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BRIMFIELD Benjamin Bedell was a fun-loving guy who always made his classmates laugh, a former teacher said.

"He had a real dry sense of humor. He was fun to call on for answers to things. He would say something silly, and then he would come up with the answer," said Scott Carlson, the social studies teacher and basketball coach at Brimfield High School. "He was just a kid that all the other classmates enjoyed having in class because they knew he would crack up the class once or twice during the time he was there. I think he enjoyed being at school because he had his friends around him and he knew he could get a laugh or two."

Bedell, 18, a 2020 graduate of Brimfield High School, was pronounced dead about 4 p.m. Tuesday at the scene of the wreck at Illinois Route 89 and County Road 2100 North, a few miles south of Washburn.

The accident happened about 3 p.m. Tuesday when Bedell was driving east on the county road and pulled into the Route 89 intersection. He was struck by a northbound semitrailer truck hauling grain. The truck driver, Glenn Edwards, 70, of Henderson, Tenn., was taken by LifeFlight to OSF HealthCare Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria.

In addition to having a great sense of humor, Bedell was also a fine chess player, said Robert Bernales, the Brimfield High School math teacher and chess coach.

"He was an awesome chess player, probably the heart and soul of the team," said Bernales. "He was well-respected."

Bedell joined the chess team as a novice player, but he soon became an expert.

"He was a quick learner. He picked up the game and strategies very fast," said Bernales. "He actually beat me in a few games he pulled some surprises on me in a few games."

Bernales recalled a match against Metamora that appeared all but lost.

"He was losing pretty badly, and his opponent wasnt being very careful, and Ben found the one winning move it was perfect," said Bernales. "I remember the player from Metamora got mad and stormed out, but they became friends later. It was a pretty awesome game."

Wednesday was a rough day for teachers and students at Brimfield High School. With a student body of only about 240, everyone pretty much knows everybody. Bernales was among the many who took a day off to deal with their grief.

"We had quite a few not here, actually, and it was pretty somber," said Carlson. "It wasnt that long ago that we lost another student, Aaron Miller. A lot of their friends are the same people. Brimfield has been hit really hard for everybody to take. Especially their families and friends are definitely hurting."

Miller, 16, had just finished the first day of his junior year at Brimfield High School on Aug. 19 when he died in a single-vehicle wreck on U.S. Route 150 in Peoria County.

"Everybody around here is shocked and very sad," said Carlson. "Its going to take awhile to get past it, Im sure. We are praying for their families and friends."

Leslie Renken can be reached at 270-8503 or lrenken@pjstar.com. Follow her on Twitter.com/LeslieRenken, and subscribe to her on Facebook.com/leslie.renken.

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Gone too soon: Brimfield teen remembered as jokester and expert chess player - Pekin Daily Times

It's the classic game of cat and mouse played and admired by millions across the globe, one which requires meticulous planning and strategy to stay ahead of the opposition.

This thinking mans game is believed to have originated in India before the 7th century, although the pieces gained their current titles in Spain in the late 1400s.

The rules werent standardised until the 19th century, and the first recognised World Chess Champion, Wilhelm Steinitz, claimed his title in 1886.

Hampshire residents have enjoyed playing the game over the years, like the team at King Edward VI school who made the headlines in 1996 after winning the British Times Schools Championship 15 times in 20 years.

Eastleigh Unity Club played host to the county individual championships in 1996, in which Southampton University secretary Alisdair Alexander won the under 175 grading prize.

Adam Norton form Woolston was just 11 years old when he was featured in The Southern Daily Echo for being one of the brightest prospects in chess.

Norton had represented England for three year in 1998, and hadnt lost a game. He was also the only person at Southampton Chess Club to win the Under 18 championship three years running.

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Pictures of people playing chess in Hampshire through the years - Daily Echo

10/4/2020 Two days ago, October 2, it was Jon Speelmans 64th birthday. Given that 64 is a canonical number for chess players, our columnist used this chance to remind us that every single square of the chessboard may be important. In order to illustrate his point, he goes on to show a game in which, as Black, he placed his knights on both h1 and a8 during a single game. Happy birthday, Jon! And many thanks for your ever-ingenious columns! | Pictured: Speelman usin PressTel Chessbox to play long distance chess | Source: British Chess News

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Im writing this on Friday, October 2nd which, a fond hope, is International Day of Non-Violence after Gandhis birth on October 2nd 1869, and coincidentally (there are lots of worse people to share a birthday with) my own. Mercifully it isnt a round one, at least for a pentadactyl, though if our lords and silicon masters eventually attain real consciousness, they will presumably consider 0x40to be fairly round and their more simple-minded colleagues will deem 1000000 to be very much so...

Im not enormously delighted to be 64, but at least it is a canonical number for a chess player and does provide a fairly plausible segue to the idea that every single square of the chess board may be important (or to misquote Monty Python: Every square is sacred).

Theres a game I sometimes show people in which as Black I put knights on both h1 and later a8,and it appears at the end. (I think it may have appeared here before but not for a good while?). This set me thinking about how unusual it is for knights to appear on multiple corners of the board in the same game, and I did a fairly simple-minded search for white knights on a1 and h1, starting by making a database of games in Megabase in which a white knight at some stage appeared on a1 there were a little over 17,000 of these and thensearching that database for ones in which a knight also appeared on h1.

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These are pretty rareand, of the nearly 6.5 million games in my Megabase,I found 39.They included three in which people (kids?) had agreed a draw and then moved their horses around the board for a longer or shorter time: one of these masterpiecesended in the initial position (admittedly after rooks had also moved, so in no-castling chess) after Blacks 54th move. There were also a few instances of Chess960, but still over 30 real games.

After a quick look at these, I reached a tentative conclusion that knights on the rim really are dim or at least that the people who had created this very aesthetic picture were making a minus score. To my surprise I also found that of these 30 or so games, eight (!) featured white knights on a1 and h1 at the same time.

Given a chance to create such an aesthetic picture, Id certainly do so myself if the second knight move to the corner was decent, but I dont think that aesthetics played any part in most of these, and you can judge for yourselves.

I realize that foolish horses in the corner may not be to everybodys taste so please dokeep on sending in your Agonizing and Ecstatic games and /or ideas for future columns, more rooted in the nitty-gritty of battle.Readers whose games or ideas are used will win a 3-month premium membership.

Select an entry from the list to switch between games

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These DVDs are about Understanding Middlegame Strategies. In the first DVD dynamic decisions involving pawns are discussed. The second DVD deals with decision making process concerning practical play.

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Sacred squares and foolish horses - Chessbase News

Start position:

The St Louis Chess Club in the US held its annual Chess 9LX 2020 Tournament as an online competition owing to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In terms of grandmaster quality, the 9LX tournament was one of the foremost for 2020. Current world champion Magnus Carlsen was a participant, as was a previous world champion, the inimitable Garry Kasparov. The challenger for the last world championship title match Fabiano Caruana was there. So were six leading grandmasters: Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Hikaru Nakamura, Wesley So (last years Random chess champion), Levon Aronian, Leinier Dominguez, and Peter Svidler.

Alireza Firouzja, the worlds best junior, completed the ten participants of the round robin competition. It was played on the popular site Lichess and was contested according to the rules of Chess 960 at rapid time controls (20+10).

In Chess 960 or Random Chess, the pieces on the chess board are placed differently to the usual set-up. This new organization gives the game a different flavour. Take a look at the position of the pieces in the diagram, which is referred to as Start Position 476. It means that any chess game adopting the position of the pieces on the chess board would be known as Chess 960/476.

Before the start of each game in a Chess 960 tournament, the pieces are rearranged and carry different numbers. Random Chess or Chess 960 is the creation of world champion Bobby Fischer, as far as I am aware. He invented this method to take grandmasters out of book or out of theory and compel them to be more creative. During his lifetime, Fischers random chess never caught on. It is therefore encouraging that the St Louis Chess Clubis promoting the American chess geniuss idea. Fischers principal argument was it would lessen grandmasters dependence on known theory and make draws more infrequent.

Carlsen and So tied for first in the Chess 9LX Tournament. They shared the first prize. American grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura was third.

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Carlsen and So tie in Chess 9LX tournament - Stabroek News

The remaining seven rounds of the FIDE flagship event the Candidates are facing a fresh crisis as Chinese Star Wang Hao is considering withdrawing from the event scheduled to resume November 1 in Yekaterinburg, Russia.The 31-year-old GM said the tournament should be moved from Russia because the host country is not safe and accused FIDE president Arkady Dvorkovich of rudeness towards him.

In September FIDE announced that the Candidateswill resume with the 8th round on November 1st in Yekaterinburg, Russia. The event that decides Magnus Carlsen's challenger for the World Championship title was halted abruptly on March 26th when only 7 rounds had been played.

On Monday, Wang Hao published e-mails he has had with FIDE lawyer Alexandr Martynov where he has made it clear that he is not a fan of the idea of holding the event in Russia. He has not yet decided whether he will participate.

Russia, like most of Europe and many other countries, is experiencing a spike in new Covid-19 cases and broke 10,000 new cases on October 4th, its highest number since May 15.

According to screenshots published on his private Facebook account, seen by chess24, FIDE has offered Hao a private flight, directly from Beijing to Yekaterinburg and is also willing to cover a business-class flight and VIP transfer in Germany, in case he needs a stopover. He also turned down offers to play in Tbilisi, FIDE's reserve venue, as he does not consider airports in Europe safe.

The World no. 12 is concerned with the venue in Russia. chess24 reached out to Wang Hao, who commented:

We are still discussing. But I was very disappointed and angry with the attitude of FIDE and the rudeness of the president.

The response comes after FIDE president Arkady Dvorkovich intervened in the conversation with the following:

Wang Hao followed up:

I think that its risky to have the tournament this November. If FIDE wants to resume the tournament in November, the tournament cannot be held in some place which is not safe like Russia.And somewhere is easy for players to go, to have a direct flight, make sure less possibility of the infection.Also, players need to be compensated if they get infected during the way or in the tournament place, because we are taking risks.

After Round 7, Wang Hao finds himself one point behind the leaders Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Ian Nepomniachtchi, who scored 4.5.

The Chinese player, who qualified by winning the 2019 FIDE Grand Swiss tournament, had already expressed safety fears prior to the event.

He was not alone. Azerbaijan Grandmaster Teimour Radjabov also predicted big problems and went one step further by withdrawing before the tournament.

Radjabov was replaced by GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and the tournament started as scheduled. The 33-year-old has since said he wants his place back and was reportedly considering legal options.

Asked whether dropping out of the event is an option, the Chinese star says:

I am not sure about it. It depends on how the discussion goes.

According to the Regulations of the FIDE Candidates, Wang Hao will be considered to have lost his remaining games:

5. 3. If a player withdraws after completing 50% or more of the games, the rest of his games are lost by default. In case a player completes less than 50%, all his results are annulled.

FIDE confirms to chess24 that discussions with Wang Hao are ongoing. General Director Emil Sutovsky made the following response:

FIDE makes a huge work trying to secure safest and at the same time most comfortable environment for players. Objectively, it is not easy - and we see that even in Stavanger foreign players had to quarantine for 10 days. We are going to resolve it without obliging players to quarantine, and we also are in constant touch with every one of them discussing every detail. It is a monumental task, but we realize how important it is and make every effort and beyond that.

Leon Watson contributed to this report for chess24.

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Wang Hao brands FIDE president 'rude' and threatens to pull out of Candidates - chess24