Of late, I have been pitting my modest chess skills against the AI Factory Free Chess on my mobile. Finally, I am getting the upper hand at Level 9, recording a 55% success rate.
In this game, orchestrating the Black pieces, I piled pressure on the half-open b-file and infiltrated the 7th rank with the major pieces, after which the enemy King fell swiftly on the other side of the board.
[pgn height=500 initialHalfmove=28 autoplayMode=none showMoves=justified]
[Event "Man vs Mobile"]
[Site "Kogarah, NSW"]
[Date "2011.11.12"]
[White "AI Factory Free Chess"]
[Black "RL"]
[Result "0-1"]
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. d3 d6 6. c4 Be7 7. Nc3 Bg4 8. Be3 0-0 9. Bxc6 bxc6 10. h3 Bh5 11. g4 Bg6 12. c5 Re8 13. Rc1 Bf8 14. Bg5 h6 15. Bxf6 Qxf6 16. 0-0 Qe6 17. Nd2 d5 18. Nb3 a5 19. a4 d4 20. Nb1 Reb8 21. Nb1d2 Be7 22. f4 exf4 23. Rc4 Bf6 24. Nxd4 Bxd4+ 25. Rxd4 Rxb2 26. Nf3 Rab8 27. Qc1 Qf6 28. h4 Ra2 29. h5 R8b2 30. hxg6 Qxd4+ 31. Kh1 fxg6 32. Qxf4 Qxd3 33. Rc1 Qe2 34. Rg1 Qxf3+ 35. Qxf3 Rh2++ 0-1
[/pgn]
Showing posts with label chess. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chess. Show all posts
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Institutions Matter
Why is it that some countries continue to be poor despite being blessed with abundant natural resources, human capital and technology transfer from developed countries? Many resource-rich African countries mired in poverty and bloody civil wars come to mind. Even India, despite its much lauded economic growth of recent years, can be added to the list of these underachievers.
According to Tim Harford in The Undercover Economist (2006), the answer lies in the poor nations' institutions or lack thereof. As he puts it succinctly, "institutions matter".
Most resource-rich poor countries lack institutions capable of holding executive power in check and making them accountable to the people. As a result, the ruling cliques and their cronies can cream off the proceeds from the resources with impunity and become obscenely rich while the vast majority of their compatriots sink deeper into poverty.
"Institutions matter". This phrase popped into my mind again when reading about the 1843 British annexation of Sindh (Punjab) in John Keay's India: A History (2000). One of the last so-called princely states to be bullied into Pax Britannica, Sindh had been able to keep the British at bay with diplomacy and a modern military under the inspired rule of Maharaja Ranjit Singh.
On the eve of the First British Afghan War in which the British Raj suffered one of its most disastrous losses, Ranjit Singh, the Bonaparte of Sindh, the Lion of Punjab, died, in 1839.
Keay writes: "A philander of many wives and more women, he was not without potential successors. Yet so personal had been his rule and so absolute his authority that the institutions of sovereignty and government through which a successor might establish himself scarcely existed."
The result was predictable. In the midst of the succession crisis that engulfed Sindh, the British, in the words of the victorious British general, pulled off a "very advantageous, useful, humane piece of rascality."
'Rascality' actually sums up the Indian, or perhaps any human, history.
Keay opens his narrative with the ancient Indian concept of Matsya-Nyaya or 'fish law' according to which big fish devour small fish. The subsequent laundry list of dynasties great and small that subjugate various parts of the Indian sub-continent through the millennia appears like a rogue’s gallery of history.
When the various dynasties are not oppressing their wretched subjects by imposing extortionate taxes to finance their ego-boosting monumental extravagances, they are at each others' throats, pillaging the defeated kingdoms’ treasuries and polluting their women.
This gives lie to the myth of a golden age, the so-called ‘Ram Rajya’, to which many people of certain persuasion look back with great nostalgia in the Indian sub-continent.
Keay has a slippery grasp of Sanskrit words and phrases but he, nevertheless, convincingly demolishes many cherished mytho-historical sacred cows of India. For example, he cogently argues that the epic Mahabharata predates Ramayana, a startling proposition only an outsider like Keay could perhaps make.
After reading about the umpteenth petty cutthroat performing a ritual digvijaya or world conquest and assuming the title of Maharajadhiraja , one starts to contemplate the august personages of surviving Maharajadhirajas with fresh eyes.
According to Tim Harford in The Undercover Economist (2006), the answer lies in the poor nations' institutions or lack thereof. As he puts it succinctly, "institutions matter".
Most resource-rich poor countries lack institutions capable of holding executive power in check and making them accountable to the people. As a result, the ruling cliques and their cronies can cream off the proceeds from the resources with impunity and become obscenely rich while the vast majority of their compatriots sink deeper into poverty.
"Institutions matter". This phrase popped into my mind again when reading about the 1843 British annexation of Sindh (Punjab) in John Keay's India: A History (2000). One of the last so-called princely states to be bullied into Pax Britannica, Sindh had been able to keep the British at bay with diplomacy and a modern military under the inspired rule of Maharaja Ranjit Singh.
On the eve of the First British Afghan War in which the British Raj suffered one of its most disastrous losses, Ranjit Singh, the Bonaparte of Sindh, the Lion of Punjab, died, in 1839.
Keay writes: "A philander of many wives and more women, he was not without potential successors. Yet so personal had been his rule and so absolute his authority that the institutions of sovereignty and government through which a successor might establish himself scarcely existed."
The result was predictable. In the midst of the succession crisis that engulfed Sindh, the British, in the words of the victorious British general, pulled off a "very advantageous, useful, humane piece of rascality."
'Rascality' actually sums up the Indian, or perhaps any human, history.
Keay opens his narrative with the ancient Indian concept of Matsya-Nyaya or 'fish law' according to which big fish devour small fish. The subsequent laundry list of dynasties great and small that subjugate various parts of the Indian sub-continent through the millennia appears like a rogue’s gallery of history.
When the various dynasties are not oppressing their wretched subjects by imposing extortionate taxes to finance their ego-boosting monumental extravagances, they are at each others' throats, pillaging the defeated kingdoms’ treasuries and polluting their women.
This gives lie to the myth of a golden age, the so-called ‘Ram Rajya’, to which many people of certain persuasion look back with great nostalgia in the Indian sub-continent.
Keay has a slippery grasp of Sanskrit words and phrases but he, nevertheless, convincingly demolishes many cherished mytho-historical sacred cows of India. For example, he cogently argues that the epic Mahabharata predates Ramayana, a startling proposition only an outsider like Keay could perhaps make.
After reading about the umpteenth petty cutthroat performing a ritual digvijaya or world conquest and assuming the title of Maharajadhiraja , one starts to contemplate the august personages of surviving Maharajadhirajas with fresh eyes.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Three Cheers To the Old Champion
With the successful defense of his second world title against the formidable Bulgarian GM Veselin Topalov earlier this month, Indian GM Vishwanathan Anand has again proved himself to be one of the greatest chess players of his era. The match went down to the wire, with both GMs tied at 5.5 with one game to play. In the final game, Anand, disadvantaged with Black pieces, still prevailed over his illustrious opponent.
[caption id="attachment_351" align="alignright" width="297" caption="Anand contemplates the position on the board."]
[/caption]
Anand was a childhood hero of mine. After he became the FIDE world junior champion in 1987, I think it was the Indian sports magazine, Sports Stars, that shipped with a centerfold of a youthful, bespectacled Anand staring intensely at a chess board. That image adorned the wall of my bedroom and fueled my own youthful, quixotic dreams of becoming a GM.
In a sense, Anand carried the hopes of all the youth from the developing world but specifically from South Asia. The fact that India is today poised not only as a rising economic but also a chess powerhouse owes a lot to Anand's spectacular exploits at the highest levels of chess. He has inspired an entire generation of chess players in India and South Asia. The only other Indian chess player to make his mark at international level before was Mir Sultan Khan (1905 - 1966), who won the prestigious British Championship three times between 1929 and 1933 before his promising career was cut short to attend to his duties in the service of an Indian prince.
When Anand first won the FIDE world chess championship in 2000, he became only the second person to wear the crown who was not of Russian or former Soviet background since 1937. The other person was the mercurial American GM Bobby Fischer, who, in a highly charged Cold War superpower theatrics of 1972, defeated the then world champion Boris Spassky of the USSR in Reykjavik, Iceland.
What was astonishing about Anand's meteoric rise was the suddenness with which he appeared out of seemingly nowhere to take the chess world by storm. Although the birthplace of chess, India did not have the state-backed chess patronage system of the USSR, which marketed the post-WW II global dominance of its chess players as the validation of its ideology, or a vibrant community of grandmasters, theorists, writers, supporters and clubs to match those in the US and Britain. When he attained the rank of grandmaster in 1988 at the age of 18, it was the first for his country.
One of the crowd-pleasing features of Anand's style is the speed with which he makes his moves. This has served him well in shorter formats of the game as well as in the classical format, where he almost never runs into time troubles. Imagine Sachin Tendulkar and Cameron White, unrivaled masters of Test and Twenty20 cricket, respectively, rolled into one. This capacity for lightning fast thinking earned Anand the nickname of 'speed demon' early in his career.
A new brat pack of chess superstars led by the 19-year-old Norwegian GM Magnus Carlsen, who became a GM at the age of 13, is snapping at the heels of Anand and his generation of grandmasters. In the next world championship cycle in 2012, Anand will face players who grew up on a diet of computer chess. It will be interesting to see if this new breed of players will be able to topple the last of the pre-Internet generation of grandmasters who still rule chess.
[caption id="attachment_351" align="alignright" width="297" caption="Anand contemplates the position on the board."]
[/caption]Anand was a childhood hero of mine. After he became the FIDE world junior champion in 1987, I think it was the Indian sports magazine, Sports Stars, that shipped with a centerfold of a youthful, bespectacled Anand staring intensely at a chess board. That image adorned the wall of my bedroom and fueled my own youthful, quixotic dreams of becoming a GM.
In a sense, Anand carried the hopes of all the youth from the developing world but specifically from South Asia. The fact that India is today poised not only as a rising economic but also a chess powerhouse owes a lot to Anand's spectacular exploits at the highest levels of chess. He has inspired an entire generation of chess players in India and South Asia. The only other Indian chess player to make his mark at international level before was Mir Sultan Khan (1905 - 1966), who won the prestigious British Championship three times between 1929 and 1933 before his promising career was cut short to attend to his duties in the service of an Indian prince.
When Anand first won the FIDE world chess championship in 2000, he became only the second person to wear the crown who was not of Russian or former Soviet background since 1937. The other person was the mercurial American GM Bobby Fischer, who, in a highly charged Cold War superpower theatrics of 1972, defeated the then world champion Boris Spassky of the USSR in Reykjavik, Iceland.
What was astonishing about Anand's meteoric rise was the suddenness with which he appeared out of seemingly nowhere to take the chess world by storm. Although the birthplace of chess, India did not have the state-backed chess patronage system of the USSR, which marketed the post-WW II global dominance of its chess players as the validation of its ideology, or a vibrant community of grandmasters, theorists, writers, supporters and clubs to match those in the US and Britain. When he attained the rank of grandmaster in 1988 at the age of 18, it was the first for his country.
One of the crowd-pleasing features of Anand's style is the speed with which he makes his moves. This has served him well in shorter formats of the game as well as in the classical format, where he almost never runs into time troubles. Imagine Sachin Tendulkar and Cameron White, unrivaled masters of Test and Twenty20 cricket, respectively, rolled into one. This capacity for lightning fast thinking earned Anand the nickname of 'speed demon' early in his career.
A new brat pack of chess superstars led by the 19-year-old Norwegian GM Magnus Carlsen, who became a GM at the age of 13, is snapping at the heels of Anand and his generation of grandmasters. In the next world championship cycle in 2012, Anand will face players who grew up on a diet of computer chess. It will be interesting to see if this new breed of players will be able to topple the last of the pre-Internet generation of grandmasters who still rule chess.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Nepal in Chess Olympiad
A 5-member Nepalese team including National Champion Surbir Lama is participating in the 38th Chess Olympiad being held in Dresden, Germany from November 13 to 25. This is only the third time that Nepal is taking part in this prestigious event.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Chess Problem No# 1
The following chess problem by L I Loshinsky won the first prize, Abastumansky Shakhmaty Bureau, in 1933. White moves and mates in two.
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