Daily Rome Shot 709: QGA

In chess news, the women are duking it out in St. Louis.  I haven’t followed that one closely, since Norway is underway.  In Norway, with black Fabi won a classical against Nodirbek.  (I assume you all know their names by now.)  In doing so, he moved into the 2nd highest rating in the world after Magnus.  My guy Wesley So gained points against Shakhriyar Mamedyarov.  Watch the action today at 1100 EDT and 1700 CET.

There was a funny moment in coverage.    Ivanka was taking us into a short break with a phrase like, “We’ll be back in a few minutes with all the exciting action!”  The shot didn’t cut right way and the camera was fixed with a side view of one of the tables where only one of the players was at the board, sitting absolutely dead still.

One of the odd features of the tourney in Norway is “The Confessional”.  It’s really called that.

Use FATHERZ10 at checkout

Norwegian chess organizers and chess.com apparently have more confidence in the Confessional than 80% of Catholic parishes in these USA.

Players can go into this booth and bare their souls to the camera.  Of course what is said in the confessional stays in the confessional… at least as far as the other players are concerned.  Hikaru, the chattiest Kathy of them all, is a frequent confessor.   He’s also doing recaps of his games every day.  I don’t know how he does it.  I haven’t been a huge fan of Hikaru’s live stream because he is so verbally repetitive.  However, his recent recaps have been instructive.  As far as his “confessions” are concerned, it is interesting to hear how he thinks he is doing, compared to the eval bar and the three commentators (including women’s chess legend Judit Polgar).

For all of you…

GO TO CONFESSION!

I’ll make a confession right here, a chessy confession.  I’ve been playing badly.  I am thinking about my first OTB tournament in 50 years.  Scary.

Your use of my Amazon affiliate link is a major part of my income. It helps to pay for insurance, groceries, everything. Please remember me when shopping online. Thanks in advance.  US HERE – UK HERE

Black to move. There are some weak squares around that enemy King.

NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.

Priestly chess players, drop me a line. HERE

Speaking of puzzles, a strong refutation of a series of puzzling pieces by scholars who ought to have know better than to wade into this topic unprepared:

Illusions of Reform – Responses to Cavadini, Healy, and Weinandy
IN DEFENSE OF THE TRADITIONAL MASS AND THE FAITHFUL WHO ATTEND IT

US HERE – UK HERE

I’m an affiliate of the shop of chess.com which is handled by House of Staunton.  I’ve ordered from them and, once, called in to obtain some spare queens for a set – not because it’s pride month and there were Jesuits around – but because the sets only had 32 pieces.  It is really handy to have a couple of extra queens, particularly when there is some interior decoration to be done on the promotion rank.  After all, a promoted queen is really just a trans-pawn, right?  (Trick question: No, it isn’t. It’s a queen.)  Hmmm… I guess that begs the question of why one wouldn’t have a few spare minor pieces.  After all, I know one nasty gambit line that requires under-promotion to a knight to gain a tempo with a check.  Perhaps because by the time you get to promotion, some pieces are off the board.

UPDATE:

I played OTB with the club today and did very well.  I won one with white against a super-aggressor with a really pretty surprise check mate and I won one with black, QGA against perhaps the strongest player.  (I won’t talk about the one before that, QGA where I went to the zoo and did exactly what my prep told me not to do.  Hilarity ensued.)

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3 Comments

  1. Jim Dorchak says:

    Our Son Thomas now has his first HAM radio. It was gifted to him by a Chilean friend of ours who is his adopted uncle. We built his Di-Pole antenna and got it hooked up with a few issues but it is now up and working. Right now he is running on 5 watts. So Thomas is looking for an amplifier and working on his license.
    So all in all he is trying to figure out this whole hobby. He really does not know what is should be doing. He wants to try and contact you Fr Z but is not sure how. Chile is a long way from the rest of the world. So any advice would be great. Thanks

    [WHOA! I sense gray line opportunities.]

  2. TonyO says:

    Speaking of reform: my diocese seems to have decided to push a new fund-raising effort – separate from and not associated with the annual Bishop’s Lenten Appeal – under the term “Renewal”. With a 5-year plan of donations. Funny thing is, I can’t find a shred of suggestion of what, exactly, is supposed to be “renewed” in this. I thought, initially, that it might be connected to the USCCB effort to renew Eucharistic devotion, but…crickets about the Eucharist. Since it is virtually impossible to set forth upon a diocese-wide promotion, with separately printed pledge cards, parish allotments, etc, and NOT have some specific purpose in mind, I fear that the purpose is really to renew the bank accounts at the chancery, for whatever those accounts are for. You know. I hope I am wrong, but I won’t hold my breath waiting for the evidence.

    As to my parish: the pastor took up about 8 minutes of the homily to show us exactly how to fill out the pledge cards, with computer and camera converted into an overhead projector and all. (I discovered that he has really great hand-writing, just beautiful. They must have been really careful about this in his grade school (not in this country).) Then, the next week, he did it all again. He may have explained why he needed to show us again, but I did not hear that. I got the impression – probably not fair – that “the beatings will continue until morale improves”. But he didn’t do it the 3rd week: maybe enough people signed up?

    I have decided, tentatively, that I can no longer support the diocese until they show me that they have completely reversed (a) the utterly wrong-headed seminary directions of the 1970’s through 2000’s, all the stuff outlined in “Goodbye, Good Men” etc, and modernist (and other heretical) professors; and (b) demonstrate that they are actively trying to rid the diocese of priests who are active gays, even if they don’t prey on young victims; and (c) are willing to come forward publicly about information they have in hand that implicates bishops of other dioceses in homosexual activity, grooming, pink mafia practices, abuse, cover-ups, silencing good priests, and all the other heavy-duty bad bishop stuff going on. So, I won’t be donating to “Renewal” or anything similar.

    Regarding (c): I find it virtually impossible to believe that the “old boys network” among bishops doesn’t furnish, to all bishops, plenty of second-hand evidence of all the rotten mess regarding specific bad bishops: specific events, specific seminarians abused, specific priests silenced without cause, etc. I believe that many are (at an absolute minimum) culpable of grave negligence to the extent that they have not quite literally forced the Vatican to remove these bishops, and/or have not managed to find a way to make their information public so that those with first-hand information can make a good job of coordinating it all into actionable proof and run the bums out.

  3. JonPatrick says:

    I assume “OTB” stands for “over the board” i.e. sitting down at a real board with an opponent on the other side, as opposed to playing someone electronically on chess.com or equivalent? There is nothing better than playing on a real board with real chess pieces.

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