May Cover Stories with Chess Life: GM Francesco Rambaldi – uschess.org
Posted: May 5, 2020 at 5:46 pm
The May edition of Cover Stories with Chess Life is now live! This monthly podcast, hosted by Senior Director of Strategic Communication Daniel Lucas, goes in depth and behind the scenes of each months Chess Life cover story. This months guest is GM Francesco Rambaldi, who contributed annotations to our May Chess Life cover story on the Cairns Cup. We talk to him about the Cairns Cup, growing up playing chess in France and Italy, his current status as a member of the Saint Louis University chess team, and his new book, The Caro-Kann Revisited A Dynamic Repertoire for Black.
Image Credit: GFHund via wikimedia
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May Cover Stories with Chess Life: GM Francesco Rambaldi - uschess.org
Poem of the week: The Chess Player by Howard Altmann – The Guardian
Posted: at 5:46 pm
Theyve left. Theyve all left a man wearing protective face mask rests at an empty chess table at Tasmajdan park in Belgrade, Serbia, last week. Photograph: Andrej Cukic/EPA
The Chess Player
Theyve left. Theyve all left. The pigeon feeders have left. The old men on the benches have left. The white-gloved ladies with the Great Danes have left. The lovers who thought about coming have left. The man in the three-piece suit has left. The man who was a three-piece band has left. The man on the milkcrate with the bible has left. Even the birds have left. Now the trees are thinking about leaving too. And the grass is trying to turn itself in. Of course the buses no longer pass. And the children no longer ask. The air wants to go and is in discussions. The clouds are trying to steer clear. The sky is reaching for its hands. Even the moon sees whats going on. But the stars remain in the dark. As does the chess player. Who sits with all his pieces In position.
Howard Altmann published his Selected Poems, Enquanto uma Fina Neve Cai / As a Light Snow Keeps Falling, last year, a bilingual, Portuguese/English edition with translations by the Portuguese poet Eugnia de Vasconcellos. The Chess Player appears in it, and was first published in 2005, in Who Collects the Days, Altmanns debut collection.
Obviously, it predates the Covid-19 pandemic by a number of years. At the same time, the poem may illuminate, and be illuminated by, current events. It also tunes in to an ancient and universal human experience: the daily fading of light into dusk, when the mood may slip into melancholy and uncertainty. The hushed emptiness that descends on the park in the poem is almost naturalistic at first, but the widespread movement of desertion soon gathers foreboding through repetition. Its as if all ages and all species had silently agreed to emigrate.
The Chess Players was a film written and directed by Satyajit Ray in 1977, based on Munshi Premchands short story of the same name. Two chess-mad noblemen, Mir and Mirza, are so obsessed with their game that they refuse to notice the turmoil of the British incursions seething around them, not to mention the disintegration of their marriages. Despite these catastrophes, Rays touch in the film is light, as is Altmanns in the poem. The images his statements evoke are sometimes surreal, and sometimes presented in a whimsical manner. They may be backlit by a pun (The lovers who thought about coming have left) or trip us on a gently comic letdown (The man in the three-piece suit has left. / The man who was a three-piece band has left.) The line, The sky is reaching for its hands, is particularly effective. Perhaps hands suggests a clock, and the desire of the sky to seize hold of time and make it move faster. Or the hands may be potentially the monstrous hands of a killer. Nothing terrible actually happens in the poems foreground, but the threat level rises as the moon becomes unusually sharp-eyed, the stars unusually ignorant and dim.
The rhythm slows right down at the end of the poem, with full stops insisting on a painfully weighty pause for thought at the ends of lines: But the stars remain in the dark. / As does the chess-player. / Who sits with all his pieces / In position.
Only now do we learn that no game is in progress: in fact, the player has no visible opponent. The solitary figure sits at the untouched board in the dark. It raises the question as to whether the poems hidden subject is war. From a war gamers site, I learned that the name chess is derived from the Sanskrit chaturanga which can be translated as four arms, referring to the four divisions of the Indian army elephants, cavalry, chariots and infantry. In this regard, chess is very much a war game that simulates what we would now call the combined arms operations of the ancient world.
Perhaps we should abandon the image of an al-fresco chessboard altogether? The single player may be planning moves of a more desperate kind, moves that might include the assassination of some leader, or the pushing of the nuclear button. He may have gone crazy and got trapped in a ferment of fantastic plans too complex and entangled ever to be accomplished. The pieces, whatever they represent, are in position but, perhaps fortunately, will never move forward.
So reading the poem now, we might also be reminded of a stalemate of statistics, strategies and models. Earlier on, weve been cheerfully told, Of course the buses no longer pass. / And the children no longer ask. The lightness of tone and rhetorical patterning, and the faint stumble in the end-rhyme (pass and ask), seem to show the effects of an effortless severance of intellectual curiosity and lively physical action. Perhaps all the players in the park are obedient pieces being moved around a board or taken and scattered in some master game? Perhaps even the chess player is a pawn.
Continue reading here:
Poem of the week: The Chess Player by Howard Altmann - The Guardian
The future of chess books (2) – Chessbase News
Posted: at 5:46 pm
5/3/2020 So I am being pressured to publish a book, a collection of articles that have, in the last twenty years, appeared on our news page especially those describing encounters with famous players. And the ones that showed entertaining puzzles and games. They were very nice on a computer monitor, where you can replay and analyse everything but transfering them onto very thin slices of tree? Nobody fetches a chessboard and pieces to replay moves anymore. Ahh, but there's a solution to this problem. Let me show you. And please help me evaluate this approach.
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As I said in the first part of this article: I believe that chess books and magazines represent a colossal waste. Less than ten percent of all readers play through the games they contain those who do are called grandmaster, or IMs, and they do it in their heads they read chess books like adventure novels. The rest of us try to follow the first few moves, if they are part of our openings repertoire, and then jump to the diagrams, where we replay a few moves that follow in our mind. The rest is usually ignored.
So just a small percentage of non-professional chess players actually read chess books. Hand on your heart: when was the last time you set up the chess board and pieces and replayed a game from a book or a magazine?
The irony is that you probably have the ultimate replay right there in your pocket, or on the living room table: your smart phone or tablet. On it the moves are executed on a graphic chessboard, and you can even have an engine running in the background, ready to answer every what-if and why-not question that might occur to you.
But how do you get the moves of the game, printed on paper, into your electronic device? Scanning the page and using intelligent OCR is not a practical solution. Also downloading a file and then searching in a database for the game you see on the page is cumbersome. You need to get it in one quick and easy action. And that is possible using a QR code. This is a kind of barcode (QR stands for "quick response") in matrix form, which the camera of your smartphone or tablet can pick up quickly and effectively. And an app, one of a dozen you can get for free in the Apple or Google stores, will immediately execute the instructions contained in the QR matrix.
I am not the first person to think about the possibility of using this in chess books. As I told you in the first part of this article: my good friend Prof. Christian Hesse used the system in 2015, in his (German language) book Damenopfer. There, for the first time I believe, you could scan a QR image printed next to each diagram or at the start of a game, and then replay it on your electronic device. This takes a second or two. After that you have the game, moves, and the entire analysis on your mobile phone or tablet, and can replay them right there, in your garden, on a train or plane, anywhere. You read the stories in the book and replay the games on your electronic device. I showed some examples in my previous article.
So how I can I use this tool in my books? I have been experimenting with converting past articles printable text. After trying Microsoft Word and Libre Office I hit upon Google Drive, which has a word processor that appears to exactly fulfill my needs. So the process is copy and paste a text from articles, update and format them nicely, and then export the file, which is stored in the cloud, e.g. to PDF. Works very nicely. Google's word processor does not have all the functions of the dedicated packages, but it has all the essential ones, and they have been optimised for ease of use.
The articles I convert often have positions or games. I always have them in PGN or ChessBase in fact they are usually embedded in the JavaScript replayer on the news page and can be downloaded with a click from there. Take for example my recent article "The game that shook the world." At the bottom is a replayer with the annotated game. Clicking on the diskette icon downloads the PGN and, in my setup, loads it into ChessBase 15.
Now comes the decisive part: I go to the File menu and click "Publish this game". ChessBase 15 offers to produce a One Click Publication, with the replayer. It gives the URL, embed code for the player (so you can add it to a blog article), and social media buttons (to post on Facebook, Twitter or email to a friend). Here is what the page it generates looks like. That is definitely a page you can link to.
If you follow the URL given, on your mobile phone or tablet, this is what you get. You shold try it out: scan the following QR code (use a barcode or QR scanner as described below) and see what it looks like on your device.
As you can see on the photo the tablet produces the full player, where you can start an engine (fan icon) that will help you to analyse. There is even a "!" icon (on the right side of the engine display) that shows you the threat in any position, which is incredibly useful in the case of unclear moves (I use it all the time).
For the technically savvy there is another option: "Create an HTML file" and upload it to your server. In that case you use
So we have generated the replay page as described above. It takes less than one minute. But how do you embed a link to it in your book or magazine? This is where I use QR codes, which are infinitely more practical than typing a long URL into the mobile phone browser. And it is perfectly simple to implement: simply google for one of a dozen (free) QR code generator pages. There you simply paste the URL ChessBase gave you for the replay page, and bing! you have the QR code matrix as a JPG or PNG. This you embed on your book or magazine page.
Naturally you can use this to link not only to replay pages, but also to YouTube videos, audio files, small utilities, etc. Here are some examples from the trial articles for my book (click all images to enlarge):
The above QR code leads to a video interview that is the basis of the article
Check if this external small utility works without problems on your phone or tablet
And here is the book page with a QR link to the full game with all annotations.
I think this is a very feasible method of making chess content available to readers of a book. I thank Christian Hesse for his pioneer work described in the first part of this article. Things have in fact improved: Christian's book was published five years ago, and I am using the latest ChessBase replayer, developed in 2020. It has many exciting functions that were not previously available.
I will give you three trial chapters, which you can download and print out, to get a real feel for how my book would work. Or you can simply click on the links and display the files on the PGN reader. Then tell me how the game replayer runs on your mobile phone and your tablet. Also, I would be interested to find people who can assist in the production and publication of the book(s).
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Who is the chess player on Mars? – Chessbase News
Posted: at 5:46 pm
5/2/2020 A Mars opposition occurs when planet Earth passes in between the Sun and planet Mars. It happens every 2 years and 2 months 779.94 Earth days to be precise. Then Mars becomes a beautiful red jewel in the night sky, full of mystery. On the one hand a Martian invasion may be imminent. On the other we are able to discern human images carved on the Mars surface. In 2003 one was discovered that looked eerily familiar.
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On Wednesday, August 27 2003, at 10:51 GMT, the planet Mars approached the earth closer than at any time during the last 60,000 years. It became the brightest object in the night sky, a beautiful red jewel in the firmament, with an apparent diameter to in the sky of about 25 arc-seconds (on October 13 this year during Mars opposition the planetary disk diameter will be 22.4 arcsec).
In 2003 The two planets, Earth and Mars, were separated by 55,758,006 kilometers (34,646,418 miles). This has not happened since the Neanderthals shared the world with early humans, who as you know were lucky enough to find the Obelisk and learn how to use the thigh bones of animals properly. The next closest approach will be in 2287 we will bring you live coverage at the time.
A Hubble picture of Mars taken eleven hours before it's closest approach. Source: NASA, J. Bell (Cornell U.) and M. Wolff (SSI).
In the parlance of astronomers Mars was in "opposition", a term they have obviously borrowed (without giving due credit) from the chess world. The close approach of the two planets happens regularly when both are on the same side of the Sun. On this occasion Earth was about as far from the Sun as it ever gets, and Mars as close as ever (the orbits of the two planets are not quite circular).
At the time our resident scientist GM John Nunn informed us:
The close approach of Mars suggests that this would be a good time for the Martians to invade Earth. The last time they did so, in June 1902, they caused considerable devastation. I have a personal interest in this because the first Martian cylinder plunged into the sandpits on Horsell Common, just down the road from where I currently live. Apparently they did not use retro-rockets or parachutes, and it has always been a mystery how the relatively fragile Martians survived the deceleration of impact. Moving out from this first landing, they advanced through Ottershaw (where GM Murray Chandler owned a house) and devastated Weybridge and Shepperton. Armed with a heat-ray and a deadly poison gas, it seemed that nothing could stop them. Eventually, as everyone now knows, their invasion was defeated when they caught a nasty cold and died.
The event is commemorated in various ways and has inspired various films and radio broadcasts (see, for example, thisWar of the Worlds movie, in which the invasion was switched to America). Curiously, although the Horsell area has changed greatly in the past century, Horsell Common and its sandpits are still much the same. I am somewhat concerned that the Martians might aim for the same spot again and am keeping a careful watch for any meteorites leaving a strange greenish trail. If one falls, I intend to call Tony Blair or George W. Bush theyll know what to do.
There is another important aspect to this close approach of Mars. Everybody knows that strange rock formations have been photographed on the surface of the planet, the most famous being the "Face on Mars". It was obtained in 1976 by the Viking Orbiter 1. In the Cydonia region of Mars it photographed a region of buttes and mesas along the escarpment that separates heavily cratered highlands to the south from low lying, relatively crater-free, lowland plains to the north.
One of the images showed a face-like hill, which led many people to argue, mostly in the lay literature, that the hill was artificially shaped. The "Face on Mars" web site provides us with the raw Viking images and a brief tutorial (with examples) of image processing techniques applied to create "better looking" images.
Due to the near approach new images have been obtained which should delight amateur conspiracy theorists all over the world. They show the Cydonia region and the "face" in unprecedented clarity.
Above is the latest Hubble image taken on August 27 2003 at 10:34 GMT, seventeen minutes before the true opposition of Mars. The enlargement reveals an incredible geological formation that looks eerily familiar. Perhaps our readers can help us (and NASA): whom does the rocky formation remind you of?
A week after the above report appeared on our news page (on August 27, 2003) we learned that the "Face on Mars" picture was probably flawed. Javier Sanchez de la Barquera of Monterrey, Mexico, informed us that Hubble cannot take pictures with the zoom given, and that pictures were taken from satellites orbiting mars.
On the top left is the original fase as it appears on most conspiracy sites, next to it a JPL/NASA picture, which softens into the "face," and below that an angular view which makes it even less face-like.
We investigated the matter and discovered that some misguided soul in the ChessBase team had faked the picture, photoshopping an image of Garry Kasparov into the surface of Mars. We even found what is probably the original source of the picture.
Above is a picture of Garry Kasparov during a press conference.
We also traced the joker's practice efforts a Mars surface picture with many Kasparov faces copied into it. The prankster simply took the one which looked most plausible.
Our apologies to readers who took the whole business seriously.
Originally posted here:
Isolated Queens II: Top Streamers to Play BotezLive & US Chess Women Event – uschess.org
Posted: at 5:46 pm
Photo courtesy Alexandra Kosteniuk
Jennifer Shahade
Alexandra Botez, Courtesy Botez
US Chess Women and BotezLive present Isolated Queens II on Saturday, May 2nd at 2 PM ET. The online girls and womens blitz tournament on chess.com will be hosted by the most popular female chess streamer in the World, WFM Alexandra Botez and Womens Program Director and two-time US Womens Chess Champion Jen Shahade. Jen and Alexandra will give educational commentary on the ten round Swiss event at twitch.tv/botezlive, which will also be hosted on twitch.tv/uschess and twitch.tv/jenshahade. The event will feature some of the best players in the World, as well as many talented youngsters and enthusiastic amateurs. $2000 in prizes will be awarded to the top streamers in the event, while all women can compete for bragging rights and the chance to play against some of the strongest women in the World. Defending champion Alexandra chessqueen Kosteniuk is back to try to reclaim her title. The former World Champion and sensational blitz player will be streaming the event on twitch.tv/chessqueen.
Songwriter and chess conceptual artist Juga of Jugamusica.com will also join the party on May 2nd. Jugas music video, Isolated Pawn, is a perfect watch to get you in the mood for the event, and we will listen to it during the event commentary.
Juga, who recently appeared on Ladies Knight, is also a new streamer, where she solves puzzles and sings karaoke on twitch.tv/jugamusica.
Other confirmed players include:
Carissa Yip (photo Ootes)
IM Carissa Yip, who is a writer for ChessKid, a popular streamer at https://www.twitch.tv/carissayip and has started a and has started a recent campaign, Chess Against COVID for COVID-19 relief through her channel
Ivette Garcia, Courtesy David Llada
GM Irina Krush and WGM Sabina Foisor, Photo David Llada
Charlotte Clymer, Photo Tim Hanks
To join the event yourself, find tournament rules and instructions on how to join at tinyurl.com/isolatedqueens.
Thanks to the generosity of Ian Maprail Silverstone, Richard and Barbara Schiffrin and Nikola Stojsin of Open Field Media for donating the $2000 prize fund, which will be rewarded to the top streamers in the event. The top three streamers will receive $700, $500 and $300 while top finishing streamers Under 2200, 1800 and 1400 will receive $165 each.
60% of onstream donations during this match will support online education and educational content geared toward girls and youth. The other 40% will go toward supporting future events and matches. Dont miss the official broadcast on twitch.tv/botezlive where we will shout out many of the top streams. And look for the full post-event recap right here on CLO!
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Isolated Queens II: Top Streamers to Play BotezLive & US Chess Women Event - uschess.org
The future of chess books (1) – Chessbase News
Posted: at 5:46 pm
Let me say in advance: I have grown up with books. From the start I was a bibliophile, fanatically so, and in the course of a lifetime have collected many thousands of books including chess books, which for decades have been sent to me by friendly publishers. To these (the chess books, not the publishers) I have always had an ambivalent relationship. On the one hand they brought me a great deal of pleasure. On the other I was distressed by the colossal waste they represented.
Take for instance the famous and for a long time ubiquitous Chess Informant. I bought it regularly. The picture shows what the contents looked like. It also tells you how much of the approximately thirty volumes I collected I actually read. Close to zero percent. I did look at a lot of diagrams and try to follow the next three to five moves in my mind, but that was it.
I did notice that a certain percentage of the visitors in my house, the ones who had GM titles, and especially the super-GMs, read my Informants like Agatha Christie novels. Anand, for instance, would grab the latest Informant, curl up in a corner, and spend hours giggling and laughing at games he was replaying in his head. Nobody, really nobody, ever pulled out a chessboard to replay games. Either they could replay everything in their minds, or they used my method of diagram scanning.
So just a small percentage of chess players actually read chess books or magazines. When's the last time you set up the chess board (I'm not sure exactly where mine is) and pieces (those I can find I have two very nice sets in the shelf behind me) and replayed a game from a book? The situation has been exacerbated by the advent of replayable games in software and on web pages. That is so easy and so convenient that it is hard to find a proper place for books in the chess landscape.
So are chess books and magazines on the way out? Because you cannot replay moves, like you can do on any good web site? No, you actually can, if the publishers spend a miniscule amount of effort on it! Let me explain.
Everyone who buys a chess book has the ultimate replay device in their pocket, or on the coffee table. It is a smart phone or a tablet. What if you could use these, instead of setting up the chess board and pieces, to replay the game in the books? No mistakes, no tedious attempts to find your way back to the main line when you have been looking at analysis. Everything is automatic, just like on a replay board on your computer screen.
I am not the first person to think about this. Take a look at the paper "A Framework for Recognition and Animation of Chess Moves Printed on a Chess Book" by Sleyman Eken et al. It was published (in 2015) by the International Arab Journal of Information Technology and proposes "a set of techniques to animate chess moves which are printed on a chess book. These include (1) extraction of chess moves from an image of a printed page, (2) recognition of chess moves from the extracted image, and (3) displaying digitally encoded successive moves as an animation on a chessboard." It's all pattern recognition, and with AI today the process could be made very efficient.
But is that what I am looking for? You use your phone or tablet to scan a page, with an AI app to find the chess game and make it replayable? No, there must be an easier, non-technical way. And there is. The chess book author needs to provide the games and moves in replayable form to the reader, and the reader must have instant access to them. The solution: QR codes.
Once again I am not the first person to come up with this solution. When thinking about using QR codes in the chess books I might end up writing, I remembered that it had already been done, very nicely, by my friend Prof. Christian Hesse (who writes very entertaining books on mathematics and on chess). And I get them all from him. Searching through the twenty or so I own I found Damenopfer, written in 2015. "Damenopfer" is "Queen Sacrifice" and the subtitle translates to "Astonishing Stories from the World of Chess." It is a thoroughly charming collection of examples where surprising sacs play a decisive role if you understand German it is well worth buying ($12.40).
The thing about Damenopfer is that, for the first time, every single game in the book contains a QR code for you to scan. Within a second or two you have the game, moves, and the entire analysis, on your mobile phone, in a bus, in the garden, anywhere. So you read the stories in the book and then replay the games on your electronic device. Let me give you an example:
Here are two pages I scanned from the book (click to enlarge). In case you don't know the German piece letters: KDTLS = KQRBN. Now try reading the two examples:
Chances are you can manage the first pretty well, but the second is more difficult playing through in your mind.
Now whip out your mobile phone or tablet. Check if you have a barcode or QR code scanner installed. Chances are it is already there, but if it isn't get one of the dozen or two available for free in the Apple Store or Google Playstore. Takes a couple of minutes to download and install and of course you only need to do this once. After that you can use the scanner for all kinds of thing, e.g. read reviews of products in stores, scan grocery packages for recipies, etc. But you can also point your phone or tablet at the pages above. The scanner will automatically read the QR code and ask you whether you want to proceed to a page. That will take you to a special replayer for the game in question.You can play through the moves, tapping on the replay keys or on the notation below the chessboard. Very nice, don't you agree?
The two examples above may be just about manageable, following the moves in your mind and enjoying the beautiful tactics. But what about the following:
I just give you the diagrams and the QR codes. In the first case (White to play and win) Christian writes: "It looks like a perfectly hopeless situation for White. The chances for the white king to survive are the same as for a snowman in a blast furnace." And he goes on to show us the truly incredible moves White must make to acrtually win: 1.b6+ Ka8! 2.g7 h1=Q 3.g8=Q+ Bb8 4.a7 Nc6+ 5.dxc6 Qxh5+. "This is the critical point in the study," he writes, "White wins with a queen move that comes from a different world and a different reality." 7.Qg5!!! "The queen, dressed in a kamikaze outfit throws herself in between." Hesse give a three alternate lines explaining why the queen moving to g5 is the only way to win:
6.Ka4 Qd1+ 7.Qb3 Qa1+ 8.Kb5 Qe5+ 9.Ka6 Qa1+= 6.Kb4 Nd3+ (6...Qh4+ 7.Ka5 Qh5+ 8.Qg5 +) 7.Kc3 Qa5+ 8.Kxd3 Qa3+ 9.Kc2 Qa4+= 6.Ka6 Qe2+ 7.Ka5 Qe5+ 8.Ka4 Qd4+ 9. Kb5 Qe5+=
6...Qxg5+ 7.Ka6! Qa5+! 8.Kxa5 Bxa7 9. c7!! Kb7 10.bxa7 "and Black raises the white flag, 1-0."
Beautiful, isn't it? What, you did not follow everything? Then use your phone or tablet to see all the moves and variations on a nice graphic chessboard. Incidentally, this is one of my all-time favourite studies.
The second example, on the right in the above scan, is a 27-move game with seven additional moves to show why Black resigned after a firework of sacrifices. Can be easily followed on the printed pages by a GM, but not by me. But I can scan the QR code image next to the diagram and immediately replay everything on my phone. Try it, it is dazzling how White played 14.Kf1!!! to initiate the sacrifice tornado. In the book Hesse explains why 14.Kf1 (which he gave three exclams) was necessary in order to avoid a bishop check nine moves later. This is explained in the book, while the moves can be replayed on your phone or tablet. After a five-second scan.
After getting re-hooked on Christian Hesse's book and playing through a dozen examples I realized I had the solution to my dilemma: how to produce a book in which people will not ignore most of the chess content where they can actually play through all the games given.
So this is how I can produce my book in fact in greater quality than in Hesse's book. That was published five years ago and a lot of progress has made since then. I also discovered how easy it is to implement: adding replay code takes me a average of a minute and a half per game. And readers get instant access to tools no chess author dreamed of, until a few years ago.
How I plan to use these tools and how you can do the same for books and magazines that will be the subject of my next article. I will also give you a couple of trial chapters which you can print out and use. And in return you can tell me what you think of the project.
Here is the original post:
#GameOfTwoHalves Podcast: Can Singapore be the best in chess? – The Straits Times
Posted: at 5:46 pm
#GameOfTwoHalves Ep 83: Can Singapore be the best in chess; solving incomplete football leagues
12:42 mins
Synopsis: #GameofTwoHalves is The Straits Times' weekly sports podcast that is out every Tuesday.
Money FM's Rachel Kelly calls up ST sports correspondents Sazali Abdul Aziz and David Lee.
They discuss the following topics:
1. That unassuming young kid in your neighbourhood could be a chess whiz, as some pre-teens here already have international acclaim. But what separatesthem from that elusive Grandmaster status?
2. Several European football leagues have ended their campaigns with various debatable approaches, including the point-per-game method in the French Ligue. When will Asean leagues resume, if at all, and what are the repercussions on the respective national teams?
Produced by: ST Sports Desk
Edited by: Aw Yao Feng, Nadiah Koh & Penelope Lee
Follow #GameOfTwoHalves podcasts and rate us on:
Spotify: https://str.sg/ovjR
Apple Podcasts:http://str.sg/o8MK
Google Podcasts:http://str.sg/oXeS
Playlist:https://str.sg/Ji3k
Website:http://str.sg/stpodcasts
Feedback to:podcast@sph.com.sg
Thank you for your support! ST and BT Podcasts picked up a silver medal for Best Digital Project to engage younger and/or millennial audiences at 2019 Asian Digital Media Awards by Wan-Ifra:https://str.sg/Jw5T
Continued here:
#GameOfTwoHalves Podcast: Can Singapore be the best in chess? - The Straits Times
‘The Call To Unite’: Oprah Winfrey kickstarts live stream event and fans can’t wait for Avril Lavigne to join – MEAWW
Posted: at 5:44 pm
In times of the coronavirus crisis, The Call To Unite spreads the message to celebrate someone who has been there for you through the global pandemic. The 24-hour livestream event brings people together to share how you plan to #AnswerTheCall for someone else in need.
Locked down in our homes, what is the best thing we can do? Timothy Shriver, organizer of The Call To Unite, says it's time to co-author the "book of us". It's all about "justice" and "joy." Oprah Winfrey kickstarted the event by speaking to spiritual leaders from across the globe. "I spent 47-38 days in lockdown, I've had a lot of time to reflect what this moment means to us as a family and a community," she said.
Delving into the basic struggles people are facing, Shriver said, "If not now, when? If not us, who? So many people are starving. We all are looking for a way to trust each other. I think one thing we all need to do is the language you use to get together. It is a massive positive movement in the right direction."
Oprah then spoke to Bishop TD Jakes and Eckhart Tolle. Talking about how we divided the world into whites, blacks and browns, Bishop said, "Wed become too tribal, too separated into our own groups. This is, after all, something affecting all of humanity."
Tweeting some of his touching words, people united on social media. "We must feel the fear but never let it drive the car - Bishop TD Jakes #AnswerTheCall," one tweet read and another said, "I have an idea. @Oprah should be @JoeBidens VP. They would sweep. We need her. Also, heal us, Oprah."
"The bishop says he hasnt spent this much time at home in years, but its given him time to appreciate simplicity," one said and another said, "Its the dignity we bring to the suffering that determines the outcome, #BishopTDJakes #TheCalltoUnite."
Meanwhile, some fans noticed Jakes' peculiar live stream setup. "TD Jakes has a better livestream setup than Teddy Riley. Go Bishop! #AnswerTheCall #verzuz," the tweet read along with a picture. Meanwhile, some can't help but wait for Avril Lavigne to join in. "At which time does Avril Lavigne #AnswerTheCall," one wrote and another said, "@AvrilLavigne about what time are you joining the #AnswerTheCall live stream?" One fan posted, "She isn't shy anymore on social media. I'm very happy that i can see her live again & get to hear her voice often. Thank you so much."
Feeling the inspiration and motivation, people are waiting for more celebrities to join in. "Can't wait to tune into @TheCallToUnite, so many amazing people are coming together to #AnswerTheCall & unite our community during this pandemic. Hope you'll all follow along!" one tweet read. If you're wondering when your favorite celebrities will pop in, here's the schedule for you.
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'The Call To Unite': Oprah Winfrey kickstarts live stream event and fans can't wait for Avril Lavigne to join - MEAWW
My Life in the Age of COVID: Event Planner Bryan Rafanelli – Boston magazine
Posted: at 5:44 pm
Weddings
The man behind celebrity weddings and high-end fetes talks hoarding frozen pizza and the future of celebrations in the era of social distancing.
Photo by Joel Benjamin
As the COVID-19 pandemic upends every aspect of Boston life, were checking in with some local residents to learn how theyre processing our new normal. Theyll share serious thoughts on their concerns for the cityand yes, some silly recommendations on what to binge-watch, too. For the rest of the series, clickhere.
As the founder and chief creative officer of Rafanelli Events, Bryan Rafanelli has spent the last 20-plus years throwing luxurious soirees around the worldincluding several Obama-era White House state dinners and theweddings of celebs such as Chelsea Clinton and Allison Williams, to name a few. Now, for the first time in his career, the party has stopped as coronavirus and social-distancing policies have canceled events both locally and globally. Yet, for the leader of the Boston and NYC-based firm, these quiet, solitary days have been some of his most jam-packed as he plans for the day when we can fill dance floors once again.
What is your level of concern right now?
First and foremost, [Im concerned for] my family, my friends, my staff, and of course, my amazing clients, [who I hope are] staying safe and being well.
Thirty-five percent of my businesses is [planning events for] nonprofits, so my other concern is how we can maintain the success of these organizations that are doing great work in real time, whether theyre on the frontlines at MGH or theyre Boys and Girls Clubs. Every day I wake up thinking about how we can we help them and make sure that everybody understands they need to be helped.
Its an interesting time to be in the gathering business. The left side of my brain is like, We have to plan for the future, and we have to be honest with ourselves about what gathering will look like. So for example, if Mayor Walsh or the governor will allow assembly in the fall, Im thinking about [how to plan] events for 20, 50, 100 people so that theyre safe. I dont do events that small, but I am thinking to myself, How can I be there to think this through for people? I literally have been having calls with some of the most incredible people in our business about [things like] how we are going to serve food, how well do drinks, and how we are going to park cars. As long as this virus is around, we have to be thoughtful and proactive about the things that are going to make people as safe as possible and allow them to come back together. Inherently, as humans, we want to gather; my concern is that we do that the best [way] we can with the information we have.
Have you come up with any creative solutions that will allow us to have gatherings later this year, even if there are ongoing social-distancing requirements?
With Zoom, we are already gathering virtually. Thats happening in real time, and what came out of that for me was [wondering], Is there a hybrid of that for if and when we can assemble in small groups again? If we have an event for 300 people, is it actually three 100-person events instead? Or six 50-person events? So thats something were working on. Its a hybrid event product; people can still come together safely in small groups, but feel the connectivity of the larger group. Thats what I think the future of events looks like in the fall. And then as all of these amazing treatments and vaccines come out, [we can] come back together as a collective. Until then, we need to be thoughtful about how we do this.
Any advice for couples whose weddings have been affected by the coronavirus outbreak?
Our first wedding was [supposed to be] last weekend, and we had weddings that were supposed to happen in May and June. My best advice to these amazing, young, smart, brilliant people who fall in love and are supposed get married is, look, youve gone from a short engagement to a really long one. Itll be a yearits not forever. You have to realize how fast time moves. Accept where you are right now, and then reimagine the future. Its exciting stuff. Not everybody gets to plan these beautiful wedding stories with their families, and you get to do it a little bit longer. And thats okay. In fact, you might actually have more time to do it and not feel the pressure of planning a wedding. Youll really be able to dig in and say, What do I really want this to look like? What stories do I want to tell about my family? Who do I want to connect to? I think time is going to give you more choices. So focus on that.
How have you been coping so far?
My husband and I have been couples distancing, we call it. We have a house in Boston and a beach house in Provincetown. So we will be together for four days, and then one of us will separate. It gives us a little bit of a change, even though were not seeing anybody, and that has given us a little relief. Look, Im a very fortunate guy. We have a beautiful place in Boston. We live in a [former] church in the South End, so we have these beautiful views of the city every day. Although its been quiet, its been really magical to watch spring come.
Walk me through your average daily routine right now, starting with the first thing you do when you wake up.
I have a golden retriever named George Clooney that makes me get up and take him for a nice long walk. Then [I work out for] 30 minutes with my trainer virtually. Hes literally on my iPhone in the corner of my bedroom. Next, I insist that I shave every day. Pre-COVID, I would go five days without shaving. Now, for some reason Im like, You need to get up, shower, shave, and get dressed. And you need to wear a collared shirt. Im really trying not to break my routine.
Then I go to work. I check in with my chief of staff, we go over my day from top to bottom, and Im thinking, How am I going to tackle all of these Zoom calls? I have never worked harder, and Ive been working for 25 years. Im kind of a madman about working. But its just constant conversation: Whats going on? How are we going to handle it? What are we going to do? Wheres the money going to come from? I believe so strongly in talking to every single client, as well as my teams, as much as I can every week.
And then I sit on the advisory committee for Mass General and on five boards, from Huntington Theatre to the Boys and Girls Club to Camp Harbor View. Each one of them is facing real challenges right now about how they should be doing things and raising money. Im having those calls every single day.
The other thing Im doing is connecting with 25 producers and designers from around the world. Once a week, we get on a Zoom call and talk about business, best practices, PPP, and how to finance the future of events. I also will fully admit that every Friday I get on a call with a bunch of them, and its just a cocktail party. And we agree that we have to be two drinks in when we get on the call.
How have you been navigating relationships and staying connected?
I do a call with mother every single day, and [a call] once a week with my whole family. [I also do a call] once a week with my husbands family. Its been very healthy to do it and Ive enjoyed it. Ive never been closer to my family, quite frankly. I mean, I love them, theyre super supportive, but the idea that wed talk every week is unheard of. Seeing my nieces and nephews, who are all graduating from high school or college or getting marriedwere having really interesting life conversations that we probably wouldnt have normally.
What do you miss most about your former, pre-social distancing routine?
Im in the gathering business. I love celebration. So Ive missed that like you have no idea. I keep imagining how that first party will feel. I just saw a photograph of flowers from an event we did for a clients 65th wedding anniversary, and I was staring at the image thinking, Oh my god, those flowers. I miss that beauty, and Im not somebody who ever took it for granted.
Have you made any interesting changes to your personal or work routine that you want to keep doing even when things return to normal?
Its so weird, but I havent really cooked a meal for myself or my family in at least 15 years. Its a lot of takeout from Whole Foods, and I love restaurants and going out for breakfast. But I have been shopping and cooking and setting the table, and I like it. That I could see could stick. Its not great food, but theres something about it that Ive realized is really important.
What have you been keeping in your fridge for comfort food?
I think the strangest things happen in this situation; I only really eat healthy food, but I have so much pasta and lasagna and stuffed shells and frozen pizza that youd think this was an Italian restaurant. But Im buying it from Whole Foods, and its just always in there. I would eat it morning, noon, and night because its so good, and its definitely piling up in [my fridge].
Whats been your binge-watch/read/listen go-to to take your mind off things?
A friend was telling me that she and her husband started to watch a lot of comedy instead of watching MSNBC. I thought, What a great idea. So I have been going through John Mulaney and Wanda Sykes and old Joan Rivers clips on YouTube. Just when I start to go into a little bit of a dark place, I say, I should watch some comedy. Ive watched John Mulaney at Radio City three times. Its just unbelievably funny.
Whats a habit youll use this time to break?
Im trying to break the habit of getting too worried. Every morning I start on a high, and then it starts to slip during the day. Theres a book I often go to called A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. He basically writes about this Eastern religion idea of balancing lifes super high highslike doing a state dinner for the Obamas at the White House or Matt Damons weddingwith challenges like my best friend having cancer for the last five years or COVID-19, and not getting too drawn into the dark. Im trying to stay in the middle, so what Im trying to do is catch myself and say, Bryan, stay steady. I think if we all stay steady, we will be better off on the other side.
Getting married? Start and end your wedding planning journey with Boston Weddings' guide to the best wedding vendors in the city.
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My Life in the Age of COVID: Event Planner Bryan Rafanelli - Boston magazine
Global Free From Food Market (2019 to 2026) – by Type and Distribution Channel – GlobeNewswire
Posted: at 5:42 pm
May 05, 2020 06:33 ET | Source: Research and Markets
Dublin, May 05, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Free from Food Market by Type and Distribution Channel: Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast 2019-2026" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.
Free from food products are known as the products in which certain ingredients are removed to make them healthier and safer for consumption. They may be dairy-free, sugar-free, carb-free, lactose-free, artificial ingredient-free food, or egg-free depending upon the purpose for which they are being produced. The consumption of free from dairy and free from gluten foods is not only limited to nutritional needs but is also gaining importance, owing to issues related to intolerance or allergies.
Dairy-free products can be referred to the milk products produced by vegan alternatives. Soy, rice, almond, coconut, and even hemp seed milks are the popular dairy-free products that are dominating the dairy-free segment. Sugar-free products are made without the addition of actual sugar. Sugar substitutes such as aspartame, cyclamate, mogrosides, saccharin, and stevia are used in sugar-free products.
These products provide a sweet taste, while at the same time containing less calories as compared to sugar-based sweeteners, thus making it a zero-calorie or low-calorie product. Consumption of carbohydrates beyond the prescribed level has a negative impact on blood sugar and insulin levels. Thus, restricting carbohydrates in food items controls sugar levels and insulin needs. Increase in prevalence of chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, dementia, cancer, and cardiovascular diseases is a key factor that augments the demand for low-carb food products
Lactose is a sugar majorly found in milk products. Increased consumption of lactose may cause gas, bloating, cramping, or diarrhea, in case it is not broken down or is undigested. Alternatives for lactose containing milk can be soy milk, almond milk, and other plant-based milks. Artificial ingredient free food are natural and organic foods.
The consumer preference toward organic, natural, and healthy food is on a constant rise, owing to increase in health consciousness among consumers. Furthermore, surge in disposable income, improvement in living standard, rise in health expenditure, and large-scale promotion of organic foods owing to their benefit, such as their chemical-free nature, drive the growth of free from food market.
Increase in adverse health effects due to use of artificial ingredients, additives, or colorants such as E133 and the adoption of controversial food technologies such as GMOs have in the preparation of free from food products have limited their adoption among consumers. Moreover, these products are significantly expensive, and have a potentially shorter shelf life, thereby limiting their adoption. Furthermore, additional ingredients are added in free from food products to meet the needs of prescribed regulations, which incurs extra production cost of free from food products. Thus, high cost of these products poses a potential threat for the growth of the global market. Rise in concern about the origin of ingredients among consumers has influenced new product purchases. This trend is expected to generate lucrative opportunities in the clean label ingredients market.
In addition, the food industry is responding to an increase in demand by consumers of clean label products by supplying the food products, which are perceived as cleaner. For instance, Nestl USA removed all of artificial colors from their chocolate candy products, and removed artificial flavors from the entire line of snacks and frozen pizzas. Furthermore, in the announcement made in February 2016, Mars pledged to remove artificial colors from human food products. Most recently, Red Bulllaunched a new line of organic soda products, which are only available in two regions of the U.S.This organic soda line is another example of how companies are embracing the artificial ingredients free concept.
The global free from food market is segmented into type, distribution channel, and region. Deepening on type, the market is categorized into dairy-free, sugar-free, carb-free, lactose-free, artificial ingredient-free food, and others. On the basis of distribution channel, the market is divided into supermarket &hypermarket, specialty stores, online retail stores, and others. On the regional basis, the market is studied across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and LAMEA.
Some of the key companies profiled in the report include The Kraft Heinz Company, The Hain Celestial Group, Inc., Cargill Inc., Corbion Inc., Kerry Group PLC, Ingredion Incorporated, Chr. Hasen A/S, Dupont, Kellogg Company, and General Mills, Inc.
Key Benefits
Key Findings of the Study
Key Topics Covered:
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1. Report description 1.2. Key benefits for stakeholders 1.3. Key market segments 1.4. Research methodology 1.4.1. Primary research 1.4.2. Secondary research 1.4.3. Analyst tools and models
CHAPTER 2: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 2.1.1. Top impacting factor 2.1.2. Top investment pockets 2.2. CXO perspective
CHAPTER 3: MARKET OVERVIEW 3.1. Market definition and scope 3.2. Parent/Peer Market Overview 3.3. INDUSTRY ROADMAP 3.4. Key Forces Shaping free from food market 3.4.1. High bargaining power of suppliers 3.4.2. Low threat of new entrants 3.4.3. Moderate threat of substitutes 3.4.4. High intensity of rivalry 3.4.5. Moderate bargaining power of buyers 3.5. INDUSTRY PAIN POINT ANALYSIS 3.6. CONSUMER ANALYSIS 3.7. Pricing Analysis 3.7.1. Pricing Analysis of Product A, By Region, 2018 & 2025 3.8. Value Chain Analysis 3.9. IMPACT OF GOVERNMENT REGULATIONS ON MARKET 3.10. Market dynamics 3.10.1. Drivers 3.10.1.1. Increasing Consumer Demand for free from food Products 3.10.1.2. Increasing incidences of celiac disease and gluten intolerance 3.10.2. Restraints 3.10.2.1. High cost of Free from products 3.10.3. Opportunities 3.10.3.1. Increasing investments by small and midsized food product manufacturing companies 3.10.3.2. Shift of consumer preference towards ready-to-eat food products
CHAPTER 4: FREE FROM FOOD MARKET, BY TYPE 4.1. Overview 4.2. Dairy free 4.2.1. Key market trends, growth factors and opportunities 4.2.2. Market size and forecast, by region 4.2.3. Market analysis by country 4.3. Sugar free 4.3.1. Key market trends, growth factors and opportunities 4.3.2. Market size and forecast, by region 4.3.3. Market analysis by country 4.4. Carb free 4.4.1. Key market trends, growth factors and opportunities 4.4.2. Market size and forecast, by region 4.4.3. Market analysis by country 4.5. Lactose free 4.5.1. Key market trends, growth factors and opportunities 4.5.2. Market size and forecast, by region 4.5.3. Market analysis by country 4.6. Artificial ingredient free food 4.6.1. Key market trends, growth factors and opportunities 4.6.2. Market size and forecast, by region 4.6.3. Market analysis by country 4.7. Others 4.7.1. Key market trends, growth factors and opportunities 4.7.2. Market size and forecast, by region 4.7.3. Market analysis by country
CHAPTER 5: FREE FROM FOOD MARKET, BY DISTRIBUTION CHANNEL 5.1. Overview 5.2. Supermarket and Hypermarket 5.2.1. Key market trends, growth factors and opportunities 5.2.2. Market size and forecast, by region 5.2.3. Market analysis by country 5.3. Specialty Store 5.3.1. Key market trends, growth factors and opportunities 5.3.2. Market size and forecast, by region 5.3.3. Market analysis by country 5.4. Online retail stores 5.4.1. Key market trends, growth factors and opportunities 5.4.2. Market size and forecast, by region 5.4.3. Market analysis by country 5.5. Others 5.5.1. Key market trends, growth factors and opportunities 5.5.2. Market size and forecast, by region 5.5.3. Market analysis by country
CHAPTER 6: FREE FROM FOOD MARKET, BY REGION 6.1. Overview 6.2. North America 6.3. Europe 6.4. Asia-Pacific 6.5. LAMEA
CHAPTER 7: COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE 7.1. INTRODUCTION 7.1.1. MARKET PLAYER POSITIONING, 2018 7.2. TOP WINNING STRATEGIES 7.3. Product Mapping 7.4. Competitive Dashboard 7.5. Competitive Heatmap 7.6. Key developments 7.6.1. Acquisition 7.6.2. Product Launch 7.6.3. Business Expansion
CHAPTER 8: COMPANY PROFILES 8.1. Archer Daniels Midland Company 8.1.1. Company overview 8.1.2. Key Executive 8.1.3. Company snapshot 8.1.4. Operating business segments 8.1.5. Product portfolio 8.1.6. R&D Expenditure 8.1.7. Business performance 8.2. Chr. Hansen Holding A/S 8.3. CONAGRA BRANDS, INC. 8.4. GENERAL MILLS, INC. 8.5. HAIN CELESTIAL GROUP, INC. 8.6. Nestle S A 8.7. The Coca-Cola Company 8.8. The Kraft Heinz Company (Heinz) 8.9. Unilever Group 8.10. WHITEWAVE FOODS COMPANY INC. (DANONE)
For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/giry4r
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Global Free From Food Market (2019 to 2026) - by Type and Distribution Channel - GlobeNewswire