Daily Rome Shot 512, etc., including a chess playing robot and an unfortunate 7 year old

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In Chess News… 50 years ago today in Iceland, Boris had white and Bobby had black. The Najdorf (pronounced “nai-dorf”) Sicilian was on the board. Fischer had the win, but blew it and Spassky fought back for a 49 move draw. Fischer had to go for a perpetual check to avoid getting checkmated. Spassky is down 3-4.

After the legendary Game 6 Fischer, still being a jerk about everything, had whined about the stone chessboard.  He demanded that they go back to a wooden board that had been used in Game 3.   There would be more board drama.

In OTHER Board Drama News…  I am not making this up…

Via the NY Post:

Chess-playing robot breaks 7-year-old opponent’s finger in Russia

A chess-playing robot broke the finger of its 7-year-old opponent during a match at a tournament in Russia.

The boy was facing off against the robot when it mistakenly grabbed and broke the child’s finger at the Moscow Open last week, according to local Russian outlets.

“The robot broke the child’s finger — this, of course, is bad,” president of the Moscow Chess Federation Sergey Lazarev told TASS Thursday.  [“This, of course, is bad.”  D’ya think?]

The child reportedly made his next move on the chess board before the robot — a large, automated arm powered by artificial intelligence — had time to recalculate and mistook the boy’s finger for a chess piece, according to Lazarev.

“The child made a move, and after that we need to give time for the robot to answer, but the boy hurried, the robot grabbed him,” he told the outlet in Russian.

Footage of the incident published by the Baza Telegram channel [Yes, there’s video.] shows the mechanical arm latch onto the boy’s finger for several seconds before adults intervene and are able to pry it off his hand.

The young chess player, whose name is Christopher, according to Baza, returned to the tournament the next day and finished his matches with a cast around his finger, Lazarev said.

[…]

The VP of the Russian Chess Federation blamed the boy for violating the safety rules.