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Zhuolu Chess is a unique minigame that players will encounter plenty of times throughout their playthrough of Xuan-Yuan Sword VII. If youre like me, the brief tutorial paired with the poorly translated instructions left me scratching my head as to what this minigame is all about. Its important to familiarize yourself with zhuolu chess rules as, like Gwent in The Witcher 3, winning against certain opponents unlocks additional dialogue for you to enjoy. Here Ill be explaining the rules of zhuolu chess so you can breeze through this minigame every time.

Zhuolu chess feels nothing like chess, but more a mix of checkers and Tic-tac-toe. At the start of the match, you pick six unique pieces from your collection. Each of these has special attributes. Such as the Yinglong, that cannot be taken if there is an adjacent friendly piece. After choosing your six unique pieces, you will be given six normal pieces that dont possess any attributes, and the game begins.

Each turn, you and your opponent take turns placing down a piece onto one of the boards twenty-four positions. The objective is to get three of your pieces to line up. Its similar to Tic-tac-toe in that way. If you successfully line up three pieces, you can take one of your opponents pieces off the board.

This will take his piece out of the game and create an abandoned slot that will block both you and your opponent. This makes deciding which piece to take extremely significant, as you dont want to block yourself off from a potential play.

Because there are only twenty-four positions on the board, the game will automatically end once all twelve of both players pieces are down. After the match, the winner is crowned. The winner is the player that claimed the most opponents pieces.

Remember that winning against an opponent for the first time will often be rewarded with a unique piece. So play every opponent you come across to build up your set. Now you are undoubtedly an expert on zhuolu chess. Well, maybe not. The game is much more nuanced than it appears, but at least you unlock the achievement hit the board running for winning your first match.

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How to win at zhuolu chess in Xuan-Yuan Sword VII - Gamepur

Nearly a month ago, I called for an urgent24-day full national lockdown, arguing that therestrictions were unlikely to make a significant difference in reducing transmission. If we had acted strongly and decisively then, and implemented a circuit-breakerlockdown as we now know that the government's scientific advisory group Sagealso wanted we would be in a much stronger position today.

Many readers considered it a controversial and unwise strategy. The government agreed, declining Sage's advice and instead announcing the eventual rollout of a three-tier system covering areas of medium, high and very high risk, each with their ownrestrictions. Yet case rates, hospitalisations and deaths continue to increase across the country.

This prompted Sir Keir Starmer to finally call for a national two to three weekcircuit break. The Labour leader hascorrectly recognised that the current mixture of restrictions and pseudo-mini-lockdowns which have no clear end or exit-strategy are likely to yield an even greater negative economic impact than a national, brief and finite circuit break after which we could fully reopen the economy.

So why isnt the governments strategy working? After all, the central premise of the restrictions makes sense: if we reduce peoples contact with others in areas of particularly high prevalence, then the virus will struggle to infect new hosts.

It has failed because this isnt a chess game. People arent pawns that can be moved about without ever objecting to whatever strategy the player is employing in each move. Managing pandemics is instead much more like managing a football team. You can have the best players who in theory should always win you the game, but football, like epidemic management, isnt as simple as that.

What is needed in epidemics, like in a successful football team, is collective harmony. The majority of people need to be on board with a particular strategy. This will depend on them clearly understanding whats required of them, that everyone else is putting in a fair and equal effort and, crucially, a belief that their collective adherence to the strategy will make a significant difference. This is what happened during the first lockdown in March and why it was so strongly adhered to.

These principles align with what we know about health behaviour science, an important toolkit that I believe the government has crucially failed to effectively leverage. Most health behavioural models emphasise the importance of motivation. Simply put, if people are motivated enough, they will at least try to adhere to actions designed to protect their health. Behavioural science also highlights how fragile motivation can be and how perception underpins it.

It is clear that today we do not, as a nation, have collective harmony or motivation. This is because of many factors but an important one is perception. Many people simply do not perceive the governments restrictions as making sense because, frankly, many of them do not. Consider those people living under the very high tier whose motivation is likely to be particularly fragile given the sacrifices they are being asked to make.

To protect their motivation to adhere, these people will need clarity on why their particular area is classified as very high while a neighbouring area is not. They will question why their local gyms are closed but restaurants can remain open. Some will question whether a local lockdown is really a lockdown when schools and some workplaces remain open. Many will also question why we are making such sacrifices for a virus perceived to be of little threat to public health. Crucially, they will question the overall strategy as well as askingwhen this will all endand what happens after the second wave is over.

This is why a finite, national and even approach is much more likely to be effective than a fragmented locally targeted one. A collective national approachwill mean people are much more likely to perceive the measures as fair. With just one set of clear rules, the confusion over different restrictions for neighbouringareas will be eliminated and there will be unified clarity on what is expected. Most importantly, there will be a sense of optimism given that a circuit breaker has a finite end followed by thefull re-opening the economy.

The post-second wave strategy should also be made clear now. People need to know what the government is planning for the long-term. It should be made clear that case rates are likely to increase again but that they will do so at a much slower rate. This should allowour weapons widespread testing and track and trace to increase their effectiveness. And when the second wave does indeed pass, the government must value the expert advice of Sage including their health behaviour scientists and stop viewing the public as willing pawns in a game of chess.

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Chess vs football: The vital distinction in restriction strategy - Spectator.co.uk

By: PTI | Chennai | October 18, 2020 10:31:59 pm(Representational Image)

Indian men on Sunday qualified for the quarterfinals of the Asian Online Nations (Regions) Cup Team Championship after finishing sixth in the Swiss system preliminary round.

The top-seeded Indians endured a day of mixed fortunes, winning one match, losing one and drawing the other. They face Mongolia in the last eight stage on October 23.

Starting the day with a 1.5-2.5 loss at the hands of the Philippines in the seventh round, the team led by Surya Sekhar Ganguly bounced back to outclass Bangladesh 3.5-0.5 in round eight before settling for a thrilling 2-2 draw against Australia.

In the match against Australia, the 16-year-old Nihal Sarin provided the crucial win, beating Termur Kuybokarov after B Adhiban had lost to Anton Smirnov. S P Sethuraman and K Sasikiran drew their games.

In the eighth round, Adhiban, Ganguly and Sasikiran posted victories while Sethuraman was held to a draw by Reffat Bin-Sattar.

The fourth-seeded Philippines team had pulled off a 2.5-1.5 win over India in the seventh round with Reglio Barcenilia putting it across Ganguly while Sarin, Sethuraman and Sasikiran drew their games.

Sasikiran was the best performer for India, winning eight of his nine games while Sarin won four of his five and Ganguly five out of the seven he played.

Iran finished on top of the heap at the conclusion of the preliminaries with 15 Match Points (2 MPs for a win, 1 for a draw) followed by Philippines and Mongolia.

The tournament is being played on nine-round Swiss System preliminaries in both mens and womens division with a time control of 15 minutes plus 5 seconds increment.

The top eight teams qualify for the knockout stage of quarter-finals, semi-finals and finals. Each stage will be a duel of two matches. There are cash prizes worth USD 20,000 and gold, silver and bronze certificates as individual board prizes on offer in the preliminary stage.

The women will play their matches in the seventh to ninth rounds on Monday with the top-seeded Indians in joint top spot with Philippines and Iran.

The tournament will conclude with the finals on October 25.

The Indian Express is now on Telegram. Click here to join our channel (@indianexpress) and stay updated with the latest headlines

For all the latest Sports News, download Indian Express App.

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Asian Online Team Chess: India finishes 6th in preliminary round, qualifies for quarterfinals - The Indian Express

10/18/2020 Star columnist Jon Speelman explores the exchange sacrifice. Speelman shares five illustrative examples to explain in which conditions giving up a rook for a minor piece is a good trade. As a general rule and in fact (almost all?) of the time you need other pieces on the board for an exchange sacrifice to work. | Pictured: Mikhail Tal and Tigran Petrosian following a post-mortem analysis at the 1961 European Team Championship in Oberhausen | Photo: Gerhard Hund

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Find the right combination! ChessBase 15 program + new Mega Database 2020 with 8 million games and more than 80,000 master analyses. Plus ChessBase Magazine (DVD + magazine) and CB Premium membership for 1 year!

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[Note that Jon Speelman also looks at the content of the article in video format, here embedded at the end of the article.]

During the Norway tournament, I streamed commentarya couple of times myself at twitch.tv/jonspeelman, but mainly listened to the official commentaryby Vladimir Kramnik and Judit Polgar.

Both were very interesting, and Kramnik in particular has a chess aesthetic which I very much like. In his prime a powerhouse positional player with superb endgame technique, he started life much more tactically and his instinct is to sacrifice for the initiative whenever possible, especially the exchange: an approach which, after defence seemed to triumph under traditional chess engines, has been given a new lease of life by Alpha Zero.

So I thought today that Id look at some nice exchange sacrifices, but first a moment from Norway where I was actually a tad disappointed by a winning sacrifice.

At the end of a beautiful positional game, which has been annotated here in Game of the Week, Carlsen finished off with the powerful

42.Re8!

and after

42...Qxe8 43.Qh6+ Kg8 44.Qxg6+ Kh8 45.Nf6

Tari resigned

Of course, I would have played Re8 myself in a game if Id seen it, but I was hoping from an aesthetic perspective that Carlsen would complete this real masterclass and masterpiece with a nice zugzwang.

You start with c4 to prevent 42.f3 c4, creating some very slight confusion and then it goes:

42.c4 Kg8 43.f3

And for example: 43...Qd7 44.Qh6 Qe6 45.Kg3 fxe4 (45...Rg7 46.Nf6+ Kf7 47.Qh8 Qe7 48.Kg2) 46.dxe4 Rf4 47.Nxf4 exf4+ 48.Kxf4 Qf7+ 49.Kg3 Qg7 50.Qxg7+ Kxg7 51.Rxf8

Black can also try43...Rh7

and here after 44.Rxf8+ Kg7

as the engine pointed out to me, its best to use the Re8 trick:

45.Qxh7+! (45.Rf6 is much messier) 45...Kxh7 46.Re8!

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The black queen is trapped.

For todays examples I used my memory and the ChessBase search mask when I couldnt track down a game exactly. For instance,for the first one byBotvinnik [pictured], I set him as Black with 0-1, disabled ignoring colours, and put Rd4 e5 c5 on the board which turned out to identify the single game I wanted a hole in 1!I also asked my stream on Thursday for any examples, and one of my stalwarts, a Scottish Frenchman, found me Reshevsky v Petrosian (I couldnt remember offhand who Petrosians opponent was) and drew my attention to the beautiful double exchange sacrifice by Erwin L'Ami from Wijk aan Zee B.

Before the games themselves, which are in chronological order,it might be worthwhile to consider what makes an exchange sacrifice successful. Whole books have been written on this and Im certainly not going to be able to go into serious detail. But a couple of points:

The need for extra pieces applies particularly to endgames. For instance,this diagram should definitely be lost for Black:

Its far from trivial, but as a general schema the white king should be able to advance right into Blacks guts and then White can do things with his pawns. Something like get Ke7 and Rf6, then g4 exchanging pawns if Black has played ...h5. Play f5, move the rook, play f6+, and arrange to play Rxf7.

But if you add a pair of rooks then it becomes enormously difficult. And indeed I really dont know whether God would beat God.

Select an entry from the list to switch between games

Master Class Vol.11: Vladimir Kramnik

This DVD allows you to learn from the example of one of the best players in the history of chess and from the explanations of the authors (Pelletier, Marin, Mller and Reeh) how to successfully organise your games strategically, consequently how to keep y

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When 3 is greater than 5 - Chessbase News

The Queens Gambit includes more than 300 games, some glimpsed only in the foreground or background. To keep each match and each tournament from blending entirely into the next, the production designer, Uli Hanisch, developed unique color palettes to distinguish one locale from another. Steven Meizler, the cinematographer, varied the angles. The sounds the pieces make against the board change, as do the rhythms from allegro to adagio.

No traditional match plays out fully from start to finish. (A few speed chess sequences come close.) Typically, the camera captures only a few moves. Novice viewers rely on sportscasters or whispers among the audience or the gestures of the characters drummed fingers, blinked eyes, pursed lips to understand the dynamics and stakes.

For Beth, abandoned first by her birth parents and then by her adoptive family, the stakes tower. Only while playing does she feel a sense of purpose and belonging. In a later episode, Beth overhears some Russian champs discussing her. Shes like us, a grandmaster says. Losing is not an option for her. (This was dialogue Kasparov suggested.)

Beth struggles with her addictions, believing that tranquilizers enhance her play. The accuracy that defines the chess scenes perhaps falters here could someone play excellent chess while doped? I cant tell you Ive ever heard of a chess player performing on Valium, said Jennifer Shahade, a two-time United States Womens Champion.

Pandolfinis response: This is entertainment.

Whether a woman could play this well ever, on or off tranquilizers, has been a source of debate since the novel was released. One Times reviewer wondered whether women had the extreme aggressiveness required. Another doubted that women lacked the physical stamina. Those views didnt end in 1983.

At chess camp, Shahade remembered, a visiting lecturer told the girls that women lacked the I.Q. Shahade sees the lack of great women players as more of a social one: Women dont see other women playing so they dont take up the game themselves.

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The Queens Gambit Tries a Risky Play: Betting Chess Can Be Good TV - The New York Times