Crossing the line of war

 You don't need a million poets and prophets with their pens if you have one idiot who delivers us into a radiant crescendo.

RIP?

2023 math

 

 2023 = (2+0+2+3) * (2²+0²+2²+3²)²

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%282%2B0%2B2%2B3%29+*+%282%C2%B2%2B0%C2%B2%2B2%C2%B2%2B3%C2%B2%29%C2%B2 

 

A neat little equation, forwarded to me by Alain Brobecker via the Chess Problems & Studies server on Discord.

Volksverhetzung durch ZDF-Kanäle

 

Diese beiden Bilder von vom ZDF betriebenen Youtube-Kanälen, am 27. August 2022 abgerufen, sehen zunächst harmlos aus. Doch einen Tag vorher, am 26. August 2022, hat das ZDF über den Begriff "Indianer" das hier verlauten lassen:

Da das ZDF also den Begriff Indianer für rassistisch hält, gibt es zu, dass seine Youtube-Kanäle zu Hass und Gewalt gegen andere Völker aufstacheln. Im Strafrecht nennt sich das "Volksverhetzung".

Oder krasser ausgedrückt: Der Rundfunkbeitrag wird verwendet, um wie in der NS-Zeit volksverhetzende Propaganda durch staatlich betriebene Propagandamedien zu betreiben. Vielen Dank aber auch!

Ravensburger's racist agenda

 Currently Ravensburger sadly has taken up a racist agenda by which it wants no more books by Karl May published (especially the novels with Winnetou and Old Shatterhand that criticized the genocide against Native Americans). They cite "cultural appropriation" as the reason, which means essentially that they don't want foreign influences in their works but rather a German only culture.

Nearly 70 years after the nazi dictatorship, the dreams of pure Aryan art and the banning of "Entartete Kunst" should not exist in Germany anymore, but Ravensburger lets them live high again!

As they are shitting on the grave of Lothar Schmid with this, who was leading the Karl May Verlag (Karl May Press) for around half a decade - who also criticized Ravensburger sharply for this nazistic action -, as well as going against all good taste, I hereby openly criticize them for this.

Research paper on selfmates and reflexmates

A Note on the Computational Complexity of Selfmate and Reflexmate Chess Problems by Zhujun Zhang was just published two days on arxiv.org

 

 A selfmate is a Chess problem in which White, moving first, needs to force Black to checkmate within a specified number of moves. The reflexmate is a derivative of the selfmate in which White compels Black to checkmate with the added condition that if either player can checkmate, they must do that (when this condition applies only to Black, it is a semi-reflexmate). We slightly modify the reduction of EXPTIME-hardness of Chess and apply the reduction to these Chess problems. It is proved that selfmate, reflexmate, and semi-reflexmate are all EXPTIME-complete.

Enyonam Sewa Fumey - future FIDE President?

 As I read on ChessBase, Enyonam Sewa Fumey from Togo wants to become the new FIDE President, the successor of Arkady Dvorkovich.

In the current times, it would feel wrong to have either an Ukrainian or a Russian as FIDE President. It is not about there being any corruption, but about it possibly looking to the outside that there might be any corruption, even if there isn't any - I believe Mr. Dvorkovich is not corrupt, I believe he does a good job, but in the current times of war his country of origin could be an issue.

So it will be an interesting upcoming election. Mr. Fumey has good chances in my opinion. I didn't know Mr. Fumey at all before. But to the outside world, the non-chessplayers, it will make a better appearance to have someone from Togo than to have someone from an active war country.

I really don't have any opinion here on who is the better candidate, but to keep good optics, it would currently be Mr. Fumey. An African - to my knowledge a continent that didn't have a FIDE President yet.

We had four Europeans - two Dutchmen, one Swede, one from Iceland -, then three Asians - one Filipino and two Russians - as Presidents. As such, an African would be a welcome choice. So far Africa is one of many underrepresented continents. From the information I read, Fumey seems like a great enthusiast. A man who in his chess-political career also improved his own skills, gaining among other accolades the title of an International Arbiter.

One thing seems certain: Whoever wins the election this year will further advance chess to the best of his abilities.

If we can end the horrible war, chess can have a bright future again. If we can't, then likely chess is the least of our issues...

The Russian people are not the culprits!

 I am very saddened about the current direction the world as a whole moves towards.

I believe - want to believe - that if they could most Russians would end the war immediately, without the west destroying their lives as it does by excluding them from SWIFT, Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, etc.; and without further sanctions such as the IOC excluding their athletes while celebrating the extermination of Uyghurs in China.

What we achieve is to make sure the Russians - and Belarussians - will hate us for the foreseeable future because we treat them horribly. This is no basis for peace, it is only a basis for further escalation.

Putin says he reacted to the threat by biolabs in Ukraine. Biolabs that were funded by companies tied to the Bidens. The same Hunter Biden that funded the Gain-Of-Function research in Wuhan. If that is true, then Russia had every right to fear the use of bioweapons. This does not excuse the response that equals massive war crimes in Ukraine. This does not excuse attacking Ukrainian civilians. But it shows that this is not another one-sided affair. If we want to hold Putin responsible, we also must hold the Bidens responsible, we must hold Zelensky and Xi responsible for funding the research of bioweapons in Wuhan, and of biolabs in Ukraine that might or might not have also been used for bioweapons, which Russia might be unable to tell from the outside.

But we must not hold the innocent population responsible. While we do not outright kill them, we treat them not like humans, we destroy their lives by excluding them from receiving any kind of payments from abroad. We exclude them from sports events. All the while China, which is at least as much of a threat to the free world as Putin, gets its military presence in the South Chinese Sea up, it can prepare unhindered to invade Taiwan (aka the real China), it can support Russia's war against the Ukrainian people without having to fear any repercussions from the corrupt west, from the corrupt United Nations, from the nearly dead United States, from anyone.

The Ukrainian people have lost this war, they had no chance as they were just pawns in the games of politicians which since 2014, if not earlier, were ready to be sacrificed. More and more aggression towards Russia was sparked in rhetorics, but nothing was done to protect Ukraine from an attack.

The "Star Wars" program, the Strategic Defense Initiative, is useless against modern Russian MIRVs. The west has no chance to survive a nuclear war. Putin might be crazy enough to start one, and some western politicians would want this. Instead of doing anything useful, western leaders virtue signal by sending weapons to Ukraine, punishing the innocent Russian population, competely ignoring the Chinese influence on Russia and that they have the greatest own interest in this war, in this partial genocide.

Our politicians have completely failed us, and they have completely failed the Ukrainian people!

Nice job breaking it, heroes

So we ban Russian artists because...?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_anti-war_protests_in_Russia

 

 By 27 February, 4,000 scientists and science journalists, 6,200 medics, 5,000 architects and 6,700 artists in Russia have signed electronic petitions against the invasion.

 

Oh, right. That will show warmonger Putin if we ban the people who spoke out against him!

Nice job breaking it, heroes!

Merry Christmas, the war is over soon (also: Finally bring down the NYT!)

 Merry Christmas, my fellow friends!

It seems that we will win the war against the China Virus soon. We should not settle for any less than the complete extermination of our enemy, and that is where we might be getting at, thanks to new medical breakthroughs. The following one looks especially interesting.

https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2021/12/us-army-creates-single-vaccine-effective-against-all-covid-sars-variants/360089/

 

Keep on fighting, my friends. Stay healthy, and if the SPFN vaccine will actually work to exterminate our enemy, we will hopefully live in a free world in a year again. At least as free as possible with the devastation that was caused, and with the lost trust in governments and a hostile mass media that calls it racist to shut down international travel.

I'll rather live in a world of racists than in a world of dead people because of mass media cronies trying to help our enemy to spread. Never forget that in early 2020 those fascists actively tried to help the virus to spread by advising against shutting down airports!

But then, the New York Times is widely known as the propaganda newspaper of Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin. And they were among the antisemitic mass media that called everything racist that a certain jewish family father did during his presidency. So never forget that the mass media rather would play politics and kill millions than actually do anything sane. Hold them accountable when this is over.

Gaprindashvili sues Netflix

The child porn distributor "Netflix" (publisher of "Cuties" alias "Mignonnes", which is banned on 4chan for child pornography) is sued by Nona Gaprindashvili, as their chess series "The Queen's Gambit" contains racist and sexist propaganda against the Georgian master. She was racially insulted as a "Russian" and it was said she never has played against a man.

We hope that governments and prosecutions also finally will step in and crack down on Netflix. We deeply condemn any racist, sexist, and child pornographic propaganda, as spread on that disgusting platform, and we hope that Nona will sue them into oblivion!

New York Times smear piece about Karjakin - true or not?

 The racist "newspaper" New York Times, once gladly a mouthpiece of Adolf Hitler (see "Buried by the Times") and Josef Stalin (see Walter Durante) that denied the holodomor, and in the past years running the unhinged conspiracy theory that Russia helped Donald Trump (who has a jewish family, fitting with the earlier NYT smears) become President of the United States with election fraud, now expanded its racist smear pieces into the world of chess, "exposing" both Sergey Karjakin and the First Saturday tourneys in Budapest as supposed "grandmaster norm factories".

After this utter crap was re-published in the German magazine "Schach", which obviously fell for the propaganda surrounding the newspaper that portrays it as trustworthy, I want to let readers decide on their own which parts of the story are true and which are made up. Who knows, maybe for once some parts of the story hold up. After all, Karjakin is a bit suspicious. At least the German magazine, as opposed to the original author, did its due diligence and reproduced two of the games and footnotes that hint towards the hit piece having a core of truth.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/13/sports/chess-karjakin-mishra-grandmasters.html

An idea and its variation

 EG 225 offers to me two ideas and their variations. One is mentioned in the magazine's supplement, the other is one I only knew, as I had tried to make something off of it.

Siegfried Hornecker, Original (omposed 27 October 2004)

White to move and win

The solution 1.d:e8R! Qg8+ 2.Kh3 Q:e8 3.B:f5 Qe7 4.Rd7! Qg7 5.R:g7 wins with the d-pawn advancing if the queen remains on e7 and f7 lacks a proper introduction and is overall ugly, but the basic idea was nice. Nothing ever came of it, however.

 

The next year, this study was composed and published (abridged):

 

Siegfried Hornecker, Schach 12/2005

White to move and win

The first few moves were left out here, as they are just a horrible introduction with captures that should have been left out in the first place. 5.Be8! Rf7! 6.Kg3!! Rf8 7.f7 R:f7 8.d6 Rf8 9.d7 R:e8 10.d:e8R! wins

 

Using this matrix and the previous position's idea, some time around 2020 I arrived at something like this - no trace is left in the database, as I found nothing that works.

 

 

Siegfried Hornecker (modified), around 2020 (reconstruction)

Black to move, White wins

 

Only while writing this blog post, I arrived at the pawn pair e3/e4 to make the matrix work. Removing those, it was intended to be some kind of zugzwang. Black should have no square for the queen on the diagonal, so after 1.-Qf5+ 2.R:f5 mate but at the time I found no working setting, and the one I found now is more ugly than good.

I was surprised to find a similar position on the front page of EG 225, and remembering my idea within a second I arrived at the conclusion that 1.Rf7 must be the key there.

Yochanan Afek & Amatzia Avni, 2nd FRME tt 2020, prize

White to move and win (end of study)

Obviously it was not, they had found a completely different idea than what I sought, and must have found it a few months prior to me trying the similar setting.

Yochanan Afek & Amatzia Avni, 2nd FRME tt 2020, prize

White to move and win

 

The solution runs 1.Bg4+! K:g4 2.Sg6 S:a7 3.R:a7 Kh5 4.Kh3 K:g6 5.Se5+ Kh5 and the diagram above is reached: 6.Sg6!! K:g6 7.h5+ K:h5 8.R:h7 wins, or 6.-Q:g6 7.Ra5+ Qg5 8.h:g5 wins

 

There is nothing new under the sun when I try to compose, and sometimes a masterpiece is just one piece moved to another position away. And getting to that position two years earlier.

 

Congratulations to Yochanan and Amatzia for the incredible finding and the interesting introduction with Anzizielelement (the king leaving h5 first).

 

[DE] Suche nach Hörfunkreihe "Das Gericht zieht sich zur Beratung zurück"

 Die wohl erste deutsche Gerichtsshow, damals mit echten Fällen, die nachempfunden wurden, ist die in den 1950ern erschienene Hörfunkreihe "Das Gericht zieht sich zur Beratung zurück". Der NDR hat mir für mein Privatarchiv freundlicherweise die beiden Folgen "Bewußtseinsstörung" und "Brandserie im Kreis Rechlitz" überlassen. Diese können dort für 10 Euro auf CD angefordert werden und sind nach Angaben meiner Kontaktperson sicher archiviert. Aus rechtlichen Gründen darf ich sie nicht veröffentlichen.

 

Die anderen 77 Folgen scheinen verschollen. Wer weitere Folgen bereitstellen oder Hinweise zu deren Verbleib machen kann, kontaktiert bitte den NDR sowie auch mich (sh-schach@gmx.eu).

Schach-Fan issue 10 with Hornecker/Minski study

 The new magazine "Schach-Fan", which is aimed at beginners to improve their tactical skills, features the study by Martin Minski (composition) and me (idea) from "Schach", October 2016.

Interested readers can subscribe to the free magazine at their website http://schachwoche.de/ where also all issues are available for download. The magazine is in German, but it should be easy also for foreign readers to follow the diagrams and solutions.

I was a fan of Mikhail Zinar

 After the unecpected death of Mikhail Zinar, I wrote a memorial article in two parts about him. You can find it on ChessBase:

https://en.chessbase.com/post/study-of-the-month-2021-02 - Part I

https://en.chessbase.com/post/study-of-the-month-2021-03 - Part II

Most information in the articles is from a 2008 article by Sergey N. Tkachenko:

The King of Pawn Endgames (Russian)

hhdbvi is published

 Harold van der Heijden's sixth database is published now!

If you did receive a special invitation e-mail because you work for EG or are a friend of Harold, make sure to read the instructions there. Everyone else can order the database for 55 Euro:

https://www.hhdbvi.nl/

 

If you have no previous version of the database, or if you are an endgame studies aficionado/enthusiast, I highly recommend it. But of course I am biased as I write for EG...

Billy Mitchell's 3,338,420 Pac-Man record (modified machine)

Billy Mitchell set a record on Pac-Man on a modified machine yesterday.

Announced on November 25, 2020, the modified machine of Pac-Man allowed a tenth dot to spawn on the kill-screen, for a total of 3,338,420 points.

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?id=112589253578886&story_fbid=209641133873697

Live performance, 27 November 2020: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/817371358

Cure for COVID-19 found?

 Sometimes I must write about something that is unrelated to chess, and so also this time. Apparently a cure for the officially dubbed "COVID-19" virus has been found.

https://elifesciences.org/articles/59177

https://elemental.medium.com/a-supercomputer-analyzed-covid-19-and-an-interesting-new-theory-has-emerged-31cb8eba9d63 

The supercomputer "Summit" analyzed all the data and found a theory on how the virus works and how it can be cured. The best news? There are already nearly a dozen different treatments available, which also can be combined.

Is this the breakthrough?

Readers should be aware that this is no vaccine. It won't prevent people from getting sick, but hopefully it will prevent sick people from dying, or worse.

Anda Fairy Planet by Petko Petkov

 Bulgarian GM for composing Petko Petkov has created a new free magazine, "Anda Fairy Planet", where he presents new fairy chess ideas. Currently the layout is done by Geoff Foster.

The first two issues are available online, with him allowing also to re-host the second issue.

Google Drive links by Petko Petkov

Issue 1 (26 July 2020)

Issue 2 (1 September 2020)

Announcement: 2nd TT FRME

Vidadi Zamanov sent two PDF files. Here is the other announcement. The original file contained also examples.

2nd TT FRME, 2020The Royal Moroccan Chess Federation (FRME) organizes the 2nd TT FREM, in four 7 sections:A) Twomovers (#2) Theme: One-phase-cycle of double defensive motifs against only one threat. (aAB/bBC/cCA;
aAB/bBC/cCD/dDA etc.). Two or more threats are not allowed.Judge: Karol Mlynka (Slovakia)Send to tournament director: Twomovers (#2) to Youness Ben Jelloun (Marocco) E-mail: ubenjelloun@outlook.frB) Threemovers (#3) Theme: At least two different white pieces play to the same square, on the 2nd and on the 3rdmoves.Judge: Alexander Melnichuk (Russia)C) Moremovers (#4-6) Theme: White active sacrifice of at least two pieces (not pawns!) in sequence and sacrifices
of pieces are accepted by black. The sacrifice on the first move is not thematic.Judge: Aleksandr Sygurov (Russia)D) Endgame studies Theme: Double Sacrifice. During the solution, a White minor piece (bishop or knight) moves
to a square where is can be captured by at least two of the opponents pieces.Judge: Steffen Slumstrup Nielsen (Denmark)E) Selfmates (S#3-5) Theme: Destruction of a black battery: In the initial position, there is a black X / Y battery,
where Y is the back piece of the battery. In at least one variant or threat, the figure X plays and gives a battery-mate
to the white king. After that, in at least one variant, the piece Y plays and destruct the battery giving mate to the
white king without battery.Judge: Petko Petkov (Bulgaria)
Send to tournament director: Threemovers (#3), Moremovers (#4-6), Endgame studies and Selfmates (#3-5)to Vidadi Zamanov (Azerbaijan) E-mail: vidadi_zamanov@mail.ruF) Helpmates (H#2) theme: “The solution must have a double check to the white king at least once.” Additives
any other theme are welcome. Multiple solutions, twins are acceptable. Fairy pieces and conditions are not allowed.Judge: Viktor Zaitsev(Belarus)G) Helpmates (H#3) theme: In set play, two or three black officers (not pawns) are captured. The same officers
are in the solution used to block the squares around the black king. Twins are allowed, but there must be a set play
and solution for each twin. All forms of twins are allowed.Judge: Ladislav Packa (Slovakia)Send to tournament director: H#2 and H#3 to HJamal M Elbaz (Morocco) E-mail: allamjamal2@gmail.com
Prizes, honourable mentions and commendations will be awarded. Send problems in format PDF.
Closing date: 15. 08. 2020. The award – 2020
All received problems will be presented to the judge in anonymous form.
Award will be published on the website: http://frme.cf/