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I keep seeing the same employee:feels he has been mistreated by the employer, nothing the employer can say or do will change that, sends lengthy and agitated communications to multiple people, and is not specifically threatening, but the nature, frequency and tone of the communications is unusual and concerning. Of course its not really the same employee, but there sure is a similar profile that keeps popping up, probably aided by our technological age that lets anybody say anything without the accountability that comes with in-person communication.

Clients know I use the chess game analogy for working through many employee situations.What is the key point of thinking of it as a chess game? While we all want to plan our business affairs, in chess you cant go into the game with all 50 moves you are going to make spelled out.Why? Because the other guy is going to make moves too.

You dont know what the other guys moves will be, but in response to each move, there is an optimal move for you to make.If you calmly and methodically do so, you are very likely going to win. I have yet to see one of these types of employees who is a chessmaster. Im sure he exists, but generally the composite employee we are describing lacks the self-awareness and reflection to play this game well for very long.

The key concept is control, in several respects. You dont need to like sports analogies as much as I do to know that dictating the terms of engagement as much as you can helps you win.In my experience, it is particularly important when dealing with these types of employees to (calmly and politely) let them know they are not going to be in charge.There are many aspects to this:

1. Thou shalt not take the bait.He may say things that are untrue, exaggerated, misconstrued, aggravating, etc. but at no time will we lose our cool.Thats what he wants. Of course, communications that are harassing or threatening cannot be tolerated, but Im talking about the employee who is just smart enough not to cross that line (but not as smart as he thinks). You need to stay always polite, and always open to any information and concerns he may want to bring to your attention. Never react.

2. Have a point person.This is valuable for two reasons.One, not everybody at your business will be equally equipped to handle these tough situations.Figure out who it should be and put her in charge. Two, the employee needs to know he cant forum shop whoever he communicates with, it all comes back to the point person.He does not get to try different points of contract to find the answer he wants.

3. My lawyer wed love to talk to him/her.Many employees reference things their lawyer said.My experience is that in most (again, not all) situations where the employee truly has a lawyer, we have heard from the lawyer.Employees are entitled to have lawyers, but dont let him get away with throwing that around without testing it.Try something like this: Maybe it would be helpful for your lawyer to talk to the companys lawyer. If you will give me the contact information I will pass it along.Let the employee know you are going to gently verify his statements.

4. Communicate in writing. Most of us would agree, we could use a lot more in-person communication and a lot fewer emails in the workplace.But the usual rules do not apply here. Things you say will be misinterpreted and twisted we need to keep as much as possible in writing to protect your business going forward.

5. Be responsive but not too responsive.Not every email requires a response in real time.Indeed, for every five-line email you send, you probably get a 50-line email in return within the hour, so where we can, lets wait a couple of days before we trigger the next one.Certainly to position the company to defend itself in any future disputes we need to be responsive, but the employee does not get to set the pace of communications.

This may sound harsh.Note, it is a very small number of employees we need to think about in these terms, they just happen to monopolize a disproportionate amount of employment lawyers time.Thinking this way about the occasional employee who is sucking the life out of your business does not prevent you from being a caring, compassionate, and inclusive employer.

Also note, in some cases, underneath the bluster the employee may have a legitimate concern. After all, if you are like all of my clients, you employ human beings, and we are not perfect.The employee has the right to express concerns about the workplace, including to other employees.(Some employers do not realize, even if you do not have a union, the federal National Labor Relations Act allows employees to talk about their working conditions, including their compensation.)Any concerns raised by the employee should be handled just as they would be with concerns raised by any other employee.

Easy?Not at all.These situations can have many moving parts and, despite my point above about having a point person (likely somebody with an HR function), can put a front-line supervisor in a difficult position she is not trained for. There is a lot to balance and a lot of judgment calls. But if we start from the assumption that the employer is going to set the terms and calmly work through the chess game, we are better positioned to win that game than the difficult employee.

This article should not be construed as legal advice or legal opinion on any specific facts or circumstances. The contents are intended for general informational purposes only, and you are urged to consult your own lawyer on any specific legal questions you may have concerning your situation.

Barnes & Thornburg LLPis a large, full-service law firm that seeks to take a more entrepreneurial and cost-effective approach both to client service and its own business.

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Playing Chess with the "Mistreated" Employee Who Won't Stop Typing - themetropreneur.com

Perhaps only rivaled by the question if chess is a sport, athletics or just a game (Vik-Hansen, 2013) the role of luck in chess seems to captivate and intrigue players, non-players, professionals and amateurs alike.

The mere possibility of luck seems to contradict and undermine our perception of chess as a rational activity where skills and proficiency alone, in contrast to say dice or card games where luck is assumed to even out in the long run, are supposed to decide the outcome. In other words, chess is perceived as an activity where the players control the chain of events to such an extent that by training and effort we improve and thus control the result or outcome.

However, the notion of no luck in chess is, perhaps surprisingly, inextricably linked to a notion of free will, an idea of control, which yet further is linked to a concept of consciousness and a conscious I. Therefore, our first task is to clarify what sort of agency, or control, would exclude luck from playing a part in chess.

Human agency might be summarised as (1) action, (2) thinking and (3) perception, and we start off with action.

Regarding agency, much debated is the mind/body duality where the problem is to account for how mental states, or properties, like seeing colours, experiencing pain, tasting or smelling something, can cause physical limbs (arms and legs) to movea duality that might be summed up in two hitherto unreconciled principles:

The causal closure of the physical domain, which states that every physical effect or event has a physical cause. In a physical system, like a human body, only physical causes can move the meat (Kim, 1993, p. 280; Vicente, 2006, p. 150)

The causal relevance of the mental domain, where the question is how mental properties or states can move the meat.

A problem with the term conscious when describing actions [consciously + verb], is ambiguity, as the term may refer to common/shared knowledge, censorship, introspection, personal identity (the I as the totality of all our mental states and the answer to what or who owns these mental states) (Gundersen, 2004, pp. 8-11) or free will as an ability to act freely and unconstrained.

Examples from chess discourse, chess literature and the chess press might lure us to think that consciousness pervades all mental life but far from it because we cannot be conscious of what we are not conscious of (Jaynes, 2000, p. 23). Jaynes (2000, p. 23; Nrretranders, 1999, p. 174) compares our impression of the ubiquitousness of consciousness with a flashlight searching for something in a dark room that is not lighted and has to conclude, since there is light in whatever direction it turns, there is light everywhere.

Despite huge time gaps when the flashlight is not on, to the flashlight itself it seems it has been on all the time, and similarly, we are conscious far less of the time than we think because we are not conscious of the gapsthe timewe are not conscious of (Jaynes, 2000, p. 24).

As with the blind spot (Jaynes, 2000, p. 25; Nrretranders, 1999, p. 180), in the field of vision we do not noticethe optically insensitive region on the retina void of visual cellsboth because the spot is located on different places in the right eye and the left eye and our brain and visual experience fill in the gaps, consciousness fills in the time gaps in the stream of consciousness and gives the illusion of continuity (Jaynes, 2000, p. 25)

Since free will hardly can be thought independently of consciousness and a conscious I, it begs the question if a non-physical consciousness could cause physical limbs to move, and if so, why not ask paralysed patients in wheelchairs to use their free will and make a conscious decision and just get up? Do we blame the paralysed for being weak-willed?

However, assumed consciousness cannot initiate actions or physical movements, neurophysiologist Benjamin Libet (1985), in the wake of his experiments in the early 80s, suggested consciousness, even if not the initiator, still could lay down a veto, depending on how disciplined it is.

How often have we not caught ourselves saying I was about to say/dobut caught myself, where our mind has initiated an impulse for us to say or do something but we stop, or veto the impulse from running to action. Because we cannot be conscious of what we are not conscious of and free will hardly can be thought independently of consciousness and a concept of a conscious I, neither can we know how much of the time free will is not at work; we only know when it is at work; during the veto.

A rare and striking illustration of the veto gave the blitz game Magnus Carlsen vs Levon Aronian in the eighth round of the 6th Norway Blitz 2018.

Aronian as Black onmove 52 was about to recapture Carlsens pawn on g4 but within a fraction of a second, with pawn in hand and hovering half way over Carlsens pawn, he catches himself and the brain initiates another impulse whereupon he with a slower movement passes by Carlsens pawn and Carlsen resigns.

Aronian was about to play the auto-pilot move, recapture since Carlsen first captured a pawn

Carlsens brain, on the other hand, initiated a blunder impulse, i.e. an impulse that if converted to action (move in our context) leads to a mistake, where Carlsen was not in time to become conscious of what he was about to; he was not in time to catch himself.

Actions are one thing, but what about thinking? Can we think what we want/will?

In the early twentieth century, Marbe (2012/1901) and Watt (1906) demonstrated that thinking and judging, the supposed hallmarks of consciousness, arenot conscious at all (Jaynes, 2000, p. 38). We do our thinking before we know what we are to think about. We do not know what we are thinking until were thinking it and only its preparation, materials, and end result are consciously perceived (Jaynes, 2000, p. 39).

Could we (consciously) select the best preparations and best materials for the actual thought processes, we would control the thought processes as well as the end result. In chess, thinking manifests itself in cognitive activity as diverse as assessment, analyzing and calculating. We are, of course aware of or conscious of the fact that we are assessing a position, analysing or calculating certain moves or variations but the processes are all subconscious, since, with access to all the (perfect) information right in front of us, we would not misjudge a position, analyse or calculate poor moves or bad variations on purpose.

Since the 1950s it has been known that only a fraction (1-40 bits) of the 11,121,000 bits of the information flooding through our sense organs makes up a conscious experience (Zimmerman, 1986), and neurophysiologist Hans H. Kornhuber (1988) states:

Thus, there is a great deal of information reduction in the nervous system. Most information flow in the brain is, by the way, unconscious. The soul is not richer than the body; on the contrary, most of the processing in our central nervous system is not perceived. The unconscious (which was discovered and elucidated long before Freud) is the most ordinary process in the nervous system. We just look at the results, but we are able to direct the focus of attention.

The brain, and not we consciously, controls the influx of information, selects and organises the relevant information units into a coherent conscious experience and if we could direct our focus at will, how to explain errors, mistakes, blunders, mishaps or slip-ups? The phrase having our attention or interest caught implies that something outside our consciousness does the catching. If we could direct our focus at will, why not focus on what we should focus on? Homework, chores, poverty, trapped knights and rooks en prise? (Parenthetically speaking, how come we let our knights get trapped or we leave our rooks en prise if we at will could direct the focus of our attention?)

Delineating human agency into action (the veto), thinking and perception, when our veto depends on how disciplined our consciousness is, our actions may be said to have three possible sources: (1) Intracerebral (brain/mind alone), (2) external (impressions/information solely from outside) or (3) interplay between internal and external factors where we, because we cannot get behind our consciousness, as it were, are in no position to distinguish, isolate or separate different types of causes from one another. We are not conscious of the preceding causes leading up to the moment of action we are conscious of.

However, our delineation of human agency suggests that the brain by subconscious physical processes plays chess when triggering moves, whereas we (consciously) play chess by the veto, i.e. when aborting or stopping our brains suggestions.

Winning the lottery as an example of luck might be considered paradigmatic, caused by a coinciding of several causes/circumstances/events, intracerebral as well as external:

(Chance in lottery does not consist in the drawing but in the picking of the numbers, as the drawn numbers do not occur by chance, i.e. are uncaused, but result from causes beyond our control.)

We may now summarise our findings so far:

(1) Actions subconsciously initiated, (2) the information units pouring through our senses, (3) the minds processing of the information, (4) the selection and organization of information into a conscious experience and (5) external causes/circumstances resulting in our winning the lottery, suggest a tentative and general definition of luck and unluck:

Luck: unpredictable. favourable outcome(s) where we neither control the causes at work or how they work together (certain outcomes presuppose certain events) and an ability not to abort impulses leading to unpredictable, favourable outcomes (picking the right lottery numbers and not handing in the ticket) and to abort ill-conceived impulses leading to unfavourable outcomes (blunders in chess).

Unluck: (unpredictable) unfavourable outcome(s) where we neither control the causes at work nor how they work together and are unable to abort the chain of causes (often in the shape of ill-conceived impulses (blunders in chess).

Case in point: We avoided the avalanche because we missed the ferry when our friend called to tell us he had won the lottery on the same day his wife said she would divorce him after his old parrot for the umpteenth time bit her in her wooden leg.

However, chess appears essentially different from playing the lottery but if in control, how to explain:

If mistakes are not made on purpose but still happen, are we suggesting our limbs move without us knowing?

If the better player (on paper) always is in full control, always wins and luck plays no role:

Victory against weaker players (on paper) would be a forgone conclusion, a matter of course, so why play at all (Beyond getting the formalities out of the way)? Unless the players are equally rated, will the games be called off?

We would never end up in worse positions against weaker players (on paper) in the first place.

There is no need for happiness, rejoice or celebration when winning games, tournaments and matches, since the result, again, would be a forgone conclusion and a matter of course. (Imagine a deadpanned reaction like, Hold your applause. Of course I won, Im better.)

However, applause, celebrations, congratulations, high-fives, rejoice, smiles, and feeling of relief after winning or drawing lost games against equally strong (on paper) or weaker players (on paper) and games against lower rated opponents still being played, are all visceral testimony to a realisation that there might be gaps and glitches in perception and neural networks; the result or outcome is not a given or foregone conclusion, as ratings per se only measure past achievements. The only possible praise or compliment appears to be a measured: Good for you, when we cannot take credit for our achievements or anything but appreciate we got to experience the pleasure of success.

If chess moves and lottery numbers as well result from a coinciding of intracerebral and external causes/circumstances beyond our control, how does playing chess differ from playing the lottery?

The boundaries of human agency and control summarised as (1) action, (2) thinking and (3) perception, and our veto depending on how strong or disciplined our consciousness is, distinguish luck in chess from lottery luck as:

Unpredictable, favourable outcome(s) of causes and circumstances beyond our control, internal as well as external, but not in the lottery sense of the word as the brain/mind as a physical system is more stable/consistent than the drawing of lottery numbers, yielding different numbers every week.

Ability not to abort impulses leading to unpredictable, favourable outcomes and to abort ill-conceived impulses leading to unfavourable outcomes (blunders). (If we did control the veto-moment, we would never let ill-conceived impulses run to action.)

Happens over the board (OTB-luck) when gaps and glitches in our control, i.e. time gaps we are not conscious of, provide our opponents with chances and possibilities we later come to call luck, since, if conscious (no gaps), we would in not on purpose present our opponents with such chances and possibilities the first place. (These gaps, paradoxically, do not lend themselves to dating (since we are not conscious of them) but are manifested or expressed by our moves.)

If we were in control of both internal and external causes and circumstances underlying our moves, the better player (on paper) would always win against weaker players (on paper) as a matter of course but, as we know, the better player does not always win and our definition may explain why: Better players have full control most of the time, no control some of the time but never full control all the time.

When better/stronger players (again on paper) do not have control, there are gaps or glitches in their perception (they see the board but dont perceive it (Vik-Hansen, 2016)) or in the causal nexuses or causal chains in their physical neural network system (a.k.a. the brain/mind in the shape of processing the information) and in these gaps and glitches precisely lies weaker players (on paper) chance for improvement by defeating or drawing the better/stronger player.

We might say that one causal network (the weaker player) exploits the gaps and glitches in another causal network but where neither player consciously or volitionally controls the causal neural network, neither their own nor their opponents.

(In the contention that the better player always wins, there is a logical trap: If a weaker player (on paper) in a single game defeats the stronger player (on paper), the weaker player indeed turned out better. In other words, if the better player (on paper) does not always win against weaker players (on paper) they are by definition not better. How many games are better players (on paper) required to win against weaker players (on paper) to be recognised as generally better?)

Luck defined as gaps and glitches in perception as well as causal neural networks and unpredictable, favourable outcome(s) of causes and circumstances beyond our control, internal as well as external suggests, that luck in chess is not limited to play over-the-board but applies to (away-from-the-board) analysis or situations as well, illustrated by the following snippets from Kasparov and Anand:

Kasparov (2003, p. 208) on Laskers 59th move against Rubinstein (St. Petersburg, 1914): The last critical position in this amazing game. Here, with the help of a computer, I was fortunate enough to discover something.

Anand (2012, p. 187) commenting on Blacks 18th move in the 9th match game against Kasparov in their PCA World Championship match in 1995: I was surprised that he was prepared to go down this line [following a Scheveningen Sicilian from Cuijipers-De Boer, Dutch Championship, 1988] so blithely.It was lucky I didnt know about this game, or I might have abandoned the whole line!

Our definition suggests why luck and objectivity (IM Grnn as quoted in Fosse, 2017, Det beste og verste med sjakk [The best and worst with chess], para. 3) are not mutually exclusive: Objectivity merely signifies that moves and variations in principle, impartially and universally can be tested independently of individual subjectivity bias caused by perception, imagination, emotions, preferences or convictions, not that we control the unfolding of the events.

Along the same lines falls Valakers rejection of luck (Valaker, 2010) because chess is supposed to be a battle between brains/minds. However, dismissing luck ignores the human factor former world champion Lasker (1868-1941) encourages us to take into account when stating chess being a battle between brains/minds, as the battle does not imply our controlling the processes in the brain/mind.

In light of our analysis and definition of luck in chess, the axiom often ascribed to Capablanca (Winter, 2016), The good player is always lucky, may be said to be playing for three results(1) nonsense, (2) tongue in cheek and (3) deep insightand may serve to illustrate Italian programmer Alberto Brandolinis (2013) Bullshit Asymmetry Principle (or Brandolinis law), stating that the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it, (he principle can be sharpened by differentiating between different types of nonsense or bullshit: some types taking longer to refute than others) captured also by the old proverb, a lie is halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on.

If a good player is always lucky, were not talking luck and although the contention there is no luck in chess are only six small words, it takes quite an amount of analysis and elaboration to prove it problematic, if not flat out groundless.

Grnn (as quoted in Hiby, 2016) praises Carlens queen sacrifice 50.h6+ against Karjakin (New York, 2016), as something that happens to people who deserve it, as a reward for good play, and according to Hillarp-Perssonannotating Carlsen-Nepomniachtchi (London Chess Classic, 2017), luck usually comes to those who deserve it, which opens for worthy and unworthy recipients of luck. However, since the chain of causes leading up to the luck moment is beyond our control, luck is something we do not deserve but merely something that happens us (Good for you).

Accepting and coming to terms with the fact that luck indeed is an inherent component of chess and that we do not possess the control traditionally ascribed to conscious agency, may, as the presence of luck grants us adequate space to distance ourselves from our misery and cushion the blow, help us lower the bar of expectations and help us deal better with defeats and better cope with tension.

Concluding our analysis, we bid the reader farewell with the winged words of late Dutch grandmaster Donner (2006, p. 86):

Chess is and will always be a game of chance. How now, sir? I hear you cry. Isnt it precisely the best and noblest aspect of the game of chess that the chances are equal and that the players control everything themselves? Yes, gentlemen, quite, but who can control himself?

Among his philosophical interests, Rune Vik-Hansen nurtures a passion for the question of free will and has over the last decade suggested how it might be relevant to playing chess. Drawing upon philosophy and recent findings on brain and consciousness, Vik-Hansen offers an original and fresh approach to classical chess problems and has in great depth explored different aspects of chess playing, from analyzing blunders to questioning the concept of pattern recognition.

| Photo: Anniken Vestby, Troms

ChessBase articles

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Chess and Luck - Chessbase News

We start with a big personal thank you to D.C.s venerable Black Knights Chess Team, which earlier this month awarded this column and this columnist a lifetime achievement award at its third annual closed championship, citing our coverage over the past quarter-century of the local chess scene and of Washington, D.C., as the nations primary incubator of black chess excellence.

A special note of gratitude goes out to retired Air Force Maj. Zack Kinney, a longtime friend of the column who offered some very generous words at the event, citing in particular our coverage of late local legend IM Emory Tate, a former Black Knight himself.

I should, in turn, be thanking the Black Knights for supplying the column with so much memorable material over that time span, from the clubs long participation in the D.C. Chess League to the individual exploits of such fine players as Greg Acholonu, William Morrison, Greg Kearse, Ralph Mikell, Vincent Moore and many others I have personally tangled with over the board.

The honor was triply enhanced as the club also bestowed awards on Black Knight Mike Abron, who in October completed a record-setting 18-year quest to play a rated game in every state (Abron and Kinney have a book chronicling the odyssey coming out early next year), and NM Frank Street, a Washington-area chess legend, a former U.S. amateur champion and the second African American player ever to achieve the master ranking.

He doesnt play so much any more, but Street was known as a tough out for even the nations top players in the 1960s and 1970s. At the fabled 1976 Lone Pine international tournament (won by some guy named Tigran Petrosian, with some guy named Vasily Smyslov tying for second), Street scored very respectable 50% score and won a superb attacking game against FM Tibor Weinberger, who had played just eight years before in the U.S. Chess Championship.

Black does well out of this Symmetrical English, blockading Whites isolated d-pawn and completing his development rapidly. White goes in for a tricky unbalancing line, but it is Black who lands the first punch.

Thus: 18. Ne2?! (White should have accepted a slight positional minus with the more tempered 18. Nxc6 Bxc6 19. Ne2 Qd6 20. Rac1 Rfd8) Nxe5 19. dxe5 Bxe5 20. Bxh6 Qh4!, ignoring the attack on his rook to get the attack rolling.

Weinberger unwisely accepts the proffered exchange and his position never recovers: 21. Bxf8? (and now the better part of valor for White was 21. f4 Qxh6 22. fxe5 Ne3 23. Re1 Nxg2 24. Qxh6+ Kxh6, and hope to hold the pawn-down ending) Qxh2+ 22. Kf1 Nf4! 23. Nxf4 (Ng3 Rxf8 24. Qe3 Bd6 25. a3 Rd8, with a big edge) Bxf4 24. Ke2 (Qc2 Bxg2+ 25. Ke2 Qh5+ 26. Ke1 Qh1+ 27. Ke2 Bf3 mate), and now White would have a punchers chance on 24Bxd2? 25. Rh1 Bf4 26. Rxh2+ Bxh2 27. Rh1 Rxf8 28. Rxh2+.

But Black finds the winning path with 24Qh5+! 25. f3 Bxf3+! gxf3 26. Qh2+, picking off the queen. After 34. f4 Qxb2+ 35. Kf3, White has seen enough and resigns before Black can administer the crusher, 35Qc3 36. Ke3 (Be5 Qc6+) Qc6, winning even more material.

As for the tournament itself, held Dec. 7 at St. Pauls Community Church on Capitol Hill, expert Simon Steele claimed the 2019 title with a perfect 5-0 score, a point ahead of 2018 Black Knights champion Paul Little Jr. Ralph Mikell took home the Under 2000 trophy, Gregg Pratt was top Under 1800, and Abron was the Under 1600 winner. Sandy Jenkins, the only female in the field, naturally won the top female prize with a very creditable 2-3 result.

The history of African American chess actually starts with another local DMV-er the remarkable Theophilus Augustus Thompson, born into slavery in Frederick, Maryland, in 1855. He learned the game as a teenager and was reportedly a strong tournament and correspondence player.

His most lasting claim to fame was an 1873 book of 50 chess problems and studies that still have the capacity to instruct, baffle and delight. One of his most elegant compositions was the two-mover in todays diagram the Black king is imprisoned in the center of the board, but Whites two rooks hang and any piece move seems to open up an escape route for the enemy.

The only move that picks the lock is the subtle 1. Rb4!!, when both 1Kxc6 and 1cxb4 are met by 2. Bf3 mate.

Weinberger-Street, Louis Statham Tournament, Lone Pine, Calif., March 1976

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nc3 Bg7 4. Nf3 O-O 5. e3 c5 6. Be2 cxd4 7. exd4 d5 8. cxd5 Nxd5 9. O-O Nc6 10. Bg5 h6 11. Be3 Be6 12. Qd2 Kh7 13. Ne4 Bc8 14. Rfd1 b6 15. Ne5 Bb7 16. Ng3 e6 17. Bd3 f5 18. Ne2 Nxe5 19. dxe5 Bxe5 20. Bxh6 Qh4 21. Bxf8 Qxh2+ 22. Kf1 Nf4 23. Nxf4 Bxf4 24. Ke2 Qh5+ 25. f3 Bxf3+ 26. gxf3 Qh2+ 27. Ke1 Bxd2+ 28. Rxd2 Qg1+ 29. Ke2 Qxa1 30. Bd6 Qg1 31. Rc2 Qd4 32. Rc7+ Kg8 33. Rd7 Rc8 34. f4 Qxb2+ 35. Kf3 and White resigned.

David R. Sands can be reached at 202/636-3178 or by email [emailprotected].

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Honoring a column and a legacy of African American chess excellence in D.C. - Washington Times

The Premier Leagues official fantasy football league has over seven million entrants. And as of a few days, World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen was number one in the league. As of this writing, he's down to third place.

Apparently, Norwegians tend to do well in the league:

Carlsen, like many Norwegians, is obsessed with both the Premier League and its fantasy league spin-off. In 2017, eight players from Norway were in the top 50 FPL players in the world.

Along with a "phenomenal memory for Premier League details," Here's his strategy:

Writing for EGM, Alexis Ong looks at Neurocracy, SCP Foundation, and other gameful hypertexts. It reminded me of SCP-3308, which describes a disturbing Ikea. The location seems to be a typical Ikea, but once you enter, youre transported to an infinite space that looks like, but is not quite an Ikea: SCP-3008-1 is inhabited by []

I remember buying Westwood Studios (miss those guys) point-and-click Blade Runner game to play on my old ThinkPad, back in the late 1990s. It was the first game I can recall owning that spanned multiple disks. While I was surprised to find that the main character in the game neither looked or sounded like Harrison []

Writing for Vice, Gabriel Soares takes a look at Civilization and why a standard playthrough tends to get more boring as the player reaches modern day technology: what is progress in an historical 4X game? To be blunt, its the elimination of difference. The closer you are to us, the more you have progressed. []

Well say this about smoking: The act of asking somebody for a light is a minor bonding ritual all its own and a great chance to make a first impression. And if it takes you a while to find a bon mot, dont sweat it: Thats why they made these eye-catching throwback lighters. Theyre []

Whether youre an industry professional, IT worker or a budding entrepreneur, your worth boils down to one main thing: expertise. What you dont know can hurt you, and what you do know can only help your resume and your bottom line. Granted, it can be hard to keep your skillset up to date in []

If you smoke, you know theres nothing like the hit you get from a waterpipe. You also know that smooth hit gets balanced out a little by the refilling you have to do not to mention the cleaning. Finally, somebodys taken the basic design of the old reliable water smoker and added some much-needed []

See the rest here:

Current chess champion Magnus Carlsen is also one of the top fantasy soccer players in the world - Boing Boing

These two wily operators are circling each other warily. Photo: Bill Pugliano/Getty Images

To read most press accounts, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and his closest allies are fighting a lonely battle to keep the impending impeachment trial of Donald Trump short and bereft of witnesses. Meanwhile, Trump himself, House Republicans, and maybe some Senate renegades like Ted Cruz want a trial focused on the alleged corruption of the Bidens that the president was supposedly pursuing in his conversations with the president of Ukraine, while airing some of the vast conspiracy theories about the origins of the witch hunt Democrats have pursued to torment the poor, defenseless POTUS.

And now comes Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer with his own demands for a longer trial with witnesses, as the Washington Post reports:

The top Senate Democrat on Sunday called for subpoenaing several senior Trump administration officials who have yet to testify in the Houses impeachment probe as witnesses for President Trumps likely trial part of an opening salvo in negotiations that could determine the parameters for the Senate proceedings next month.

In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) outlined a number of procedural demands that Democrats say would make the Senate trial fair and able to be completed within a reasonable period of time.

That includes subpoenas issued by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. for acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney; Robert Blair, a senior adviser to Mulvaney; former national security adviser John Bolton; and Michael Duffey, a top official at the Office of Management and Budget. Mulvaney, Blair and Duffey had been subpoenaed by the House committees and defied the summons; Bolton has not been subpoenaed but indicated he would fight one in court.

Schumers demands, it should be understood, are in the context of a possible (but not at all mandatory) bipartisan resolution laying out the details of an impeachment trial beyond the broad outlines set by the Constitution and the standing Senate rules. Such a resolution was enacted prior to the Clinton impeachment trial in 1999, to the great surprise of observers at the time. Absent a deal, the Senate majority can easily impose a set of rules of its own by a simple majority. And items not covered by those ad hoc guidelines may trigger rulings from the chair (in this case, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts) and/or additional Senate votes, with 51 needed for a decision (except for procedures that require amendment of the standing Senate rules, which will require a supermajority).

Yes, Democrats particularly in the House, where the White Houses obstruction of efforts to secure testimony from high-ranking administration officials led to an entire second article of impeachment would love to get the opportunity to question Mulvaney, Blair, and Duffey, and have reason to think a subpoena issued by the chief justice in a Senate trial would not be challengeable in federal courts. But the White House and Senate Republicans are very unlikely to agree to such a stipulation. So what Schumer is probably conducting is a dual gambit to satisfy Democrats who want a deeper impeachment investigation than the House was able to pull off, while signaling no deal to McConnell on a bipartisan rules package even as he talks the language of bipartisanship.

Schumer is also doing McConnell the favor of giving him a talking point against Republican demands for a broader, longer trial with the witnesses Trump wants. Absent a bipartisan deal (and Schumer is no more likely to accept the idea of Hunter Biden testifying than McConnell will go along with dragging Mulvaney into the Senate), decisions about calling witnesses could wind up being resolved on individual votes, and McConnell might well fear the possibility of just enough Republicans defecting on one or more that he could lose control of the parameters of the trial. In any event, the only available compromise is for both sides to back off demands for witnesses, leading to the short-and-sweet trial and acquittal McConnell wants.

This is a tricky business, though. House Republicans and allied professional troublemakers like Ted Cruz are unlikely to stop agitating for a longer trial with witnesses until Trump publicly goes along with McConnells plans. Thats why the Kentuckian is making such a big display of his total coordination with the White House, as I noted last week:

McConnell knows that the only way to put out the MAGA fire building for an insane-a-thon in the Senate is to get Washingtons chief pyromaniac on his side. What harm is a little groveling if it keeps the lid on the craziness? Being a megalomaniac wrangler is all just part of service in Trumps army.

In other words, theres a lot of not-entirely-sincere posturing going on about how this impeachment trial will proceed. My money would be on McConnell keeping a lid on it, providing Republicans with a quick acquittal, and Democrats with protection for Joe Biden and for the five Democratic senators currently in the presidential race who could be imprisoned in Washington during a long trial.

Having said that, Cruz has helped cast some light on the fiction that senators are exactly like jurors in a criminal trial who must remain totally silent during the trial:

Senators are not required, like jurors in a criminal trial, to be sequestered, not to talk to anyone, not to coordinate. Theres no prohibition, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said on This Week, calling impeachment inherently a political exercise and Trumps impeachment a partisan show trial.

The standing Senate rules for impeachment trials provide no avenues for senators to speak (they must submit questions for any witnesses in writing), but theres no gag order preventing them from saying whatever pops into their heads when the trial itself is not in session. Id expect senators to have a lot to say late at night and on Sundays, though some will use the juror excuse to avoid reporters and angry constituents.

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Schumer and McConnell Play Chess Over Impeachment Trial Rules - New York Magazine