Category Archives: Chess Engines

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Ed Miliband is back on the Labour frontbench, and pursuing his passion of tackling the climate crisis. He talks to Georgina Bailey about why the governments green jobs plans fall short, why COP-26 is the most important international summit yet, and whether XR is helping or hurting

Its the same me. Youre going to have to explain what you mean by that question. People have discovered Ive got a personality, you mean? he says over Zoom from his office in Westminster, where he is being periodically distracted by somebody dressed as Mickey Mouse walking up and down the bridge leading to Parliament.

People have a different perception of him now, I suggest. Hes been more removed from the limelight, and launched a successful podcast. There are fewer people taking photos of him eating.

Which is a good thing, given the past record, the former Labour leader quips. I dont think I am different Its kind of hard to self-commentate on these things. I dont know. Im just the same person I was, but maybe feeling less constrained.

Now back in Labours top team as shadow business, energy and industrial strategy (BEIS) secretary, Miliband seems to be unleashing his self-proclaimed nerdy side when it comes to tackling the climate crisis. As the secretary of state who introduced the Climate Change Act in 2008, and a long-time campaigner for more radical action on the climate crisis, his promotion by Keir Starmer in April was seen as a unity appointment, strongly supported by proponents of Labours ambitious Green New Deal Policy in 2019.

Theres a shortfall of something like 30bn a year when it comes to getting on track for net zero. The government is way off target

What have I learned in the decade or more that Ive been thinking about this issue? he asks himself. I think that we probably havent done enough to make climate change not simply an environmental issue, but an economic and social justice issue, which it is.

Just over a fortnight ago, Miliband and Anneliese Dodds, the shadow chancellor, released Labours Build It In Britain report, which called for 30bn of government investment in green industries and infrastructure over 18 months. Designed to aid the UKs recovery from the Covid crisis, which has seen the economy contract by 11% and nearly 800,000 jobs lost so far, Labour estimated their plan would create 400,000 jobs.

A week later, the prime minister announced his 12bn 10-point plan for a Green Industrial Revolution. While claiming it would support 250,000 jobs, the government later admitted that only 3bn of the money was new. Unsurprisingly, Miliband brands it incredibly disappointing.

I dont think that comes up to the scale of the jobs emergency... and I dont think it comes up the scale of the climate emergency either, says Miliband. What independent estimates have said is that in Parliament, theres a shortfall of something like 30bn a year when it comes to getting on track for net zero. The government is way off target, even after what Boris Johnson has unveiled...

I do welcome the fact that [Johnsons] talking about it, because I think thats good for the country, good for the world. In a sense, now lets see who can really deliver at the scale that is required on jobs, on ambition, on fairness as well.

Miliband describes tackling the climate emergency as something that requires work across a wide set of areas, with public and private investment working together. Green jobs, he explains, are about so much more than wind turbines, pointing to the need for low carbon engines in aerospace, manufacturing electric buses, investment in hydrogen technologies, the retrofitting of homes, and carbon capture and storage.

Wind turbines are a key example of one of the problems facing politicians though: where are green jobs being created? As reported in The Times last week, in the governments flagship policy to get all UK homes powered by offshore wind by 2030, only 20bn of the 50bn investment is expected to manifest in the UK, with most turbine parts currently made abroad. The UK share of capital expenditure was expected to reach only 50% by 2030.

It makes the case harder to make if you dont create the jobs in Britain, says Miliband. I represent the coal mining industry, we know what an unplanned transition looks like. Thats what happened in the 1980s, and we are still feeling the effects of it... this is why I say that advancing this stimulus money is the right thing to do for now.

Another part of Labours plan was to boost investment in flood protection. Milibands own Doncaster North constituency was one of those under water in last winters devastating floods, causing at least 11 deaths and 150m worth of damage across affected areas.

I think people dont fully get the sense of loss and devastation of what flood means until it happens to people you know. I mean, honestly, Im still were just over a year on, and Im still trying to help the poor people, some of whom are not back in their homes, he says.

Thats a really important point about this, because it takes you to the justice or fairness question. You know, who is it that is worst affected? Its often people who have the least. Its not always, but it is often.

The issue of fairness is part of Milibands wider criticism of the governments approach. He points to the money set out for retrofitting housing to make it more energy efficient in July this year. 50m of the 3bn was for social housing. Well, actually thats not fair. That isnt meeting the justice test, he says. Housing currently is responsible for around 30% of the countrys carbon emissions; rather than pots of money for people to apply for to retrofit their homes, Miliband would like to see an organised street-by-street approach to make homes greener, with the government working with private companies.

And what does the social justice approach mean for another flagship announcement, the widespread roll out of electric vehicles? Although the Committee on Climate Change estimates that their lifetime cost will be the same as that of petrol or diesel engines within the next few years, electric vehicles currently cost an average of 10,000 more in upfront costs.

While insisting he doesnt want to make policy up on the hoof, Miliband does float the idea of giving people zero-interest loans to buy electric vehicles, paid back over a number of years, to equalise the cost upfront, so that they arent only accessible to the middle classes: Youve got to make it make economic sense for people.

While tackling the climate crisis repeatedly polls as a priority for people in the UK across demographic and political divides, Miliband believes that the green movement needs to work on its messaging about the positive impact of a just transition to net zero for society today, such as more jobs and green spaces, walkable towns and cities, and improved air quality.

I sometimes say, you know, Martin Luther King didnt say I have a nightmare. He said, I have a dream, Miliband says, And disaster avoidance, of course, its important But this is ultimately I think about better lives for people.

For all this bold talk, there are rumours that the Leader of the Oppositions Office has been stopping Milibands team from being as ambitious in their aims as they might like.

Definitely not, he says.

Theres a rhythm to opposition. Six months or so since Keir became leader, thats a different moment from six months before the election. But I think what were, what Im trying to do in this area, is set out a clear direction of travel. What is that about? That is about ambition.

When it comes to messaging, does he believe groups like Extinction Rebellion are helping or harming the cause? In particular, what of their recent protest at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday?

Miliband looks out the window and sighs.

Well, something like that of course is not right, he says quickly. I think that the thing I would say is, I think what people think about Extinction Rebellion, is we are sympathetic to their motivation and we didnt like the disruption, right? And then there are the extreme ends, like when they tried to stop the train in the first phase.

And obviously, look, I think people should obey the law. I think whats interesting is when the first polls were taken about Extinction Rebellion, three to one people said well we support their aim, but were much more divided about their tactics.

He continues: Look protests cause disruption, but I think what protesters need to be incredibly careful about is not alienating people... Im not, you know, Im not obviously in Extinction Rebellion.

He contrasts their behaviour with the unalloyed positive impact of the school strikers. I think it has shown the younger generation really cares about this, and is sort of pricking the conscience of the older, the older generations.

Looking ahead to the rescheduled COP26 in Glasgow next year, Miliband is emphatic about its importance which he thinks is not fully appreciated among all his parliamentary colleagues.

People will think all these summits come and go. But Glasgow is the moment where were supposed to be updating the Paris commitment. Weve got to close the gap between the ambitions of Paris, which was no more than 1.5 degrees of warming, and the commitments that people actually made in Paris, which add up to about three degrees of warming. That is a massive gap.

And weve got 10 years to turn it around. And we only come back to these things every five years... Thats why I think there is a sense its more important than Paris actually.

He believes the government should have three key priorities as the hosts of COP26: setting an international example for an ambitious green recovery; international finance for developing countries net zero efforts; and hammering home the importance of the 2030 targets.

This is like 193-dimensional chess, this COP thing. Youve got 190 or some odd countries who have got to be part of this agreement

China has said it will get to be carbon neutral by 2060, which is a really important move forward. But, its the next 10 years that are absolutely crucial, he says. This is like 193-dimensional chess, this COP thing. Youve got 190 or some odd countries who have got to be part of this agreement. Now, the major emitters are a smaller number, 20 or so. But this is a massive job getting this right.

Were meeting the day before the Spending Review, but Miliband says he is very anxious about the impact of the trailed cuts to international development budgets. That does have climate implications.

He apologises to his staff: hes about to break a promise not to talk about Gigatonnes, a unit of mass equal to 1,000,000,000 metric tons. This is my nerdy side coming out again, but this is a really important thing, he starts.

We are currently on track as the world for 55 Gigatonnes of emissions in 2030... To have 2 degrees of warming, you need to be at something like 41 Gigatonnes in 2030 over the world. And this is the sort of scary bit: to be at 1.5 degrees of warming, you need to be somewhere around 24 Gigatonnes. These are massive changes, he warns. The only time emissions in any country have fallen anywhere near the 7.6% a year needed in recent times was the collapse of the Soviet Union.

From his side, Miliband is clear that he is committed to push the government to be as ambitious as possible in the next four years. He says doesnt resile one iota from Labours 2019 commitment for the country to be most of the way to net-zero by 2030.

If the Conservatives want a climate election in the next election, I say bring it on. We do need a climate election. We absolutely need a climate election... If the next climate election isnt a climate election, well be failing, he says.

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Ed Miliband: 'If the Conservatives want a climate election in the next election, I say bring it on' - PoliticsHome.com

A group of researchers used data from over 24,000 chess games played between 1890 and 2014 to find the right age at which the cognitive abilities of a person peaks. The data used for the study was based on all the games played by world champions and their respective opponents throughout their entire lives.

The study, involving the analysis of 1.6 million move-by-move observations, made two major conclusions firstly, humans reach their cognitive peak at the age of 35, which begins to decline after the age of 45; secondly, the cognitive abilities of humans today are superior to our ancestors.

Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study observed that performance reveals a hump-shaped pattern over the life cycle. Individual performance increases sharply until the early 20s and then reaches a plateau, with a peak around 35 years and a sustained decline at higher ages.

For the study, an empirical strategy was formed to estimate the age profile of the performance in chess, a cognitively demanding task. This strategy is based on the analysis of data from professional chess tournaments involving world champions and their opponents. Considering chess performance data to gauge cognitive abilities have the following features that make them ideal for measuring age-performance profiles:

The resultant hump shape pattern in cognitive performance reveals an increase in performance with age for younger chess players below the age of 35 years. However, this same performance decreases above the age of 45 years, although the decline is not statistically significant (the graph is given below).

A similar acceleration is found for performance patterns against calendar years. It was found that the performance increased steadily over the 20th century with the steepening of performance increase during the 1990s. Coincidently, this period aligns with the phase where powerful and affordable chess engines on home computers chess-specific knowledge are highly accessible, positively affecting the preparation possibilities for participants (graph given below).

While the study considers a wide range of samples for its analysis, there are still a few limitations and loopholes that cannot be ignored.

Firstly, since the study considers world champions and their respective opponents, this study presents a potential problem of positive selection based on playing strengths and skill levels. Hence the study suggested that the results must be seen as an upper bound of cognitive performance patterns in the overall population. However, the implications of unobservable selections were not very clear.

Secondly, the systematic variation in the length of games may affect the performance through fatigue. However, it was found that among recent games, the younger players could somewhat play longer games even though the effects were not very pronounced. This could also be seen as an advantage. Additionally, it was found that the performance increases with the number of moves played per game. This factor is seemingly unaffected by fatigue.

Thirdly, it has been observed that the complexity of the game has decreased across cohorts and over time. This could possibly explain the increased performance levels in recent birth cohorts and variations in the age pattern.

Finally, it was observed that the younger cohorts are more experienced against a given age, and this experience is higher in the recent period. This could explain the observed increase in performance at younger ages.

I am a journalist with a postgraduate degree in computer network engineering. When not reading or writing, one can find me doodling away to my hearts content.

Excerpt from:

Cognitive Abilities Of Humans Peak At The Age Of 35: Chess Study - Analytics India Magazine

11/1/2020 Former world number 4 and long-standing columnist Jon Speelman shares one of the most complicated games he has ever played a win he got over Britains first grandmaster Tony Miles when he was 19 years old. How did he do it? Speelman concludes his analysis: Theres no point in looking for consolidation when the board is awash with lava. | Pictured: Tony Miles (sitting) and Michael Stean at the Zonal Tournament 1978 in Amsterdam | Photo: Dutch National Archive

Komodo Chess 14

Last year Komodo won the world championship title on two occasions and can call itself "2019 World Computer Chess Champion" and "2019 World Chess Software Champion". And the current Komodo 14 has been clearly improved over its predecessor!

More...

[Note that Jon Speelman also looks at the content of the article in video format, here embedded at the end of the article.]

Its generally agreed that with perfect play a game of chess ought to end in a draw. A White win seems very unlikely, and a Black one the initial position being decisive zugzwang almost inconceivable if not proven mathematically.

The margin of error actually seems to be fairly large, and so for a strong player to lose he or she has to be put under considerable pressure. This can be done quietly through long positional manoeuvring and determined endgame play Magnus Carlsen's schtick most of the time or by more violent means: hacking.

Scratch almost any strong player and beneath a possibly placid exterior you will find a sleeping hacker: a player revelling in violent tactical battles (especially if they are on the right side of them). And today we celebrate the joy of hackery with one of the most complicated games Ive ever played.

Master Class Vol.13 - Tigran Petrosian

Considered a master of prophylaxis, Petrosian sensed dangers long before they actually became acute on the board. In his prime, Petrosian was almost invincible. Let our authors introduce you into the world of Tigran Petrosian.

This was in the 1975 British Championship in Morecambe. When I was still 19 and not yet even an IM. It was, apparently (I consulted John Saunders Britbase), in the ninth of the eleven rounds that I played White against Tony Miles, who the next year would become Britains first grandmaster. Tony wound me up in the opening and becoming nervous about what was in reality a perfectly playable position by normal means, I began to hack and continued in a game which became ever more complex and hysterical.

I first annotated it around 1975 for The Chess Player, a now defunct periodical and had another look for my Best Games book about 1997, when availablechess engines were beginning to make a difference. Ive had another look with today's crop and made some more alterations.

The most important point about the game is not the exact variations which you might or, more likely, might not find during a game, but the mindset you require once things really kick off.Theres a point of no return beyond which the initiative is king and formal material balance of only limited importance. You must calculate as much as you can, try to stay reasonably calm, and above all fight!

Well continue in a fortnight with some recent examples of extreme violence at the board.

[Pictured: Magnus Carlsen | Photo:Andreas Kontokanis]

To compliment my madness, a nicely hackety game I saw last night as I write.

Since I spend some time streaming, I sometimes watch how other people do it and I happened to drop into part of a simul that Dutch GM Benjamin Bok was giving on another server. Most of the games were pretty straightforward but in one of them his opponent really went for him as you should in a simul. Bok knew that the sacrifice wasn't supposed to work since hed had a previous game in the line. But of course he couldnt remember the exact details in these circumstances and at one moment his opponent missed a very pretty mate.

Master Class Vol.2: Mihail Tal

On this DVD Dorian Rogozenco, Mihail Marin, Oliver Reeh and Karsten Mller present the 8. World Chess Champion in video lessons: his openings, his understanding of chess strategy, his artful endgame play, and finally his immortal combinations.

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The joy of hacking - Chessbase News

Anya Taylor-Joy in The Queen's Gambit.

If you're still buzzing after Beth Harmon's triumph in The Queen's Gambit, let's dive even further into the excellent Netflix miniseries. From whether it's based on a true story of a chess prodigy to what a "Queen's Gambit" is exactly, we'll hopefully have all your questions covered.

Read more: The Haunting of Bly Manor ending explained, and all your questions answered

Entertain your brain with the coolest news from streaming to superheroes, memes to video games.

Young Beth learns chess from Mr. Shaibel, her orphanage's janitor.

While The Queen's Gambit comes across as an inspirational sports story, it's an adaptation of a 1983 fictional coming-of-age novel of the same name written by American novelist Walter Tevis. Tevis was a chess player himself and consulted real-life chess masters to ensure he accurately depicted the intricacies and rules of professional chess. So no, Elizabeth Harmon isn't based on a real orphaned chess prodigy from the '50s and '60s. But if you're looking for a female chess player to read up on, Judit Polgar of Hungary is generally considered the strongest female chess player ever.

In chess, a gambit is an opening move in which the player will sacrifice pieces to later gain a positive position. According to The Chess Website, "The Queen's Gambit is probably the most popular gambit and although most gambits are said to be unsound against perfect play the Queen's Gambit is said to be the exception." It's the move Beth uses in her final winning match against Vasily Borgov, the Russian world champion. "The objective of the queen's gambit is to temporarily sacrifice a pawn to gain control of the center of the board."

When Beth was 9, her real mother Alice committed suicide by driving into an oncoming vehicle. She first drives to Beth's father's house, where his new wife answers with their young son. Alice asks Paul for help with taking care of Beth, but Paul frantically rushes her away from his new family. He says she can come back another time and they'll talk, but it's been five years since they last saw each other and he's clearly moved on. With nowhere to take Beth, Alice attempts to kill them both in the crash. Beth miraculously survives, but suffers from emotional issues throughout her life.

Beth and Benny Watts.

At Beth's orphanage, the Methuen Home for Girls, the children are given tranquillizer pills to make them compliant. When a law is passed forbidding this and Beth's pills are taken away, she suffers withdrawals and continues to struggle with her addiction to the drug.

After her whirlwind romance with pen pal Manuel in Mexico City ends, Mrs. Wheatley doesn't show up to Beth's match with Borgov. Beth returns to her hotel room to discover Mrs. Wheatley dead. The coroner expects it was hepatitis, an inflammatory condition of the liver. Mrs. Wheatley was an alcoholic, running up a huge bill on margaritas at the hotel.

The first time Beth plays Benny Watts, the reigning US champion, at the US Open in Las Vegas, he defeats her. Later, with the help of ex-Kentucky state champion Harry Beltik, Beth learns to study her opponents and the big games in their careers, instead of just relying on her intuition and improvising in the moment. She buys a copy of Chess Review with a feature on Watts and asks him questions about himself in person, like why he carries around a knife (he says it's protection from "whatever"). In the final match of the US Championship in Ohio, Beth swiftly defeats him in 30 moves. She allows him to play the same move he played to defeat her the first time -- trading queens -- but this time she's prepared.

Beth and Borgov.

When Beth plays her final match against Borgov in Russia, he requests they adjourn until the next day. This means he must write his next move on a piece of paper and seal it in an envelope. The director will then kick off the next session with the prepared move. This ensures neither player knows what the board will look like when it's their next turn.

In the final match between Beth and Borgov at the Moscow Invitational, Beth appears to be the more tired of the two, after playing several long matches in a row. But it's Borgov who requests they end the session and pick up the following day. This decision could point to Borgov's interview in a tape Beth watches while training with Harry, where Borgov talks about coming up against people half his age, like Beth, and doesn't know how long he can continue winning. "I can fight against anyone but time." It's possible he too is tired and, recognizing Beth's fatigue, believes it fair to call the adjournment. He might also already feel threatened he'll lose, so retreats to consult the other Russian players -- Beth stumbled upon Borgov helping previous world champion Luchenko in the adjournment of their match a day or two before.

The highly detailedchess sequences were put together by chess coach Bruce Pandolfini (who consulted on the original novel), with advice from Russian grandmaster Garry Kasparov. They likely used chess engines, computer programs that analyze chess positions and generate a list of strongest moves, as well as faithfully matching scenarios in the book and drawing from real games. For example, Beth and Borgov's final match, up until a point, is based on a game between Ukrainian Vasyl Ivanchuk and American Patrick Wolff at the Biel Interzonal chess tournament in Switzerland in 1993, according to chess YouTube channel agadmator. While that game ended in a draw, Beth ends up finding a different move that leads to her win. Borgov's standing to applaud Beth after she wins is a reference to a famous match between defending champion Russian Boris Spassky and American opponent Bobby Fischer at the 1972 World Championship in Iceland, depicted in the 2014 film Pawn Sacrifice. When Fischer wins, Spassky joins in with the audience's applause.

The Queen's Gambit has been generally praised by critics. Though it's received good reviews from chess players, a criticism has been aimed at the exclusive use of men's games as the basis for its fictional contests. "The Queen's Gambit is so brilliant but using some women's games would have been awesome," former US Women's Chess Champion Jennifer Shahade tweeted.

The Queen's Gambit is dedicated to Iepe Rubingh, the inventor of chess boxing, who died aged 45 in May this year of unknown causes. Chess boxing is a hybrid sport, where competitors compete in alternating rounds of chess and boxing.

Beth overcomes her demons to finally defeat her greatest rival, bringing her story to a satisfying conclusion and not seeming to tee up more for a second season. Though the actors,including Anya Taylor-Joy, have said they're open and willing to return to their characters in future episodes, showrunner Scott Frank, whose adaptation of Tevis' book finishes at the same point as the source material, doesn't sound like he has ideas in mind for more material.

"This was the single best experience I've had in a 30-some-odd year career full of really nice experiences. So it's saying a lot," the writer-director toldEntertainment Weekly. "I have no idea how people are going to take it, but it's the first time I'm willing to admit just how happy I am. Normally I'm afraid to ever say that."

"Maybe we can just let the audience imagine what comes next," Executive Producer William Horberg toldTown & Country.

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The Queen's Gambit: That ending explained and all your questions answered - CNET

The best sports show on TV doesn't involve football or hockey, the NBA or MLB, or re-runs of classics.

Rather, in all its at-times glamorous but often gritty details, the standout exploration of competition is a period melodrama about chess, set in the 1950s and 1960s, starring an actress who was previously best-known for portraying Jane Austen's Emma.

The show is Netflix's seven-episode limited series, "The Queen's Gambit," and it's a stunner. As chess prodigy Elizabeth "Beth" Harmon, Anya Taylor-joy has become autumn's biggest star and in the process lit up the chess world to such a degree that the 24-year-old talent could do for the game what Bobby Fischer achieved in 1972 when he defeated Boris Spassky in Iceland to capture the World Chess Championship, becoming the only American ever to do so.

"The Queen's Gambit" is superb TV really, a long movie, with gorgeous cinematography, remarkable acting from a sizeable cast, a fine score from Carlos Rafael Rivera, and impeccable direction from Scott Frank, whose previous Netflix series, 2017's "Godless," was also a great piece of work, a revitalizing western starring Jeff Daniels as a figure of Cormac McCarthy-grade malevolence.

Bobby Fischer also challenged the dominance of Russian chess in the 1960s and 1970s. Getty Images

The menace in "The Queen's Gambit" is more diffuse: it's an amalgam of Cold War-era paranoia and male privilege, the rigors of top-level chess, and Beth Harmon's own manifold inner demons.

Orphaned by her mother's violent suicide (we're led to assume that Beth was supposed to die, too), Harmon is taken in by a Kentucky institute for girls where tranquilizers are on the daily menu and chess is played, surreptitiously, by a kindly, taciturn janitor in the facility's Stygian basement.

From here, the plot should be predictable: Beth becomes an obscure, tormented genius, her gifts imprisoned until a sequence of events sets her on a dramatic path to twisting destiny.

Rey Skywalker, Harry Potter, King Arthur we've all been here before. Beth has her Merlin in the subterranean shadows, and later a run of heroic challenges, the most daunting being her simultaneous dependence on Librium and red wine, chugged straight from the bottle.

The marvelous, engaged acting elevates "The Queen's Gambit" far above its many, many clichs. And awaiting it, supporting it, enhancing it at every step is the relatively meticulous attention to chess detail and the overarching premise that the game is not a game. Still, an intensely competitive sport played not just by solo savants but, ultimately, by teams.

Nona Gaprindashvili was the strongest female player of Fischer's generation. Woods/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Team Beth winds up being quite scrappy, as even high-grade US chess was in the 1960s. Her most daunting foes are, of course, the Soviets, whose Cold War chess was anything but rough around the edges. Few actual historical players are presented in the story, adapted from a 1983 novel by Walter Tevis. The reigning world champion is Vasily Borgov, a mashup of Spassky and Tigran Petrosian, with a sly touch of current world champ Magnus Carlsen thrown in (Borgov, like Carlsen, is described as a master of the endgame).

But Beth confronts plenty of rivals, all-male, along the way. Two become boyfriends, and then coaches. That might sound offensive, but it adds some helpful romantic sizzle to the depiction of a world that was certainly sexy in a Gibsons-and-Chesterfields, Rat-Pack-in-Vegas, James-Bondish sort of way back when JFK and LBJ were in the White House but that was also, well, full of socially awkward young men playing chess.

(A significant element, almost entirely omitted in the series, is that there was a women's pro chess tour in the 1950s and 1960s, too, with its own world champions, including five-time winner Nona Gaprindashvili, the only real-life player depicted in the series, and then only in a pan of an audience, with the voiceover acknowledgment that she had never faced the Soviet men.)

In any case, the real sizzle is in the chess, which has never been depicted better on screen.

"Searching for Bobby Fischer" had been the gold standard, but it avoided the deep intricacies of adult, professional chess. In "The Queen's Gambit," Beth completely skips kid chess and leapfrogs, in her first notable title, to top board against an overconfident Kentucky state champion (a plaintive Harry Melling). From there, it's grownups all the way, with Beth making bank, buying beautiful clothes, and fighting the pills and the booze as much as her opponents.

Beth loses a game in an opening favored by the most recent World Chess Championship challenger, American Fabiano Caruana. Spectrum Studios

"The Queen's Gambit" could have covered all of this with some offhand references to the Sicilian Defense and a bunch of closeups of the pieces being pushed around the board, accompanied by furrowed scowls or smug grins from the actors. But the filmmakers instead asked former world champion Garry Kasparov and "Searching for Bobby Fischer" consultant Bruce Pandolfini for advice, to infuse the series with chess, chess, and more chess.

Not one but two variations of the Sicilian Defense make an appearance: the Najdorf and the Rossolimo, the latter a favorite of the most recent challenger for the World Championship title, American Fabiano Caruana (After an all-night bender with a Parisian temptress, Beth loses a Rossolimo Sicilian to Borgov in her first showdown with the steely Russian, played with heft and precision by Marcin Dorociski).

There's a savage joke about the Caro-Kann, an opening wielded by Carlsen in Game 2 of the 2013 World Chess Championship: Benny Watts one of Beth's paramours, the cocky US champion with a taste for black leather dusters, jauntily played by Thomas Brodie-Sangster says it's "all pawns and no hope."

Beth recounts a victory to her adoptive mother and quips about playing the "Marshall," shorthand for a variety of openings named from Frank Marshall, the US champion for most of the first third of the 20th century and the namesake of the famous Marshall Chess Club in Manhattan.

The Queen's Gambit of the series title also makes a crucial appearance, in a now much-discussed reference to Game 6 of the 1972 World Chess Championship, when Fischer played white and opened with moves that transposed to a Queen's Gambit Declined position and defeated Spassky in a masterpiece that put the volatile American ahead and prompted Spassky to lead a standing ovation for his opponent.

Taylor-Joy is no stranger to period drama; her she is in "Emma." Focus Features

Fischer never played this opening, preferring a King's Pawn game: 1. e4, for the chess-heads. Likewise, Beth is a dedicated 1. e4 player, befitting her reputation as a flamboyant, attacking competitor who disdains draws and relishes the moment when you "break his ego" what Fischer in 1971 told talk-show host Dick Cavett is the greatest pleasure in competitive chess.

Harmon shatters all the male egos she faces, across the chessboard and other contexts, and she breaks several hearts. But she also garners respect, a development in her character that extends beyond Netflix.

A top chess YouTuber, Antonio Radi, has already tracked down her important games from the series, as the consultants based them on real duels. And he's analyzed them as Harmon games, elevating Taylor-Joy's unexpected contributions to chess history (Vassily Ivanchuk vs. Patrick Wolff, Biel 1993 the basis for the series' final game might henceforth be better known as Harmon vs. Borgov, Moscow 1968).

Actual chess players, or at least their names, figure in the story. The great American player Paul Morphy comes up, as do legends such as Jos Capablanca alongside personalities and events only true chess aficionados would know: Reuben Fine, the Hastings International Chess Congress, the importance of 1600 Elo ranking.

Conspicuously absent, of course, is Fischer. But that's because Harmon is Fischer, in the alternate universe of the series.

Actually, with her reputation for playing "intuitive" chess, rather than pondering reams of theory, she more like a Fischer antecedent and a player who Fischer adored: the Latvian world champion, Mikhail Tal, considered by many to be the greatest attacking player of all time (Tal drank a lot and smoked a lot while he devised devastating combinations, piece sacrifices, and otherworldly checkmating maneuvers, but unlike Harmon, who overcomes addiction, he embraced his demons and died at 55.)

Latvian chess champion Mikhail Tal was known as "The Magician from Riga." Photo by Dennis Oulds/Central Press/Getty Images

We don't end up searching for Bobby, however. Beth is outlandishly captivating, and Taylor-Joy brings an often wordless, physical, yet transcendent style to the role that's equal measures intimidating and alluring, animated by a ferocious intelligence. As a competitor, Harmon is obsessed. So the second half of the series focuses on how her individual intensity is transformed into a team effort.

This is where "The Queen's Gambit" nails big-time chess. There might be just two players at the board, but there are squads behind each side, and for the Soviets in the 1960s, that was a national advantage. All the finest players in the world worked together to elevate the finest among them, and in the series, Borgov doesn't spend time alone: he huddles with his seconds, plotting, and planning.

Harmon is a one-woman army, at least chess-wise, until the final episodes (she receives considerable support, emotional and financial, from the best performer in the show, Moses Ingram as Beth's best friend from the orphanage, Jolene; Ingram steals every scene she's in).

First, Benny transports her to his grim basement apartment in New York to partake of la vie bohme and undergo a serious training regimen only briefly interrupted by the hot sex we all knew was on the agenda.

Then, with Harmon staring down a second defeat by Borgov, this time in Moscow while all Russia watches, Benny and Beth's original romantic fixation, a chess journalist named Townes, organize a transatlantic team of informal seconds who use a long-distance call during an adjournment to devise a winning line. (When Borgov doesn't cooperate, Beth has to summon all she's got to find victory without the Librium and the vin rouge.)

Adjournments are gone, but this is how the world's chess elite manage their encounters. Carlsen and Caruana didn't saunter into London in 2018 and battle for the World Championship as independent operators. Both had grandmasters in their camps and months of preparation behind them, and the best computer chess analysis engines money could buy helping them break down each others' strengths and weaknesses.

"Do you know why they're the best players in the world?" Benny asks Beth of the Soviets at one point in their training sessions.

"Because they have the best suits?" Beth counters, still dismissive of the notion that she needs anyone else to beat Borgov.

"It's because they play together as a team," Benny says, with a severity that verges on mansplaining. But Beth knows he's right.

Irina Krush won the 2020 US Women's Chess Championship, her eighth title. Getty Images

Without these extras, "The Queen's Gambit" still would have been exhilarating. Still, it might not have snared the admiration of the serious chess community, which is used to the game being reduced to a caricature of the intellectually complicated and physically demanding throwdown it often is, with grueling contests that extend past 100 moves and leave both players slumped in their chairs.

Chess folks are also well aware of how much the game has evolved in gender roles since the 1960s. Hungary's Judit Polgr made a habit during her serious playing career of taking out top-ranked men, included Kasparov, and Irina Krush just won her eighth US Women's Championship. Two-time US women's champ Jennifer Shahade, with Yasser Seirawan and Maurice Ashley, is a member of the best chess commentary team this side of "Monday Night Football" in its heyday.

Ultimately, the beautiful achievement of "The Queen's Gambit" is that it evokes the 1960s and 1970s period when chess had been elevated to the same plane as more recognizable sports, with Fischer making the cover of Sports Illustrated in 1972. Beth lands in Life magazine, but her character is both better than Fischer and worse.

Like Fischer, famous for his collection of bespoke suits, Beth adores good clothes and outdresses the competition. But unlike Fischer, Beth needs the pills and the wine to arrive at what she calls a "cloudy" state to play at her best (she eventually adds cigarettes to the cocktail).

What prevents "The Queen's Gambit" from becoming "The Karate Kid" with knights and rooks instead of "wax on, wax off" and crane kicks is the exceptional woodpusher detail combined with Harmon's rise, through a system stacked against her, to become if not world champion, then a threat to the world champion, a reason for Borgov to both applaud and lose sleep at night.

She's a contender, and like any great athlete in sports, she leaves the fans wanting more. And they might get it if Netflix pursues a second season. Fifty years ago, Fisher set off a chess boom that, in his words, welcomed everyone: men and women, young and old. How interesting it would be if Beth Harmon encourages a new boom, and more women than ever set their sights on the big time.

Excerpt from:

Netflix's 'The Queen's Gambit' is the best sports show on TV right now - Business Insider - Business Insider

ProjectResolute has been a chess fan since he was a kid. He now enjoys playing on chess (dot) com and various computer chess programs.

These chess engines are super powerful! You'll love these!

sk

Chess engines are a great tool to have. Whether they are used for analyzing games, accurately converting a large advantage into a win, studying openings, or watching cyber chess warfare, if they are used correctly, they can help any chess player improve.

Any avid chess player can and should download at least one strong chess engine. However, there are thousands of engines out there and not all of them are created equal. Some of them have a fairly good rating on various chess engine rating lists, but they dont function well. Some have various problems such as the inability to set search depth, searches longer than the set time limit, or crashes every now and then.

This can be a pain, although most engines that have these issues are free for anyone to download. To avoid this potential frustration, Ive decided to make a list of the five best free chess engines. These engines all follow the Universal Chess Interface protocol (UCI for short), and can be used in any UCI-compatible chess program.

All of these engines are 100% functional and have quite a few configurations to play with. They are also all extremely strong, although some can be set to play at a more human level, too. Please note that the rating given to these UCI chess engines arent mine, but I get them from a 3rd-party source, which tests hundreds of chess engines and apply a rating to them. The link above will take you to the rating list I used for this article.

Okay, Ive blabbered around long enough! Lets continue to see what some of the best free chess engines are.

Rating3339

Stockfish is the strongest free chess engine. Stockfish 7, the latest version as of this moment of writing, has a rating of 3339. Although computer rating lists and official rating lists dont necessarily match up, it is easy to say that Stockfish 7 is well beyond the skill of any grandmaster. It is also about 40 points above the next best chess engine!

The main co-authors of this engine are Tord Romstad, Marco Costalba, Joona Kiiski, and Gary Linscott. It must be noted that although these four are the main developers, this engine is open-sourced and thus was developed by a whole community of people. It is licensed under GPLv3, which basically means you can share to anybody, sell it as part of a larger project, and change the source code, as long as you either point back to where you got it, or supply the original source code.

The Stockfish project is actually a fork off of a chess engine called Glaurung, which is also open-sourced. People gradually started moving to stockfish, until finally Glaurung was abandoned altogether. It is interesting to note that the Glaurung chess engines rating is 2902, so Stockfish has improved upon its predecessor by 430 rating points.

Stockfish has several interesting configurations; the most noticeable in my opinion is the ability to scale down the skill level, so an average human can beat it. It has 21 different playing levels, and at level 0, although I have to think, I can beat it.

Another configuration that caught my eye is contempt. This setting is to make it play more risky moves. A setting of zero is default and considered neutral, a positive number up to 100 is more aggressive setting, and a setting of below zero up to -100, it will play for a draw.

While Stockfish is undeniably a strong engine, it is not the strongest. There is one engine that is stronger than stockfish according to most rating lists.

Rating3296

Komodo chess engine is actually the strongest chess engine in the world. The reason why it isnt first place in the list is because the latest version isnt free. The most recent version of this engine is Komodo 10.1, which costs $59.96. This version has a current rating of 3379, which is 40 points above its archenemy, Stockfish.

However, with every new version of Komodo that is unveiled, there also becomes a past version available for free. Currently, Komodo 8 is available without charge, and this version has a rating of 3296. The free version is about 40 points below Stockfish 7 and 80 points below Komodo 10.1. So even with Komodo 8, youre going to have a world-class chess engine.

The thing I wish Komodo would have but doesnt is a setting to weaken its play. This is true for all versions. It is a minor inconvenience though because I mostly use UCI chess engines for game analysis, and if I want to, I can still limit its skill by search depth, which when set to one ply, plays quite stupidly.

Komodo 8 does have a configuration to control its aggressiveness, called draw score. The default setting is -7, and if you set it lower, (i.e. -15) it will play more aggressively, and if higher, it will try to play for a draw more often.

So, although the free Komodo chess engine isnt quite as strong as Stockfish 7, I cant think of a reason why one wouldnt want to take time and download the chess engine. In fact, I bought the engine back when it was the latest and the greatest, and although it was a while back, its still among the strongest.

Andscacs Logo

Rating3211

The Andscacs chess engine was first released in September of 2013. Since then, its only grown in strength. Its current release, Andscacs 0.872, has a rating of 3211 according to CCRL and has participated in stage 3 of season 9, where it came in 5th place.

The creator of this chess engine, Daniel Jos Queralt, lives in the country Andorra. Hence the name of the engine, Andscacs, And for his country, scacs for the Catalan word escacs, meaning chess. Daniel got his inspiration for creating this chess engine from a variety of open-source engines such as Stockfish and Gull.

Unfortunately, this chess engine is no longer available for download. That said this article is long overdue for an update, and I will do so very soon.

Rating3208

Fire is another one of the top free chess engines. Originally called Firebird, this chess engine is usually among the top 10 in many rating lists. It's debatable whether Fire or Andscacs is the better engine since they are within 10 points difference in the CCRL rating list.

It originally started out as an open-source project, but later the code became closed. However, there is a fork off of fire 2.2, which has been rename Firenzina, which is still open-sourced. When the Fire chess engine became closed, the code was completely rewritten and doesn't contain any code from the chess engine Ippolit, as the original open-source version did.

Rating3197

The Houdini chess engine is a very popular chess engine even though it is a distant 3rd place on most chess engine rating lists. Houdini 4 is the most recent version and it has a rating of 3255 on CCRL. It is a 3 time champion in the TCEC tournaments, which is considered by many to be the world computer chess championship. Only Komodo holds as many titles.

Rumor has it that Houdini 5 will be released for the final stages of TCEC season 9. Houdini 4 improved upon its predecessor by approximately 50 elo points. Will this Houdini 5 have a rating of around 3300? Were going to have to wait and see. I personally have my doubts, since at the moment Im writing this, Stage 3 of season 9 is already under way, and theres no sign of Houdini 5 as of yet.

Whether or not a new version will ever be released, the free Houdini chess engine is also very strong. With a rating of 3197, Houdini 1.5a is a chess engine that a human will never stand a chance at winning. Whats more is that Houdini has an interesting style of play. Many chess players have remarked that this chess engine has a very romantic style of play, similar to such players like Paul Morphy and Mikhail Tal.

Rybka Chess Logo

Rybka

Rating3024

I know that the Rybka chess engine is fairly outdated. Rybka 4, the last release, has a rating of 3160. This is around 30 points lower than the free version of Houdini! However, the latest release is still available for sale on Amazon & Chessbase. On Amazon, the engine costs about $50 and on Chessbase it costs a whopping $90.75! Even the latest version of Komodos cheaper!

Thankfully, theres a free version too Rybka 2.3.2a which has a relatively minuscule rating of 3024. So, why am I recommending this engine as one that every chess player should have? Because of a configuration that I think is quite handy! You can set the rating at which it works. With a range of 1200 to 2400, the lower one sets this rating the more mistakes they make.

The rating will not match up with a Fide rating though, so dont go into a tournament saying that you have a rating of 1300 because you beat Rybka at that rating. That said, if you win a game at 1200, your rating will likely be higher than this. I have trouble defeating it at this level, and my rating on chess.com is around 1600!

Thus ends my listing of some of the best free chess engines. Although the article is now drawing to a close, I encourage you to check back, since Im planning on adding more engines to this page.

2016 ProjectResolute

Sorrowdy on April 24, 2020:

And where is Raubfisch? According my engine tournaments it is the best engine ever. And it's also free.

noob on March 10, 2020:

It's 2020 and this article makes zero mention of the new Neural Network engines Lc0, Leelenstein, Stoofvlees, all of which are significantly better than every engine above except Stockfish.

Chess Player on February 25, 2018:

Thanks! Good Job for the Source!

Erik on November 26, 2017:

Thanks, good job. Nice would be comparing chess GUIs, too.

Erik

Really? on October 27, 2017:

Check your spelling and grammar. Nothing added here beyond a rating list and some nonsense. You can find actual reviews elsewhere online, and links that aren't "hard to find." A chess "fan," really? Not a player, a fan? lol

ciarli on September 29, 2017:

what about 'demon' engine! I heard that it is prohibited because he can make any move and win again and is insulting Godmaster way of thinking!

Md. Shahinur Islam on August 30, 2017:

Whats the position of Chessmaster & Fritz in terms of ratings??

Reign Tibudan on July 27, 2017:

Thank you, you are so helpful

Kainoa Thomas Henao on May 24, 2017:

Great idea

Hal on April 01, 2017:

Thank you.. 🙂

Thomas on October 23, 2016:

Very nice and competent review of the best chess programs - thanks! I wonder, however, if the new version of Houdini is not even stronger given it's current performance in TCEC Rapid - perhaps 100 -150 Elo points over version 4? Anyway - we'll see in the TCEC Super Final! Best Regards Thomas

Read this article:

Best Free Chess Engines Every Chess Player Should Download ...

By Marc J. Rauch Exec. Vice President/Co-Publisher THE AUTO CHANNEL

I mention all this about Paul and Joe because as good as they are at being "car guys," they represent the overwhelming majority of people in the auto industry, they mirror the typical interests of the public. From the top to the bottom, from the influencers to the consumers, people like Paul and Joe are the hearts and minds of the automotive world. Their understanding and appreciation of ethanol fuel represents the automotive marketplace's level of understanding and appreciation of ethanol fuel. For those who may have forgotten, this is where the battleground for the ethanol fuel industry lies. You lose here, you lose everywhere. Sadly, the ethanol industry has done very poorly; there is no momentum.

This past Friday, Paul's website published a story written by Joe regarding the 2nd Presidential Debate that took place the evening prior. The article "Biden, Trump Clash about Energy in Debate," centered on those issues related to energy, which are logically most relevant to his website (as they are to THE AUTO CHANNEL).

In reply to the article - and in effect, to the debate itself - my business partner Bob Gordon posted a comment that questioned why ethanol was not included (considered) in the article or in the debate, as it should be because ethanol is the only available, proven, and safe alternative engine fuel, and it's 100% domestically produced. Specifically, Bob wrote:

Bob also appended a link to a story that was published on TheAutoChannel.com just three days prior: "Any Meaningful Electric Vehicle Ecological Benefit Wont Happen Until All Of Us Are Dead But Instant Benefit Can Come From Using Green American Flex-Fuel Now!"

Paul Eisenstein replied to Bob's posted comment. He wrote:

"Ethanol is the fuel of the future and always will be, Bob. We saw the industry push it during the first years of the new millennium and it went nowhere. If corn-based, it turns out, the environmental advantages are questionable, at best. It also has helped drive up food prices because of the impact on corn costs."

I had also read the Joe Szczesny story, and then Bob's post, and Paul's reply - which struck an interesting, all-too-true, sarcastic tone. Since Paul jumped into the exchange, I now did so, too. I replied to Paul's comment:

"Ethanol will always be just the fuel of the future as long as incorrect information about it is allowed to continue being circulated.

"Corn prices right now are only about as high as they were in Dec. 74/Jan. 75, which was well before the expanded use of ethanol fuel and the RFS program. In May of 2020, corn prices were just about the same level they were in late 1947.SEE: Historical Corn Prices (graphs)

"There were some high corn price spikes about 12 years ago which resulted in an erroneous World Bank story that blamed increased food prices on the price of corn. This story was the basis for the spread of the myth about ethanol production causing the rise in food prices. However, two years later the World Bank retracted the story and correctly laid the blame on higher food prices on the tremendous spike in petroleum oil. The World Bank has since reiterated this correction on the corn/food prices story on at least two occasions. SEE: World Bank Study Debunks Food vs. Fuel Myth

"A $4.00 box of corn flakes has between a nickel and a dimes worth of corn in it. So even if corn prices tripled it would have minimal effect on the overall price of any food. The price spikes on corn at any time during the last dozen years are largely attributable to commodity investor speculation.

"Regarding environmental advantages, the only questions come from people who dont know what theyre talking about. In every imaginable way ethanol is cleaner, healthier and safer than petroleum oil fuels. And if you compare a flex fuel vehicle running on E85 with a fully electric vehicle, when you take into account the GHG emissions created in generating the electricity and the production of the batteries, the two vehicles are roughly equal in GHG emissions.

"There are arguments that ethanol corn crops require too much water, land, and fertilizer. However, less water, land and fertilizer is used to grow corn today than at many times in the past 80 years, and yet the yield per acre, per annum is far greater than ever before. If the lies and misinformation about ethanol could be stopped and the demand for ethanol be allowed to increase, then the economics of ethanol would dramatically improve. "

A couple of hours later, in response to my post, Paul countered with:

I liked Paul's reply. I liked his reply, first and foremost, simply because he allowed my response to be posted on his comments section and then actually replied to it (something that doesn't always happen). I also liked his reply because it meant the "chess game" was on (I haven't played real chess in decades but I consider literary exchanges to be like playing remote chess).

Since my Sunday was shaping up to be a quiet day - outside of a dozen different "honey-do" obligations, I was happy for the diversion. The following is my response to Paul's reply to my post that was made to respond to his observation of Bob's comments about Joe's story....

Paul -

Thanks for your reply and the list of links. Your links and their respective authors prove my statement that only "People who don't know what they're talking about" question the advantages of ethanol. I say this despite their professional and academic credentials.

Over the past decade and a half, I've already engaged some of the authors and reports contained in the links you suggested. Some of these engagements are included in my book "THE ETHANOL PAPERS," which was published online nearly two years ago, and then in print about a year ago. Where possible, I will respond one-by-one using links to my full individual replies as I originally wrote and published them. In the instances where I hadn't previously encountered the author or link I will provide specific responses.

I'll start with your first link (an article written by Carlisle Ford Runge for the Yale.edu website) and then your very last link to the James Conca editorial published on Forbes.com. They seem to be your heaviest hitters by virtue of their affiliation with Yale and Forbes, respectively.

My rebuttal to Mr. Runge is part of this editorial: The Case Against Ethanol Opponents: They Are Simply Incorrect

As for the 2014 James Conca/Forbes.com article, it was a laugh riot, a virtual comedy of errors. If you visit the link today, you'll see at the bottom of Mr. Conca's article his thanks to Commenters for pointing out errors in his story. There were many. Forbes.com used to have a "comments section" but they did away with it. Unfortunately, the deletion of the comments section means you can't see all of the errors that readers pointed out. However, using Waybackmachine.com I was able to retrieve one archived page of the many pages of comments that the story generated. This will give you a sense of the errors that Mr. Conca made: https://web.archive.org/web/20150623063842/http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2014/04/20/its-final-corn-ethanol-is-of-no-use/2/.

My personal rebuttal to Mr. Conca and Forbes.com, which had been published on the Forbes.com blog is no longer available to be seen. But I still have my original copy of what I posted on their blog more than five years ago; it's as follows:

"Let me begin with Mr. Conca's reference to The International Institute for Sustainable Development's claim that the CO2 and climate benefits from replacing petroleum fuels with biofuels like ethanol are basically zero, and that it would be almost 100 times more effective, and much less costly, to significantly reduce vehicle emissions through more stringent standards, and to increase CAFE standards.

"The IISD's claim might be a true statement, but the reason that MPG fuel economy has been so traditionally low, and harmful vehicle emissions so high, is because of the collusion between the oil industry and the automobile manufacturers to squeeze consumers for as much fuel money as possible, while doing everything possible to resist making changes to tetraethyl-lead and MTBE-laden gasolines.

"If we had an auto industry that was not benefitting (in fact, they were partnering) from the excessive use of gasoline, the automakers would have long ago produced vehicles that were capable of using less fuel that causes such voluminous harmful emissions. I consider this segment of Mr. Conca's article to be a good example of misinformation.

"Mr. Conca goes on to examine, "...Where is the U.S. today in corn ethanol space?" He writes, "In 2000, over 90% of the U.S. corn crop went to feed people and livestock, many in undeveloped countries, with less than 5% used to produce ethanol. In 2013, however, 40% went to produce ethanol, 45% was used to feed livestock, and only 15% was used for food and beverage." This complaint is simply sleight-of-hand; three-card monte; the old shell game.

"Let's look at how this works out: In 2000, U.S. corn production was 251,854 metric tons. According to Mr. Conca's figures, this means that 226,668 MT went to feed people and livestock. Please note that Mr. Conca has combined the human and livestock figure. In 2013, U.S. corn production is estimated to be 353,715 metric tons. For some unexplained reason, for 2013 Mr. Conca breaks up the use of corn into two categories (livestock food and human food, 45% and 15%, respectively). However, when you combine the two categories they amount to 60%. This means that 212,229 MT went to feed people and livestock; nearly the same total amount in 2013 as it was in 2000. So while Mr. Conca was obviously trying to present a horrific factoid to support his pejorative headline, he was engaging in deceit by making it seem like there was a great change in usage. The above corn production numbers come from the US Dept of Agriculture. http://www.indexmundi.com/agriculture/?country=us&commodity=corn&graph=production.

"Clearly, more corn went to ethanol production, but it was because since 2000 there has been a greater demand for ethanol and our American farmers were capable of ramping up to meet that demand - while also earning more money...without forcing humans or animals into starvation. I agree that the amount of corn available in 2013 for humans and animals was less than 2000, but the difference was marginal. In short, can you recall any point in 2013 when you couldn't find enough corn to eat at your local grocery store?

"As for Mr. Conca's comment about people in undeveloped countries; people in undeveloped countries don't eat corn on the cob or corn niblets like we do, so any short fall of U.S. corn production had no serious effect on them.

"Moreover, there's a great problem with our supplying free or very inexpensive corn to undeveloped countries for livestock feed; it tends to force their own farmers out of business because they can't compete with the free/cheap corn they get from us. There's an old saying that "If you give a person a fish, he eats for a day; but if you teach him to fish, he will eat everyday." Putting their farmers out of business means that they must continue to rely on others rather than ever becoming self-sufficient. And their relying on our food costs us American taxpayers. As an American taxpayer, I am not happy to be paying for their food, their medicine, and their defense in addition to paying too much for poison gasoline.

"Mr. Conca also states, "We should remember that humans originally switched from biomass to fossil fuels because biomass was so inefficient, and took so much energy and space to produce." This is a lie - it might be an unintentional lie because he simply doesn't know the truth, but it's a lie. We did not switch to fossil fuels because biomass fuels were so inefficient and required too so much energy and space to produce. For example, Americans switched from alcohol to kerosene for indoor heating and light because the tax on alcohol (to finance the Civil War) was so great that people were forced to use stinky, black-smoke producing kerosene.

"Furthermore, alcohol (ethanol) was always considered by the automobile pioneers to be the superior more-efficient fuel. Until the FREE ALCOHOL ACT of 1906, gasoline had a significant price advantage over ethanol, but the poor efficiency of gasoline restricted gasoline engines to slow speeds and under-nourished horsepower. From 1906 until Prohibition, ethanol was approximately the same price as gasoline, and because it could be used in higher compression engines, automobile manufacturers like Henry Ford were building ethanol-only or bi-fuel engines that could be adjusted according to fuel availability. Early race car drivers preferred ethanol over gasoline.

"Once Prohibition became the law of the land, the issue was moot since all alcohol production was illegal. We were forced to buy John Rockefeller's junk fuel, and in order to mimic the natural anti-knock characteristics of ethanol, the poisonous tetraethyl-lead was added to gasoline. America then had to put up with several decades of being forced to use inferior fossil fuels, being told lies about the dangers of leaded gasoline.

"Mr. Conca brings up other issues such as high water usage and the problems with over-fertilization of land (and the water run-off). Gasoline production requires almost as much water as ethanol production, and many of the problems associated with water run-off are caused by fertilization used on golf courses, corporate and educational campuses, and residential lawns and gardens."

As usual, I had emailed my response to James Conca. He's never replied.

Paul, moving down your list of citations you present a 2009 article from Wired.com, written by Chuck Squatriglia, titled "Another Argument Against Ethanol." This is a terribly misleading and incorrect article for a couple of reasons. The first is that the title makes it seem as if the writer or Wired.com had previously published one or more stories against ethanol, or that there are an unlimited number of arguments against ethanol. But in reviewing the author's previous editorials there doesn't appear to be any indication that he had ever published any previous "Argument Against Ethanol." Consequently, labeling this article isn't "another argument," it's his first argument.

The second problem with the Wired.com article is that it is just a story about someone else's story. The writer, Chuck Squatriglia, only made reference to an article written by Ed Wallace for BusinessWeek and then added a reply from Growth Energy (an ethanol advocacy group). Moreover, Growth Energy's reply largely rebuts Ed Wallace's negative comments. So in reality, including this link in your list of citations is worthless because the Growth Energy rebuttal defeats the article's negative comments. It makes me think that you didn't fully read this Wired.com story and consider its potential value in rebutting my earlier comments.

The third problem is that Ed Wallace's BusinessWeek story was nonsense. In 2015, after I replied to a different nonsensical article regarding Jay Leno and his sudden dislike for ethanol-gasoline blends (after being a fan of ethanol-gasoline blends), I received an email from a reader named Max Macke who challenged me by citing this same 2009 Ed Wallace story - this Wallace story was titled "The Great Ethanol Scam". My reply to the reader, and BusinessWeek, and directly to Ed Wallace in an email to him, was:

"Ed Wallace's article is disparaging and demeaning the corn ethanol industry by relying on information that is either out-of-date or was never correct at any time. He engages in fear mongering by relating anecdotal stories that are unlikely to have ever been true and he uses at least one situation that would have been impossible to have been true.

"For example, in trying to describe how ethanol damages vehicle engines, this article refers back to a previous article he wrote in which he states that an Exxon station in Texas mistakenly filled a customer's flex-fuel vehicle with 100% pure ethanol. Mr. Wallace says that it wasn't Exxon's fault, that it was the fault of the distribution center. However, regardless of who was at fault, where did this mythical 100% pure ethanol come from? Basically speaking, just as there is no such thing as 100% pure gasoline (gasoline is not one substance but the combination of many, which includes substances like tetraethyl lead or MTBE or other "aromatics" that are not in-and-of themselves an engine fuel), there is no 100% pure ethanol outside of a specialized laboratory. At the very most, the distribution center would have had denatured alcohol (ethanol) which is not 100% pure ethanol. You could argue that this is a very minor discrepancy, but it is still an exaggeration that was invented to instill fear and distrust in ethanol.

"In any event, for this distribution center to have shipped out a very high-level denatured alcohol that exceeded E85, the worst thing that Mr. Wallace was able to report was that the vehicle didn't start. If an engine doesn't start that doesn't mean that the engine was damaged. In all likelihood, if the engine didn't start it didn't start because the onboard computer didn't recognize the fuel and it stopped the vehicle from starting. In other words, the vehicle's onboard computer did what it was supposed to do. If water or diesel or Coca-Cola was mistakenly pumped into the fuel tank the engine would also have not started. I'm not saying that putting water, diesel or Coke in your gasoline fuel tank is a good idea, but it's a long way from making the kind of destructive claims that he makes about ethanol.

"Mr. Wallace refers to the Pimentel-Patzek study that claims it takes more energy to make ethanol then the ethanol puts out. This study was never correct; it used preposterous assumptions to create an exaggerated scenario. Even Patzek's home university (at the time) UC Berkley did a later study in which they found the Pimentel/Patzek study to be wrong. Incidentally, Mr. Wallace published his two articles in 2009 and 2010. The UC Berkley study that corrected Pimentel-Patzek was done in 2006. So the information was there if Mr. Wallace wanted it, but he obviously didn't want correct information.

"Ed Wallace is supposed to be a car guy with many, many years of experience. He quotes mileage reduction statistics that are wrong. I think that he would have done what I've done over the years, and that is to actually try putting E85 in a car and see what happens. Apparently he has never done this. I'm not surprised, because I've found that very few automotive journalists have tried this. Those that have always (to my knowledge) reported that the mileage loss is no where as great as those suggested by new vehicle Monroney stickers or manufacturer handbooks. Why is this you ask? There are at least three reasons: First, Monroney MPG statistics are often wrong, even when just referring to gasoline. Second, the gasoline used to make the MPG estimates is often different than the actual gasoline you buy at a retail filling station. Third, when dealing with flex-fuel estimates, the estimates are not necessarily based upon actual on-road performance, but based upon an on-paper BTU calculation. The problem with this is that BTU rating is irrelevant when dealing with an internal combustion engine. Ethanol does indeed have a lower BTU rating than gasoline. However, a gasoline-powered engine will deliver more miles with gasoline fuel (as compared to using an ethanol fuel) because the engine is optimized to run on gasoline. The same engine optimized to run on ethanol will deliver the same or more miles when run on ethanol. While diesel fuel has a higher BTU rating than gasoline, and it is derived from the same petroleum oil as gasoline, it will deliver far fewer miles if you tried using it in a gasoline-powered engine (in fact, the engine might not even start)."

Ed Wallace never replied to me, BusinessWeek never replied, and the reader (Max Macke) disappeared. Unfortunately, the negative story and the wrong impressions it made are still there.

Next up on your list, Paul, is a link to a 2016 NPR story titled "The Shocking Truth About America's Ethanol Law: It Doesn't Matter (For Now)." The writer, Dan Charles, begins his article with what he says is a riddle that's bothered him for years: "Suppose somebody yanked away the law that currently props up the nation's ethanol industry, as Cruz has proposed. What would actually happen?"

Mr. Charles goes off in search of someone to answer the riddle. He finds two different someones and he gets the same very simple answer that comes down to: "If the law changed tomorrow and gasoline companies were free to ignore ethanol, they'd almost certainly keep right on blending ethanol into their fuel."

The reason given for this answer is a one word answer: "octane." Ethanol provides the octane boost that's needed to prevent engine damage from "knocking."

The simple answer to the great conundrum that puzzled Dan Charles for so many years is actually a bit more complex and also very ironic to the entire issue before us. As I'm sure you know, Paul, there are other ingredients that could be used to increase the octane level of gasoline, such as additional aromatics (benzene, toluene, xylene, etc.). So why would the gasoline companies still go outside of their own community to get an octane booster like ethanol? That answer is because ethanol is cleaner, safer, healthier and less expensive than anything else. Therefore, this one article that you cited to bash ethanol actually goes a long way to dispel the primary negative comment you made about ethanol's "questionable" environmental advantages.

Mr. Charles' NPR story goes on to include information from author/spokesman Robert Bryce. Next to David Pimentel and Tad Patzek, Robert Bryce is the most notorious slinger of anti-ethanol bullshit. Robert Bryce wrote and published "Gusher Of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions Of Energy Independence" in 2009. Despite the fact that Mr. Bryce had no real background in energy and alternative solutions, the book became highly heralded and it propelled him into a starring role as a slayer of alternative fuel monsters. In 2013, I wrote and published a review/rebuttal to "Gusher Of Lies." My review/rebuttal to his book was nearly 70 pages long. That's how much he got wrong. It took me almost 70 pages to correct the garbage contained in his book, and I didn't even address his chapters on natural gas, nuclear power, and solar (which comprised roughly 40% of his book).

In the seven years since I published my rebuttal to "Gusher Of Lies," Mr. Bryce only ever responded to me once, and that was just after I sent him the link to where my review could be read. His immediate reply was "Thank you." I laughed and thought to myself "After he reads my review I hope he remembers that he thanked me."

Since then he's had plenty of time to read it, respond, challenge me, and even sue me for libel/slander if he believed I had mischaracterized him or what he wrote; but he has never done so. The most egregious part of all this is that in the years subsequent to publishing "Gusher Of Lies," whenever Mr. Bryce makes an appearance and discusses the subject of the book, he relies on the same bad and/or outdated information that rendered his book rubbish in the first place. My review/rebuttal of "Gusher Of Lies" can be found by CLICKING HERE.

Your next link is to a story posted by SEMA Action Network (part of Specialty Equipment Market Association). It is merely a reiteration of numerous lies and myths invented by API starting in the 1920's. It's wildly irresponsible of them to post this story, but I assume they did so because of sponsorships and funding they receive from oil industry entities and affiliates. They should be ashamed of publishing it as it makes them out to be devoid of any in-depth knowledge of the history of automobiles and internal combustion engines. Many of my individual alternative fuel editorials destroy their accusations and innuendoes. There is no indication of who specifically wrote their story, but I'd be willing to travel anywhere to debate any single person or team of their people in live public event. By the way, last summer I engaged in an online debate with Michael Lynch (considered to be an energy expert). It was moderated by Robert Bradley (who is also considered an energy expert). Links to the 2-part debate can be found by CLICKING HERE.

Your very next link goes to a November 2019 story on TheAtlantic.com written by Frank Loyola, titled "Stop The Ethanol Madness." A couple of days after that story was published, I wrote and published a rebuttal titled "Stop the Anti-Ethanol Ridiculousness." You can find it by CLICKING HERE.

Paul, the last item on your list is a link to a chapter of the "Workshop Summary - Roundtable on Environmental Health Sciences, Research, and Medicine..." It sure sounds very impressive.

While the summary (and I presume the entire roundtable) dances around true factual information, it veers off into fantasy for what appears to make the entire event just a tool for pushing an erroneous extreme green agenda.

For instance, under CASE STUDIES, the summary addresses the "ethical issues stemming from corn ethanol production in the United States...on food prices and food security." This is the old food vs. fuel argument.

In my initial reply to you, Paul, I covered the issue of "food vs. fuel." I described how the issue first took flight (from an incorrect report published by The World Bank), soared through the rarified air of the global media because of API financial support, and then crash landed two years later after The World Bank retracted the conclusions of the report (sadly, the crash was rather silent as the media chose not to make as big a fuss of the correction as they did of the original faulty claim).

By the time that this summary of the Roundtable on Environmental Health Sciences, Research, and Medicine was being prepared for publication, it had already been publicly known for at least four years that The World Bank report on food vs. fuel was wrong. Incidentally, in the summer of 2010, I delivered a presentation at the American Coalition of Ethanol national conference that included details and links to The World Bank retraction.

There is no excuse for the august body that staged the Roundtable on Environmental Health Sciences, Research, and Medicine to not have had access to the same information I had years earlier. And if they had it, then it means they intentionally hid it from their audience because it didn't fit their agenda.

The CASE STUDIES section goes on to state that Alena Buyx, a senior research associate at the School of Public Policy at University College London, noted that "some calculations show that biofuels production actually makes the greenhouse gas problem worse than simply using gasoline." Indeed, some calculations, such as the debunked calculations presented in Pimental-Patzek studies do show this. In the absence of any referenced research information indicating otherwise, I'll presume that Ms. Buyx was relying on some form of the Pimentel-Patzek misinformation as the basis of her comments.

More contemporary ethanol bashers like Mark Jacobson, a professor at Stanford University, claim that biofuel (ethanol) production makes the GHG problem worse than using gasoline. Ms. Buyx was wrong and Professor Jacobson is wrong. Continuous credible studies from universities and government laboratories over the years show that ethanol is significantly cleaner than gasoline.

Another part of the CASE STUDIES section looks at Brazil and the near universal panic that has ensued over the destruction of the country's critical rain forests in order to turn them into sugar cane crop fields. The problem with this near universal panic is that sugar cane is cultivated in the central and southern areas of Brazil, while the Amazon rain forest is located in the north-western area of Brazil. This issue, like most of the extreme green and AGW positions are wild exaggerations that don't deserve consideration or panic. SEE:

An environmental policy writer named Michael Shellenberger (a Time Magazine "Hero of the Environment") recently published a book titled "Apocalypse Never." On pages 29-31, he describes how photographs and films of cleared crop fields in the south are used to fraudulently present worrisome imagery of rain forest deforestation.

The Workshop Summary refocuses on the United States with concerns over water and land issues, presenting the case that too much land and water is used to grow ethanol crops. In fact, in the years since the adoption of the Renewable Fuel Standard, water and land usage for corn crops has been at the same or lower levels than in the years leading up to the passage of the RFS program and increased national use of ethanol-gasoline blends. Regardless of the reduced amount of land and water, there have been enormous increases in corn yield. The increases are due to improvements in farming techniques, not wasteful natural resource usage. SEE:

The Workshop Summary includes an exhaustive amount of additional information designed to beat down the advantages and benefits of biofuels. The summary includes events and circumstances in Malaysia, Columbia, and other parts of Latin America. It would be virtually impossible for me or almost anyone else to deflate each and every instance set forth in a timely manner. Fortunately, I don't have to expend that much effort because even if some or all of the disturbing instances are correct, they are not anywhere near as horrendous as the societal, health, and safety disasters caused by the petroleum oil industry. Furthermore, in many instances the growing of ethanol crops isn't even as environmentally damaging as the total effects caused by the creation and deployment of wind generators and solar farms, or in the mining and production of elements and materials needed to produce batteries and electric vehicles.

The bottom line is that ethanol fuel represents the most efficient and economical solution to the world's energy problems, and it is available right now. Ethanol shouldn't be thought of as "the fuel of the future," it should be "The Fuel of Today That Meets the Needs of Tomorrow!"

With this in mind, I present you with one more editorial to be considered: "Ethanol is the SAVIOR of the Oil Industry, Convenience Store Industry, Automotive Supply Chain Industry and Much More!".

*NEAT - National Ethanol Action Team - a subsidiary of The Auto Channel.com

More:

Plumbing the Depths of Ethanol Ignorance - The Auto Channel

The Star Wars Universe is incredibly rich in its lore. While Disney attempted to demote the Extended Universe to Legends, most invested fans still hold the pre-2012 tales, activities, and characters in high regard. Across the incredibly diverse galaxy, there are several games and sports enjoyed by the masses although, mostly by smugglers and ruffians which allow fans to get a more in-depth look at the cultures at play away from the space battles.

In some way, many of them derive from games enjoyed in our world, with a twist put on them to suit the Star Wars Universe. While we cant enjoy the true forms of these sources of entertainment from a galaxy far, far away, there are other ways to experience them and the source material.

One of the most memorable moments of the prequel trilogy was the booming pod race at Mos Espa on Tatooine. The tiny pods propelled by massive engines made for quite the spectacle, especially as, in the race shown, so many racers crashed from a mix of underhandracing, environment obstacles, and even Tusken Raiders.

The races were much-watch entertainment, drawing in beings from across the planet to see the high-speed action unfold, as well as celebrities like the Hutt crime syndicate. Some of those in attendance had invested in racers, others were there just for the sport, and several of the fans packing the stands would be placing bets on the race.

In our world, Pod Racing will never become a reality, both due to the technology required and the necessary health and safety regulations that would come into play. While we do have the fast-paced Formula One and Formula E racing, the best way to enjoy the battles of a pod race is in the Star Wars Episode I: Pod Racer game. A classic of the N64 era in the late 90s, the game has been excellently upgraded for the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4.

Card games are famously played across the galaxy, often at very high stakes. Enjoyed by smugglers and natural gamblers, cards were a way for the most oversized egos to earn status, flex their sleight of hand skills, and win their opponents most prized possessions.

The most famous of these is Sabacc: a 76-card deck game in which the aim is to get as close to a 23-value hand without exceeding that value. Sabacc is the game that saw Han Solo win the Millennium Falcon from Lando Calrissian. There was also the ancient game of Pazaak, which was played in the era of the Old Republic. It, too, was a game of reaching a value without exceeding it, in this case being 20, and was described as being easy to learn by very hard to master.

While the games themselves played a bit more like poker due to their player-versus-player nature, as they were card games that are easy to learn but hard to master, with the aim of hitting a set number, Sabacc and Pazaak clearly derive from blackjack. Blackjack is still widely available today, being found at the online casinos with the highest-rated welcome bonuseslike Sloty, still being among the most popular mobile games. Or, if you have an Xbox One, you can play Knights of the Old Republic II, which has a Pazaak mini-game, through the backward compatibility program.

Onboard the Millennium Falcon and throughout homes, Dejarik was one of the most popular games in the galaxy, rising to prominence well before the Clone Wars. The black and white circular game table featured three rings with alternating black and white segments, on which players would battle holographic monsters.

In chess, the pieces have different movements, and any piece can defeat another, but in Dejarik, each monster has its own attack, health, range, and movement rating. As such, chess doesnt really relate to the Star Wars game. However, the game can still be enjoyed, provided that you have a Lenovo Mirage AR headset, with the Star Wars: Jedi Challenges app featuring the full tactical game of Holochess.

Whether it be the pod racing, Sabacc, Pazaak, or Dejarik, theres a way to experience the thrills of these Star Wars games right here.

See more here:

How to Experience the Best Games of the Star Wars Universe - Fantha Tracks

The COVID-19 pandemic has put a lot of peoples interests online, whether thats playing Dungeons & Dragons over Zoom or taking virtual workout classes. But at least one of these interests, online chess, dates back at least 1,000 years. Why is playing chess online so popular?

You love badass games. So do we. Let's play together.

Chess is a deceptively simple gameeasy to learn, but hard to master, as one adage goeswhere each player has 16 pieces. These are eight pawns, two rooks, two bishops, two knights, and a king and queen. The board has 64 squares, like a checkerboard, and is easy to refer to using a classic grid notation system used in maps and even the game Battleship: A, B, C, ... along one axis and 1, 2, 3, ... along the other.

What this all means is that in order to play a game of chess online, you can work with two players who each have a complete chess set and send moves in word form. Even for the pawns, which are identical, players say knights pawn, bishops pawn, and so forth. That means the earliest online chess players were able to do the same thing: noting moves using grid notation and relative terms for their pieces.

Many of the most masterful chess games require very few moves, compared with how amateurs tend to play. High-level chess players think many steps ahead and can often telescope what their opponents will decide to do. And since each piece has a restriction, like pawns that can only move one square unless its their first move and take other pieces only diagonally, chess is a popular subject for study by game theorists, statisticians, combinatoricians, and more.

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The mathematical nature of the moves has made chess a popular thing to program, and chess-playing artificial intelligence has advanced beyond human players in key ways. A computer first beat a human in 1996, and after a few high-profile incidents, chess tournaments are kept very secure to prevent any kind of computer-aided cheating. Chess engines can run in tandem and give insights as viewers watch major chess matches online.

For a long time, people playing chess online in predecessor systems like bulletin boards could exchange short strings of characters that indicated their moves. You can do this with just lettersK for king, Q for queen, and so forthwith N for knight, since K is already in use.

But online chess players, at least, have had another option since at least 1995, when documentation from Unicode confirms the chess pieces were part of the character set likely from the very first version of Unicode. Like card suits, logic and math notation, and certain map and public safety symbols, the people who designed computer fonts knew users were likely to need these special characters to put into newspaper chess columns, for example, or for the actual printing of maps without separate typesetting.

Today, that means almost any online chess arena can introduce full notation with all pieces represented in their real grid. That means games can be pretty low-techno one needs plug-ins or rendered artwork, and exchanging moves is only a few technical steps past sending them back and forth in emails or even the mail. And when much of online chess takes the form of speed matches played in 3 or even 1 minute (!), the less technical overhead, the better.

If you want to wade into online chess, check out Chess.com for both games and a ton of lessons and help as you get started. The Free Internet Chess Server dates back decades, with browser games and an option to download their app. And Lichess, which is "just" 10 years old, is an open-source chess platform that hosts a million games a day.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io

Go here to read the rest:

Chess Online: How to Play and Win Chess | Chess Tips & Strategies - Popular Mechanics

It seems like we are in for a couple of weeks of lively chess action, as the over-the-board elite tournament in Stavanger kicked off with three entertaining matchups. Magnus Carlsen did not take many risks with the black pieces against Levon Aronian in the classical game and went on to win a double-edged Armageddon decider, while Fabiano Caruana and Alireza Firouzja both won with black without needing to go to sudden death.

Talking to star commentators Judit Polgar and Vladimir Kramnik, Caruana referred to the Candidates Tournament, which is supposed to resume on November 1. Noting that Wang Hao has raised some concerns regarding the corona-related safety measures taken by FIDE, Caruana explained:

Navigating the Ruy Lopez Vol.1-3

The Ruy Lopez is one of the oldest openings which continues to enjoy high popularity from club level to the absolute world top. In this video series, American super GM Fabiano Caruana, talking to IM Oliver Reeh, presents a complete repertoire for White.

Theres pretty much constant negotiations. I cant really go into too much detail. [...] I think that FIDE is really doing their best because its such an incredibly difficult situation. [...] There are a lot of scenarios in which there are basically no good solutions, like if someone gets sick in the middle of the tournament.

For the American, the result in the event has ceased to be his main concern:

To be honest, I think we shouldve just completed the tournament when we were there. [...] But thats already in the past. I hope it happens and it goes smoothly. For me right now the main thing is not even the result, the main thing is just that it happens.

Nonetheless, the world number two managed to leave these concerns behind during his game against Aryan Tari. In the second round, Caruana will face Jan-Krzysztof Duda with the white pieces;Carlsen and Aronian will also have white, against FirouzjaandTari respectively.

Namaste!Aronian and Carlsen found a way to shake hands while keeping the social distance| Photo: Lennart Ootes

In the classical game, Carlsen had a good position out of the opening with black, but he did not go into the most critical continuation on move 15:

Instead of 15...bxc5, leading to a sharper struggle, the world champion played 15...Nxc5. When Kramnik asked him why he had chosen the more conservative alternative, Carlsen responded:

The answer is very simple its the first game in a long time. I just feel that 15...Nxc5 was one-hundred percent safe for me, and I just wanted to play a normal game.

Carlsens approach led to a safe 30-move draw. In the Armageddon decider, a complex battle ensuedwith kings castled on opposite sides. White had the initiative, but Black had the better structure. Aronian was in the drivers seat throughout the middlegame, but gave up his initiative in the heavy-piece endgame:

Master Class Vol.11: Vladimir Kramnik

This DVD allows you to learn from the example of one of the best players in the history of chess and from the explanations of the authors (Pelletier, Marin, Mller and Reeh) how to successfully organise your games strategically, consequently how to keep y

Aronian went for 25.b3 here, and Black infiltrated on the kingside with 25...Qg4. As Carlsen pointed out, 25.Kb1 would have prevented this idea due to 25...Qg4 26.Qd7, while Polgar and Kramnik were analysing the more ambitious 25.h5 for the Armenian, who needed a win with the white pieces.

This slight imprecision did not give Black a better position, but it allowed the world champion to show his practical skills when both players had little time on the clock. Finally, Aronian blundered his rook on move 37 and resigned.

Select an entry from the list to switch between games

Focused world champion Magnus Carlsen | Photo: Lennart Ootes

Right out of the opening, the well-versed commentators were understandably surprised by Caruanas 13th move:

Here Black gave up a pawn with 13...Bxe3 14.fxe3 Be6 15.Qxd6 Rc8. Although this was not a novelty per se, apparently it was playedvoluntarily for the first time, as Caruana explained:

Its been played before, but I think its a novelty in the sense that people played it and it was a blunder. [...] In terms of serious games, this is a completely new idea.

The Benoni is back in business

On top level its a rarer guest but with this DVD Rustam Kasimdzhanov will turn the tables. New ways and approaches in most lines and countless improvements of official theory will show you how to play this opening at any level with success.

The American grandmaster confessed that it was Rustam Kasimdzhanovs idea, and that they had worked on it just a day before. White was a pawn up, but had trouble coordinating his pieces:

Here Caruana continued improving his pieces with 20...Nb6, but the commentators suggested the more direct 20...Rxc3, further damaging Whites pawn structure. Caruana showed how deep he had looked into this line and his general remarkable understanding when he explained why he had not gone for the exchange sac:

Its often an idea in this line, and one of the main ideas, but usually the point is that the pawns should be on h6 and h2, so after White plays h4 we can play Kh2, g5 and if Bh3, g4.

As it happened, Black slowly upped the pressure until getting a 55-move victory. Tari was not happy about his decision on move29:

29.Bf3 was naturally followed by 29...g4 and White went back with 30.Bg2 in a strange sequence. Instead, Polgar looked at 29.g4, when the white bishop will get some open diagonals to have a bigger say in the game.

World number two Fabiano Caruana | Photo: Lennart Ootes

Out of a Caro-Kann Firouzjas main weapon with black Duda decided to avoid entering a typical struggle in the opening by capturing a poisoned pawn on b7:

The Fashionable Caro-Kann Vol.1 and 2

The Caro Kann is a very tricky opening. Blacks play is based on controlling and fighting for key light squares. It is a line which was very fashionable in late 90s and early 2000s due to the successes of greats like Karpov, Anand, Dreev etc. Recently due to strong engines lot of key developments have been made and some new lines have been introduced, while others have been refuted altogether. I have analyzed the new trends carefully and found some new ideas for Black.

The Polish grandmaster had already spent over half an hour on his 15th move, and now it took him almost 15 minutes to decide on 17.Qxb7, grabbing a pawn while granting Black open lines for an attack. Carlsen gave his opinion about Dudas decision:

Practically its a terrible choice I think, especially against Alireza.

Or as Firouzja himself put it:

I will always have the initiative. This attack is endless.

The game continued 17...Nd5 18.Qa6 Rb8:

The world champion correctly pointed out that 19.dxc5 was absolutely necessary here, while after Dudas 19.Bd2 White is strategically lost.

Indeed, Firouzja kept calling the shots from that point on and even forced White to give up an exchange. The conversion was not trivial though, as at some point the engines gave a 0.00 evaluation. Nonetheless, withstanding the pressure for so long took its toll on Duda, who ended up faltering on move 46:

Blacks kingside pawns became unstoppable after 46.a5 h3 47.gxh3 e4 48.fxe4 g2 and White resigned four moves later. In the diagrammed position, the passive 46.Ng1 was necessary.

Jan-Krzysztof Duda knows there is no way to stop Blackspawns | Photo: Lennart Ootes

1-2. Caruana, Firouzja 33. Carlsen 1.54. Aronian 15-6. Duda, Tari 0

Magnus Carlsen Alireza FirouzjaFabiano Caruana Jan-Krzysztof DudaLevon Aronian Aryan Tari

Originally posted here:

Norway Chess: Caruana and Firouzja get off to a good start - Chessbase News