ROME SHOT 899

In some places EPIPHANY is the big gift giving day, for obvious reasons.  Please remember me when  shopping online. Thanks in advance. US HERE – UK HERE  WHY?  This helps to pay for health insurance (massively hiked for this new year of surprises), utilities, groceries, etc..  At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful.

Photo by The Great Roman™

WELCOME REGISTRANT
Walznut

Meanwhile,… black to move and mate in 3

Use FATHERZ10 at checkout

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

Interested in learning?  Try THIS. There’s a big sale on right now.

Priestly chess players, drop me a line. HERE

The only chessy news that I have regards the explosion that is chess and a message to parish priests:

FATHERS!

ORGANIZE PARISH CHESS CLUBS!

Dear readers into chess… get organized and present a plan to your parish priests.

Use my ChessHouse link for supplies.  There are good “bulk” sales and “kits” for clubs.

Huge numbers of young people are playing on their phones.   Let’s get them also onto boards interacting with people.  It’s intergenerational!

Experiment: Set up a board in the public place sometime, a cafe or whatever, and see if you don’t draw spectators.

Chess is going ballistic, especially among children and young people.  The other day I saw a year’s recap video by the brilliant and somewhat unbalanced “Gotham Chess” on YouTube, in which he revealed his viewing stats for both numbers and demographics.  The average age fell.  The number of subscribers and, especially, views or impressions has reached amazing numbers.  From 2021-2022 he went from 780K to 2.4M subscribers, adding another  1.6M this last year.  In this last year until 30 Dec 23 he had 9.3B… billion… impressions. 

One thing that has massively affected his traffic is the use of “shorts”, very brief videos that then prompt viewers to watch longer videos.  And, as I said before, the average age of subscribers/viewers is dropping.

It seems like we in the Church are always a step or two behind in understanding what is going on in the world.  There are a great many things that catch us or leave us behind in gobsmacked surprise.  Then we seem to choose the worst ways possible to deal with them.

CHESS, however, is not one of those things which endangers our well-being. Unless you are excessive.  You know what they say, “Too much of a good thing is too much.”

In non-chessy news, I’ve determined from the 1st day of the year to read Kirsten Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset.  (US HERE – UK HERE) I’ve been avoiding it for a long-time and it is now time.

BONUS SHOT