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Alexandra Botez, Vassily Ivanchuk and Aryan Tari will participate in the Reykjavk Open chess tournaments that starts on Wednesday. Composite image

A record-breaking attendance will be at the Reykjavk Open, which begins in Harpa on Wednesday and lasts for two weeks until April 4. Participants include 34 Grandmasters, including Russian chess legend Vassily Ivanchuk, who has the highest ELO score of the participants in the tournament.

A handful of chess world community stars attend the event, best known is Canadian chess player Alexandra Botez, who has about 1.3 million followers on Youtube. She boasts 2059 Elo points and her chess matches will be streamed online.

Next in the rankings of competitors after Ivanchuk are Swedish Grandmaster Nils Grandelius and Norwegian Grandmaster Aryan Tari, who has long been the second best North American and Nordic chess player after the World Champion, Magnus Carlsen.

Historically, this years Reykjavk Open Chess tournament has never been more popular, with around 400 competitors registered. This compares to last years total of 245 participants and an earlier record of 272 participants, as stated in a press release from the Icelandic Chess Federation.

The participants are from about 47 countries. Some 85 Icelandic chess players take part, making up nearly 80% of the participants. The largest number of foreign chess players come from Germany Germans or about 60. The Icelandic Chess Federations announcement also states that overnight stays that follow the tournament can be expected to number about 4,000.

Competitors come from countries such as Kazakhstan, Singapore, Australia and Sri Lanka, among others.

Six of the 34 Grandmasters participating this year are Icelandic, including the newest Icelandic Grandmaster, Vignir Vatnar Stefnsson. Of the Icelandic Grandmasters, in addition to Stefnsson, are Hjrvar Steinn Grtarsson, Hannes Hlfar Stefnsson, Jhann Hjartarson, Gumundur Kjartansson and rstur rhallsson, as well as womens Grand Champion Lenka Ptcnkov.

Chess is for everyone, and this is reflected in the age difference between the youngest and oldest competitors. The oldest competitors are 74 (born in 1949), while the youngest will be seven this year (born in 2016).

Chess explanations will be provided every day at Harpa by our strongest chess players, who do not participate. These include namesake and grandmasters Helgi lafsson and Helgi ss Grtarsson.

Chess aficionados are encouraged to make their way to Harpa to follow the tournament.

The tournament will officially be set on Wednesday, March 29, at 15.00, at which time Mayor Dagur B. Eggertsson will start the tournament and play its first move. The tournament is the 37th in history, with the first Reykjavk Open took place in 1964. The crowd is always welcome at the venue and free admission is available sponsored by Kvika. Asset Management and Brim.

About 50 matches will be available to watch directly online for each round on the tournament's website, http://www.reykjavikopen.com .

See the rest here:
Record attendance in Reykjavk Open - Iceland Monitor - Iceland Monitor

by Siegfried Hornecker

Continuing where we left off last June, i.e. after the year 1966, most basic ideas already were explored. As such, we can now concentrate more on interesting ideas connected to castling, instead of just the castling aspect itself. One such idea is happening in a study by Vitaly Kovalenko.

Vitaly Kovalenko

Tikhookeansky Komsomolets 1967, 1st prize (correction).

White to move and win.

The then young Russian master Vitaly Kovalenko (23 May 1947 - 5 March 2014) who won this tourney that first was announced in Primorsky Krai is not to be confused with multiple other people (an actor, volleyball player, or even professor of organic chemistry) of similar names. Judge Vitaly Tyavlovsky noted that not only the two prizewinners but also the first two honorable mentions of this tourney came from the Far East. Of Kovalenko's over 750 endgame studies, around 80 won prizes (source: Kovalenko obituary by Yuri Bazlov, EG 196, July 2014). The next endgame study of our article today coincidentally also is by Vitaly Kovalenko.

Vitaly Kovalenko. Problem October 1968.

White to move and win

Obviously after 1.a7 0-0 the game would be an easy draw. But... can Black even castle? What was his last move? Certainly not with the pawn on f7. But if it was with either the king or rook, castling is impossible. So 1.a7 Ke7 is the only way to stop the pawn for now. How does White continue?

Iosif Krikheli, Prioskaja Pravda 1968, 1st/2nd prize.

White to move and draw

The first five moves are important to find here, Afterwards the positional draw is easy to manifest. So how can White prevent the immediate loss, and what is the continuation afterwards?

Iosif Krikheli (10 May 1931 - 22 September 1988) attended an All-Union congress of chess composers in Sukhumi when he suddenly died, being a chess composer from 16 years old to the last minutes of his life, as Velimir Kalandadze characterized him in EG 98, October 1989, where Kalandadze also wrote:

As a study composer Krikheli worked with the classic themes. His personal preferences concentrated on stalemate, positional draw, and themes from problemdom. He always endeavoured to find that one elusive, light and economical setting to express his chess thought: in his best output one can feel the harmony of form with content.

The total output of Krikheli was over 1500 compositions of many genres.

Johan van den Ende, Schakend Nederland December 1972, 4th prize.

White to move and win (correction)

The study - Mario Garcia added a pawn on d6 four decades after the original publication to correct it - starts off a bit brutal, but after 1.e:d4 Rc2 2.Bf1+ Ke4 3.B:b5 B:b5 4.N:d6+ Kd5! 5.N:b5 R:b2 an interesting position is reached. How does White win here?

Johan J. van den Ende (6 August 1902 - 9 July 2002) was six times champion of Zeeland, the westernmost province of the Netherlands, in practical play. He was an endgame study composer for over six decades, creating around 150 endgame studies.

I found the solution of the following study amusing. Will readers share the same sentiment?

Jindich Fritz, Szachy December 1973 (correction, winning 2nd prize, in Szachy May 1975).

White to move and win.

How can the pawn on h2 be stopped? Beautiful geometry unfolds but it ends with an... well, not entirely unexpected... castling.

In October of 2017I quickly wrote about Jindich Fritz (15 June 1912 - 9 November 1984). Lawyer, Grandmaster for Chess Composition (1976), composer of more than 500 works (endgame studies and problems) which were collected in the 1979 book Vybran achov problmy according to the writers at the German Wikipedia. Eric Huber & Vlaicu Crian date the book to 1959 on their blog, attributing 252 problems and 50 endgame studies to it. So were there multiple editions? Yours Truly found only the 1979 printing of Olympia in Praha (Prague) in a quick search at used book sellers.

Ernest Pogosyants, Shakhmaty v SSSR January 1974, 5th commendation.

White to move and win

It looks as if giving the check on f1, exchanging rooks on f5 and then playing the ending in a precise manner wins. But what is the difference between 1.Rf1+ and 1.0-0+, or is there even a difference? Or should White not exchange rooks at all?

Ernest Pogosyants (5 June 1935 - 16 August 1990) was a victim of medical torture after speaking out against KGB leader Alexander Shelepin (the same Shelepin who then also was heavily involved in bringing Brezhnev to power by overthrowing Khrushchev in 1964). Those experiments left him an insomniac. The numerous sleepless nights were used to compose endgame studies and chess problems, totaling over 6,000 (nearly 2,000 of them endgame studies). This was reported by John Roycroft in the book "A (First) Century of Studies" and gained widespread attention after being included as entry 43 by Dutch author and chess curiosities collector Tim Krabb in hisOpen Chess Diaryon 25 December 1999. Many of Pogosyants' endgame studies harbor very simple yet interesting ideas, such as the study above. And also often, such as in the study above, the ideas are accompanied by entertaining play. Of course, another famous chess composer, Vladimir Nabokov, whose "Lolita" might be the most misunderstood work in literature history by those who didn't read it, is well-known for his "Poems and Problems", but if Pogosyants published a similar work, he could have included over 4,000 of his own poems and aphorisms...

Stanislav Belokon, Krasnaja Gazeta 1975, 1st prize.

White to move and draw.

Here castling is only the introduction to three stalemates: 1.0-0-0+ Kc3 2.Rd8 Bf7 3.e8Q B:e8 4.R:e8 Bf4+ and the magic begins...

Stanislav Belokon (Belokin) (30 April 1939 - 21 February 1984) was an Ukrainian composer (from Kharkiv) of more than 100 endgame studies. Having lost both hands in an accident at 10 years old, he still became a high-class creator of artistic endgame studies, winning many awards, including the Ukrainian championship four times in the 1970s. Unfortunately it seems that not much is known about Belokon on the internet, I only found the ARVES website's short biography. In the magazine EG, also no further information seems to be provided about him, although we read that his both memorial tourneys received over 100 entries each by international composers. (A bonus study by Belokon is added at the replayable entries, which doesn't fit the theme but I like a lot.)

Ernest Pogosyants, Shakhmaty v SSSR September 1977.

White to move and win.

White wants to play 1.Ra7 Kf8 2.Kf6 Ke8 3.Ra8+ and 4.R:h8, but sadly 1.-0-0! prevents this. So how can White prevent the castling defense? Another small but interesting Pogosyants study.

Valery Maksaev, Shakhmaty v SSSR June 1978, 6th honorable mention.

White to move and win.

Castling is used as a defense here, but eventually White captures the rook. The chase starts with 1.Bc3, and then...? (While editing the study, Yours Truly found there is a dual, but the intended winning way is much easier, so solvers should look only for that.)

Valery Maksaev (born 5 September 1946), according to the information[S3] by Oleg Efrosinin on the ARVES website, studied Russian language and literature before working as a teacher and school director until his retirement in 1995. Since 1965 around 150 of his endgame studies and problems were published. He lives in the Volgograd region (probably this should be "Volgograd oblast[S4]") for which he participated in chess composition tourneys.

The article "Castling in Studies" by Ernest Pogosyants in EG 56, June 1979, contained only some originals by him, but not all were correct. One was corrected by Stephen Rothwell in the specialized magazine "Knig & Turm" in 2006 by moving the knight from d5 to d1.

See: EG Archive Part 1andPart 2

Ernest Pogosyants, EG 56, June 1979 (correction).

White to move and win

The study is short but fun.

1979 was a very interesting year for castling in endgame studies. The magazine Shakhmaty v SSSR held a thematic tourney and the Joachim Reiners Memorial Tourney was also held as a thematic tourney. We shall get to those next time in this series. The winner of said tourney was reprinted in Tim Krabb's book about chess curiosities, by the way.

For the more experienced solvers, I have a final challenge. It is from 1978, and also replayable below as the second bonus entry. Can you find the solution? The author is not to be confused with a boxer of the same name. We have no biographical information on Vladimir Nikitin (born 3 September 1954), so we also don't know if he was related to the master coach Alexander Nikitin who died last year, but the surname seems to be not uncommon.

Vladimir Nikitin, Shakhmaty v SSSR June 1978, 2nd prize.

White to move and win

Castling plays no big role here, although technically it refutes 1.Rg7? 0-0-0.

As a famous cartoon series said: "That's all, folks..." Well, at least this time.

Don't get me started on Shelepin, this is as far as I think still is acceptable for readers. Brezhnev and Shelepin were fully corrupt in my opinion, and history should tell it, but it is not my place here to educate on that.

Humbert sexually abuses 12-year old Dolores after becoming her supposed "stepfather" and giving her sedatives. So the way the name "Lolita" is handled usually is a complete reversal of the role of the victim and the perpetrator. She dies at the end during childbirth. And he is an unreliable narrator who dies while awaiting a murder trial for shooting her ex-boyfriend when she's 17. Anyone who doesn't get the message of the book never even wanted to understand the plot.

https://www.arves.org/arves/index.php/nl/endgamestudies/studies-by-composer/1256-maksaev-valery-1946

Of historical note is that Volgograd, whose region also held many names, was formerly named Stalingrad but was renamed during the de-stalinization (the Oblast Stalingrad was renamed Oblast Volgograd on 10 December 1961). It was the site of a major battle in the European theater of WWII between Germany and Russia (1942-1943).

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Study of the Month - A short history of endgame study castling III - ChessBase

The opening ceremony of the Bangabandhu Innovation Grant (BIG) 2023 was recently held at the BCC Auditorium, Agargaon, Dhaka.

The ICT State Minister Zunaid Ahmed Palak was present as the Chief Guest during the inauguration ceremony along with other dignitaries.

This year, the BIG authority plans to select 300 innovative startups during the initial stage.

Later, a 3-day boot camp will be organised with the selected startups. This boot camp will include day-long workshops, mentoring, and pitching sessions for the selected startups.

The top 51 startups will then be selected from the boot camp, and the final round will be organised with the top 5 startups.

The best startup will be awarded a grant worth BDT 1 Crore, while the rest of the top 50 startups will also be awarded grants worth BDT 10 Lakh each.

The BIG initiative has been organised by the Innovation Design and Entrepreneurship Academy (iDEA) Project of Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC) under the ICT Division since 2019.

Budding entrepreneurs can register by visiting the website http://www.big.gov.bd from March 28 to April 22, 2023.

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3rd edition of Bangabandhu Innovation Grant 2023 gets underway - The Daily Star

to eliminate gas hookups in new buildings shows that progressives are indeed serious about banning gas stoves. (Photo by Davide Bonaldo/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

A proposal in New York to ban gas hookups in new buildings has reignited a heated debate about whether gas stoves should be banned. The proposal, which is likely to pass in the annual state budget this year in Albany, would exempt many commercial uses of gas lines but end new residential connections, thereby enacting a de-facto ban on gas stoves and appliances. The New York proposal follows one earlier this year by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, a federal agency that was exploring a ban on gas stoves.

Supporters of these policies claim that they are essential for protecting public health and preventing climate change. Meanwhile, critics argue that they are an example of government overreach. Beyond the surface-level arguments, the Albany proposal also exposes a more profound issue about the nature of progressivism as a philosophy: Rather than acting as a force for progress, too often progressives want to take us back to the past.

Some studies purport to show that gas stoves produce harmful pollutants that can cause respiratory problems, such as asthma. Supporters of a ban point out that technology exists to replace gas stoves with more efficient electric alternatives that are safer and cleaner. Gas stoves and other gas-powered appliances are contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, which are responsible for global warming and its associated environmental problems.

However, critics of gas stove bans argue that they are based on bad science, as well as an example of government paternalism. They contend that the research into health problems caused by gas stoves is underwhelmingor at least the relationship is still unprovenand that products powered by natural gas actually lead to fewer greenhouse gas emissions than do their chief competitors: products powered by electricity generated from burning coal. More fundamentally, many conservatives accuse gas stove critics of fomenting alarmism, believing it is not in the governments mandate to tell people which appliances to use in their homes.

As the gas stove example illustrates, progressivism is too often based on the idea that ever-increasing amounts of bureaucracy and red tape should be added to American life to solve societal problems. Rather than empowering individuals to make their own choices and find their own solutions, progressives believe that government technocrats should take control and impose their preferred solutions on society.

Ironically, the debate surrounding the Albany proposal also highlights the phenomenon of gaslighting in political discourse. Critics of the Consumer Product Safety Commissions proposal earlier this year were accused of spreading false information. The commission had no intention of banning gas stovesor so we were told. However, the Albany policy demonstrates that progressives are indeed serious about eliminating gas appliances from homes. By accusing their opponents of gaslighting, progressives attempted to deflect attention from their actual policies, which they likely knew would be controversial. The Albany proposal shows that the critics were right all along.

By trying to ban gas stoves and other aspects of modern life, progressives show their true colors. Despite claiming to be for progress, supporters of these policies are attempting to return society to a more primitive and supposedly simpler time. They actually want to freeze society in its current stateor even go backwardspreventing progress from taking shape.

Rather than promoting innovation and creativity, progressive policies tend to favor the status quo. In this sense, gas stove bans are not outliers: they are emblematic of a broader worldview centered on coercion and technocratic manipulation. To truly promote progress in the 21st century, a dynamic and bottom-up approach is surely needed. Dont expect it to come from those who call themselves progressive.

I specialize in regulation, cost-benefit analysis, and the effect of regulations on innovation and growth. I'm author of the bookRegulation and Economic Growth: Applying Economic Theory to Public Policy. My writing has appeared in theWall Street Journal, theLos Angeles Times,and theWashington Post. I have also published in scholarly journals, includingRegulation & Governance,Contemporary Economic Policyand PLOS ONE. I received my PhD in economics from George Mason University and my BA and MA in economics from Hunter College of the City University of New York.

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New York Ban Proves Progressives Are Coming For Your Gas Stove - Forbes

At an election night party in November, I asked then-Assemblymember-elect Diane Papan about what appeared to be the growing split in San Mateo County politics between progressives and moderates with her clearly ensconced in the latter.

Papan swiftly balked at the label. She is not a moderate, she said, but rather, a pragmatic.

The implication is clear: A progressive agenda must be tempered by the need to get things done. Some progressives would argue this pragmatism is an excuse to back away from truly pursuing solutions to such issues as the climate crisis, housing costs and associated discrimination or police misconduct.

Progressive is just one of the terms I use with some frequency when writing about politics. In this lull between campaigns, it seems a good time to question what it means and how it should or should not be used. Moderate is another term that turns up here, and I am not at all sure it can be applied with any degree of accuracy. Another is the word activist, and I am pretty confident in its application.

What difference does any of it make?

Well, as long-winded as this corner can be, I am limited to 800 words. For the sake of economy and, like a lot of journalists, I resort to a kind of shorthand terms that have a common understanding, at least within the political world I frequent. The risk is that these words yes, labels are generalizations, with all the biases and inaccuracies that may attach.

Particularly now, in the political environment of the Peninsula, I confess to some confusion about how to apply terms such as progressive and moderate with confidence in their usefulness as labels to me, to the people I write about and to those of you who do me the honor of reading.

The Pew Research Center describes progressives as advocating that U.S. institutions need to be completely rebuilt because of racial bias.

Pew also notes and it is abundantly true here that progressives are among the most politically active Democrats.

Many of Peninsula progressives are young; many of them not all are from communities of color, which are slowly emerging as the combined majority on the Peninsula.

They are far-left liberal. Many of them are adherents of the Democratic Socialist principles espoused by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders. They are big fans of U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who, responding online to the label of extremist, offered a list of positions she obviously believes are more mainstream than the political establishment believes: Medicare for all, the Green New Deal, ICE is a rogue agency that should be dismantled. I believe in cooperative economics and cooperative democracy, aka democratic socialism, she wrote.

Incidentally, I have heard more than one candidate say he or she wants to be the AOC of SMC. I dont think this is an AOC county, but there you go.

The complication of describing progressives as a distinct political entity within our local political landscape is that most of the elected officials on the Peninsula certainly the most prominent ones can only be described as progressive. Then-Assemblymember Kevin Mullin, running for Congress last year, was described by several progressive groups as one of the leading progressives in the Legislature. He also, most assuredly, is a leading member of the political establishment.

It is notable that the election night comment from Papan was made at the plumbers union hall in Burlingame, a mainstay political setting in the county for decades. Labor has been, perhaps, the key factor in the transition of San Mateo County from staunchly Republican to entirely Democratic. Labor remains the single most influential interest in the county, and unequivocally progressive. But progressives could easily see labor leadership as pragmatic and mainstream establishment. Labor consistently has a strong track record when it comes to supporting candidates who win, which, inarguably, is the ultimate mark of pragmatism.

And this may be the heart of the matter. The real conflict between progressives and pragmatics is that more pragmatics win office at least for now. This tension plays out in other ways: in votes on political matters at the Democratic Central Committee, or in fights over who goes as delegates to the state Democratic conventions. On these battlegrounds, the sides are evenly split.

There is a core emerging of leading progressive officeholders emerging county Supervisors David Canepa and Noelia Corzo, San Mateo Mayor Amourence Lee and South San Francisco Councilmember James Coleman among the most notable.

But the real tension may simply be that a younger generation is impatient for an older establishment generation to get out of the way.

And that is as old as politics itself.

Mark Simon is a veteran journalist, whose career included 15 years as an executive at SamTrans and Caltrain. He can be reached at marksimon@smdailyjournal.com.

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What is progressive? | Columnists | smdailyjournal.com - San Mateo Daily Journal