Latest news with #chess
New York Times
a day ago
- General
- New York Times
Chess Lover Introduces Game to Malawi's Prisons, Schools and Street Kids
While most of her teenage schoolmates spent their allowances on snacks and other small treats, Susan Namangale made an unexpected move with the little money she had. She and a few friends pooled their change to buy two chessboards for their school in Malawi. 'If my mother knew then what I had done with the little pocket money she had given me, I would have been in trouble, especially looking back on how much we struggled,' said Ms. Namangale, dressed in a black suit and a white shirt with a checkered necktie, an outfit evocative of the game she adores. 'But that's how much I had fallen in love.' Now 49, Ms Namangale is on a mission to change the narrative that chess is only for the elite. She has introduced the game to rural schools, prisons and some of the world's most underserved communities. 'Chess is for everyone,' she said, in a recent interview in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi. Her first encounter with the game occurred when she was 9. One school holiday, an older sister, Gladys, returned home with a chessboard, a gift she had received from Peace Corps volunteers after excelling in mathematics at secondary school. Her sister began teaching her the basics of the game, but after Gladys returned to school, her little sister had no one to play with in Chombo, a small village along Lake Malawi, where opportunities and resources are few and far between. Africa TANZANIA Detail area Lake Malawi ZAMBIA Chombo MALAWI Lilongwe Mozambique ZIMBABWE 100 miles By The New York Times Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The Guardian
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Chess: Carlsen finally achieves 2900 rating as Niemann aims to be Las Vegas party pooper
For years the world No 1, Magnus Carlsen, tried to achieve a 2900 classical rating but he always peaked 10-20 points short of the round figure. The Norwegian, 34, had a personal best of 2889, achieved in 2014. That was 33 points ahead of Garry Kasparov's highest figure and 100 ahead of Bobby Fischer. Carlsen made later attempts but could never get past the 2880s, while the numbers had an eerie similarity to the 28,000s and 29,000s at the top of Everest where George Mallory and Andrew Irvine perished in 1924. In the new Freestyle rating list Carlsen at 2909 is nearly 100 points ahead of Hikaru Nakamura in second place, with his performance boosted by his perfect 9/9 at Grenke Karlsruhe. In contrast, the Fide world champion, Gukesh Dommaraju, ranks a lowly 26th with 2701 points. Carlsen will hope to maintain his new rating next month when the third leg (of five) of the Freestyle $3.75m Grand Slam takes place on 16-20 July at Wynn Las Vegas. The field of 16 will include most of the usual top names but there will be particular interest in one who could turn out a party pooper. Hans Niemann, the 22-year-old whose game with Carlsen at the 2022 Sinquefield Cup led to a $1m lawsuit, was invited to the Paris leg of the Freestyle Grand Slam but withdrew for undisclosed personal reasons. Now, having turned down the easy entrance, Niemann has got in by a much harder route, qualifying for the Las Vegas leg by winning a 16-player knockout where he defeated four top-class opponents, including the former world classical champion Ding Liren. Niemann has also shown significantly improved results in Titled Tuesday, where, in recent weeks, his performances have matched those of Carlsen and Nakamura. Chess in the past five years has enjoyed powerful boosts. Netflix's The Queen's Gambit and its heroine, Beth Harman, were a viewing success, the Niemann v Carlsen lawsuit was widely publicised, Carlsen's personality is popular, while the leading chess site, has millions of blitz games played every day and is also very successful. As a consequence, the incomes of the top 10 or 20 grandmasters have soared from events like the St Louis organised Grand Chess Tour and the $3.75m Freestyle Grand Slam. This year, for the first time, the Esports World Cup, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, will include chess (10-minute games without any per-move increment and a $1.5m prize pool). In 2026 Fide's $2m official world championship series will resume centre stage, as India's Gukesh defends his crown against the winner of the eight-player Candidates. Meanwhile, back in Britain, participation remains high but financial returns do not match the stellar numbers. A new survey from reveals that its UK online membership has reached an astonishing 8.9 million players, behind only the US (43.9 million) and India (20.4 million). This stratospheric figure is 600 times that for the membership of the English Chess Federation, which in 2023 was officially 14,567. Worse for the ECF, the £500,000 government grant for elite chess, which Rishi Sunak introduced in 2023, was axed completely as part of the Treasury's departmental cuts at the end of April 2025. One consequence of this is that the rewards for playing success in Britain do not compare with the massive amounts on offer in world events. Next month's English Championship in Warwick (18-21 July) offers £2,000-£1,250-£750 for its top three, while the week-long British Championship in Liverpool from 31 July to 9 August has £5,000-£2,500-£1,500. The highest ever British Championship first prize was £8,000 in 2011. Sign up to The Recap The best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend's action after newsletter promotion There is an obvious event which could make a big difference, and ought to tempt some of the millions of UK residents who play exclusively online blitz on to try a day of over-the-board blitz chess as well. This is the UK open blitz championship, which was launched in 2023 and is now in its third year. Full details for the tournament can be found here. The UK blitz championship uses a three minutes per game plus a two-second per move increment, which is also the most normal time control for blitz games. The championship will have 16 one-day regional qualifying tournaments in August and September, followed by a one-day final at Leamington Spa on 22 November. The one-day qualifiers will be in London (three events at Golders Green, Hampton, and Harrow) Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield and Southampton. Many masters and grandmasters are expected to take part. The total prize fund will be in excess of £10,000. To enter any of the qualifiers, click here. 3978: It's mate in six by 1 Rg6+! hxg6 2 Rxg6+ Kh7 3 Rg2+! Kh6 4 Qe3+! Kh5 5 Qxe5+ Kh4 6 Qg5 mate.
CBS News
2 days ago
- Sport
- CBS News
Brooklyn teacher who built nationally renowned chess team retires after 50 years
On the last day of school in New York City, it wasn't just students saying goodbye to the classroom. At Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn, longtime math teacher Eliot Weiss marked a personal milestone: retiring after five decades of teaching and 44 years leading one of the country's most successful high school chess teams. "I had the most fun" Weiss became a legend not only in his calculus classroom, but on the chessboard, where he created and coached Murrow's team to dozens of city, state and national wins. "We won our first National High School Chess Championship in 1992 in Lexington, Kentucky, and that was the first of eight," Weiss said. Over the years, his classroom became a launching pad for hundreds of students, both academically and personally. Weiss was also the subject of a 2007 book chronicling the success of his students. "I had the best students in calculus. I had the best students on the chess team. I had the most fun — it was just so enjoyable," Weiss said. On Thursday's last day, students and colleagues reflected on his unique impact. Eric Zheng, the current chess team captain, said the joy Weiss took in his students' success was obvious. "I understand that feeling when you see the person you taught succeed and do great things. And I feel like Mr. Weiss really took passion in that," Zheng said. "He was more of a life teacher" Former students like Kseniia B., who still show up to support Weiss at his hockey games, described his influence as life-changing. "He was more of a life teacher. He showed us how to put a lot of dedication into what you love," she said. That dedication inspired more than just checkmates. Math teachers Beth Flash and Hayley Mercorio both started out as Weiss's students and now teach at Murrow alongside him. "Mr. Weiss was such a dynamic teacher that it just made you want to learn ... and I try to do that with my students," Flash said. "[He] made math so much fun and entertaining, and jokes and playful, and not something that was scary," Mercorio said. But retirement doesn't mean slowing down for Weiss, who's long balanced his classroom time with passions for skiing, travel and competitive hockey. "I'll be playing a lot of ice hockey now since I don't have to wake up early in the morning," he told Brooklyn reporter Hannah Kliger. As the school bell marks the end of the academic year, Weiss dims the lights and walks out of his classroom for the last time. It's a quiet end to a masterful career. Have a story idea or tip in Brooklyn? Email Hannah by CLICKING HERE.
CNA
3 days ago
- Business
- CNA
Chess, golf, video gaming: The sports helping executives stay at the top of their game
The idea that the business world can learn from sports is old and convenient. It means company away days can be filled with fun activities. It allows retired athletes to charge companies large sums for motivational talks, and it enables business people to meet their sporting heroes. But which sports – traditional physical activities or mind-based games – can really claim a close link to working life? Here are some contenders that are regularly championed by executives and investors. CHESS Chess is synonymous with thinking ahead and encourages players to see the world from their adversaries' point of view: UK chancellor Rachel Reeves said it had prepared her for politics. Demis Hassabis, co-founder of Google DeepMind, became a chess master aged 13. He attributes his early interest in AI to playing chess 'and trying to improve my own thought processes'. Billionaire investor Peter Thiel was also a chess master. But he has sometimes downplayed parallels between success on the board and in the boardroom: competitive chess could lead people to focus too much on beating a particular opponent, and not enough on doing things that are 'important or valuable'. (Thiel himself was so competitive that, according to former PayPal executive David Sacks, when he lost, he would 'smash all the pieces'.) Chess is not a solved game: despite the computing advances, there is no known perfect way to play it. But for some, it is too controlled an environment to offer a window into the real world – too little emotion, too many pre-planned sequences. How much can you learn about life from a sport that machines play far better? TENNIS Adherents: Jamie Dimon, chief executive, JPMorgan Chase; Andy Jassy, chief executive, Amazon Tennis' lessons for business stem from its ruthlessly individual nature. At least in its singles variety, it embodies self-reliance. 'Tennis is very much a meritocracy,' Amazon's chief executive, Andy Jassy, has said. 'There's no favouritism, there's no politics. You either win or lose based on how you perform in the moment.' Tennis fans see another useful parallel: that what seems like natural talent is in fact the result of practice. 'No one is born with an amazing serve,' said Andre Sokol, managing partner at M&A advisers Akira Partners. Similarly, 'the number of times you see a player move in the right direction to return a serve is not the result of superhuman reactions. It's experience.' Ditto the skills of senior employees. FOOTBALL Adherents: Sir Jim Ratcliffe, chair, Ineos; Florentino Perez, chair, Grupo ACS, president, Real Madrid; Sheryl Sandberg, former chief operating officer, Meta Football should have clear lessons for business, because it is a huge business. But it is also an unusual business, where many big investors seem resigned to losing money. Perhaps the sport is most relevant regarding team management. 'Football is a great laboratory, a great simulator, where we can see what makes humans reach their maximum competitiveness,' former Real Madrid coach Jorge Valdano has said. Sir Alex Ferguson, Jose Mourinho and other managers were famed for how they handled different personalities. Mourinho has spoken of freezing out his strong-minded striker Samuel Eto'o until he upped his performance. Paris Saint-Germain's victory in the 2024-25 Champions League came after they had moved from paying entitled megastars to focusing on building a team of exuberant, youthful talents. Arguably, football requires more focus on group dynamics than other team sports, such as cricket and baseball, where individual roles are more defined. If nothing else, the sport's struggle with VAR and financial fair play can certainly remind business people of regulators' limitations. These insights are probably best gained from watching football. Does trotting around a five-a-side pitch on a Wednesday evening give the same effect? Debatable. GOLF Adherents: Donald Trump; a lot of other executives who are not at their desk at 1pm on Friday Like tennis, golf rewards individual resilience and intense practice. But its popularity among executives has been more about the networking it facilitates. 'I come from a very small country,' said Finnish President Alexander Stubb after a golf game with Donald Trump in March. 'To spend seven hours with the president of the US, you don't do that in a meeting room.' One business lesson from golf is that it is who you know – and how they may let you cheat. VIDEO GAMING Adherents: Elon Musk, chief executive, Tesla; Sam Bankman-Fried, co-founder of FTX A few years ago Anna Malmhake, chief executive of Swedish beauty brand Oriflame Cosmetics, complained that businesses often hired sports people as motivational speakers, when many in the audience were likely to be more familiar with video games. Strategy game series Civilization had taught her that: 'If you only pay attention to what is urgent, the non-urgent things will cause trouble at the most inopportune moment.' Team-raiding games such as World of Warcraft showed 'one negative, energy-draining person can single-handedly kill the performance of a team of 25 people'. Gaming is, however, notoriously time-demanding. Multitasking Elon Musk has been accused of exaggerating his performance at Diablo IV. Before cryptocurrency exchange FTX's collapse, co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried's ability to play League of Legends and Storybook Brawl while in business meetings was talked of as a sign of his genius. But perhaps a greater genius would have been to give his full attention to the lawyers. POKER Adherents: Jeff Yass, co-founder, Susquehanna International Group; Chamath Palihapitiya, venture capitalist Poker is the source of corporate phrases such as 'above board' and 'pass the buck'. The game itself has the clearest relevance to traders. Susquehanna, the quantitative trading firm, is one that embraces the link. 'Before you become a trader at Susquehanna, you learn how to play poker,' says Jeff Yass, who co-founded the company with his poker friends. 'We have a couple of months training in poker, because ...being a poker player and a trader ...is very similar.' Success in poker derives not just from an understanding of probability, or from luck, but from a reading of other players' intentions and an acceptance of uncertainty. Jo Living runs Aces High London, a company that organises corporate poker workshops. She argues poker should be taken seriously – as a way of revealing and improving business skills. 'How people show up in the real world is how they show up at the poker table,' she says. The game rewards 'deep listening' and punishes a lack of assertiveness, she adds. Investor Chamath Palihapitiya says it teaches you to 'be unemotional but stubborn'. The scenario of imperfect information echoes real-life negotiations. As such, poker could even be a tool for assessing recruits. (Gary Stevenson, the self-proclaimed best trader in the world, says he won his Citibank internship via a poker-related game.) Poker's addictiveness is a potential downside. 'The worst possible outcome would be if everyone left here and started playing internet poker, gambling against eastern European bots,' an Aces High instructor warned participants at a recent workshop. Other card games are available, some of them involving teamwork: Warren Buffett spent at least eight hours a week playing bridge, claiming it was 'the best exercise there is for the are learning from every word spoken and not spoken.'
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
Tournament organizer says interest in chess on the rise in New Brunswick
There were 27 participants in the N.B. Open chess tournament this weekend. Organizer Jason Manley says that number is up considerably over recent years.
