Things I didn't know #3

The Lewis chessmen. Never heard of them until now. 78 12th century (chess is a very old game played at the top level by the very young) pieces, 67 of which are in the British Museum, the remainder in the National Museum of Scotland (which I'd also never heard of).

They (at least some of them) are going on their travels as part of a cultural loan exchange between the British Museum and the French, which will see the Bayeux Tapestry come the other way.

The chessmen are made of walrus ivory and whale tooth, probably made in Norway and found on the island of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides in 1831. The Hebrides were part of Norway - Viking invaders -

 [from the Bayeux Tapestry]

from the 9th century until 1266 when King Alexander III of Scotland paid Norway 4,000 marks and 400 marks p.a. for sovereignty in the Treaty of Perth. The annual fee was supposed to last forever but it has apparently been forgotten about - perhaps Scotland didn't have any marks left after a while.

There's obviously an argument that we should be lending the chessmen to the National Museum of Norway rather than the French.

Rinse and repeat

I remember exactly where I was when President Kennedy was shot. In the bath (me not him). My mother came into the bathroom and told me. I was 19 and a bit protective of my privacy so I was a bit shocked.

Memory is a funny thing. I can see that in my mind from 62 years ago but I can't recall what I had for dinner last night.

I don't remember when we were told we couldn't call Peking Peking any more, it had to be Beijing. I can remember it happening but not when. Maybe it just crept into our consciousness. Or perhaps the Chinese leader (I don't know which one, just that it wasn't Chairman Mao) phoned the BBC and said "we've issued an edict that filthy imperialists must address us respectfully".

Is that what happened with Kiev? I've lived with my childhood love of geography for 70 years and suddenly the old atlases are wrong? Who decided? I know, it's about derussification but I say again: who decided?

The latest (and I'm probably coming a bit late to this party) is - no more Czech Republic. I'd just got used to forgetting the Czechoslovakia that shockingly won the European Championship in 1976. I remember that I was sitting in my car listening to the commentary on the car radio, and that I felt great joy at the underdog winning the penalty shootout with Antonin Panenka chipping the winning penalty down the middle - a technique now forever known as a Panenka. More so that they beat the Germans. Who at that time were West Germany. Anyway, it's now Czechia. Which I'm uncertain how to pronounce (not Chechnya, that's a different country - pay attention at the back!). In any case "the Czechs have just scored a third goal past the hapless England goalkeeper" will probably do for past, present and future. Unless we change our name. Or goalkeeper.

Tonight they are playing us (England under 21s) at soccer. They being Czech Republic. Which is apparently what we have to call them when it's an official occasion, as opposed to a holiday destination. Hope our goalkeeper's OK.

And on a completely different note and referring back to a recent post:

Hou Yifan's back! In a team chess tournament in Londinium, at the Novotel London West in Hammersmith, which used to be Hamersmyth. Although that was in 1294, so I can be forgiven for not remembering that.

By invitation only

The highest rated woman chess player in the world is China's Hou Yifan. She has an official rating of 2633 and is ranked equal 100th in the world. World number 1 Magnus Carlsen is rated 2837.

Yifan is a four time women's world champion, winning her first in 2010 aged 16. However she has played only spasmodically since 2018 and no longer competes in international tournaments. She is a professor in the sports department of Peking University, having previously held a professorship at Shenzhen University, where she became the youngest-ever full professor at the age of 26, heading the institution’s chess program within the School of Physical Education. Chess can be studied at uni, who knew?

Current women's world champion Ju Wenju,

also from China, is rated 2580 and ranked 292 in the world. And just in case you think I'm copying this from Wikipedia or worse still from ChatGPT, I've been watching Wenju play live on YouTube for the last few days in the Norway Chess Women's tournament in Stavanger (it's better than gardening in the rain and I might improve my chess play, although I do admit it's a bit weird).

BTW it's perfectly possible I've got Chinese names the wrong way round. If so, I hope my Chinese readers will forgive me.

There doesn't seem to be any logical reason that girls/women should be any better or worse than boys/men at chess, so why aren't they doing better than they are? According to Wikipedia "Hou claimed that there are many reasons for the lack of female contenders at the chess top-level. She says there is a physical aspect to long chess games that might advantage men, and that men generally work harder at chess than women growing up. She uses Chinese girls as an example and points out that most prefer a balanced life, prioritizing things such as university and family life at the cost of working on chess. But she claims there also are external factors: girls playing chess growing up are only encouraged to compete for the girl's title, which might lower their motivation."

I'm not at all sure about the physical aspect. A championship game of classical chess can last 5 or 6 hours but don't women run marathons? Run governments working 12 hour days?

Judit Polgar from Hungary is the only woman to ever get into the top ten in the world; her highest rank was number 8 and her peak rating was 2735. She got into the top 100 in 1989 at the age of....12! So it can be done. But a key point of difference is that, once she became good enough, she competed against the top men. She would play in the Open section of tournaments rather than in the Women's section. In the Chess Olympiad, competed for every 2 years, she chose to represent her country in the Open section rather than the Women's and was very successful, playing "top board" ahead of her male compatriots.

Top chess tournaments commonly select many, often most, of their competitors by invitation. The recently completed Norway Chess was a 6 player tournament where the invited players were the current top 5 in the world plus 8th place Wei Yi (I think he was number 6 when the invitations were issued). If women don't play against men they won't get invited.

Then there's prize money. The 2023 World Championship Open had a prize fund of $2 million [which is about what you'd pay to sign a talented 15yo goalkeeper in football]. The Women's World Championship prize fund was $500,000. I suppose you could argue that the temptation of competing for 4 times as much would encourage more women to consider that but, when you realise there are 100 times more men playing chess than women, the half a million seems easier to compete for. Interestingly Norway Chess had equal prize money for the Open and Women's sections but this is rare and, possibly, simply upholds the present differentials.

I'd like to see some of the talented young women - and there are many - electing to play Open tournaments rather than taking the "easy way" against their fellow women. And some tournament organisers issuing invitations to women to play against men in a single section rather than a separate section.

There's an argument that having separate women's Master titles inhibits women's development. A woman can become a WGM - Women's Grandmaster - with a rating of 2300 but to be a Grandmaster (GM) you need 2500. There are are around 41 women who have earned the full, open Grandmaster (GM) title, out of over 1,700 total GMs worldwide, so roughly 2% of GMs are women. Is it possible some women are satisfied with reaching WGM and continuing to play in women-only sections? Obviously I don't know; I'd like to know what they think.

The sport of chess needs a new Judit Polgar, a new Hou Yifan. Who will step up?

Not sure why

After two years and three weeks, I've decided to get back to blogging.

If I start with football, I lose half my audience. But it's been a bad football few days and getting it off my chest will hopefully improve my gloomy mood. Maybe later.

I recently stopped playing computer games. My much-loved Civilization VI game was superceded, obviously by Civilization VII, and I was excited in anticipation of the February launch. Until it turned out it wouldn't run on either my laptop (expected) or my desktop (unexpected). So a choice of spending substantial money on a new PC or an upgrade or examining whether I wanted/needed to play turn-based strategy games any more. I chose - for the moment - to live without computer gaming.

This decision was in part influenced by my new obsession - chess.

I've played on and off for much of my life - off more than on - at the level of knowing how the pieces move. There was an English chess player named Nigel who became a Grandmaster at the age of 19, eventually ranked number 3 in the world and played a world championship match in 1993 against the legendary Garry Kasparov. That however wasn't me (there are plenty of other well-known Nigels but I'm not going there at the moment) - it was Nigel Short. Of course as a young man I followed the famous Bobby Fisher vs Boris Spassky cold war match, in the same way I followed Ali v Liston in boxing and other iconic sporting battles. Later I followed Kasparov vs Anatoly Karpov in 1985 - I was a sporting nerd. Actually a sporting spectator nerd.

One of the things Fischer was famous for was his queen's gambit opening leading to a stunning world championship victory and this inspired the 2020 Netflix series of the same name - also referencing the cold war - based on a novel by Walter Tevis. This caught my attention and that of millions of others, particularly as the world was in Covid lockdown at the time. Enter (historically) Deep Blue.

Deep Blue was a computer program developed by IBM, which defeated world champion Kasparov in a game in 1997, thus signalling the end of the world. Gradually chess 'engines' improved to today's level where the top Grandmasters simply cannot beat them.

In 2007 the chess.com website was launched and became the 'go to' online platform for ordinary humans to play each other over the internet. So when the dreaded lockdown occurred in 2020, and The Queen's Gambit screened, the stars aligned to create a major "chess boom". I, of course, ignored it as I was starting blogging.

In late 2023, at the Sea Farmers Dive Taproom in Whitstable, a seminal chess match was played. A 13 year old young man, distantly related to me, asked if I played chess. I obviously mentioned I hadn't played for years but knew how the pieces moved. I don't exactly remember why there was a chess board there but anyway we played. I'm going to spare the young man's blushes and not mention the result but the main outcome was that my son (who had been watching) and I decided to join chess.com and we have played each other (and occasionally others) online ever since. Here's the state of our current game:

That's me at the bottom (playing as black) in my Ipswich Town celebratory gear (if it's possible to celebrate relegation). It's my son's move. No helpful suggestions in the comments please - that is officially cheating!

The question remains whether I have the patience to continue blogging regularly. I hope so but comments are very welcome and I'm hoping family members in particular can spread the word. Bye for now.