6 Nxa1 31.Nxd4 After 31.Ne7!? Re8 32.Rf2 f6 33.h4 the black knight on a1 is trapped.

31...Rd8 32.Bc3 b4 33.axb4 Bxd3 34.Rd2 Bxe4 35.Nf5 Re8 35...Bc2+ 36.Ke2 Re8+ 37.Kf3 f6 might have been a bit more stubborn.

36.Rd7 Bf3+ Harassing the white king, who has just enough squares to avoid being mated.

37.Kc1 Nb3+ 38.Kb1 Bc6 39.Rxf7 Be4+ 40.Ka2 Nd4 40...Nc1+ 41.Ka3 yields nothing for Black.

41.Rxg7 Bd5+ 42.Ka3 Nb5+ 43.Kxa4 Bc6

44.Ka5 Black chases the white king but the king can escape.

44...Nxc3 45.bxc3 Bg2 46.Re7 White repelled the attack and is winning.

46...Ra8+ 47.Kb6 Bxh3 48.Ne3 Rc8 49.c4 Bxg4 50.Nxg4 Rxc4 51.Nf6 Rxb4+ 52.Kc6 Rh4 53.Kd7 Rh1 54.Ke8 Ra1 Or 54...Rh2 55.Kf7 -- 56.Re8#55.Rxh7#10

About a 100 players start in the Open. The number one seed is GM Vjotech Plat

Tournament page...

Excerpt from:
Duda beats Navara in the first round of the Prague Chess Festival - Chessbase News

Nate Diaz had quite an interesting piece of advice for Leon Edwards after their five-rounder on Saturday at UFC 263. Dont let these motherfs tell you (you) aint shit. Name your price or they will name it for you.

Tactics like these can work for certain fighters. Back in his day as an active competitor, Georges St-Pierre also used a similar strategy to negotiate his contract.

Now enjoying retirement, the 40-year-old St-Pierre recently wrote a guest piece for Wealthsimple Magazine entitled The UFC Wont Pay You Fairly Unless You Make Them. Here, he described the negotiations with his former employer as a chess game you strategically have to play.

In mixed martial arts (MMA), we dont have an association to protect fighters like players in basketball, hockey, or baseball do. There is no union in the fight game. So, for us in MMA, negotiations can become like a chess game.

It was in 2008, two fights after Id become UFC world champion, and my contract with the UFC was going to be up. Other organizations wanted to have me as their poster boy and UFC knew that. So, like a poker bluff, we said, We dont want to re-sign before the fight we want to just finish the contract.

We took a big risk. Because its like a stock market. Your stock might go up if youre successful, but it can also go down if you lose. But thats what we decided to do. I always believed in myself, so we took the big risk.

St-Pierre revealed taking home a mere $9,000 from his UFC 50 title fight against Matt Hughes. With a $9K/$9K show-win contract, he only earned half after losing the fight via first-round submission.

But as he climbed the ranks and slowly built his name up, GSP had more leverage on his side. And like how any star athlete would, he used it to his advantage.

So after I won the championship in 2008, I took a big gamble on myself and told UFC I was not going to re-sign with them. And then, the day before my fight with Jon Fitch, the UFC came back with a big, crazy contract because they didnt want me to become a free agent.

You read I made $400,000 a match? No. I made a lot more than that. A lot more than that. Millions. When I was at the peak of my career, I was making many millions of dollars. Because you not only get the money to show and the money to win, but you also have a percentage of the gate and pay-per-view buys the gate and the pay-per-views are where the real money is.

Thats how fighters make their money. But you need to have the power to negotiate those terms. I was very successful so I could demand that extra money.

After nine straight title defenses as the undisputed UFC welterweight champion, St-Pierre took a hiatus in 2013 out of disgust towards the performance-enhancing problem at the time.

After USADA intervened a couple of years later, St-Pierre decided to make a comeback. But this time, he wanted a different challenge for a much bigger payday.

I didnt want to come back to fight for the same title. I wanted to make history and do something different. So, I challenged Michael Bisping, the champion in a heavier weight class.

I came back mostly for my own sense of accomplishment, but of course, the money was there. Theres a lot of people buried in the desert for much less than what I made for that fight, my friend.

For the fight with Michael Bisping, with the pay-per-views, the sponsorship and all that, I made about $10 million. Then in 2019, I got out. Im very lucky and very privileged that I finished on top.

The reality is most fighters finish broke and broken. They hang there too long. They get brain damage. They go broke. Im very healthy and Im wealthy. Its very rare to find someone that hangs up his gloves and finishes on top like this.

Unfortunately, what may work for both St-Pierre and Diaz may not work for everybody else. Not even for former long-time champions.

As for St-Pierre, he still butts heads with the UFC. The company recently rejected his supposed boxing match with Oscar De La Hoya, which he said wouldve been for charity.

Continued here:
GSP details chess game negotiations with UFC that earned him many millions of dollars - Bloody Elbow

While Scotland has a clear history of playing the game, arguably chess has lost its way in this country against its continuing popularity in many parts of the world. Enter stage left Gareth Williams and Andrew Green Williams the co-founder and longtime CEO of online travel site Skyscanner and Green the nations only full-time chess coach.

On Sturday an online chess tournament was staged by Green with the backing of Williams and saw more than 600 Scots kids from Dingwall to Dubai play in competition for prizes totalling 10,000, the largest prize fund of its kind anywhere in the UK.

The aim of the game, so to speak, is to get more kids into playing chess in this country. Securing government funding would help. Most European countries receive public funding for chess in schools and the lack of funding is one of the factors at the root of the problem in Scotland.

The benefits of the game to kids are well proven. Research points to the educational benefits of chess, including around cognitive and emotional skills, maths and problem-solving. And with chess increasingly played in an online environment without language barriers, its never been easier or cheaper to get into the game no need to keep replacing the chess sets in the school cupboards when a bishop and a few pawns go missing.

From a campaign point of view, it has been great to work with Andrew, Gareth and the team to get the story out there and featured in the national media. The mainstream UK press hasnt taken much of an interest in the game, to the extent that when the World Chess Championship took place in London in 2018 there was relatively little coverage of the event.

We brought in social media agency Sunshine Communications to support the campaign, and the Jenny Emslie-led outfit who have offices in Edinburgh and London have done a great job of amplifying the story via social channels.

Unsurprisingly, the kids were the real stars of the show, not least a ten-year-old from Edinburgh who has been putting fabled Grandmasters to the sword in competition play. On a personal level, I was pleased to get our daughter into playing the game under the expert tutelage of Andrew Green himself. With kids spending so much time on devices these days, chess can certainly be seen as good gaming in comparison to many of the so-called shoot em up games available online.

Some say The Queens Gambit has helped to put chess back on the map, and perhaps the Netflix series has made chess cool to those who didnt previously see it in this light, but its great to see Andrew Green and Gareth Williams put real building blocks in place in the hope that they can help to grow the game here.

Nick Freer is the Founding Director of corporate communications agency the Freer Consultancy

Read more here:
Gareth and Andrew's gambit is putting chess back on the map - Nick Freer - The Scotsman

Loneliness has been a universal experience during lockdown.

More people were calling mental health helplines throughout the pandemic suffering from mental ill-health caused by the isolation. The number of adults showing symptoms of depression has doubled since the pandemic began.

Now one Cambridgeshire man is hoping to address this global feeling of disconnection in his own unique way - through chess.

If you walk past Cambridge Market in the city centre on a Tuesday you might see some people playing chess at Shelley and Sarahs cafe van. This isnt any old chess game, however.

Its a paired-back game that is easier to pick up and quicker to play and it also has a secondary purpose instead of just being a way to pass the time.

The game was designed by Oakington based Ross Smith with his business partner Ian McKay in 2015 after they decided to do something about the levels of disconnection and inequality they saw in society.

Untold Stories - a new newsletter bringing together the very best journalism about and for our underserved and minority communities and groups from across the south east.

Simply press here to enter your email address and get news, features and plenty more besides.

And subscribe to the CambridgeshireLive newsletter for the latest breaking news and updates.

Ross said: People are afraid to talk to each other nowadays. We all harbour stranger danger and are stuck on our phones. Chess is a device we can all use to get people to talk.

He chose the universal language of chess to encourage a connection over a game and a coffee.

Ross and volunteer Sam Jermyn trialled a five-a-side chess session for the first time since the pandemic on June 8 at Cambridge Market to see who would play.

He said: Shelley and Sarah have been established as part of Cambridges community for decades. They greet everyone by name and many who pass are the lost, lonely or dispossessed. Their faces light up at the connection.

The chess games help Sams social skills by practising speaking to people, but it also encourages strangers, especially men, to talk.

As a Cambridge local, Ross wanted to address the divide seen in the city between the top few and the bottom many. In 2019 Cambridge was named the UKs most unequal city in terms of earnings.

Chess was used as a form of therapy in Baghdad in the 9th century and has since been used to treat ADHD and dementia. It demonstrates empathy by predicting other players moves and aims to encourage problem-solving and build rapport between the players.

Ross said: Chess isnt about elitism or champions. It crosses social divides. I watch my eight-year-old granddaughter play with the elderly in care homes. You can play our cardboard version of chess by text like battleships.

"Sam has been playing with people virtually who have been shielding throughout the pandemic. It gives people an excuse to start talking.

Since Ross started his enterprise six years ago he has seen benefits including increased self-esteem and confidence and a reduction in loneliness in the communities hes worked with.

He has also taken his chess sets into prisons across the country. In the last year, he has received 292 letters from inmates who opened up about their lives and their mental health because of these chess sets.

Ross describes these sets as a self-help tool kit to help with life skills, bring some company and contribute to mental wellness.

He said: When you receive a chess set we set you a challenge to play with different people. When you complete it you get a certificate. My granddaughters goal is to play 25 games in Milton Keynes shopping centre. I saw her approach some kids in McDonalds and watched their faces turn from concern to beaming smiles as she sat down and started to play with them.

Learning to play chess was what helped pull the famous chess player and author John Healy out of prison and alcoholism. Healy, who is a friend of Ross, was taught to play by a cellmate during a stint in a prison and went on to become a chess champion.

Ross said: Healys story isnt of redemption. Its a story of peer to peer connection. It took an insider to get through to him. To us, chess can be a conversation starter and an important life tool.

To connect with a fellow stranger and play some chess, head to Shelley and Sarahs cafe van on the northside of Cambridge Market every Tuesday from roughly 9am-2pm.

Quote Your first move is hello to receive a free chess set valued at 7.50 and start your course to share the game further.

Learn more on the 5asideCHESS website.

Visit link:
The man behind the five-aside chess set in Cambridge Market helping the lonely to reconnect - Cambridgeshire Live

HIGHWOOD Not a lot goes on in the small community Highwood, according to resident Ashton Pasha. Despite that, the seventh-grade student always finds ways to stay busy - and her most recent activities have her packing a suitcase for next month.

Ashton is a state champion chess player and qualified for the national K-8 chess tournament at the annual U. S. Open Chess Championship in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

I did not win the overall tournament so when they said I qualified it was pretty shocking to me, Ashton said.

Not only did she qualify for nationals, but she did so after playing just one tournament. That state tourney in Helena a few weeks ago was her first ever, and she left quite the impression on the field and her family.

On top of that she juggled several sports in the same time frame, competing in track events that same week.

Her mother Andrea was equally shocked when she got the email saying Ashton could play chess with the best next month: Ashton is the hardest worker Ive ever met. Shell prioritize multiple things and just go for it. I couldnt be prouder of her.

Ashton contemplates her next move

The Pashas have a family chess board they have used for years, and Andrea said they all play chess as a family, but only recently did things start to heat up.

I like playing with them and it usually goes pretty well, Ashton said with a smirk.

If you have Netflix, you probably know about the movie "The Queens Gambit" and how it stormed the Internet when it was released. It also gave Ashton some inspiration in her chess game as well: It was cool to see because she chased her dream, Ashton added.

She will be a long way from home come July, but she will have her family right there with her chasing her dream.

If you would like to help with Ashton's travel expenses, click here.

Continued here:
Chess whiz-kid from Highwood set for national tournament - KRTV Great Falls News