Mediaboss Marketing

Chess is a game so complex that even with all our computing power it remains unsolved, which means that the perfect strategy has yet to be determined. And that's just boring old regular chess. It gets considerably more complicated when you and your opponent can use time travel to send your chess pieces into the past and create different parallel universes. Now thinking ahead isn't enoughyou have to start thinking a few dozen moves behind and a whole bunch of moves sideways.

I've played one game of 5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel, but that means I've really played several games of 5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel, because of the new timelines that spring up when you send chess pieces into the past and thus create new timelines in a parallel universe, you're constantly playing a number of slightly different games of chess at once.

Unsurprisingly, I lost, and I eventually could see why: I was checkmated by my opponent, not in any of the present realities but in one version of the past, which then became the new present, when they sent a bishop back to trap one of my kings. (I had two kings on that particular chessboard in that particular universe, having sent one back from the future and into the other king's reality in what I thought might be a clever move at the time. It was not.)

How does it all work? I'm afraid the current version of me hasn't figured it all out yet, but the brief trailer below will give you a small taste.

Did that help? That may not have helped. Here, try reading this Steam review from TheSpookiestUser:

"I was playing a game against a human opponent online, and at one point they sent a queen back in time from one of the ten timelines currently in play to put five of my past kings into check at once. I sent one of my own pieces even further back to stall, and they proceeded to send one of their queens back to the start of the game to try and beat me before I even got to that point. I was able to maneuver one of my bishops in the second-most divergent timeline into position to capture the queen in the alternate present once we got back to that point and save the game (I eventually won by checkmating their king 5 turns in the past)."

If you didn't find that helpful, either try waiting a few minutes to let it sink in, or better yet, travel a few minutes into the past to read it and maybe it'll be helpful to your alternate self when it catches back up to its version of now. There are also, blessedly, some guides to help you get started.

Original post:
If regular chess isn't hard enough for you, try 5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel - PC Gamer

Theoretically, I like chess. I learned it at a very young age, and defeated the uncle who taught me, hollowing his soul and cursing myself to a decade with nobody to play it with. That decade probably kept me from being the kind of person who memorises moves and has special names for things from a textbook. In a way, it made me.

5D Chess, on the other hand, makes me feel like that uncle likely did. This is not possible. How. What. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

I have yet to experience a single defeat or victory that I understood. And I dont like it.

The basic idea of 5D Chess is that instead of moving your pieces around as normal, you can (sometimes) send them back in time, to add them to an earlier state that the board was in. It does this not in the Achron way, with its single timeline periodically reordering events and erasing units in an attempt to enforce linear causality.

Instead, whenever a unit goes back in time, a new timeline is formed. This means two boards are now in play, running parallel to each other, and you have to make a move on each of them. You can then move pieces through time again, opening a third timeline, or crossing between the current two.

You might think this makes for some immensely satisfying matches where you and your opponent get embroiled in escalating mindgames and interlinked plots and decoys, only for one of you to pull off a brilliant victory by suddenly moving the piece you sent back in time for no apparent reason 8 moves ago.

What actually happens is that you keep winning games but you have absolutely no idea why. You see this? Im playing as black here, and Ive just won. I didnt question it at first.

Cuh, pfft, OBVIOUSLY Sin this is Horgdens 9th Upper Galician maneouvre, you amateur. Did you even study chess?

But then no. No, this isnt checkmate. They can move their king. And its not hopeless either. If they move their king to the right, theyre fine. I cant even hurt them much on my next turn. Sure, theyre clearly on the defensive, and I fancy my chances, but its still open.

An old friend called our playstyle Erosion Chess. Devastating each others armies as much as possible is more fun than a rapid technical knockout.

A few games later I think I got why this one was checkmate. After suffering several defeats that were very similar, I learned that you lose the game if you cant make as many moves as there are active timelines. Quite often, if your king only has one escape route, its all over. This makes a charging queen even more absurdly powerful, and honestly? Its very anticlimactic. I keep being surprised by my own victories.

But it gets weirder than this. When you send a unit back in time, it doesnt move how youd expect. Say your bishop, which normally moves diagonally, moves to another board. It doesnt go directly to the same physical location, nor does it just transfer its diagonal moves to another board. Instead, each piece has its own new rules on how it moves when going back in time or jumping to another timeline.

Its a fun concept, but what it means in practice is now you have a tonne of new oblique rules to think about, and instead of a single board where you can see every possibility, you now need to scroll around and mentally cross-reference as many boards as there have been turns in the game so far, and potentially multiplied several times if you have several timelines going. And it means that games are often won because now a knight is actively threatening a load of extra squares on a board from six moves ago.

Ill be honest, I kind of hate it. The time travel is one thing, but combining it with the weird physical movement is such a ballache that I just end up playing regular chess instead, doing my best to ignore my opponents schemes. I am, ironically, like an old European king, idiotically playing pompous games while Napoleons armies cheat by being competent instead of posh. They didnt understand why they kept losing, and only won kind of by accident, too.

I stick to one timeline, and only travel in order to chase down and root out fleeing kings. I want a film about this now.

My brain is already an ever shifting Gordian knot of possibilities when Im not playing chess. I dont need this in my life. But what really gets me is this game:

Dont get me wrong, I was still a massive boffin in primary school. If Id got into chess Id be insufferable now.

Im playing as black, right. You might notice that the opponent has two kings dont worry about that too much. This is the second of two timelines, and their king from the original has fled here. If I capture either of the kings on this board I win. I have a few plans for doing that. I decide to move my pawn on the left to take the white horsey, giving room to bring my castle into play.

Its probably terrible being extreeeemely good at chess. After a certain point, winning every time must get embarassing.

Oh, thats checkmate. Ive won.

WHAT.

When I click on the exclamation mark, a line appears to explain that my horsey in the top right corner is able to take the king in the past? But neither of them has moved for several turns, so why can it do that now but what?

I hate it when people use castling defensively. Cowards. Send out your king. Outgrow your useless tyrant class. Join us.

For the sake of completeness, heres the other active board. I moved my bishop up a bit, threatening neither king.

I find an unusual trick more satisfying than winning, which probably explains a lot about my life.

WHAT? WHAT? HOW? HOW IN THE EVERLASTING CHRIST WAS THAT A WINNING I mean, uh ha ha! You see? Foolish challenger! You ignorant peasants should stick to ONE DEE chess, fnaw fnaw. I am very smart.

View post:
Actual 5D Chess proves that time travel should not be allowed - Rock Paper Shotgun

Josef was 28 when his son was born in Smichov, a district of Prague by the Vitava river, on 18 August 1898. His wife Matilda had made him thegreat gift of giving birth toa young boy. The boy would learn about law and chess, and start making his own chess puzzles, just like Josef did. While he didnt know all of this yet, the founder of papyrology in Czechia would name his son after himself: Josef Vanura.

When we talk about a man named Josef Vanura, usually we talk about the endgame studies composer. It is safe to assume that many readers will know his theoretical works, especially a rook endgame known as the Vanura position.

It seems that for the Vanura position (also sometimes called the Vanura draw), the position of the white king is not necessarily relevant, as both of those configurations are called the Vanura position (and indeed another one is given by Dvoretzky in the same book). Wikipedia quotes the first one. It is of note that White cant bring his king closer, and Ill go into more detail below, with the information from that source as well as John Beasleys British Endgame Study News the two relevant issues are Special Number 63and the one fromSeptember 2010, as found linked at the Chess Composers Blogspot by Huber and Crian [pictured]. The latter issue only clarifies why for a long time it was thought his first name is Jan.

Black will draw because, if the white king tries to support his pawn, the rook can give checks on the f-file while the white king cant find any refuge. If White plays a6-a7, Black brings the rook to a6. Here we see why the king should be on g7. If the king was on f7, White could easily win: 1.a7 Ra6 2.Rh8 Rxa7 3.Rh7+. Although this should be an ancient maneuver, the oldest example I found is from Kling & Horwitz 1851. In any case, both Dvoretzky and Beasley agree that the Vanura position revolutionized the theory of this specific endgame, as many analyses before 1924 became or rather always were incorrect due to the new knowledge.

A short note on the publication where the famous draw position and many other endgame studies of the younger Josef Vanura appeared. For some time apparently it remained a mystery what the 28. jen was, while it has always beenknown that it is a historical Czech/Czechoslovakian commemoration day (the Czechoslovakian Republic was founded on28 October 1918). In the memory of these important events, a nationalist newspaper was founded under that name, running also a chess column. According to Ken Whyld, as referred to by Beasley, it was a Prague daily. As we taught the readers two years ago, F. J. Prokopran its chess column for a while.

Our tale is a sad one, as even in 1924, when the position was first published, its author had left this world. This must have been an event that caused great pain to the elder Josef Vanura for the rest of his life (see the study in the final note).

It is of note that there is a sequence of moves that leads to the Vanura position, but that requires the rook to go to the other rook file first. Dvoretzky wrongly attributed it to Romanovsky 1950, but already Orrin Frink discovered it in 1925.

Black to move can draw with 1.-Ra5+ 2.Ke6 Rh5!!, and: 3.Kd6 Rh6+ 4.Kc7 Rf6! with the Vanura position, or 3.Ra7+ Kg8 4.Rf7 Ra5! 5.Ra7 Rh5!, and if White tries to win with 6.Kd6 Rh6+ 7.Kc7, Black must cautiously play either 7.-Rg6! or 7.-Rf6!, creating a Vanura draw, for example 7.-Rg6 8.Ra8+ Kh7!. If White plays 8.Kb8 instead, Black draws comfortably by any of four different moves, including the thematic 8.-Kh8 9.Ra8!? Kh7!.

The Frink position lends itself to some interesting introductory play, and I managed to create a rundlauf, i.e. the rook starting at f6 and returning to its original square.

While the theoretical value of this is debatable, the artistic value of the maneuver 1.-Rf2! 2.Kg5 R:a2 3.Kf5 Ra5+ 4.Ke6 Rh5! 5.Kd7 Rh6 6.Kc7 Rf6! exists despite only the first one and a half moves being completely original.

Josef Vanura (jr.), despite his short life, made at least two important contributions to endgame theory. The position above is one of them, the other is in the endgame of rook and a/h-pawn against the bishop that controls the promotion square. He also researched the other colored bishop, and while one of my favorite simple endgame study endings was shown by him, it was shown earlier by Duras and also Mouterde. However, the young Josef Vanura also analyzed the opposite case.

During his short life, Josef Vanura worked as a scrivener and public notary according to the Dutch endgame study association ARVES. Unfortunately, I have no further biographic information available.

While finishing my article, I found that Edward Winter already had quoted the obituary that I asked Emil Vlask about (see below) in his Chess Notes. Winter there links to an article in Pat a Mat where my suspicion was confirmed that the father of the deceased master handed over the sketchbook of around 70 endgame studies to another composer said composer was not Prokop or Dedrle, as I had suspected, but Duras (sadly there is no mention of this in Prokops 1944 chess-biographical book Duras vtz). Josef Martink unfortunately did not give his source, neither did he give the source for the cause of the early death that he mentions. It seems that some of the studies are permanently lost, as the remains of the sketchbook are unknown, which usually means that after so many years only a miracle could turn it up again.

John Beasley writes in his British Endgame Study News, special number 63, June 2010:

Seven of his studies appear in the Russian edition of Averbakh (five in the English edition), eleven are in Cheron, and five are in John Nunn's Secrets of rook endings.

As I was unable to obtain the 28. jen, I asked Emil Vlask to translate for me the relevant information from the obituary given by Frantiek Dedrle in asopis eskoslovenskch achist, issue 02/1922, where also an original by Josef Vanura appeared. Sadly it seems to have no new information.

The father worked as a professor of Roman Law at the University of Prague (also known as the Charles University). He is considered the founder of papyrology in Czechia. In 1925, he joined the Czech Academy of Science and Art. This information from the German Wikipedia is supplied by the Czech version, where we also learn that he became an extraordinary member of the Royal Czech Society of Sciences. Vanura was the dean of Charles University in 1910/1911, 1911/1912, 1924/1925. In 1926/1927 he was rector of the University. Other important dates in his life were 1893, when he graduated from Law at the Czech University. Afterwards he practiced Law for a short while before joining the Czech Provincial Committee where he became secretary in 1898, the same year hehabilitated for Roman Law at the Czech Faculty of Law. As we saw earlier, his son was born the same year.

He was the opening speaker of the first Ukrainian Scholarly Congress in Prague as rector of the Charles University, where it was held from 3 to 7 October 1926. The congress was organized by the migr academic community. (Source: Nadia Zavorotna: Scholars in Exile: The Ukrainian Intellectual World in Interwar Czechoslovakia. University of Toronto Press 2020. Page 48-49).

Josef Vanura (sr.) composed chess problems, although not endgame studies. In the replayable section, the endgame studies are of his son, he composed the one problem. Sadly I was unable to find more of his problems in easily-available public sources.

Mistakenly, some sources give the first name of either the father or son as Jan.

One of the great motivations for most articles in this column is to remind of the great study composers of the past, as per George Eliots quote, Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.and while this necessarily involves swiftly talking about death, rarely do we explore the relationships of parents and their children, as we do here, where by no doubt a long-lasting effect on the happiness of the surviving parents is left.

For interested readers I found a psychological study by Moor and de Graaf. They found: Ten years after the death of a parent or child, bereaved people are still unhappier than people who have not experienced the death their relative(Moor, N., de Graaf, P.M. Temporary and Long-Term Consequences of Bereavement on Happiness. J Happiness Stud 17, 913936, 2016).

Please do not hesitate to get medical and psychological assistance if needed.

Click or tap an entry in the list to switch positions

You probably know that you can move pieces on our replay boards to analyse and even start an engine to help you. You can maximize the replayer, auto-play, flip the board and even change the piece style in the bar below the board.

At the bottom of the notation window on the right there are buttons for editing (delete, promote, cut lines, unannotate, undo, redo) save, play out the position against Fritz and even embed the ChessBase game vieweron your website or blog. Hovering the mouse over any button will show you its function.

Endgame Turbo 5 USB flash drive

Perfect endgame analysis and a huge increase in engine performance: Get it with the new Endgame Turbo 5! This brings the full 6-piece Syzygy endgame tablebases on a pendrive. Just plug it in a USB socket and you are set!

World Federation for Chess Composition (www.wfcc.ch)

Visit link:
Check Czech Chess: Father and son Josef Vanura - Chessbase News

Madibaz student Charlize van Zyl will use the time left ahead of South Africas entry into the Online Chess Olympiad to fine-tune her preparations for the competition in August.

This tournament has been set up after the actual Chess Olympiad, scheduled for Russia next month, was postponed to 2021 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Earlier this year Van Zyl was chosen for the South African team after she excelled in a qualification tournament where she won the womens section by two points without suffering any losses.

Although the disruption caused by the pandemic has created some frustration, the 20-year-old said she was looking forward to the challenge when SA joins the competition on August 20.

This online format is very different, but I really enjoy it, she said. We will be playing on our laptops or desktops on the biggest online chess-playing platform Chess.com.

We will be closely monitored through webcams and microphones, so although it is different to live chess as you are not directly facing your opponent, which in itself is a huge psychological factor, your every movement is still being watched.

Other than that, it is a lot more comfortable than live competition or over-the-board chess as you can play from the comfort of your own home with no distractions caused by other players.

The third-year BA student said one of the chief differences was the time allowed in which players had to make their moves.

The time control will be quite different. For the normal Olympiad and most prestigious over-the-board tournaments, the time control allows games to stretch on for hours.

But in this competition we will have 15 minutes, plus five seconds. This means that both you and your opponent will start with 15 minutes and get an additional five seconds added to your clock for every move that you make.

It means that games will not exceed an hour.

She said her preparations would focus mostly on playing many games in this time format to get used to it.

The online competition is divided into different sections and has already started with the base division (5). There are a further three divisions (4 to 2) for which teams from the lower sections will be able to qualify as the tournament progresses.

The top 15 teams from division two will join the 25 teams who have already been placed in the top division, which includes South Africa.

Happily, being in the top division, we dont have to follow this long play-off system in the next month, said Van Zyl.

Each team is made up of six boards with two male players, two female players and two U20 male and female players. Each board has a reserve player, so in total we are 12 players.

It is going to be tough as we are already placed in the same division as strong chess countries such as Russia, China and the USA.

But we still have some time to prepare and I am looking forward to testing myself against some of the best chess players in the world!

Supplied

Originally posted here:
Chess star making all the right moves ahead of online Olympiad - Yiba

Russian human rights campaigner and chess supremo Gary Kasparov has said that the current economic crisis, which has led to unconventional monetary policy, will drive people towards bitcoin.

Bitcoins finite supply compares favorably to agenda-driven printing of money by governments, noted the Avast security ambassador, who also chairs the Human Rights Foundation and the Renew Democracy Initiative.

Speaking to Forbes on the intersection of human rights and new technologies, Kasparov said cryptocurrencies enable the public to regain control of personal finances at a time when unilateral moves by government and institutions are on the rise.

The good thing about bitcoin is that you know exactly the number the magic number of 21 million. And we understand the formula behind that. But when you look at the other side, the Fed for instance, you never know how many trillions of dollars will appear on the market tomorrow that will damage your savings, he observed.

Kasparov said cryptocurrencies potential for abuse gets overstated but it is the upside which must be harnessed to empower individuals. Crypto offers means to protect personal finances against inflation and state interference and anything that can offer us the opportunity to take back control or some control of our privacy is always welcome, the chess grandmaster said.

Thats why I think the steady rise in popularity of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology as a concept is inevitable, because its a response to the shift of power from individuals to states or other institutions that may act on our privacy without our consent, he added.

As chairperson of the Human Rights Foundation, Kasparov has promoted blockchain and cryptocurrency as a means to empower dissidents around the world.

For us, it was important for us to address every violation of human rights, and we were trying to help these people, most of them under severe attacks by their governments even if they left their countries, their financial accounts were hacked, their information was stolen so we have been providing special training courses.

He continued: Weve invited famous hackers to help them and to work with them we have been using every opportunity to offer them extra protection, and of course blockchain and bitcoin were very natural choices to incorporate into this strategy.

Kasparov also criticised the discriminatory treatment of customers from one territory to the other by tech giants and encouraged internet users to practice digital hygiene to stay safe from governments and other third parties.

What do you think about Kasparovs views toward crypto? Let us know in the comments section below.

Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a direct offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

See more here:
Chess Grandmaster Kasparov: Bitcoin Empowers the Public and Protects Dissidents | News - Bitcoin News