Archive for December 5th, 2009

I have commented before on the way Barack Obama is portrayed as a “chess master” on the world political stage (see Obama as Chess Master and Obama as Chess Master, Part Two). Today GM Kevin Spraggett points us to a spate of images (to which we add one from yesterday’s Daily Telegraph) that show Obama playing chess under nearly impossible conditions: against multiple opponents, as the clock winds down, his head nearly engulfed in smoke, and with the board stretching forth interminably before him. Yet in all of these images he retains his composure, even while performing a handstand. Do you think, maybe, we are expecting a little too much of him?

A very important aspect of chess strength is the ability to "see"
things on the chessboard, and see them quickly. Our flagship program Fritz 12
has a number of function – probably unkown to many users – that
help you train your visualisation skills. In his latest ChessBase Workshop installment
Steven Lopez demonstrates one very useful training function in his streaming
video lecture.

It was not a protracted tiebreak, which can theoretically go over 15 games. It took just three for Boris Gelfand and Ruslan Ponomariov to get into the semifinals. The Israeli GM beat Dmitry Jakovenko in two rapid games, and drew one; the Ukrainian took out Vugar Gashimov with the same result (that makes it 2:0 for Ukraine over Azerbaijan in the quarterfinals). Full illustrated report.

As we reported
some weeks ago, Marilyn young, Bobby Fischer’s “Filipina live-in partner”,
is claiming rights to the late champion’s estate for their common daughter Jinky.
The claim has been filed with Icelandic courts, and during their visit
a blood sample was drawn from Jinky and submitted for DNA ananlysis. Marilyn’s
lawyer Samuel Estimo sent us the following report from Reykjavik.