Chess in a Bar – Lusaka, Zambia.

Moving pieces with power and authority. Youtube video from Cespreza.

UTD Chess Program.

Brief interviews with top world players studying at the University of Texas at Dallas.

Youtube video from Littlepeasant .

Chess Maestro Visits Czech Republic.

Garry Kasparov arrived in the Czech Republic at the invitation of Tomáš Jirsa, the mayor of the small Czech town of Hluboká nad Vltavou. Jirsa has stated that Kasparov was invited not only as a chess player but also a representative of the Russian opposition, a role which has seen Mr Kasparov do jail time back home. On Sunday, Mr Kasparov played a showpiece chess match in Hluboká against 26 opponents simultaneously. Among the opponents were an 11-year-old schoolgirl as well as the son of the Czech president Václav Klaus. The marathon match started at 2:30pm and didn’t conclude till five and a half hours later, when Mr Kasparov defeated the last of his twenty-six opponents, an Austrian player Alexander Klinker. Among the last of the players to be defeated was a Czech teenager from the town of Tábor, who had lost his hearing at the age of seven.

Mr Kasparov also met with the Czech president Václav Kluas and touched upon several political issues between the Czech Republic and Russia as well as on the international front, including the situation in Iran and Kosovo. Crucially, he also stated that he believes that the proposed US missile base to be located in the Czech Republic and Poland is not relevant to Russian security, but he also added that he did not agree with the US plan.

The 44-year-old Russian politician was the world’s number one rated chess champion for almost all of the period between 1996 and his retirement from the sport in 2005. After that, he founded the United Civil Front party in Russia, which forms part of The Other Russia, a coalition movement opposed to President Vladimir Putin. Mr Kasparov visited the Czech Republic in June 2007, for a conference on politics and security. He has also played chess in the country before, the last time being an exhibition match in 2001.

Original Post Here.

Team-O Exposed!!! Antarctic Chess League Foiled!

Michael Truth talks about this amazing moment captured on video –

“The Federation of Oxymoronic Sports has resurfaced and this video proves it! Watch these top secret chess players scramble in deep snow to their getaway – as I get everything on tape!!! Everything – except their faces or any other identifiable evidence. “

Team-O Website.

100 Chess Book Reviews by Blue Devil Knight – Part 6.

BDK’s excellent youtube series describing his library of chess books continues.

Previous Book Review Videos -

Part 1.

Part 2

Part 3.

Part 4. 

Part 5. 

Check out his blog – Confessions of a Chess Novice.

Amazing Mind Over Matter.

Bel Air High teen manages disability with guts, brains

By Cassandra A. Fortin

Special to The Sun
March 30, 2008

Cohen leaves a lasting impression on people.

A junior at Bel Air High School, the 16-year-old has a 3.8 grade point average and was recently inducted into the National Honor Society. After graduation, he wants to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Although he excels academically, he does it from an electric wheelchair, with the assistance of an entourage of caregivers and teachers.

“I’m not able to do much on my own,” Ofek said with a shrug. “I’m very weak. I can’t walk or write or pick things up. I need help doing everything.”

But Ofek has never let his physical limitations hold him back. He was diagnosed with Type II spinal muscular atrophy, a hereditary disease of the muscles that affects 1 in 6,000 children.

The disorder causes a loss of motor neurons in the spinal cord that results in weakness and wasting of muscles used for crawling, walking, standing and sitting up. There is no cure for SMA, and treatment consists of managing the symptoms.

Tom Crawford, a pediatric neurologist at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center who met Ofek about 15 years ago, said he hasn’t changed much since then.

“Ofek is almost the same, as far as what he can do for himself, as he was when I met him,” Crawford said. “He is profoundly weak. He can’t do something as simple as bringing his hands up to his face.”

However, Ofek doesn’t dwell on what he can’t do, said his mother, Michelle Cohen-Hammond. Instead, he focuses on what he can do, she said.

“Ofek is like a little Michelangelo,” said Cohen-Hammond. “He’s self-taught. He has an amazing mind. Some kids with SMA grow up with parents who bring the world to them. But when Ofek was little, I took him out into the world.”

On one occasion, she wanted Ofek to know what it would feel like to stand up, so she put him in a standing frame and took him to the mall, she said.

Perhaps his biggest asset is his memory, which comes in handy when he engages in one of his favorite pastimes — chess.

Unable to participate in high school sports, Ofek wanted to do something competitive, he said. He had taught himself how to play chess, but he wanted to take it to the next level.

He helped start a chess club at Bel Air High, but it was short-lived because the teacher who sponsored the club became ill. However, last year a chess tournament was started in the county, Ofek said. He won the first tournament, and then won again this year.

To help give his game a little boost, Ofek said he received tutoring in chess last year from Dan Heisman, who is a U.S. Chess Federation National Master.

Ofek believes his opponents have an advantage over him when he plays chess. But Ofek has overcome that advantage by thinking multiple steps ahead when he plays, said Bill Wardle, the teacher who sponsored the chess tournament.

“Ofek is good at analyzing the situation when he plays chess,” said Wardle, who teaches math at Aberdeen High. “He rarely makes a mistake.”

Because of his illness, Ofek said he has to have his opponent move his chess pieces.

“It sounds like I may have an advantage, but the truth is, it makes it easier for my opponents to estimate my moves,” said Ofek, who was born in Israel but moved to Maryland when he was a young boy. He and his family now live in Abingdon.

Although Ofek doesn’t share a lot about what he goes through with his peers, he has used his story to help raise money for the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, has been a guest speaker at public engagements, and has served as a state ambassador for the muscular dystrophy association, he said.

“I try to do whatever I can,” Ofek said. “But thinking is really all I can do. I’m really proud of my ability to think.”

Ofek has come a long way since his diagnosis, his mother said. Originally, she was told his prognosis was death by age one.

Unwilling to accept a death sentence for her son, his mother began researching the disease. She brought him to Maryland, where he was treated by doctors at Johns Hopkins and the Kennedy Krieger Institute.

“Since then, we have looked at his disease as a birth defect that he has to live with,” she said. “Not something he has to die from.”

Ofek has adjusted to his illness, but some days it can be depressing, he said.

“I can’t go anywhere or do anything,” he said. “I have to rely on other people for everything I do.”

Richard Kelley, the director of the division of metabolism at Kennedy Krieger, became acquainted with Ofek when he received a call from Ofek’s mother, who was living in California at the time, he said.

Kelley helped Ofek through a metabolic crisis, he said. He created a special formula for him that included corn starch, to shorten his overnight fasting period from 10 to 4 hours, he said.

“A healthy person fasts at night and part of their muscle mass is broken down and turned into sugar,” he said. “The problem comes with a child who has 20 percent of the muscle mass his peers have. He still has to produce the same amount of glucose.”

Although he will never lead the life of a normal teenager, Ofek has a great personality and outlook on life, Kelley said.

“Ofek is very verbal, knowledgeable and articulate,” Kelley said. “He charms you.”

His 7-year-old sister, Orly, said she has learned to be more compassionate because of her brother.

“Ofek is very fragile,” Orly said. “He’s different from other people who can walk and other stuff.”

Orly gave an account of an incident at school where she joined the children who had to sit at a special table in the cafeteria.

“We have a table that is called the red zone in the cafeteria at school,” Orly said. “The kids who sit at the table are allergic to peanuts. I went over and sat with them. I try to be nice to people who are different.”

Read Entire Story Here.

Comments.

Argh… The Spammers found me. I’ve had to moderate (delete) so many comments over the past week that I’ve had to change the comment rules. You have to be registered and logged in to post your comments on Pawned!. So live and learn, I say. Here’s an article from the Modern Life is Rubbish website on why we see so much Viagra spam…Rich

There’s no escaping spam these days. Even with the best Bayesian filters, blacklists and other filtering techniques, most of us are still plagued with an endless stream of invitations for all sorts of weird and wonderful products and services. One of the most common forms is advertising for pharmacological products – and perhaps the most notorious form is for the ‘men’s health’ variety- notably Sildenafil citrate, more commonly known as Viagra. But how do spammers make their money?

In the US, Viagra is available via prescription only, and will cost around $10 per pill. Pfizer still control the production and distribution of Viagra in the US, so in essence they can control this price to maximise profit and to recoup the cost of development.

However, in certain countries (for instance, India and Mexico), the patent on Sildenafil citrate has expired – meaning that it can be manufactured in these countries very cheaply indeed. Pharmacy websites have sprung up to act as a channel for distribution, likely operating outside of the USA, and charging in the region of $2 per pill – and at nearly a fifth of the cost to the US consumer, this mode of distribution is a very popular way to buy Viagra online.

With this profit comes great competition, however, so off-shore pharmacy sites have resorted to one of the most popular forms of product marketing on the internet – affiliation. With massive profit margins to fall back on, pharmacy companies can easily offer commission rates of around 40% to their affiliates – a very tempting offer to some people.

Affiliation of this nature is ideally suited to spam – the affiliates are legally separate from the online pharmacy, so the pharmacy itself is in no way liable for the illegal bulk email – the onus there falls to the mysterious spammer, likely hid behind false identities and proxy servers. Obviously, for the pharmacy this is ideal – and it provides an ideal opportunity for spammers to make a quick profit.

Click rates for email campaigns are difficult to know exactly – it largely depends on the campaign, the success in evading email filters, and the format of the email itself. However, generally speaking it is very low – reports suggest a typical figure of around 0.02%. Supposing the spammer sends 1 million emails in a day – not an unlikely figure given the ease of sending email – this means the spammer can expect to see 200 clicks through to the online pharmacy store.

Conversion rates are likely to be much higher – I would expect 1% to be a typical figure, but again, this can vary between campaigns. At this figure, then, the spammer can expect to see a handful of orders per million emails. Typical order values are quite high though – price breaks help push the lowest viable purchase to at least $100. If we assume $100 as the average transaction, 40% commission means the spammer will net $80 per million emails sent – all considered, not a bad return.

Of course, there are running costs involved – DSL lines, computers, email lists – but assuming the spammer can send a million emails a day, he/she will earn $29,200 per year – not a bad sum, considering the minimal work involved.

And if you scale up the figures – say the spammer has the capacity to send 5 million emails a day, and the capability to attain the same sort of conversion ratio, then the potential yearly earnings are $146,000 – an impressive amount by any standards.

Of course, there’s a lot of competition out there – and only a limited number of erectile dysfunction sufferers, so these figures have to bottom out somewhere. As spam filters get better, conversion ratios will drop, so the harder a spammer has to work to hit those targets. I’m not confident in the example figures quoted in this article – there are too many factors to accurately predict conversion ratios and conversion rates. But, my email inbox will attest to the same – there certainly must be more than a few individuals out there making a living from this virtual form of ‘hard’ drug pushing. And all it takes is a few emails…

View story at the modernlifisrubbish website.

Toronto City Chess Tournament.

David Letterman Late Night Chess Set.

Here’s a blast from the late night TV past – judging only by the amount of hair on Dave and Paul’s heads, I’d say it’s from the early-mid 80’s. Youtube video from 13genX.

Doeberl Cup 2008 – Round 5 Commentary by GM Ian Rogers.

Watch all the commentary on the Doeberl Cup matches from youtube user Doeberl.

Doeberl Cup 2008 Website.