Friday tidings

SPRAGGETT ON CHESS

Ras Bruno, a reader from Turkey, sent me the following video link!  Great stuff!  Kirsan is becoming a legend...when songs are written to you then you know that you have arrived!  Enjoy!

http://www.fsajedrez.com/

The 36th edition of the Sevilla International started today.  Fellow Canadian Leon Piasetski is also participating, enroute to Gibraltar later this month.  This tournament is always a tough tournament...15 GMs or so and as many IMs.  Sevilla is one of my favourite cities in the whole world!  You can follow the tournament on the link given below the tournament poster.

Leon looked a bit under the weather...his trip from Vancouver could have gone better.  He forgot his PC adaptar and had some unfortunate experiences finding a replacement.  His latest adapter blew up in his face earlier today...however, not is all bad news.  Leon managed to save what appeared to be a hopeless position against a fairly weak player in round 1.  When things go bad....duck!

Don't worry, Leon!  Tomorrow is the beginning of the rest of your life! (original saying)

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Chess players know they sit too much.  But how much is too much?  And , seriously, can it be bad for your health to stay seated too long and too often?  Scientific American had an article that might interest you this week:

Can sitting too much kill you?

By Travis Saunders

''We all know that physical activity is important for good health—regardless of your age, gender or body weight, living an active lifestyle can improve your quality of life and dramatically reduce your risk of death and disease. But even if you are meeting current physical activity guidelines by exercising for one hour per day (something few Americans manage on a consistent basis), that leaves 15 to 16 hours per day when you are not being active. Does it matter how you spend those hours, which account for more than 90% of your day? For example, does it matter whether you spend those 16 hours sitting on your butt, versus standing or walking at a leisurely pace? Fortunately or unfortunately, new evidence suggests that it does matter, and in a big way.''

The rest of this interesting article can be found at this link:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=can-sitting-too-much-kill-you-2011-01-06

About the author: Travis Saunders is a Certified Exercise Physiologist and PhD Candidate at the University of Ottawa in Ontario, Canada. His research focuses on the relationship between sedentary behavior and chronic disease risk in children. When he is not in the lab, he can be found blogging at Obesity Panacea and Science of Blogging, and running marathons with his fiancé. He can be reached at @travissaunders.

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What happens when you show your kids the techno-crap that we played with in the '80s and so??

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Who would have believed??

Wow!  The kid on the right grew up to become the first black prez of the USA!! (cerca 1974,Kenya).  That is Obama's father sitting down.

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Super Cat attacks dog!!

A great photo.  Sheep are not stupid!  The sheep knows that he is going to the slaughter...

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TODAY'S SEXY TATOOS

(My sister hates this!  She thinks it is sexist.  But it is art!  Correct???)

FIND THE CANADIAN IN THE PHOTO BELOW!

TODAY'S SEXIST JOKE

Two women were sitting on a fence minding their own business.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN MEN BAKE COOKIES

(Thx, Ole!)

A few laughs

SPRAGGETT ON CHESS

Spot growl!   See Jane run! Fast...

Two men , dressed as women, playing with their balls

A perfect meal; chick's breast with plenty of good wine. Who needs more than this?

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Meanwhile, the TSA is doing its best...

Interesting statistics from the recent security pat-downs at U.S. airports ... TSA stands for Transportation Security Authority or something akin to that ... as per screenings by the Department of Homeland Security:

Terrorist Plots Discovered 0

Transvestites 133

Hernia’s 1,485

Hemorrhoid Cases 3,172

Enlarged Prostates 8,249

Breast Implants 59,350

Natural Blondes 3

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Are you up to this challenge?

SPRAGGETT ON CHESS

IM   GYULA  KLUGER

ANDRAS  OZSVAITH

This is the position after White's 28th move of the game Ozsvath vs Kluger, Hungarian Championship (semi-finals) 1955.  A violent cut and thrust struggle, both sides seek desperately to mate the other before he gets mated himself!  In this kind of position, everything depends on who has the move and can he profit from this? For example, White needs only to withdraw his Bishiop to deliver mate along the h-file. However,  it is Black's move in this position.  He knows that he must have a way to win: his Queen, Rook and Bishop are available for the task; the White King has absolutely no defenders!

But how should Black proceed?  He has no time to take the Bishop on h6 because 29.Qxd7 wins (mate threats and Ng4 coming in soon)  Nor can he play 28...Qa5 (threatenting a devastating discovered check) because of 29.Qe6ch mating. And a complete exaggeration would be the brilliant  28...Rb1ch as after 29.RxR Bb2ch 30.RxB! PxRch 31.Kb1 Black has run out of  both pieces and ideas!

It is not easy to see what Black should play.  In the actual game Black did not succeed in finding the path to victory.  Though he correctly realized that there was no forcing sequence of ''check...check...mate!' moves , and that he needed one more prepatory move inorder for his attack to be decisive, Kluger made a slight imprecision and this gave his opponent the chance to miraculously escape and win the game!

He played the clever looking

28...Rb5?

This threatens to win by 29...Bb2ch 30. Kb1 Bc1ch 31.KxB Rb1ch!! and 32...Qb5ch and finally 33...Qb2mate!

Unfortunately for Black,

29.Bc1!!

avoids an immediate and threatens to mate Black along the h-file!

Now Black realized that if 29...Bb2ch White has the simple 30.BxB and the checks soon run out.  So he instead tried the desperate but brilliant 29...Rb1ch which was insufficient (in the game White played the unnecessary 30.Ka2--which is good enough--but 30.KxR! is simplest and Black would run out of checks soon afterwards, leaving Black's monarch to be mated along the h-file. (see pgn viewer below for the game continuation)

HOWEVER, BLACK DOES HAVE A WAY TO WIN AT MOVE 28!  CAN YOU FIND IT? 

(SOLUTION BELOW)

[Event ""]
[Site "HUN ch"]
[Date "1955"]
[Round ""]
[White "Ozsvaith"]
[Black "Kluger"]
[Result "1-0"]
[Eco "C22"]
[Annotator ""]
[Source ""]

1. e4 e5 2. d4 exd4 3. Qxd4 Nc6 4. Qe3 Nf6 5. Nc3 Bb4 6. Bd2 O-O 7. O-O-O Re8
8. Bc4 d6 9. f3 Ne5 10. Bd3 Be6 11. g4 Nc4 12. Bxc4 Bxc4 13. g5 Bc5 14. Qf4
Nd7 15. h4 b5 16. b3 Ba3+ 17. Kb1 Rb8 18. h5 Qe7 19. Nh3 b4 20. g6 fxg6 21.
hxg6 h6 22. Nf2 Rf8 23. Qg3 bxc3 24. Bxh6 Bxb3 25. axb3 Qe5 26. Qh3 Rxb3+ 27.
Ka2 Rb2+ 28. Ka1 Rb5 29. Bc1 Rb1+ 30. Ka2 Ra1+ 31. Kxa1 Bb2+ 32. Kb1 1-0

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SOLUTION:

The path to victory is indeed with a prepatory Rook move, but to b6 (not b5--which interferes with the Queen sliding over to a5)

28...Rb6!!

Now White is indeed helpless!  If he tries 29.Bc1 (as in the game) then Black wins with 29...Bb2ch! 30.BxB Qa5ch! (which did not exist in the game continuation because of the position of the Rook on b5!) mating  in 2 moves!  And if White does not take on b2 then he gets mated with the same ...Bc1, ....Rb1...Qb5 and ...Qb2 mate sequence described above.

Other tries are also insufficient: 29.Rd5 allows 29...Ra6!! with a fast mate along the a-file. Or 29.Nd3 (attacking the Queen and covering the sensitive b2-square) allows 29...Ra6!! (again) 30.Kb1 Qb5! etc  Finally, 29.Be3 goes off to 29...Bb2ch 30.Kb1 Ba1ch 31. Kc1 (nothing better) 31...Rb1ch! and mate soon following.

In sharp and complicated positions such as what arose in this game, nerves of steel are required!  One slightly imprecise move can turn a well-deserved victory into a painful defeat!

Andras Ozsvaith (born Hungary, 1929) is still alive and well.  He is a respected coach. I could not find much about his life on the 'net.

Gyula Kluger (1915-1994, Hungary)

1914 - 15th of January . Born in Sátoraljaújhely - Hungary, commercial secondary school there, 1932 - Schluckenau - Czech Republic - 1st place, Czech master title, 1935 - reaching the Hungarian master title,

1954 - reaching the International master title

1959-63 - first board player in the team of the Budapest Spartacus in the first league of Hungary and he won with the team 3 silver and one bronze medals.

1964 - he played the second board and the team reaches a bronze medal, 1964-67 - second board in the MTK team, new bronze medal,

He had good results in some Budapest championships:

1967 - 2nd-3rd place,

1968 - 2nd-3rd place,

1979 - 2nd-4th place.

He played more than 50 games in the Hungarian national team in International team matches.

1954 - member of the 6th place winner Hungarian team in the Amsterdam chess Olympiad /he played in the 2nd board/, 1960 - second reserve of the 4th place winner Hungarian team in the Leipzig chess Olympiad,

1965 - a member of the bronze medal winner team in the Hamburg European team championship,

He played in many team matches against the the Yugoslav, Soviet and Rumanian team. He played not so many International tournament. He took part in some little events when he was old already. Bukarest, 1954-ben 5th place, 1956-57 Hastings 1st place, 1960 Asztalos memorial - Balatonfüred 3rd-5th,

1967 Debrecenben 3rd-4th,1968 Zombor 5th-6th.

His best games are the wins against the active world champion Tal, Korchnoi, Stahlberg and Gligorich.

He has brought up honestly four children, they like the chess nowadays as well.

23rd of September 1994 Date of his death.

His family played an important role to organize this tournament and to keep the memory of the chessplayer died not long ago. His first son, Gyula / Julius / gave the prize found of the GM-tournament, he is living in the US and he is a leader of an American commercial firm SKYEX.

Source: http://www.teleschach.com/werbung/k...

SPRAGGETT ON CHESS

We could all use more sleep!

SPRAGGETT ON CHESS

KEY TO SUCCESS: MORE SLEEP

Two and a half years ago Arianna Huffington fainted from exhaustion, hitting her head on the way down. She had to get five stitches near her eye. Shortly after the accident, she became an advocate for getting more sleep.

Here she is at the TED Women conference telling attendees about the benefits of sleep. Yes, it's pretty obvious that a lack of sleep isn't good, but it's really hard to make a commitment to get enough sleep.

''[U]nfortunately, for men sleep deprivation has become a virility symbol. I was recently having dinner with a guy who bragged that he had only gotten four hours sleep the night before. And I felt like saying to him -- but I didn't say it -- I felt like saying, "You know what? If you had gotten five, this dinner would have been a lot more interesting."

SPRAGGETT ON CHESS 

Double blunder

SPRAGGETT ON CHESS

GM ANTUNES

GM KARPOV

This position arose after Black's 27th move in  Karpov's game against the Portuguese GM Antonio Antunes at the Tilburg international chess tournament in 1994.  Antunes has been playing quite solidly and has achieved a more or less equal position. Not much is happening here and neither side is threatening anything.  Further,  Black's strong Knight on d6 and control along the d-line fully compensate whatever weaknesses he might have on the Queenside.

However, Karpov's 28th move is a real lemon: 

28.Qa6?? 

Clearly Karpov's idea is easy to understand: he wants to play 29.Rc8 , picking up the Queen if it was him move immediately.  Antunes therefore played 28...Bf8?? and after 29.Rc8 Qe7 30.Qa8 Karpov developed a stranglehold on the postion and won in 40 moves.  (See game in pgn viewer below)

It was only discovered in the postmortem that Karpov's 28th move was a terrible blunder that should have cost the game  had Antunes played the very simple 28...b3! (diagram,right)

Karpov can not reply with his intended 29.Rc8 because 29...bxa2 and Black emerges a Rook up!  So Karpov would have to play 29.axb3 and after 29...Nb4 and 30...Nxc2 he would find himself an exchange down with the worse position!

The dynamics of 'blundering' would make an interesting theme for a book (I know of several published articles on the theme!) , especially since it is such a common occurence in our play, regardless of what level one plays at.  Clearly in the case of this game , Antunes did not even allow himself to entertain the possibility that such a great player as Karpov would allow a shot like 28...b3, so he did not even bother to take a few extra seconds to check to see if Karpov had blundered.  As a result, a life-time opportunity to defeat the ex-world champion slipped unnoticed thru his fingers.

There is no moral to this story: but it is worth drawing to the reader's attention what the great Tartakower once wrote:  ''If you don't know what to do, do nothing.  Wait for your opponent to do something: it is bound to be wrong!''

[Event ""]
[Site "Tilburg (Netherlands)"]
[Date "1994"]
[Round ""]
[White "Karpov An"]
[Black "Antunes Antonio (POR)"]
[Result "1-0"]
[Eco "D47"]
[Annotator ""]
[Source ""]

1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. Nf3 Nf6 4. Nc3 e6 5. e3 Nbd7 6. Bd3 dxc4 7. Bxc4 b5 8.
Bd3 b4 9. Ne4 Be7 10. O-O Bb7 11. Nxf6+ Nxf6 12. e4 O-O 13. e5 Nd7 14. Be4
Rb8 15. Qc2 h6 16. Be3 c5 17. Bxb7 Rxb7 18. Rfd1 Qc8 19. dxc5 Nxc5 20. Rac1
Rd8 21. Qc4 Rxd1+ 22. Rxd1 a5 23. Rc1 Rd7 24. Qb5 Qd8 25. h3 Rb7 26. Qc4 Nd3
27. Rc2 Rd7 28. Qa6 Bf8 29. Rc8 Qe7 30. Qa8 f5 31. Re8 Qf7 32. Qc8 Rd5 33.
Nd4 Nxe5 34. Nxe6 Nd7 35. Bd4 f4 36. Bxg7 f3 37. Bxf8 Rd1+ 38. Kh2 Nf6 39.
Re7 fxg2 40. Bxh6+ 1-0

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GM Antonio Antunes (born 1962, Portugal)

Retired from competitive chess since 2000, Antonio was officially Portugal's first GM.  A tough competitor in every sense of the word, he has defeated many top GMs in tournament play, including J.Polgar.  Today he is happily married with (with a Cuban chess player !)  has a number of children and is a successful stockbroker in Lisbon.

SPRAGGETT ON CHESS

Charges dropped against chess players in NYC

SPRAGGETT ON CHESS

Chess players still not out of the woods in New York as police remain vigilent

A little while ago the story of a small group of mostly homeless men who were arrested and ticketed for playing chess in a park went around the world, I assume to show how strange the world is becoming.  It turns out that adults could play chess at the park in question, but only if accompanied by a child (!), which was not the case.

Anyway, a NY judge has thrown the case out on a tecnicality! Apparently the wrong code was entered by one of the arresting officers...I am not sure if this is a good thing for NY chess players, however, as next time there might be some pay-back.  Here is the New York Post story:

Judge tosses remaining charges

against chess players ticketed at Inwood Hill

BY MELISSA GRACE

DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2011/01/04/2011-01-04_judge_tosses_remaining_charges_against_chess_players_ticketed_at_inwood_hill_par.html
 

The war on chess in city parks is not over, the NYPD said Tuesday after a judge tossed charges against two men ticketed for playing the strategic board game.

The victory by Yacahudah Harrison, who is homeless, and Christopher Peralta, came as civil rights lawyer Norman Siegel argued cops entered the wrong legal code when they ticketed the men.

"The summons was defective," Seigel said of a case that drew howls of protest against overzealous cops. Charges against five other men busted with Harrison and Peralta were dismissed last week.

Police mistakenly issued the violations under a code that bars people from being in park when it's closed - typically after dark.

"The park was open," Siegel said of the 2 p.m. arrests.  "Checkmated on a technicality," said Paul Browne, the NYPD's top spokesman.

Police brass conceded cops failed to enter the intended violation code, which bars adults from an area of the park reserved for children and their guardians.

The men did not have kids with them and were playing at chess tables located in a playground. Despite the snafu, the rule will be enforced in the future, Brown said.

"The Police Department will respond when, as happened in this case, violations of park rules and other conditions generate community complaints," he said.

The local precinct's "conditions team" was doing its job when it responded to complaints about drinking, drug use and violations of park rules intended to protect kids from predators, officials said. Browne said two of the seven men had arrest records.

"Had [the NYPD] not addressed the condition, no doubt they would have been damned for leaving the men in the children's section," Browne said.

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Potpourri

SPRAGGETT ON CHESS

Believe it or not, somebody actually produced and published an article about a monkey photographing women in bikinis!!  http://gizmodo.com/5724592/every-bikini-model-should-be-photographed-like-this

Art. The simplest way to describe this magnificent photo

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I can understand why she needs a long cigarette holder here!

My legs hurt just looking at this photo!

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THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX

SOLVING THE PROBLEM AT THE VICTORIA CHESS CLUB MEN'S WASHROOM:

THE PROBLEM:

BIG EGOS; SMALL DICKS

 SOLUTION A:

Personally, I would not recommend this.  It is expensive and you might need surgery afterwards

SOLUTION B:

Much more economical!  Hurts like a bitch, but it comes with a gift of 352 rating points...

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I can be sooo nasty!

Them again?!

What a great invention!

Gina Lollobrigida. What lips! 

Anne Francis (R.I.P.)

SPRAGGETT ON CHESS

Few of my generation have not been marked by the sci-fi classic ''Forbidden Planet'' (1956) starring Walter Pidgeon, Leslie Nielsen and the beautiful Anne Francis.  This film was way ahead of it's time as far as sci-fi films are concerned, and many of its innovations were later copied and expanded on by Star Trek (1966).  Even today this classic gives me goose bumps!

Apart from having a great script and wonder actors, Forbidden Planet also had a fair amount of cheesecake, notably in the nude swimming scene, but also with the scantily clad wardrobe of the one and only female actress!  Anne Francis became a sex symbol and heart throb for a whole lot of 9-year olds!

Anne Francis and Leslie Nelson

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Anne Lloyd Francis (September 16, 1930 – January 2, 2011) was an American actress, best known for her role in the science fiction film classic Forbidden Planet (1956), and as the female private detective in the television series Honey West (1965–66). She won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Emmy award for her role in Honey West. Francis holds the distinction of starring in the first TV series with a female detective character's name in the title. (wiki)

Francis married twice and is survived by a daughter.  She died in Santa Barbara at age 80 of cancer.  Her website is http://www.annefrancis.net/

SPRAGGETT ON CHESS