I believe that chess can combat many challenges we face today: fractured attention, indecisiveness and a shortage of grit and discipline brought on by too much screen time. Technology has forever changed the way we live, learn and play. Our children have insatiable appetites for fast-paced, action-packed entertainment, and it often feels as though we are watching powerlessly as their patience and critical-thinking skills suffer.
Enter DeepMind. The Google-owned AI company’s AlphaZero is a paradox. AlphaZero taught itself chess (as well as go and shogi) starting with no knowledge about the game beyond the basic rules. It developed its chess strategies by playing millions of games against itself and discovering promising avenues of exploration from the games it won and lost.
Newly elected President of the Athens-based Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE – World Chess Federation) Arkady Dvorkovich, expressed his ongoing support to root out antisemitism and continued to ensure that Israelis will have the right to compete in all competitions held by the FIDE, during a visit to Israel last week.
Russian chess grandmaster Vladimir Kramnik, undisputed world champion in 2006, regarded as one of the strongest players in the world, announced on Tuesday he was retiring from professional competition. “I already decided to finish my professional chess career a couple of months ago and now, after having played my last tournament, I would like to announce it publicly,” he said on the website of the Tata Steel Chess tournament that ended in the Netherlands on Sunday.
Camaratta, an engineer and former vice president of the United Chess Federation, went home and made drawings, prototypes and his own carvings. He had 50 sets made and figured they’d take years to sell. They sold in months.
The queen and bishop were found in a beam over the barn’s main entrance and are believed to have served as protective amulets, placed there to help keep the occupants and their livestock safe, according to archaeologist Adam Daubney of the Lincolnshire County Council.
Karjakin failed to qualify for the 2018 World Chess Championship, but said he is determined to inflict defeat on the seemingly invincible Norwegian chess legend.
“Undoubtedly, I would like to beat Carlsen,” Karjakin said, TASS reported.
“I will do everything possible to reach this goal. Last year I was close to being selected for the World Chess Championship, but failed to do that.
Brin-Jonathan Butler’s spellbinding new book, The Grandmaster: Magnus Carlsen and the Match That Made Chess Great Again, an exploration of the 2016 World Chess Championship, and the rivalry between reigning world chess champion Magnus Carlsen of Norway and Russia’s Sergey Karjakin. Butler’s quest to catch the eccentric Carlsen at the “height of his greatness,” leads him to a world that is at once as frightening as it is beautiful, and by far transcends the legacy of any individual chess player.
“…mastered not only chess but shogi, or Japanese chess, and Go. The algorithm started with no knowledge of the games beyond their basic rules. It then played against itself millions of times and learned from its mistakes. In a matter of hours, the algorithm became the best player, human or computer, the world has ever seen.”