English Chess Forum

David Robertson wrote: ↑

Sat Apr 27, 2019 1:44 pm

The Times today carries an interview with Dean Smith, manager of Aston Villa FC. This factoid pops up:

Management always appealed, having long been into strategy. “I was an avid chess player, played for the school chess team, we became West Midlands school champions. Write the move down, put on the timer.” Smith rattles off his chess inspirations. “Garry Kasparov. (Anatoly) Karpov. Bobby Fischer. Boris Spassky.”

[full disclosure: I'm a Villa supporter. UTV ]

He would thus have been active in the 1980s, somebody with access to old grading lists could see if he appears on them?

Not a comment as such....

https://www.kentonline.co.uk/ashford/ne ... rd-203648/

Harvested from the ACF News Bulletin

“But buried among the myriad of revelations contained in Mueller’s 448-page report, released on Thursday with limited redactions by Attorney General William Barr, was the fact that Trump disclosed to investigators that sanctioned Russian powerbroker Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, then the president of the World Chess Federation (FIDE), invited the Trump Organization to host the 2016 World Chess Championship at Trump Tower.


“During the course of preparing to respond to these questions,” wrote Trump on November 20, 2018, in response to a chess-focused inquiry from Mueller, “I have become aware of documents indicating that in March of 2016, the president of the World Chess Federation invited the Trump Organization to host, at Trump Tower, the 2016 World Chess Championship Match to be held in New York in November 2016.”


“That invitation, from a Russian sports chief with ties to the Kremlin, appears to represent both another Russian outreach to Trump and his associates in the height of a political campaign, and another example of the ways in which critics say Russia has used sport in general, and chess in particular, as statecraft.


“In the days following Trump’s shocking electoral victory, Russia’s business and political elite, headlined by Vladimir Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov, gathered in Manhattan’s South Street Seaport to watch Russian grandmaster Sergey Karjakin challenge Norwegian world champion Magnus Carlsen at the biennial World Chess Championship.

The One Show 1.5.19 ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m ... w-01052019 ) at 53.21 Shreyas Royal and his family on their battle to be allowed to stay in the UK. Rachel Reeves appears - she wrote to the Home Secretary.

Also on the iplayer at https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m ... hess-scene from 50 seconds in, the Travel Show episode Nick Grey posted about on 20th April. Episode from 27th April.

FALSETTOS a Broadway Musical has its European Premier at the Other Place 30 Augut to 23 November.

It is a rather sad story during rh hgights of th AIDS crisis.
The 12 year old son sings that The most bautiful thing in the world is Chess.
Later he again sings that it is girls.

https://worldchess.com/news/1531?ss_sou ... T18:03:20Z

Details about the World Chess Club in Moscow.

ALDI ad that I didn't understand as it went by too fast.
But it defin itely had two men playing chess that ended with an announced checkmate.
The actual position was impossible for me to undertnd. Morrison's seem to e involved as well, somehow.

Do you mean this?

Justin. Thank you.
I'm still mystified.

https://www.aol.co.uk/news/2019/05/15/o ... uzzles-st/

says doing word puzzles and number puzzles can boost brain function, although if you actually look at

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/gps.5033

the abstract says, "Future work needs to determine whether engaging in such puzzles can favourably influence cognitive trajectory with age."

They don't mention chess, but it's a similar idea...

I never denigrate other ways of boosting brain function e.g.
bridge, word puzzles, number puzzles, scrabble, poker, backgammon, tennis, golf, walking, social interaction, travel, etc.

Bridge is more sociable than chess.
The chess rating system is valuable for checking decline in the elderly. Chess needs less administration than bridge.

Surely what is important for the individual is whether they enjoy the activity.

Stewart Reuben wrote: ↑

Thu May 16, 2019 11:45 am

.
The chess rating system is valuable for checking decline in the elderly.

I had no idea there had been any studies on the subject.

Justin >Stewart Reuben wrote: .
The chess rating system is valuable for checking decline in the elderly.
Justin said >I had no idea there had been any studies on the subject.<

Arpad Elo did work on gerontology. Chapter 6.1 of his book, 'The Ratings of Chessplayers Past & Present touches on the subject.

I don't think I had ever seen this before: the video for Why Can't We Be Friends, by the funk band War.

Anyway it led me to something else I hadn't seen before: a paper entitled "Why Can’t We Be Friends?” An Empathic Game Companion for Long-Term Interaction (Leite, Mascarenhas et al, Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, 2010).

From the abstract:

In this paper, we present a study where a social robot with empathic capabilities interacts with two users playing a chess game against each other. During the game, the agent behaves in an empathic manner towards one of the players and in a neutral way towards the other.

The agent turns out to be iCat, the subject of several papers on Professor Leite's list of publications (linked to above).