Did I say chess is like boxing?

See MonRoi, a wireless device for recording chess moves.

See MonRoi criticized.

See MonRoi commit possibly the worst, most non-Internet-savvy marketing hari-kari in recent memory!

In a nutshell, the company responded to some mild criticism, posted by commenters on the most prominent English-language chess blog in the world, by repeatedly lambasting the posters and hinting about lawsuits if the blogger doesn’t remove the offending comments AND fork over the IP addresses of the commenters.

So now, see MonRoi’s target market, chess players, ripping MonRoi a new one in the thread above:

“Hey MonRoi – YOU SUCK. Come and get me. Please spend a lot of time and effort trying to squeeze out my IP address from Mig, energy you won’t be using to, you know, actually focus on your product and marketing. Write to the Canadian Bureau of Hurt Feelings, and have them exercise their mighty might over the U.S. and its citizens. That process should take you at least a few months, and I hope it leads to your government revoking whatever funding they are providing to you under the “incompetency” clause….”

Go, MonRoi, Go!

Crowd control then and now

Here’s a scary video of a crowd collapse, i.e. people packed too tightly at a stadium such that, when one person falls over, they all fall over. The knock-down is toward the end, maybe 2 minutes in.  The video is part of my colleague Scott Berinato’s look at crowd control. They’ve got it all down to a science – exactly how much space people need seated or walking; what geometries facilitate crowd flow; what type of music to play before and after a sporting event; what kind of signage works or doesn’t.

That’s no surprise, though I find the details fascinating.

What is perhaps more surprising is that people in ancient times already had it down to a science. The stadium in Pompeii seated 30,000 and could be emptied completely in ten minutes. In fact, Pompeii was better designed than most modern stadia, which of course have cut corners, so to speak, for commercial reasons.

Do I not work for a cool publication? I do.

Chess, like boxing

Chess and boxing are governed in an equally incompetent and nutty manner.

Did you know that the head of the world chess federation (FIDE), Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, is the despotic ruler of Russian Federation state Kalmykia (Europe’s only Buddhist state)? And that he claims to have been visited by aliens? And that Larisa Yudina, the most prominent opposition journalist in Kalmykia , was found stabbed to death in 1998?And that despite helping run the game’s popularity into the ground (much as boxing’s popularity is said to be on the wane), Ilyumzhinov keeps his autocratic position in the chess world by virtue of pumping out million-dollar prize funds for destitute grandmasters, and by rather bare-facedly coercing support (via bribes) from third-world countries?

Did you know that, for the past many years, chessplayers have argued endlessly over who is the current world champion, just as various promoters fractured the belt-holding situation in boxing over the years? 

Did you know that FIDE is now reviving (sort of) the tradition of “candidates’ matches” to determine the next challenger – and that former Russian prodigy Gata Kamsky, now a US resident with a law degree – is playing against former French prodigy Etienne Bacrot, who has largely abandoned chess because he can make much more money playing poker? And that the candidates’ matches are taking place in the chess palace in Elista, the city where Yudina was murdered?

Did you know that the recently concluded US Championship was nearly canceled after losing a lucrative sponsorship, allegedly in large part due to the presence on the US Chess Federation’s board of a person widely regarded as a nut job? And that of the top ten finishers in the tournament this year, one is from Cuba and the other nine from Russia and other former Soviet states?

And they say chess is boring. Yeesh.

The Baobab

The weird tree pictured in Reassembler’s header image is a Baobab. It’s native to Africa - in fact it’s the national tree of Madagascar – and grows a fruit called monkey bread. I had never seen or heard of the Baobab until we shot this picture in Disney’s Animal Kingdom park. (Guess I should get out of the US more often!)

Words of the day: reassemblies

Fulcrumb   The exact point on a slice of pie that counterbalances the crust, such that when your fork cuts off the fulcrumb, the piece of pie falls over backwards. A culinary tipping point.

Javoulet     A cassoulet is a French stewpot dish of white beans and herbs and duck or goose or lamb etc. The longer you cook it, the more tender and aromatic and tasty it becomes. Legend has it that in some French countryside restaurants, the cassoulet pot never gets emptied or washed. Every night they just add more new beans and more meat and keep stewing, using the day’s leftovers like bread starter. Javoulet is a mashup of cassoulet and java, denoting the ever-more-fungal stuff drunk by office workers who never wash out their coffee mugs.

Yeah, I made those up.

Adrian Belew

I remember quite distinctly the first time I heard Adrian Belew. I was working on a crew painting the dorms at UNC, and somebody on our small team threw this very odd, buzzy, noisy song (it was Big Electric Cat) into the tape player. (Yeah, tapes! 1988.) I kept saying “This is really bizarre” and then the next day, I said, “Hey, put that one back in again.” The next year I had a roommate who had the albums Lone Rhino and Twang Bar King, and I was hooked.

You might or might not know who Adrian Belew is. But if you’re my age, you’ve heard him, because he’s played guitar with Zappa, Bowie, King Crimson, Talking Heads, Nine Inch Nails and so on. His solo work is a bit kooky – particularly the early bits where he makes animal noises with his electric guitar. Elephants, rhinoceros etc. Yes, very kooky.

Anyway the video clip on his home page is well worth a spin. It’s a short narrative, his life in a nutshell, but also a selective chronical of rock over the last twenty years (plus). At the end, he says, “Too  much of today’s music is fashionable crap dressed as artistry. It’s mostly about how you look or the way you dance….But things go in cycles. Maybe creativity will become fashionable again….I can’t wait to see what happens next.”

Words of the day: assemblies

Witnagemot: an anglo-saxon advisory board on administrative and judicial affairs, comprising about 100 nobles and prelates and so forth

Eisteddfod: an annual gathering of Welsh poets and musicians

Folkting: the Swedish Assembly of Finland (yes)

Nothing to lose

I want to continue my Rob Deer / favorite losses series of chess posts. However, I can’t seem to find the score I’m looking for – a loss to John Kirby in which I played a piece sacrifice that literally caused one spectator’s jaw to drop open in surprise. (Unfortunately, obviously, the sacrifice didn’t work.)

Fear of losing is a real killer in chess. Freedom from fear is a big factor in creativity and, ultimately, in achieving good results. When you’re the statistical underdog by a huge margin, that tends to provide just that sort of freedom. After all, if I lose to an IM, who’s surprised?

Slater (1989) – IM Foygel (2489), Metrowest Chess Club 20051.e4 g6 2.d4 Bg7 3.Nc3 c6 4.Nf3 d6 5.h3 Nd7 6.Be2 Qc7 7.0-0 Ngf6 8.a4 a5 9.Re1 0-0 10.Be3 Rd8 11.Qd2 e5 12.Rad1 exd4 13.Bxd4 Nf8
White is going to sacrifice a couple of pawns here in exchange for a very active rook on Black’s back rank. And some vague threats against f8 and f7. I should note here that Igor has beaten me in 9 rated games, many of them quite ugly thrashings. Why not swing for the fences? As I noted earlier, every once in a while Rob hit one out. In this case I am luckily aided by an apparent oversight – I think Igor simply overlooked 21.Bd3.
14.e5 dxe5 15.Bxe5 Rxd2 16.Bxc7 Rxc2 17.Rd8 Rxb2 18.Ne5 Rc2 19.Nb1 Nd5 20.Bd6 b5 21.Bd3 Rb2 22.Nxc6 Bb7 23.Rxa8 Bxa8 24.Bxb5 Ne6 25.Rd1 Bxc6 26.Bxc6 Nb4 27.Bb5 Bd4 28.Nd2 Nd5 29.Ne4 Nc3 1/2-1/2.
Even here, if he played on it’s likely that he would end up crushing me. But we were both short on time and he perhaps decided to avoid potential accidents, since I have the two bishops.