Daily Rome Shot 775

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Will @HariChess and Co be able to stop ‘WR Chess’? pic.twitter.com/RXLLnBtVBp

— International Chess Federation (@FIDE_chess) August 27, 2023

In Dusseldorf the World Rapid Team Championship 2023. Looking at the team rosters I opined that WR Chess was going to be hard to beat. In fact, that’s how it turned out. WR Chess is lead by my guy Wesley So and they were, after day 1, in 1st place. As I write, I haven’t caught up to today’s results. The World Rapid Team Championship – this is the first – features six nine-player teams each with blend of professional players, top women, and amateurs. The time control is 15 minutes per player, with a 10-second increment per move. The trend in chess is obviously going to faster and faster games. I don’t think that’s good for chess over all. However, people have shorter and shorter attention spans. And there’s money in watching the flash and fury of rapid and blitz.

There are five players from the world top-ten playing: Fabiano Caruana, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Anand, Rapport and Weslet So. The highest ranked woman is there, Hou Yifan. Prodigies are there, Gukesh, Pragg and Nodirbek.

WR Chess team is really powerful. Recent World Cup runner-up, Praggnanandhaa, is board five. Who else? Line up Ian Nepomniachtchi, Abdusattorov, Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Praggnanandhaa, and Vincent Keymer (who almost knocked Magnus out of the World Cup), with two women’s world champions, Hou and form champ Alexandra Kosteniuk.

Meanwhile,… white to move and mate in two. How long did it take you?

Use FATHERZ10 at checkout

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

I’m really impressed with Chess House. They have a big “back to school” drive on. Usually you can get 10% with my link and code “FATHERZ10” but right now you can get 15% off with “B2S2023”. [UPDATE: US CHESS FEDERATION has a sale with 20% off for US Labor Day, code “LABOR”.  I don’t have an affiliate account with them, however, as I do with Chess House.]

I liked this blurb at Chess House:

A 5-year study of 7th and 8th graders showed test scores improved 173% for students regularly engaged in chess classes, compared with only 4.56% for children participating in other forms of “enrichment activities”

Not only have the reading and math skills of these children soared, their ability to socialize has increased substantially Educators at the Roberto Clemente School (C.I.S. 166) in New York report that chess has improved not only academic scores, but social performance as well. [Super important to consider after COVID and kids out of school.] In 1988, Joyce Brown, an assistant principal and supervisor of the school’s Special Education department, and teacher Florence Mirin began studying the effect of chess on their Special Education students. When the study began, they had 15 children enrolled in chess classes; two years later they had 398. “The effects have been remarkable,” Brown says. “Not only have the reading and math skills of these children soared, their ability to socialize has increased substantially, too. Our studies have shown that incidents of suspension. and outside altercations have decreased by at least 60% since these children became interested in chess.”

Here is a good option which is great for small spaces and is very portable. You can choose all sorts of color combos of board, pieces and bag. The Mini Marshall Chess Set and Bag Combo, on sale $46.

Just for fun, at least, go check out the color combos and let us know which combination you would choose? 

I do like that standard tourney green, but I also find the blue very pleasant.  I think blue with the black and natural pieces.   Otherwise, because of “Say The Black – Do The Red”, the black board with black and red could be fun.

Home altars and chess sets in every home, I say.

FATHERS!  PARISH CHESS CLUBS!