Clipmarks | Russian chess champion Clips

mate/ king hit

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:17:59 GMT

clipped by: zadoz
clipper's remarks: odd combo

Chess boxers slug it out

A RUSSIAN man has been crowned world champion in the novelty sport of chess boxing, a game that requires equal skill at moving pawns and throwing punches.

The loser said he was simply too punch-drunk to fend off checkmate.

"I took a lot of body-blows in the fourth round and that affected my concentration. That's why I made a big mistake in the fifth round: I did not see him coming for my king,'' he said.

The match began over a chess board set up on a low table in the middle of a boxing ring.

A chess boxing match consists of six rounds of chess and five in the ring but it can also end suddenly in knockout or checkmate.

Alternatively one of the players can be disqualified for taking too long to make his move in the chess rounds or breaking the boxing rules.

Perhaps fittingly, the sport had its beginnings in a comic strip by the French author Enki Bilal, titled Equator Cold that hit shelves in 1992.

Tags: chess

All the right moves: Russian takes world chess boxing crown

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 14:29:49 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: Keeps the minds off the real issues. Too punch drunk to stop the checkmate.

Clip Source: www.theage.com.au

Rarely do brains and brawn come together in this way. A Russian was crowned world champion today in the novelty sport of chess boxing that requires equal skill at moving pawns and throwing punches.

Mathematics student Nikolai Sazhin, 19, competing under the name The President, knocked out a 37-year-old German policeman, Frank Stoldt, who served as a peacekeeper in Kosovo until recently.

The loser said he was simply too punch drunk to fend off checkmate.

"I took a lot of body-blows in the fourth round and that affected my concentration. That's why I made a big mistake in the fifth round: I did not see him coming for my king," he said.

Berlin is home to the world's biggest chess boxing club with about 40 members and it is in an old freight station here the two men settled the matter in the early hours this morning.

The match began over a chess board set up on a low table in the middle of a boxing ring.

Tags: what, next

On This Day 10 Years Ago, Chess Champion Defeated By Supercomputer

Mon, 12 May 2008 01:19:19 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: WN: Kasparov's request for a rematch was turned down. Why do you think that was? It looked like IBM had got good publicity but took the ball away and didn't want to play anymore.

Campbell: I believe we had accomplished what we were trying to do for so many years and it was time to move on to other problems. Garry Kasparov has now retired from chess and Deep Blue is in a museum so that's not going to happen, but matches between other computers and the current world champion have taken place as recently as last year.

Clip Source: www.wired.com

On this day 10 years ago, the human race got an inferiority complex. A computer, Deep Blue, beat Russian Garry Kasparov

Blame IBM. Deep Blue was just the latest in a line of three supercomputers developed by Big Blue’s research scientists over the decade before its triumph in New York on May 11, 1997.

Kasparov, who was the youngest-ever world chess champion, trounced the first Deep Thought in a 1989 matchup.

Wired News: What is the state of supercomputer-versus-human matchups? How are we humans doing?

Murray Campbell: Not so well! The current world champion, Vladimir Kramnik from Russia, lost a match to a PC program in November, 4-2. If you look at the supercomputer that Deep Blue ran on, I think a present-day Cell processor has as much processing power as that entire system did in 1997.

Tags: garry kasparov, russian chess champion, ibm, deep thought, supercomputer, human matchups

Garry Kasparov jailed over rally

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 19:54:46 GMT

clipped by: rwatuny
clipper's remarks: Plus ça change...

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Former world chess champion and Russian opposition figure Garry Kasparov has been jailed for five days.

He and other opposition figures were detained during a rally organised by Mr Kasparov's Other Russia coalition.

Police moved in when protesters marched on the election commission. Mr Kasparov was charged with resisting arrest and organising an unauthorised protest.

Other Russia brings together a broad coalition of mainstream politicians, leftists and nationalists, all of whom are opposed to the Kremlin.

They began to march to the election commission and were stopped by riot police.

The commission has barred Other Russia candidates from the 2 December election.

Tags: russia, politics, elections, putin, kasparov

Kasparov Jailed after anti-Putin Protest

Sun, 25 Nov 2007 01:36:44 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: Playing Chess with the Kremlin. Chess is politics with dignity.

Clip Source: www.mail.com

By MANSUR MIROVALEV

Russian authorities arrested former world chess champion Garry Kasparov on Saturday and sentenced him to five days in prison after he helped lead a protest against President Vladimir Putin that ended in clashes with police.

Kasparov, one of President Vladimir Putin's harshest critics, was charged with organizing an unsanctioned procession of at least 1,500 people against Putin, chanting anti-government slogans and resisting arrest, court documents said. His assistant said he was beaten during the demonstration

At the hastily organized trial, two police testified that they had been ordered before the rally to arrest Kasparov

"What

you read is the fruit of a fantasy dictated on orders from above," Kasparov told the court

The violence came amid an election campaign in which some opposition political groups have been sidelined by new election rules or have complained of being hobbled by official harassment

The constitution prevents

Putin

from serving three consecutive terms.

Tags: kasparov, putin, protest, jail, trial

Garry Kasparov jailed over rally

Sat, 24 Nov 2007 21:29:04 GMT

clipped by: Nerfzilla

Clip Source: newsvote.bbc.co.uk

Garry Kasparov jailed over rally

Clashes erupted when activists tried to break through police lines
Scuffles in Moscow

Former world chess champion and Russian opposition figure Garry Kasparov has been jailed for five days.

He and other opposition figures were detained during a rally organised by Mr Kasparov's Other Russia coalition.

Police moved in when protesters marched on the election commission. Mr Kasparov was charged with resisting arrest and organising an unauthorised protest.

The incident came a week before polls which supporters of President Vladimir Putin are widely expected to win.

Tags: garry kasparov, russia

Kasparov arrested in anti-government march in Moscow

Sat, 14 Apr 2007 19:43:24 GMT

clipped by: RecordSage

Clip Source: www.cbc.ca

Kasparov arrested in Moscow march

Russian police arrested opposition leader and former chess champion Garry Kasparov and a large number of his supporters on Saturday during an anti-government protest in Moscow.

Authorities had banned the demonstration and about 9,000 police officers, many of them in riot gear, blocked the streets.

As head of the United Civil Front, part of the Other Russia opposition coalition, Kasparov has accused President Vladimir Putin of trampling on democracy and has often called on his supporters to stand up to his rule.

Kasparov was taken into custody along with about 170 other activists as police prevented them from marching through the centre of the Russian capital.

The former chess grandmaster appeared briefly outside a Moscow court after being charged with public order offences. He told reporters the crackdown on the protest was another attempt by the Kremlin to suppress free speech.

Tags: garry kasparov, arrest, government, politics, opposition, chess, champion

English Ice Chess

Sat, 13 Jan 2007 05:35:45 GMT

clipped by: abbysname

Clip Source: www.cnn.com

England avoids international chess meltdown

Players move chess pieces carved from ice across a large board in London's Trafalgar Square on Thursday.

LONDON, England (AP) -- Chess is a challenging game at the best of times. But try playing it in Trafalgar Square, with huge pieces carved from ice -- on a relatively balmy British day that threatened to turn pawns to puddles.

Organizers of London's Russian Winter Festival knew players in their ice chess match Thursday would be battling not only each other but the weather. But the match was completed and the sculptures survived, despite a drizzly day and temperatures that reached 55 degrees.

Wegg-Prosser said the pieces, which were carved to look like local landmarks -- the king was the Gothic tower that houses Big Ben --were still intact at the end of the hour-long match, which began at 8 a.m.

"It takes at least three hours for them to melt," said Yulia Wegg-Prosser, the chess spokeswoman.

A second board was set up in Moscow -- also experiencing warmer-than-usual temperatures -- and the Russian team, led by former world champion Anatoly Karpov, offered a draw to the British squad, captained by grandmaster Nigel Short.

Players and spectators in both cities were connected by satellite link.

Even in January, temperatures rarely fall below freezing in London, so the melting of ice sculptures is not new to the Russian Winter Festival, said Lieran Stubbings, a festival organizer.

Last year, a sculpture of St. Basil's Cathedral in Trafalgar Square disappeared before the end of the event, confounding festival-goers.

"People were asking where the sculpture of St. Basil's was," Stubbings said. "We were just laughing and pointing to the nearest puddle."

Tags: england, chess, ice, creative, fun, games

England avoids international chess meltdown

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 21:00:07 GMT

clipped by: lcstekkinger
clipper's remarks: Those ice sculptures are just beautiful. And, yeah, the weather is acting strangely these days...

Clip Source: edition.cnn.com

England avoids international chess meltdown

Players move chess pieces carved from ice across a large board in London's Trafalgar Square on Thursday.

"It takes at least three hours for them to melt," said Yulia Wegg-Prosser, the chess spokeswoman.

Players and spectators in both cities were connected by satellite link.

Even in January, temperatures rarely fall below freezing in London, so the melting of ice sculptures is not new to the Russian Winter Festival, said Lieran Stubbings, a festival organizer.

Last year, a sculpture of St. Basil's Cathedral in Trafalgar Square disappeared before the end of the event, confounding festival-goers.

"People were asking where the sculpture of St. Basil's was," Stubbings said. "We were just laughing and pointing to the nearest puddle."

Tags: news, humour, chess, russia, london, england, humor

Chess champion loses to computer.

Wed, 06 Dec 2006 08:09:46 GMT

clipped by: BitDrifter

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Kramnik said he would like a rematch in a year or two

Deep Fritz, a chess-playing computer, has beaten human counterpart world chess champion Vladimir Kramnik in a six-game battle in Bonn, Germany.

Deep Fritz won by four points to two, after taking the last game in 47 moves in a match lasting almost five hours.

Of the six games, Deep Fritz won two and four ended in draws.

The 31-year-old Russian, who received $500,000 (£253,000) for playing the machine, could have walked away with double if he had been successful.

After the game, Mr Kramnik said he was "a bit disappointed" but hoped a rematch could be arranged in a year or two.

"With more time to prepare, I still have a chance," he said.

In 2002, Mr Kramnik held Deep Fritz to a draw after eight games, but the chess software has since been updated, calculating millions of positions every second.

In October, Mr Kramnik defeated Bulgaria's Veselin Topalov to become the undisputed world chess champion for the first time since 1993.

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Tags: computer, game, games, chess, human, ai, germany, deep fritz, technology

No bathroom visits for Chess World Champions

Sat, 30 Sep 2006 09:06:13 GMT

clipped by: RecordSage
clipper's remarks: The good old days when people just played the game are long gone apparently... too bad.

Clip Source: abcnews.go.com

ELISTA, Russia Sep 29, 2006 (AP)— The future of the world chess championship was in question Friday when a player did not show up for the fifth game and threatened to withdraw from the match after he was accused of cheating and locked out of his private bathroom.

Vladimir Kramnik, a Russian, was accused by the manager for his opponent, Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria, of taking too many bathroom breaks an apparent suggestion that he was secretly using a technical device or a computer program to help him with his moves.

"The World Champion Veselin Topalov is outraged by the suspicious behavior of his opponent Vladimir Kramnik, who actually makes his most significant decisions in a toilet," Danailov said. "During every game, he visited the relaxation room 25 times on average and the bathroom more than 50 times."

Tags: chess, world championship, bathroom, cheating, russia