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With Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine ragingon, Svitlana Demchenko pauses to think about how she'll handle her next Russian opponent.

"I think it depends on the person not every Russian player has such strong opinions," saidthe 18-year-old Ottawa chess player, who holds the woman international master title and is one of Canada's highest-ranked competitors.

"I do not know how I would feel. I'm a bit conflicted."

Born in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv,Demchenkohas friends and relativesthere who've been sleeping in bomb shelters at night. Between those worriesand her university studies, chessisn't her biggest priority at the moment.

Nonetheless, the war, now more than a month old,is reverberating far beyond Ukraine's bordersand the world of chess is no exception.

Tournaments have been relocated. One top Russian player has been suspended for supporting Putin, while others are unable to play due to travel restrictions. There have been calls for the Russian head of governing bodyFIDEto resign,even though he's spoken out against the conflict.

Russia's ties to chess run long and deep, with players such as Garry Kasparov, Boris Spassky, Anatoly Karpov and Mikhail Botvinnik dominating the game's landscape for the better part of a century.

The country has twice as many grandmasters as any other, according to a 2021 post on chess.com, the most popular online chess site. Tens of thousandsplay the game recreationally.

So when Putin's forces invaded Ukraine in Marchit sent shock waves through the game's top levels, according to Victor Plotkin, the FIDErepresentative from theChess Federation of Canada(CFC).

The invasion prompted the CFC to both condemn Russia's "evil and illegal" actions and applaud the courage of the Ukrainian people. The federation also declared that, for now, no Canadians would compete in official events on Russian soil.

While dozens of top Russian playershave decried Putin's actions, some have stayed loyal including Sergey Karjakin, one of the world's best.

Before the war, Karjakin had qualified for the 2022 Candidates Tournament, an eight-person round-robin to determine who'lltake on Norwegian chess superstar Magnus Carlsen for the title of world champion in early 2023.

But after his comments, FIDE gaveKarjakin a six-month suspension, almost certainly meaning he won't be able to compete.

"I believe it's right, but it's a very strong decision by FIDE," Plotkin said. "It means that right at the top, Russia does have a problem."

The suspension of Karjakin, who was a win away from becoming world champion in 2016, isn't the only big development.

Several players have called for the head of FIDEArkady Dvorkovichto step down. That's because of Dvorkovich's close ties to the Kremlin he previously served as Russia's deputy prime minister.

Despite that fact many believe,political ties aside, he's done a good job in the role.

The 2022 Chess Olympiad, which draws teams of players from countries around the globe, has been relocated from Moscow to Chennai, India. International sanctions, meanwhile, are cutting into the sport's fundingas many Russian companies were sponsoring top-level tournaments, saidCFC president Vlad Drkulec.

Plotkin and Drkulec sayfor the moment, the war's effects are mostly being felt at thehighestlevels, ones that Canadian grandmasters tend not to reach. (As of FIDE's April 2022 rankings, Canada hadnoplayers in thetop 100.)

Nor is the chess board turning into a venue for political disagreements, said Drkulec, at least not among Canadian players of Russian and Ukrainian heritage.

"In Canada, I don't know anyone that's supportive of what [Putin's] doing there. And it just seems insane, really. He just seems to be wanting to break everything," he said.

"He's just like a petulant child, getting revenge right now."

Amidst all that uncertainty, the growingworld of online chesshas stepped upto help out the Ukrainian people.

Shortly after the invasion, U.S.grandmaster Hikaru Nakamuraone of the highest-profile online players, with more than 1.4 million followers on online gaming platform Twitch streamed chess-related content for 12 straight hours in a fundraiserthat brought in morethan $100,000 for humanitarian relief efforts.

"I think as a streamer, there should be a social implication that you should be doing something to help," said University of Toronto student Qiyu Zhou, who holds the woman grandmaster title andstreams chess and other e-sports to thousands of followers on her own Twitch channel.

Zhou took part in Nakamura's fundraiser, and has also hosted her own. Aside from "one or two trolls," her streams have been largely free of any political back-and-forths, she said.

The game'sinternational profile, Zhou added, makes online chess an ideal venue for raising money during the conflict.

"Chess players are definitely more in tune [with the war]than a lot of other streamers, just because we have friends in Ukraine, friends in Russia," Zhou said.

"I'm not faulting anybody for that, but I feel like as a whole, chess players did a really good job with fundraising."

As for Demchenko, shesaidwhile some onlinegames might be "more heated" than before, she'sseen an overwhelming amount of support for Ukrainian chess players and the prevailing sentiment is that almost everyone wants to help.

"The situation is just very scary and worrisome," Demchenko said. "I'm just in disbelief that this could even happen."

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How Russia's invasion of Ukraine is sending shock waves through the chess world - CBC.ca

In some games, you win or lose, but in a new game developed for students that uses the laws of quantum physics, you can win every time. So explains Spiros Michalakis, outreach manager for Caltech's Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, or IQIM. For the past two years, Michalakis has been helping to develop various games, events, and activities across the globe for the first-ever World Quantum Day, April 14.

As part of these efforts, Michalakis and others are developing lessons for middle school and high school students that teach the principles of quantum science. The initiative, called QuanTime, is sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and includes a host of additional partners. Five new classroom lessons will launch as part of World Quantum Day; Caltech helped develop two of them together with its partners Quantum Realm Games, Google, and Western Illinois University.

One of the lessons, titled Zeros and Ones, involves a game in which teams of students assign 1s and 0s to a grid based on a recreational math concept known as a magic square. This particular game is designed such that students have about a 90 percent chance of winning, but as they continue to play, their probability of winning every round goes down exponentially. However, the game takes a turn for the better when principles of quantum physics are invoked, such as superposition and entanglement. For example, in the quantum phase of the game, students can place a 0 or 1 into a state of superposition, which means that squares on the grid can contain both 0 and 1 at the same time. By using their "quantum powers," the students can now win the game every time.

"We are learnifying gaming, not gamifying learning," says Michalakis, who is the U.S. ambassador for World Quantum Day. Michalakis explains that the goal of the lessons is to give students a sense of the surprising behaviors of quantum, or subatomic, particles, which lie at the root of many future technologies, including quantum computers.

"We are trying to entice the future quantum workforce," says Michalakis. "Quantum computers were once science fiction, but they are being developed now and involve not just quantum physics but math, computer science, engineering, chemistry, and other fields." The field as a whole is called quantum information science and engineering, or QISE.

The other lesson, developed by Caltech and its partners Quantum Realm Games and Google, involves quantum chess. Quantum chess was conceived by Quantum Realm Games founder Chris Cantwell during weekly meetings with Michalakis at Caltech beginning in 2014. The game was featured in a video produced by IQIM in 2016 starring Stephen Hawking and Paul Rudd, and, later, in 2019, Cantwell partnered with Google to run the game on Google's prototype quantum computer.

Quantum chess resembles classic chess, but like the Zeros and Ones lesson, it incorporates the quantum weirdness of superposition and entanglement to give players more options. For example, players can decide to split their kings into a state of superposition, such that one king piece exists on two squares at once. If one player tries to capture their opponent's superposed king on one of the two squares, then there is only a 50 percent chance the king is actually there.

"We wanted to give people a way to interact with quantum physics outside of a lab, so the game is built on top of a true quantum simulation," says Cantwell. "This makes it possible for players to experience things like entanglement and interference, not just probability. I always felt that meaningful educational experiences could be built on top of quantum chess. It is cool to see that happening!"

The quantum chess puzzles for kids help them "build intuition about quantum physics," says Ricardo Olenewa, who leads quantum education for Google. "People learn best by doing things with their hands. Our puzzles give them a chance to imagine the quantum rules of nature in a physical reality."

All five of the new QuanTime lessons, which were piloted in November 2021 with the help of 20 teachers, are available at the official QuanTime website hosted by the national Q-12 Education Partnership. More information about World Quantum Day, including how to participate, is online at the initiative's website.

"Quantum underlies all of space and time, so really every day, throughout the universe, should be dedicated to quantum physics," says Michalakis. "Our knowledge is at a place now where we can really harness the power of the quantum world to transform society."

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Quantum in the Classroom - Caltech

Every day, even at 86, Manuel Aaron gets up from the living room in his Chennai apartment, crosses a corridor, often barefoot, to another flat on the same floor. Here, there are rows of tables and chairs, chess boards and notation books, where every evening 40 children come to be trained by him. After all, Aaron is Indias first International Master (IM) and a nine-time national champion, an inspiration for generations of Indian chess players to follow. I think it is this teaching that is keeping me alive, Aaron says, breaking into a smile.

The Tal Chess club, named after Mikail Tal, a Soviet-time world champion and Aarons hero as he grew up, began in the year 1972, under the shadow of the Cold War. It opened its doors at the Soviet Cultural Centre in Chennais bustling Nungambakkam.

Everything came from Moscow at that timethe chess sets, chess books and clocks. And we could use the place for free. I just had to manage the chess club, says Aaron. Chennai had no other places,other than the YMCA, which barely had infrastructure, where enthusiasts could go and play, and there was thus a steady stream of students. Among them was a certain Vishwanathan Anand.

There is now interest in chess in Chennai afresh, for the city is set to host the 2022 Chess Olympiad, after it was shifted, ironically, out of Russia under the shadow of another conflict, this time with Ukraine.

Aarons rise

Aaron was born in December 1935 in Toungoo, a British colony in Burma, after his parents, originally from Thoothukudi, migrated there due to poverty. By 1941, Aaron was back in Madras, already interested in chess, having watched his parents play. He taught himself chess, his natural affinity for the game making it easier. Most of the players of my generation never had a coach. It was Tamil that I found difficult, Aaron said.

Learning about chess was not easy as Aaron grew up. When he was an undergraduate B Sc student in Allahabad, he couldnt afford to buy the 6th edition of the Modern Chess Opening, which cost 16, until his older sister bought it for him. Decades later, Aaron founded Chess Mate in 1982, a monthly magazine. Now run by his son Arvind Aaron, the latest edition has on its cover the 16-year-old Grandmaster R Praggnanandhaa and his stunning win against world champion Magnus Carlsen.

In 1955, after college, when Aaron came back to Madras, he had thought he would be an engineer. Because everyone thought if you became an engineer, life would be good, Aaron says.

There was pressure from the family too. His father often asked him what chess would feed him. But Aaron was steadfast. But it did feed me. I got a job at the Indian Bank only because of chess, he adds. Aaron moved around a lot with his siblings and lived with different relatives. We had a very hard life. It taught me patience, I learnt to remain calm under pressure, he says. It also made him one of the finest defensive players. No matter how good you are as an attacking player, it cannot save you if you do not know how to defend.

His childhood influenced him intensely to be number one. I didnt aspire to be a Grandmaster, but I wanted to be the number 1 in whatever I did. All my life, everywhere at home or in school I had only been number two or three.

In 1961, Aaron became Indias first IM after winning titles that made him the number 1 in Asia. The following year, he was also the first chess player to receive the Arjuna Award in 1962. It was in Germanys Olympiad in 1960 where USSR won and he played against his idol Tal in a blitz match conducted a day after the tournament. To Aarons glee, he drew against the mighty Tal.

In 1971, Russia sent Grandmaster Alexey Suetin to train Indian players for a month in Pune. Suetin wanted the players to show him games in which they had lost. And most of them had lost to me, says Aaron, who was also being trained at the camp. Suetin advised Aaron to change his opening move from d4 (a queens pawn opening) to e4 (the more widely played and traditional kings pawn opening). Aaron followed the advice and in the next national championship, won the title with two rounds to spare.

Anand & Aaron

In 2012 after Vishwanathan Anand beat Boris Gelfand at the World Championship held in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin asked him where he had trained. When Anand replied that it was at the Tal Club in Chennais Soviet Centre, Putin remarked that Anand was a problem they had brought upon themselves, Aaron says.

Anand was such a nuisance, says Aaron. He used to constantly ask questions and he would never let me finish my class. But he always asked relevant questions. I knew this boy was going to be someone great. Aaron also taught chess using foreign literature, which he translated from Russian, German and rarely French. Anand poked holes in that too, he says.

While he was coaching, Aaron also became secretary of the Tamil Nadu Chess Association (TNCA) for two stints in the 1970s and 90s. It gave him a more formal role to promote, improve and professionalise chess across the state. Spasky and Anand fuelled a spurt in chess, he says. It gave birth to more clubs, and in the 90s, Chennai had tournaments almost every weekend, and the competition was tight. 36% of 66 GMs in India as of 2020 are from Tamil Nadu. Most of the unemployed chess players started academies. There is a value for chess here and more opportunities, says Aaron.

In a sense, Aaron says, life has come full circle for him, with Chennai hosting the Chess Olympiad, which is also the first such in India since the tournaments inception in 1929.

I used to think India couldnt conduct the Olympiad because we have so many uncertainties, natural disasters. We have basic problems in electricity, water shortage.

But now that the Olympiad is here, there is another aspect Aaron feels about strongly.

Do you see whats happening to the Muslims in our country? Arent they our people too? Aaron says.

Divya Chandrababu is an award-winning political and human rights journalist based in Chennai, India. Divya is presently Assistant Editor of the Hindustan Times where she covers Tamil Nadu & Puducherry. She started her career as a broadcast journalist at NDTV-Hindu where she anchored and wrote prime time news bulletins. Later, she covered politics, development, mental health, child and disability rights for The Times of India. Divya has been a journalism fellow for several programs including the Asia Journalism Fellowship at Singapore and the KAS Media Asia- The Caravan for narrative journalism. Divya has a master's in politics and international studies from the University of Warwick, UK. As an independent journalist Divya has written for Indian and foreign publications on domestic and international affairs....view detail

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Teaching chess keeps me alive: Indias first IM Aaron continues tryst with 64 squares - Hindustan Times

Sam faces Jalena tonight (Picture: ITV)

Sam Blakeman (Jude Riordan) takes his seat for the finale of the chess tournament in tonights episode of Coronation Street.

This week, after discovering Sam had secretly been playing chess with Roy (David Neilson), Nick (Ben Price) accepted his son was basically a child genius and allowed him the chance to play in a chess tournament held in the bistro.

Sam beat his opponent, Oscar (who was played by Judes brother) and was thrilled to realise he was through to the final.

Oh, he also had to remind his dad to pipe down a bit as hes watching a chess match, not a football game.

Tonight, Nick goes over some chess tactics with Sam, convinced his son is going to wipe the floor with his opponent.

He takes his seat opposite Jalena but will he take the crown?

Whether Sam will be crowned winner is something were keeping secret for now, but what we can reveal is that the young lad is set to develop a bit of a crush on Jalena.

After telling Roy and Hope (Isabella Flanagan), Sam sits down with his dad and confesses all he likes Jalena.

Nick smiles as he gives Sam some advice on lurrrrve but how will things go?

MORE : 25 soap spoilers: Coronation Street sad goodbye, Emmerdale verdict, EastEnders protest, Hollyoaks fire horror

Includes exclusive content, spoilers and interviews before they're seen on the site. Find out more

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Sam falls in love over a chess board in Coronation Street - Metro.co.uk

Long before Beth Harmon saw visions of chess boards on her ceiling in the Queens Gambit series, Canadian Hans Jung was experiencing the very same thing at home.

His parents insisted he go to bed early on school nights, but hed spend the time analyzing imaginary positions. It led to a career as a chess master and a practitioner of blindfold chess.

Jungs most impressive performance came in 1993 in London, Ont. when he played 26 people simultaneously without ever looking at any board. He was pumped right after, but suffered bad vertigo over the next two days.

Its like the Ironman of chess, says Jung of blindfold play. Now in his 60s, he says blindfold ability declines with age, but hes confident he could still do five boards at once.

Jung worked for years as the City of Kitcheners chess co-ordinator, and hopes to be organizing more activities soon in his current role at Waterloo Public Library. Blindfold play always draws a crowd, but the number of people who can do it is very small.

Timur Gareyev holds the current world blindfold record. He played 48 simultaneous games in Las Vegas five years ago, winning 35 and drawing seven.

15. Nf7! If the Black Queen moves, 16. Qxe6 is deadly. But if Kxf7 then White plays 16.Qxe6+ anyway, because Kxe6 17.Ng5 is mate, and other Black moves lose as well.

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Chess is hard; blindfold chess is much tougher - The Globe and Mail