Mediaboss Marketing

By Harlin Pierce

Not too long ago my mother told me about how chess has gained fresh popularity due to The Queens Gambit, a hit Netflix drama named after a fundamental opening. Im an avid chess player and like to think of myself as a somewhat formidable opponent. My main adversary is Wally, an especially gifted player with chess pieces tattooed on his knuckles. In his quest to practice enough to become a grandmaster, he beats me consistently.

I dont mind losing to Wally, but being in prison during the COVID-19 pandemic is the worst. Its like being at the center of one of those Russian nesting dollsa box within a box within a box. Social distancing policies limit our access to recreation yards, the dayroom, classes and phones. Some days we spend roughly 23 hours in our 6-by-10 cells. And on top of everything, board gamesincluding chesshave been completely banned to promote social distancing. This situation has forced us to create a new approach to a classic game.

For a few desolate days after the No Board Games Allowed sign was posted, it seemed that Wallys quest to become a grandmaster would be on hold indefinitely. But Wally and I are not the type to give up on our dreams.

Fortunately for usand unfortunately for our neighborswe live on the same row, two cells apart. Since were in shouting distance of one another, we decided to play the game in our respective cells. We both set up our chess boards and used algebraic notations to tellor yellour moves to one another. Then we moved the corresponding pieces on our boards.

To understand how our game sounded to our disgruntled neighbors, a brief explanation of the chess board is necessary. The columns on the board are referenced by the letters A to H. The rows are referenced by the numbers 1 to 8. So every square on the board has its own letter and number that we use to describe where the pieces move. So if I move a bishop to c6, I say, bishop c6. (For pawns it would just be c6.)

But prison is loud, and the letters B, C, D and E sound very similar over a ruckus. To avoid confusion Wally and I came up with a nomenclature for those letters: alligator for A, baseball for B, constellation for C, dinosaur for D, elephant for E and golf ball for G.

We became the butt of jokes because of how ridiculous we sounded yelling out moves like, dinosaur 4! But the ridicule didnt bother us. We were only deterred by the fact that playing the game this way took at least three hours.

The following day, Wally and I were sitting together at a metal table during a measly hour in the dayroom. We were reminiscing about how we used to be able to play chess at that very table, and just like that one of my most absurd ideas to date was born. Why dont we just play in our heads? I asked Wally with 50 percent sarcasm. I wasnt serious, but Wally latched on to my idea like a fish to a hook.

With a sense of joy that had been missing since the pandemic started, we began our first game of mental chess. We each made a few moves, getting our bearings. We played until an officer yelled, Rack it up! Our hour was over.

Despite the fact that Wally lives fewer than 20 feet away from me, the only other time I would have a chance to see him is when they let us out for a meal. When I caught up to him in the cafeteria later that day, the first words out of his mouth were, Do you remember where everything is? Of course I do, I replied. Its your turn.

We started playing again, and the spaced out expressions on our faces captured the curiosity of a few inmates nearby. It was obvious we were doing something together, but we werent talking. Then Wally declared, Knight captures on elephant 7, check! And I said, Man, that was a great move! I didnt even see it! The men looked at us like we were totally nuts for a split second then went about their business. It was hilarious to Wally and me. We loved transcending the literal barriers of time and space and challenging ourselves in a creative way.

Now Wally and I start our games in the dayroom, continue the next day at lunch, and finish three days later by yelling from our cells. Which leads me to our most recent game in the dayroom.

Dinosaur 4! Wally began. He was leading me into the Queen's Gambit, a very effective opening. We were sitting on a metal bench, one of many bolted to the concrete floor in front of the TV. Someone sitting on the other side of Wally asked, What movie is this? Neither of us responded. The man asked more insistently, Hey, what movie is on TV?

Giving in to the intrusion, Wally replied, I dont know, Im not watching it.

What do you mean? the guy demanded. Youre staring right at it.

Im actually playing chess, Wally said. Gesturing toward me he added, Were playing against each other in our minds.

I gave the guy a corroborating nod so my friend didnt sound totally crazy. Wally went on to describe how we visualize the board to keep track of each others moves. It turned out that the man was a chess player himself. He was interested in seeing how our game would go. So Wally and I continued playing, only talking to make our moves or to clarify our odd nomenclature for our spectator.

A man farther down the bench asked our spectator, What are you doin, bro? He responded, Im watching them play chess. The other man looked at us, and then back to his homeboy. Youre what? It took a serious effort for me to suppress my laughter and stay focused. By the end of the hour, I was humbled and encouraged to see that several more guys had become intrigued by our idea and wanted to try their handor should I say their brainat a game.

It may be wishful thinking to say that well have a mental chess tournament anytime soon, but with the quirky square names and the sheer challenge, its certainly trending. More importantly, this intellectual oasis we created in the middle of a lonely desert brings people from diverse cultures and backgrounds together. At the heart of our mental chess game lies a profound lesson: It is easy to play the victim in life, to allow your circumstances to dictate your disposition. But the difference between being content or distraught is a matter of perspective. Every one of us has the ability to cultivate the perspective we want for ourselves and apply it to our experience. While we have been forced to relinquish our physical freedom, we dont have to give up control over our minds. And who knows? Maybe one of these days Ill finally beat Wally.

Harlin Pierce, 24, is a singer, songwriter, visual artist and writer. The Santa Fe, New Mexico, native became incarcerated shortly before he was due to graduate from high school. Pierces passion for learning continues, with independent studies in math, languages and physical fitness. He also teaches fellow incarcerated people music and participates in a book club he founded. Pierce is serving 33 years for murder at the Jim Ferguson Unit, Texas.

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When The Prison Banned Board Games, We Played Chess In Our Minds - The Marshall Project

With an aim to popularise the sport, the newly elected office-bearers of the All India Chess Federation (AICF) announced plans, including an Indian Chess League and a schools programme.

The vision document of the AICF was released following the Annual General Body Meeting attended by 33 state units.

We have been keen on starting the Indian Chess League to popularise the game. The first edition, which will be a franchise model, will be organised this year, Dr Sanjay Kapoor, the president of the AICF said. At the AGM, it was also decided to host the Womens Grand Prix, Kapoor confirmed. The AICF will also be bidding for the next available Chess Olympiad.

The AICF also has plans to give a push to the schools programme, which secretary Bharat Singh Chauhan said would be focussed on government schools and will involve up to 700 teachers, who will be trained by experts to teach children the game.

Before April we plan to start the chess in schools programme. We will be using a slightly modified version of the Fide curriculum, Chauhan added. The AICF has had a Chess in Schools (CIS) project, but Chauhan said there will be greater emphasis on spreading the reach.

Other decisions taken at the AGM were to have a single registration system for players, which will need an annual renewal, starting a centre of excellence, and organising a super tournament.

The super tournament will see many top players in action. It will give our Grand Masters an opportunity to compete with the best in the business at home, Kapoor said. Our plan is to make India a superpower in chess.

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AICF to start Indian Chess League - The Indian Express

Frederic Friedel was a science journalist when he co-founded ChessBase in 1987 in Hamburg. It's still the headquarters of the German firm, which has become the world leader in chess software. His partner, the programmer Matthias Wllenweber, created the architecture of the first professional chess database in history: ChessBase 1.0. The iconic Fritz was born in 1991, developed under DOS by Frans Morsch and brought to light under Windows by Mathias Feist.

The "guru" of ChessBase is now 75 years old. He believes that Artificial Intelligence can be the key to the future, so that humans can live better on earth. He is as optimistic and enthusiastic as ever. He expresses his hopes, but also his fears and doubts. How will we coexist with computers of a new type when they have become as intelligent as we are, and even more so?

The following article was based on a telephone discussion conducted in December 2020 by Europe-checs editor Jean-Michel Pechine.

The article appeared in the February 2021 issue of Europe checs, which can be bought here.

Jean-Michel was advised and guided byHenri Assoignon, from the administrative desk of Europe Echecs.

This "general public" game program started modestly, but its computing power developed exponentially. In 2002, Deep Fritz drew a classic match against Kramnik (4-4), as did X3D Fritz against Kasparov in 2003 (2-2). In 2006, Kramnik lost 4-2 to Deep Fritz, and the taste for man-machine matches was over. The German firm continued to improve its flagship programme. Version 15 was developed by Vasik Rajlich, the creator of Rybka. Last November, it launched version 16 of ChessBase. That ushered in a new era by integrating specific revolutionary applications. Artificial Intelligence is in vogue. Frederic Friedel's new child prodigy, Fat Fritz, was launched a year earlier. It is a neural network program. Unlike its predecessors, it was not taught to play chess by human masters. It plays millions of games against itself and draws its own conclusions from them, becoming stronger and stronger. In one year, the prototype has gone from an absolute beginner's level to an Elo rating flirting with 3600 points!

This is the magic of technology and Fredric Friedel is delighted. He views his programs like his own children. How could he have imagined, 34 years ago, that his company would revolutionize the world of chess like no other player or theorist had done before? His meeting with Garry Kasparov in 1985 was decisive. The world champion became involved in the process of creating ChessBase. Kasparov's brute force helped to finish the job. It was the time of the computer pioneers, from Atari to Windows. Like Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, Frederic Friedel's desire was to democratise access to high technology. This was also Kasparov's wish, he stresses in his interview. ChessBase offered everyone the opportunity to acquire state-of-the-art tools to prepare themselves, at an affordable cost. Chess became globalised.

This "general public" game program started modestly, but its computing power developed exponentially. In 2002, Deep Fritz drew a classic match against Kramnik (4-4), as did X3D Fritz against Kasparov in 2003 (2-2). In 2006, Kramnik lost 4-2 to Deep Fritz, and the taste for man-machine matches was over. The German firm continued to improve its flagship programme. Version 15 was developed by Vasik Rajlich, the creator of Rybka. Last November, it launched version 16 of ChessBase. That ushered in a new era by integrating specific revolutionary applications. Artificial Intelligence is in vogue. Frederic Friedel's new child prodigy, Fat Fritz, was launched a year earlier. It is a neural network program. Unlike its predecessors, it was not taught to play chess by human masters. It plays millions of games against itself and draws its own conclusions from them, becoming stronger and stronger. In one year, the prototype has gone from an absolute beginner's level to an Elo rating flirting with 3600 points!

With this program we carried out an experiment in Artificial Intelligence" explains Frederic Friedel. We used the same strategy as Google DeepMind with AlphaZero, which was developed by my old friend Demis Hassabis. We created our own program, which we called Fat Fritz. How did we do it? In December 2017, a DeepMind Artificial Intelligence project manager, Thore Grpel, came to see us in Hamburg. He revealed all his secrets to us, and we used the same basic techniques. After that, for a year, I had this very powerful computer right here under my desk. It was playing against itself, all the time, nearly 90,000 games a day in total tens of millions of games. A similar computer in Brazil was retrieving the games and learning from them. This project was led by my friend and colleague Albert Silver.

The only thing we did at the beginning was to teach it the basic rules. How the queen, a rook, a knight move, what is allowed or not allowed (like castling conditions), and the purpose of the game. After its first hundreds of games it played like an absolute idiot. After a few thousand, it started to play at the level of a beginner, and after a few million, Fat Fritz became really strong. It learned what it takes to win. It knew how to evaluate a position. It knew the value of the pieces, the value of a bishop, a knight. It understood that a queen is generally worth eight or nine pawns, depending on the situation. It knew which strategy to adopt. It went on to become the strongest entity that had ever played chess, stronger than Fritz or Komodo.

So Fat Fritz learned all on its own. Chess programmers are among the first human beings to directly experience the power of this new programming technique. The applications are infinite and will develop in all spheres of life. They will touch all fields, science, technology, writing and even the legal world. We can show billions of legal decisions to AI and, again, it learns from each of them. In the end, it may render more competent and fairer verdicts than human judges.

There has been nothing comparable to this revolution since the dawn of humanity. It is as if an alien lifeform had landed on our planet, coming from a distant galaxy. Suddenly we have a machine that may not think like a human being, but it acts in a similar. It may not be able to tell you how it arrives at its decisions. Take the example of chess: if you ask the AI program why one move is better than another, it will tell you: "Because statistically it is 1% better than the next best move." It cannot explain its "reasoning" in human terms. However, this mysterious way of thinking has already made it considerably stronger than the best player in the world.

Fat Fritz's current classification is around 3500 to 3600 Elo. Nobody can beat it, but chess players can use it to try ideas and see how it reacts. You test a novelty or a specific move in a known position and see how it responds. You think, "Oh, that's interesting, it takes the pawn or, on the contrary, why didn't it take it?" I'll explain it to you differently. Fat Fritz can leave a piece hanging. A GM who is analysing this position may say that the program is playing a really rotten move, and will try to demonstrate why. Five moves later, the GM will say: okay, maybe it wasn't a losing move, but whatever it was, it wasn't good. And five moves later, he'll see that it's a winner, that it was a brilliant move!

In the openings, Fat Fritz likes to play 1.e4 and 1.d4, which remain the best moves, according to it. The program will not play 1.h4, for example. Now, we have no idea about its strategy in the openings. It has played millions of games and prefers certain starting patterns. Then we started to show it the games of the best players in history, contained in MegaDatabase. With them, it learned the different styles of play of the humans: aggressive, tactical, positional, strategic, etc. It changed its style in a way that we find very interesting. But it continues playing against itself, to discover things that no human had discovered before. It learns to evaluate positions differently. It also has to discover elementary things, for example that three queens win against zero queens, a situation that never happens in games between humans.

Part two of the interview to follow soon...

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Chess and Artificial Intelligence (1) - Chessbase News

I have not played chess once in my entire 41 years on this planet, but I have watched 'The Queen's Gambit' on Netflix. After finishing the series I was intrigued by the game, but I know my patience is likely too thin to actually playit.

Millions of other people throughout this world have found a renewed love for playing chess thanks to 'The Queen's Gambit', and because of that, an old chess club in Rockford is making a comeback this March at Ken-Rock Community Center.

The Rockford Register Star reports that brothers John and Joe Guth are re-launching the Ken-Rock Chess Club this March to give people the chance to play face-to-face instead of online which has become VERY popular the last few months.

Joe Guth has been Auburn's Chess Club coach for several years, and his brother Joe currently runs the Ken-Rock Community Center. The Guth brothers recently told the RRStar that this club is open to all ages and that their hope is to "work with other organizations such as the Rockford Chess Club to again make Rockford a regional chess center".

Beginning March 3, 2021, the Ken-Rock Chess Club will meet weekly from 6 to 8:30 p.m. and they will offer a 4-week class for any chess newbies (ages 7 -79) that want to learn how to play the game.

For more information on the Ken-Rock Chess Club, please emailJosephGuth1960@Yahoo.com.

Catch Lil Zim on Q98.5 Mornings with Lil Zim & JBonQ98.5 from 6:00 a.m. to 10 a.m. Follow her onTwitter,Instagram,andFacebook

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Rockford Chess Club Gets Revived Thanks to ' The Queen's Gambit' - q985online.com

Star Trek baked the Tridimensional chess set into its very fabric. Were introduced to it in practically the opening shot of the second pilot, Where No Man Has Gone Before. Now there is a new replica from Noble Collection that you can play as a game too. We have a review and full unboxing video below.

You play a very irritating game of chess, Mr. Spock, Captain Kirk says before irritating his first officer with an unexpected move.

After the second pilot, Tridimensional chess went on to play pivotal roles in TOS episodes like Charlie X and Whom Gods Destroy. The game went on to appear in numerous episodes of The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, as well as Discovery and Picard. Lets face it even the general public would recognize a tridimensional chess set as THE futuristic game from Star Trek (sorry, Parrises Squares).

The first appearance of Tridimensional chess, in the TOS episode Where No Man Has Gone Before

The Noble Collection recently released a beautiful new replica, which includes 32 die-cast pieces that measure approximately 1.5 inches tall. The set itself measures approximately 13 inches tall which is about half as tall as the one seen in TOS and features translucent acrylic game boards. At the same time, once you get it out of the packaging, youre committed. This isnt like your standard chess set, which you can fold back up into a box and store in a cupboard. The base is one big piece meant for display. And, really, if you are buying this, you are going to want to keep it out. Its simply gorgeous.

Set up is pretty easy. The bulk of the board comes already attached to the curved metal base. The four Attack Boards come out of the box separately and then easily slot into place or places, since theyre meant to move during the game. The half-dome baseplate features a nice Starfleet emblem, and it has a felt bottom, so it wont scratch up your display case.

The individual chess pieces, too, have a soft underside which, combined with their solid, weighty feel, make for satisfying movement across the boards. In design, they look just like the ones featured in Charlie X attractive, minimalist, retro-future.

All in all the Noble Tridimensional Chess Set is a quality replica that looks screen-accurate and also displays well.

The game

But this is not just a display piece, it is also a game. The Noble Tridimensional Chess Set comes with an instruction sheet that details the moves each piece can make. However, it doesnt go into a lot of detail, especially about the attack boards. I did find this video helpful in getting a general feel for how to play. My son and I found ourselves continually reorienting as we played, standing up so that we could get a birds eye view. This helped keep us aware of how the board would look from a more conventional frame of reference. One drawback for this set is that the bishops are essentially identical to the pawns, only slightly taller, so its easy to get them confused the first couple of times you use them in gameplay.

After a few games, Im sure the multilevel play will start to feel a little more natural to navigate. It certainly makes for a great way to surprise an opponent whose pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking. (Sorry I dont have a photo of my sons reaction when my bishop slid up two levels to take out his queen.)

Our next step will be to read the tournament rules so we can get a better handle on utilizing the attack boards and I can then neutralize my opponent and, in so doing, show my son that I AM THE SUPERIOR INTELLECTSorry, got carried away there.

The following video gives you a closer look at the set, including the pretty large package it will arrive in.

The Noble Collection Tridimensional Chess Set is nice to look at and to feel, and its fully functional. Even in a home that doesnt have a lot of Trek items on display, this would make a great conversation piece and a thought-provoking pastime.

The board is yours, Reader.

The Noble Collection Tridimensional Chess Set is available now at Amazon for$145 and directly fromnoblecollection.com.

Find more Star Trek product news and reviews here at TrekMovie.com.

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Unboxing/Review: The Noble Collection Star Trek Tridimensional Chess Set Is Fun For Display And Play - TrekMovie