Anand suffers fifth straight defeatChennai: Indian Grandmaster Viswanathan Anand suffered his fifth straight defeat in the USD 150,000 Legends of Chess online tournament, going down 2-3 to Peter Leko of Hungary. The former world champion got off to a good start and won the first game of the best-of-four contest. The next two games were drawn before Leko levelled by winning the fourth. The Hungarian then claimed the Armageddon (a tie-breaker) to ensure Anand remain winless and at the bottom of the points table. Anand, who is making his maiden appearance on the Magnus Carlsen Chess Tour, had earlier lost to Peter Svidler, Magnus Carlsen, Vladimir Kramnik and Anish Giri. World no. 1 Carlsen bounced back strongly to avoid an upset, beating veteran Vasyl Ivanchuk 3-2 to stay on top. Legends of Chess is a unique event where Carlsen, Liren, Nepomniachtchi and Giri, semifinalists at the Chessable Masters, received an automatic invite and are up against six legends aged 40-52, who have been at the top of world chess in their career. The tournament is part of the Magnus Carlsen Chess Tour. The winner of this event will qualify for the USD 300,000 Grand Final scheduled from August 9 to 20. Results of Round 5: Peter Leko beat Viswanathan Anand 3-2; Magnus Carlsen beat Vasyl Ivanchuk 3-2: Vladmir Kramnik beat Ding Liren 2.5-1.5; Anish Giri beat Boris Gelfand 2.5-1.5; Ian Nepominiachtchi beat Peter Svidler 3-1. (PTI)

NASCAR Hall of Famer diesKansas City (US): Maurice Petty, part of a racing dynasty and the first engine builer to be inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame, has died. He was 81. His family confirmed the death on Saturday. No cause was given. He was the son of Lee Petty and brother of Richard Petty, and his ability to turn a wrench earned him the nickname The Chief in the garage. While his father and brother were stars for their ability behind the wheel, Maurice Petty was known more for his mechanical acumen. He helped the famiily win 198 races and seven championships in NASCARs premier series. Hall of Famer Buddy Baker, Jim Paschal and Pete Hamilton also drove Maurice Pettys engines to victory lane. Lee Petty died in 2000 and Maurice Pettys wife of 52 years, Patricia, died in 2014. He also was the uncle of former driver and broadcaster Kyle Petty and Truck Series crew chief Trent Owens. No funeral arrangements were announced. (AP)

Late NBA commissioner earns gloryKnoxville (US): Late NBA Commissioner David Stern has been added to the Womens Basketball Hall of Fame induction class. Commissioner of the NBA from 1984-2014, Stern was Instrumental in the founding of the WNBA and a longtime supporter of the womens game. He died Jan. 1 at age 77 a few weeks after a brain hemorrhage. The enshrinement of the Class of 2020 has been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic until next year. The ceremony will be held on June 12, 2021. Joining Stern in the class that was selected by the Womens Basketball Hall of Fame Board of Directors are Tamika Catchings, Swin Cash and Lauren Jackson. The other members of the class are veteran player Debbie Brock and contributors Carol Callan, Sue Donohoe and Carol Stiff. The 1980 US Olympic womens basketball team, which did not get to compete in the Olympics because of the US boycott of the Moscow Games, also will be honoured as the Trailblazers of the Game. Stern previously was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball and the International Basketball Hall of Fame. (AP)

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Sports Snippets - The Shillong Times

7/19/2020 Remembrances of his first chess books, analysis of a World Championship game, backstories from a Candidates Match and a squashed Caro-Kann are all part of the latest column by Jonathan Speelman. The former world number four confesses: Opening theory has never been my thing, and I was perhaps lucky to be active at a time when it was much less essential. | Photo: David Llada

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[Note that Jon Speelman also looks at the content of the article in video format, here embedded at the end of the article.]

When I was little, I hada row of chess books on a shelf above my bed. Of course I cant remember all of them, but several are very clear.

After learning the moves of chess from my cousin on Boxing Day (December 26th) 1962, my first chess book was Chess for Children by Bott and Morrison, which gave me the basics.

My first-ever serious chess book though was Bob Wades account of the 1963 World Championship match between Mikhail Botvinnik and Tigran Petrosian. My mum bought it for me in Edgware Roadpresumably the match ran from March to May in the summer of 1963. With a distinctive dark red cover once it lost its jacket (I can see it on a shelf now) Ive enjoyed re-reading and dipping into it ever since.Some of the games especially Petrosian's epic king march in game 5 are truly memorable.

Master Class Vol.10: Mikhail Botvinnik

Our experts show, using the games of Botvinnik, how to employ specific openings successfully, which model strategies are present in specific structures, how to find tactical solutions and rules for how to bring endings to a successful conclusion

Later, I got Euwe and Kramers two-volume work on the middlegame, Bent Larsens Selected Games 1948-69and Peter Clarkes book on Mikhail Tal (which annoyingly, although I can see at least five other books on Tal, I cant at the moment bring to hand).

And a couple of years later, I beat some 200ish ECF (2200ish) player in a simultaneous display at Foyles (the famous book shop on Tottenham Court Road) and won a whole selection of books from Pergamon Press, including Vladimir Vukovics wonderful The Art of Attack in Chessand a book on Petrosian by Alberic OKelly de Galway the Belgian count who as an arbiter at some team competition in the 1970s once attempted to get the England team captain David Anderton to order myself and Jonathan Mestel to get our hair cut!

The Pergamon Tranche also included A Complete Defence to 1.P-K4,a study of the then backwater, the Petroff, by Bernard Caffery and David Hooper.Though our main opening bible in the English speaking world at that time was Modern Chess Openings.

I had the tenth edition (1965, completely revised by Larry Evans under the editorship of Walter Korn). Chess theory was then still very rudimentary compared to today, and there was a wonderfully whooly quote about the Yugoslav Attack against the Dragon which went,Black must react promptly and vigorously just how is not quite clear. I also found the 8th, 11th and 13th editions on my shelves. By the 11th (Walter Korn, 1972), defences had been found against the Yugoslav.

Opening theory has never been my thing,and I was perhaps lucky to be active at a time when it was much less essential. But of course I know lots of general information and in a few lines I was either a trail blazer (quite possibly losing track of the line later) or one of the main protagonists.

As White, these tended to be sneakily wimpy ways to try to get the advantage without having to learn the complexities of the then main lines. For instance,6.a3 in the Symmetrical English, while it wasn't of course a novelty, was new to me when I played it against Jan Timman in the Reykjavik World Cup in 1988 and has since become the main line, slightly surpassing 6.g3 innumber in recent games.

But perhaps the best known instance was against Nigel Short in our first Candidates Match.When a couple of weeks after Mikhail Gurevichintroduced it on the Russian Championship, I was lucky enough to be able to play 10.0-0-0 in the Bf4 Queen's Gambit

This had been published in a Norwegain newspaper which Marianne, my second Jonathan Tisdall's then girlfriend (and now ex-wife), had bought on the way here. And I was able to play it before Nigel or his second John Nunn were able to see it in Schachwokke.

As Black I tend to like to maintain my pawn structure,and have for many years had a love/hate relationship with the Caro-Kann or Cockroach (a mild joke the Russian for cockroach is tarakan). Its an opening which works splendidly if White gives any quarter, since your position is intrinsically sound and eventually, once youre developed, then the extra centre pawn on e6 may come to the fore.

However, if White is suitably dismissive and able to back up his or herscepticism with sufficient kinetic energy then even the cockroach may get squashed as in this game against the great Misha Tal:the only one I lost while qualifying from the SuboticaInterzonal in 1987.

The Fashionable Caro-Kann Vol.1 and 2

The Caro Kann is a very tricky opening. Blacks play is based on controlling and fighting for key light squares. It is a line which was very fashionable in late 90s and early 2000s due to the successes of greats like Karpov, Anand, Dreev etc. Recently due to strong engines lot of key developments have been made and some new lines have been introduced, while others have been refuted altogether. I have analyzed the new trends carefully and found some new ideas for Black.

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The Cockroach's Carapace (and other opening disasters) - Chessbase News

With last weeks long-planned, no-Olympics launch of Peacock, the Streaming Wars have reached something approaching a status quo. For the first time in what feels like all of living memory, there are no upcoming new services to speculate about. The players are all present and accounted for, and as the pandemic has sent us inside and in search of entertainment, streaming has taken on an outsized role in how we decide to spend our spare time. In other words, its the perfect time to check in on the streaming landscape, which finally feels stable enough to evaluate as a whole. Here are some takeaways from the past few months in Hollywoods digital frontier.

Peacocks debut is certainly significant for the long-term aspirations of Comcast and NBCUniversal. But the largely free, somewhat confusing service feels most significant for the era its presence effectively ends. Ever since Apple ordered what would eventually become The Morning Show in the fall of 2017, consumers and critics have been in a state of anticipation. Weve been reacting less to streaming as it is than predicting what it would eventually become. But while the opacity of streaming companies makes some speculation inevitable, our days of reading the tea leaves by way of press releases and trade reports are effectively over. Peacock was the final chess piece to show up on the board. Now, the game can begin.

Disney+, Apple TV+, HBO Max, Peacock, and Quibi together form the second generation of streaming services: those designed to capitalize on, and hopefully chip away at, the success of the first. Disney+, Max, and Peacock are all owned by content-rich parent companies who grew tired of leasing out libraries they could be earning profits from; Apple TV+ and Quibi used a trillion-dollar valuation and Jeffrey Katzenbergs pitching prowess, respectively, to start their own production engines from scratch. Collectively, all of these companies have claimed they can take on the more established Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu, whove had time to shore up their original offerings as titles like Friends and Frasier return to their home turfs. In the back half of 2020, the noise of the second wave will start to fade, and streaming will begin to settle into some kind of equilibriumone that may well include fewer contenders.

If Peacock is an inflection point, the next few months may well bring some sort of downswing, and not just because of COVID-19-related halts on new productions. What are subscribers actually willing to pay for, or spend their time watching? After years of expansion, the pendulum is due to swing toward contraction. And theres already a prime candidate for where natural selection may start to take its toll ...

Of all the new services, Quibi assigned itself the steepest challenge. Not only were Katzenberg and his business partner Meg Whitman trying to compete with a completely clean slatethey also tried to stand out with a short-form gimmick ill-suited to a premium rendition, plus an emphasis on mobile, on the go viewing caught flat-footed by a moment when almost nobody is going anywhere. The silly name and counterintuitive pronunciation (its short for quick bites, but it rhymes with libby) were just the cherry on top.

More than two months after its April launch, the Wall Street Journal published a report outlining Quibis many troubles, both in overall performance and behind the scenes, followed soon by a similar tell-all at Vulture. In both accounts, Katzenberg and Whitman were characterized as two 60-somethings trying to cater to a demographic they didnt understand as their brainchild burned through cash and lost executives like its head of brand marketing. Katzenberg has tried in vain to shift blame onto the pandemic, while some reports have indicated more than 90 percent of free trial users have opted not to sign on for a paid subscription. And while all publicity is good publicity, most of Quibis publicity consists of viral tweets dunking on loopy concepts like a woman has a golden arm.

The idea of a snappier streaming service that toys with the bounds of traditional TV has its defenders, including myself. But nearly four months in, it seems unlikely Quibi will be able to channel that potential into a sustainable businessas opposed to an outlet like YouTube, which has its own homegrown community of creators. If Quibi does sputter out, itll take floods of investor money with it, after everyone from Alibaba to Disney bought into Katzenbergs track record because of his past ventures like Dreamworks. At least well always have the memes.

In happier but equally symbolic news, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings announced last week that chief content officer Ted Sarandos, widely viewed as the Hollywood counterpart to Hastingss base in Silicon Valley, would share his title and join the companys board of directors. While a company as big as Netflix having co-CEOs is exceedingly rare, the promotion also cements what outside observers have long known to be the case: Netflix is no longer a tech company with a satellite business in entertainment. Its a tech and media company, one whose original productions play an increasing role in its success. Sarandoss ascent may not change much about Netflix, but it reflects a seismic change in the kinds of companies that now shape the industry, with form and function more intertwined than ever. Our platforms and what we watch on them are now one and the same.

Actual theaters may still be dark, but theater is adapting, if only at its upper tiers. July 4 weekend was dominated by the streaming release of Hamiltonor rather, a version of the Broadway smash starring the original cast and filmed without an audience. Disneys $75 million investment appears to have paid off in the form of a meaningful uptick in new subscribersadult theater fans are a distinct demographic from the families with kids who powered Disney+s first few months (though Lin-Manuel Mirandas contributions to Moana may have trained a new generation of fans).

The success of Mirandas translation to screen naturally leads to questions about its potential replication. Just as stand-up comedy specials are live performances filmed and repackaged for home viewing, could stage plays and musicals enjoy a second life outside their venues four walls? (Netflix tried something similar with its 2019 release of Kerry Washington in American Son.) Such distribution could democratize an art form thats historically limited to those who can afford tickets and travel to a theater, and could draw an untapped market to new services.

Of course, theater-as-streaming is hardly that simple. Hamilton is a once-in-a-generation hit with a massive cultural footprint. Celebrities and politicians routinely stopped by the original Broadway run, where tickets ran into the thousands; the soundtrack alone has sold millions of copies. A built-in audience makes the expense of a professional directing job worth the start-up costs, but almost every other Broadway show operates on much thinner margins; its doubtful theres equal demand for, say, Keri Russell and Adam Driver in a revival of Burn This. In the space between popular sensations and niche adult dramas, however, theres uncharted territory for other content-hungry streamers to explore. And without a path back to Broadway in sight, theater may have to get unorthodox in order to survive.

Last and least, as always, are the self-released statistics selectively offered by streamers to gauge their own success. Andy Sambergs charming Palm Springs is Hulus most talked-about original film; Tom Hanks vehicle Greyhound earned an audience commensurate with a summer theatrical box office big hit on Apple TV+; 40 million people watched Never Have I Ever and Space Force in their first four weeks of release, a term Netflix defines as taking in just two minutes of a single episode. (The company used to tally views in terms of completing 70 percent or more of a single episode, then further lowered the threshold for its metrics.)

These data points mean little on their own, but they start to take on more meaning in context. Palm Springs was a record-setting Sundance acquisition Hulu wants to show was worth the investment, financially as well as creatively. Hulu holds an Outstanding Drama Series Emmy for The Handmaids Tale, but its not yet as established in features, which a streaming-friendly romantic comedy could help to fix. Apple wants to prove itself as a venue for upcoming releases with the likes of Martin Scorsese and Sofia Coppola, whose pivots to streaming will be less last-minute than Greyhounds. Over at Netflix, meanwhile, a full list of its pseudo-ratings reveals some surprising disparities: The ubiquitous Love Is Blind, for instance, was far less widely watched at 30 million views than the magnificently dumb Too Hot to Handle, at 51 million.

The asterisks on these figures remain firmly in place, though its still interesting to see exactly how many eyeballs a supersized meme like Tiger King amounts to (64 million, at least for those first two minutes). Streaming is far from transparent, but with the peacocks coming home to roost, its worth seeing what major players count as a successand how they try to claim it.

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Welcome to the Status Quo of the Streaming Wars - The Ringer

When the COVID-19 pandemic started, many people considered it mostly a nuisance that would be gone sooner rather than later. These days, popular opinion has shifted to another extreme. Life will never be quite the same even when the pandemic is finally gone. Indeed, it looks like many companies (especially tech firms) will keep their employees working from home on a permanent basis due to numerous financial and other benefits. It is a sign of times that mighty Microsoft is going to permanently close its retail stores.

A similar situation happened to most tournament chess players. At first, we thought that the migration online was just a temporary thing in order to weather the storm, but by now, it is quite clear that internet chess is our new reality. GM Sosonko even wrote an interesting article on this topic on a popular Russian website. The title of the article is quite telling: "The End?" So, whether we like it or not, internet chess is our future, and we need to adapt. The goal of this article is to underline the major difference between over-the-board (OTB) play and online chess.

Internet chess is our future, and we need to adapt.

An uninitiated person might say "Internet, shminternet... it is all chess." It is more like comparing a seahorse to a horse. They are totally different animals who still have some similarities. They both have a pair of eyes, don't they? Let's start our comparison of chess and internet chess with the most obvious one.

Internet chess allows players from all around the world to play for free in big tournaments and against the best players. It is much cheaper to run many events online, BUT in order to play online, you need to have an internet connection (or should I say a stable internet connection?). Ask GM Ding Liren how it felt when he got disconnected in a recent game vs. Magnus Carlsen and lost what should have been a draw.

In recent scholastic tournaments, I observed many games that were lost due to problems with the connection. I would hate to be in the shoes of the parents who had to deliver the bad news to their seven-year-old kid: "You've just lost due to disconnection, but that's OK, honey, it's just a game."

This special feature of internet chess leads to another phenomenon: People don't resign, and they keep playing completely lost positions until checkmate. It reminds me of an old story that happened some 50 years ago. A master adjourned a completely lost position, and the next day he came to the chess club to resume the game. When his opponent greeted him at the board, the master immediately resigned the game. A friend asked him why he didn't resign the game the day before and save some time. The master's response was quite unexpected: "Well, I just wanted to make sure that my opponent didn't have a car accident or a heart attack. You never know. When I saw him today in good health, I resigned." Players who play until checkmate hoping that their opponent may get disconnected remind me of that master. Of course, I am talking here only about advanced players. Beginners should never resign as I explained in this article.

Justice in online chess is blind. The chess server doesn't care if you are a grandmaster or a beginner, all rulings are the same, however, there is also no human to whom you can raise complaints.

When you play an over-the-board (OTB) game, and you have a concern or a claim, you have an arbiter to talk to. Here is a simple example. In my last article, we discussed a weird case in which two super-grandmasters played an endgame of kings and rooks for 32 moves. Well, people learn from their chess idols, so I wasn't surprised to see the following game only two weeks after the grandmasters' game:

In this article, I am going to remove all the names of non-professional chess players and instead use their rating as an indication of their strength. When the same endgame happened in this game, my student had about 1 minute left (the time control was 30+0), and had it been a regular tournament, she would have claimed insufficient winning chances. In this case, the game would be either declared a draw right away, or an arbiter would provide a clock with a time delay. This used to be a standard USChess procedure some 20 years ago when many people still used an analog clock.In a case of such a claim, you forfeit half of your remaining time, but you get a digital clock with a time delay. In either case, this would be a sure draw in an OTB tournament. My advice here is quite simple: either play with an increment or... see the next topic.

Bullet chess (and even hyperbullet) and insane blitz time scrambles are too chaotic for most in the real world, but they are a staple of online chess, as is their core mechanismthe premove.

I never would have imagined that I would use the term premove during my chess lessons, but it is the reality of the new world we live in. Premoving is a skill any Internet chess player should be proficient in. It is not just about the technique of doing it. It is also about when you should use it and when you shouldn't in order to avoid something like the following popular bullet trap:

Online chess requires precision. There are no knocked over pieces, pieces placed on half a square, or players smashing pieces into each other in a blitz time scramble. Sometimes though, the unforgiving internet can enforce a move that you clearly did not intend. If you have been playing on the internet for awhile, you have definitely had your share of mouse slips. No one is immune against them. Here is a recent example:

This is another reason some people never resign and play until checkmate. Here is a good example from a scholastic game. White showed a very good technique in the endgame king and queen vs. king, but when the moment of triumph was close, disaster happened:

By the way, here White broke the well-known "Chepukaitis rule": In blitz, play short moves since it saves time. Therefore, White should have moved his queen to c8, d8, or e8 which would have also eliminated the danger of a stalemate due to a mouse slip.

Unfortunately, cheating is an elephant in the room that should be addressed. Let me show you the following game:

What a smooth game from Black. If you are wondering if all players rated 700 play like this, I must disappoint you. Here is an over-the-board game played by kids with comparable ratings:

In this game, played by two sub-1000 rated players, you can see all the typical mistakes that players of this level make. We discussed many of them in this article. Of course, I am not even talking about the basics of chess strategy since this is too advanced a topic for players of this level. Indeed, when every other move is a bad blunder, who cares about weak squares or backward pawns? Meanwhile, the player rated 700, who played black in the previous game, was quite different. In the whole game, he made no blunders whatsoever (just like in the whole tournament!), plus his strategical skills were quite impressive. "No blunders?" you may ask, "but what about 14...Nh5?" I know, most players would prefer to protect the pawn with 14...Nd7 or just trade it with 14...exd4. Don't worry, 14...Nh5 is not a blunder but a positional pawn sacrifice that chess engines actually like.

My student ended the tournament with 6 points out of 7 games, and this was his only loss. Chesskid.com later closed this players' account. In fact, Chess.com closed over 10,000 accounts for fair-play violations last month, but the damage is still done.

Many people compare cheating to theft. In my opinion, cheating is much worse. If somebody stole $20 from you, you would be definitely upset about the financial loss and maybe even more by the injustice because you worked hard to earn this $20, and somebody just stole it from you. But I doubt that the theft will alter your life in any significant way. Now compare it to the situation where a kid worked very hard to become a state champion, and the title was literarily stolen from him. It is quite possible that a very young kid becomes so frustrated by this injustice that he can even drop out of chess! I am sure that if more people understood this aspect of cheating, we would have less cases like this. Unfortunately, many players (especially kids) see using a chess engine during a game as some sort of internet trolling without a clear realization that it is completely different. Also, people who consider using chess engines during their games should remember that experienced players can detect cheating quite easily by many direct and indirect hints. In my opinion, it is the duty of chess coaches to explain it to their students.

In conclusion, I would like to emphasize that there is no point in discussing if internet chess is "better" or "worse" than regular chess. It is just different. Here is what FIDE's general director GM Sutovsky wrote on his Facebook page regarding the mouse slip in the game Lagno vs. Hou Yifan:

Online play is obviously not a real sport. But since it is a mix of a sport and a show, the element of unpredictability is quite good here.

Here is a relevant piece of history for you. The Ford company unveiled its signature Model-T in 1908. Many buggy whip manufacturers probably complained that cars are very dangerous, they would lead to accidents and thousands of people would die. But some of them saw a new opportunity. The famous automaker Studebaker was originallya producer of wagons, buggies and carriages but managed to adopt and became quite successful in the new field. Similarly, tournament chess players should adopt to the new reality... at least till the quarantine ends

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Are You Ready For The Future Of Chess? - Chess.com

Written by Shaikh Ayaz | Mumbai | Updated: July 21, 2020 12:06:45 pm In the third essay of 100 Bollywood movies to watch in your lifetime series, we present 10 book-to-film adaptations to watch.

For book lovers, the very idea of seeing their favourite novel or work of literature turn into a movie is simply unacceptable. To the question, So, how does the film compare to the book? the reply is typically in the negative. The book is better, being the standard and well-practiced repartee from those who prize the primacy of literature over cinema. Indeed, literature may or may not need films, but films undoubtedly need literature for its creative growth and sustenance but mainly, to access material thats inaccessible in cinema. Yet, time and again, cinema has surprised lit types and doubting Thomases with what it can offer. For example, the great director Stanley Kubrick had a knack for picking reputed works of literature and giving them his own twist. Its another matter that the authors were not always pleased to see their labour of love go up in flames in the hands of the notorious perfectionist that was Mr Kubrick. A question arises, then: is A Clockwork Orange the work of Anthony Burgess or of Stanley Kubrick? Does Lolita belong to Nabokov, the original creator, or Kubrick who helped bring the controversial novel to life on screen? Few authors have had as much success in having their work adapted for screen than John le Carr. Still, that never stopped the spy specialist to exclaim, Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes.

For some authors, books and movies are not just separate compartments of a train but, in fact, are plying on completely different tracks altogether. Shall the twain ever meet? Books and movies are different languages, and attempts at translation often fail, Salman Rushdie had famously warned in 1999. One reason for that pessimism could be the authors long-held frustration to convert Midnights Children into a film or TV series. Midnights Children is a prestigious winner of Booker of Bookers and is easily Salman Rushdies favourite Salman Rushdie novel. So, when the iconic tome failed to find takers, it plunged Rushdie into deep depression. After several false starts, a film adaptation of Midnights Children (directed by Deepa Mehta) finally took off. It was released to tepid reviews in 2012, thus proving the master of magical realism right instead of a winner, Midnights Childrens cinematic version was a failed attempt at translation. The failure merely proving that just because you have a great book does not necessarily mean it will yield a great film. And the opposite is true just as well. Sometimes, thanks to the imagination and talent of directors and screenplay writers, a clumsy bestseller can result in a highly watchable film. A Bollywood case in point: Raju Hiranis 3 Idiots (2009), that adroitly turned Chetan Bhagats IIT memoir Five Point Someone into a satire on Indias by-rote education system. Spearheaded by the bankable Aamir Khan, the campus comedy rewrote box-office history on its release.

There is something literary about Aamir Khan and Raju Hirani, the twin creative engines behind 3 Idiots. Whats common between the duo is that they are champions of middle-of-the-road cinema, trying to merge art with commerce the meaningful with mainstream, so to speak that predecessors like Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Gulzar, Basu Chatterjee, Guru Dutt, Vijay Anand and Nasir Hussain (Khans uncle) had done so successfully before them. Hirani counts Hrishida as one of his idols and its easy to see a connection between their work. Hiranis own films, starting with Munnabhai MBBS, have been likened to the Mukherjee school of comedies gentle and middlebrow led by popular stars brought down to ground zero to channel their inner common man. Literature was the backbone of several Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Gulzar hits. This can, in turn, be best described as the Bimal Roy hangover the original auteur, steeped in New Theatres realism, whose best films (Do Bigha Zamin, Parineeta, Devdas, Sujata and Bandini) drew heavily from Bengali literature. Largely female-oriented, these classics relegated the men to the background. Himself influenced by Italian neorealism, Bimal Roy was a mentor to both Mukherjee and Gulzar, and from him, one can guess, they may have learnt the tricky art of spotting cinematic potential from the verbosity of the page. While Roy was busy conjuring up Tagore and Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay, Gulzar added one more name to that list. That name is Shakespeare. 1982s Angoor is a rare mix of Bengali and Bardish literature, resulting in a madcap comedy of errors. Gulzar passed down this passion for literature to Vishal Bhardwaj, who started out as his assistant just as Gulzar had joined Roy after being encouraged by him to quit his job as a car mechanic to pursue poetry and cinema.

Today, Bhardwaj has acquired the reputation as a poster boy of Shakespearean tragedies. The Bard is the inspiration behind some of his finest films. If his cheeky take on Macbeth, Othello and Hamlet (Maqbool, Omkara and Haider respectively) is any indication, he surely knows a recipe or two about how to best translate Bard for the Hindi screen. Shakespeare is the most adapted playwright and author in the world. His works are strikingly relevant in the East and West, from Kurosawa to Orson Welles, every filmmaker worth his salt has taken a crack at the Bard. But the relationship that Bollywood shares with the playwright is unusual, to say the least. Professor Jonathan Gil Harris, author of the book Masala Shakespeare, has argued that the English dramatist is more alive in Bollywood today than anywhere else in the world. Harris often jokes that Shakespeare is the biggest screenplay writer in Hindi cinema. In an interview with The Hindu, he said that the Bards clever use of puns and rhythm is replicated in Indian cinema. Shakespeare and Bollywood go as well together as Romeo and Juliet do.

Besides the Bard, for a time Bollywood was captivated by the Russian and French masters. Inspired by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Gustave Flaubert and Charlie Chaplin, directors like Mani Kaul, Ketan Mehta and Kundan Shah tried to fashion the then-upcoming star called Shah Rukh Khan into a romantic and dreamy-eyed hero of their multi-fanged literary imagination. Sanjay Leela Bhansali had probably wished the same for Ranbir Kapoor, when he launched the RK heir in 2007s Saawariya, a blue-canvas fable of Fyodor Dostoevskys White Nights.

Elsewhere, take for example, Indian art cinema, you can see that literature has been a strong ally to some of its greatest filmmakers. Most famously, Satyajit Ray, himself a man of letters, borrowed regularly from books. Rays only Hindi film, Shatranj Ke Khilari, based on Munshi Premchands short fiction, is on our list of 10 Book-To-Film Adaptations to Watch. The social realism that Ray helped inspire in Hindi cinema paved way to the New Wave, with directors like Shyam Benegal and Govind Nihalani at the forefront of that 1970s movement. Also called parallel cinema, classics from this period such as Ardh Satya, Tamas, Mandi and Junoon owe their existence to works of literature. Many players who were part of the 1970s scene lament that Bollywood today does not reflect on literature as much as it ought to. For one, Jaya Bachchan daughter of a Bengali writer-journalist and Ray and Hrishikesh Mukherjees protg recently recalled how her father taught her to give books as gifts because a book remains on the shelf, unlike chocolates or cookies. Bachchan went on to say that in her family as she was growing up, regional films were seen as a cultural activity.

That brings us to an important question does Bollywood read? And why have films stopped being a cultural activity they once were. While the reader is left to ponder on these questions, heres our list of ten best Bollywood adaptations of bestsellers.

Compete or die Dr. Viru Sahastrabuddhe

Rajkumar Hirani is the byword for comedy. But his flicks are equally designed as weepies of the Bas kar pagle, rulayega ka kya variety. He is among the new breed of contemporary filmmakers who have reset the box-office parameters, making Rs 100 crore sound like pocket change. Hiranis 3 Idiots found that rare middle ground between critical acclaim and commercial success, one of those films that ensures a bum on every multiplex seat. Bum chairs, anyone? No pun intended! 3 Idiots is about three friends from their engineering college days, but its really mostly about Aamir Khan who plays the radical Rancho. He has his own way of looking at the world, especially the world of education. Diminutive and curious, he puts up a hand and asks a question that the audience knows will baffle the professor. He doesnt believe in rote learning and insists on a more meaningful approach that doesnt involve parroting back a dictionary definition of things. While other hostel-mates would queue up for their morning bath, Rancho showers in the park, joyously greeting teachers and professors. All ij well! No wonder, Rancho is such an out of the box thinker that nobody has heard from him after college. So, best friends Raju (Sharman Joshi) and Farhan (R Madhavan) set out to find him. Hiranis scathing commentary on Indias education system, 3 Idiots is riotously funny. Special mentions for Boman Irani, a Hirani regular, with an extraordinary ability to transform into any character the director wishes and Omi Vaidya as Chatur, a compulsive topper and Ranchos bumbling foe.

Chaahe jo bhi ho raha ho tumhare saath, ek nayi bahu ki muskurahat hamesha tumhare chehre pe rehni chahiye Khalid Mir

Reportedly, Gulzar had expressed reservations when daughter Meghna Gulzar mentioned about her intentions to turn the book Calling Sehmat into a film. For Meghna, what appealed the most about Calling Sehmat was that it was an intrepid young girls journey. Alia Bhatt stars as that girl in Raazi. Shes no ordinary girl. Shes a spy who infiltrates Pakistan, by the act of marrying into a respectable army family thus minimising all levels of suspicion. Who would suspect this shy, soft-spoken newly married Kashmiri bride to be secretly reporting to Indias RAW? Above all, shes played by Alia the ultimate cute-ball who, it seems, has merely scratched the surface of her talent so far. As informer Sehmat, Alia is impressive both in the domestic scenes as well as the training session and undercover ones. Jaideep Ahlawat and Vicky Kaushal put in a brilliant show, matching leading-lady Alia at every step. Meghnas biggest achievement in Raazi is that she manages to set the film in a pacy thriller mode, while retaining her innate talent for the way she deals with intricacies of relationships. Heres a sensitive filmmaker who resists the narrative of us-versus-them in favour of a more nuanced interpretation of Pakistan. She sees those across the border as people. Clues are strewn across Gulzars timely Aye Watan that plays like an anthem in Raazi. It may have been used heroically on Sehmat to denote Indian patriotism but could serve her Pakistani husband Iqbal (Vicky Kaushal) just as well.

Jab tak hum inteqam se azaad nahin honge na, koi azaadi humein azaad nahin kar sakti Ghazala

A haunting adaptation of Bards Hamlet, Vishal Bhardwajs Haider shines an unflinching light on the insurgency and violence in Kashmir. The firebrand Tabu plays the mothership, a complex and conflicted half widow who nearly steals the film from her son, Haider (Shahid Kapoor). Her character Ghazala pumps so much intensity and intrigue into Haider that The New York Times reviewer wrote, Instead of Haider, Vishal Bhardwaj might have considered calling his fast-and-loose adaptation of Hamlet Ghazala, after its Gertrude character. Ghazalas Oedipal relationship with her young son is at the core of the story rare for mainstream Bollywood to skew the sacred mother-son relationship to such Freudian depths. Like in other Bhardwaj films, the music of Haider stands out for its remarkable compositions and poetry. One of the pleasures is to see Shakespeares gravedigger scenes turned into a musical romp against the bloodstained wintery Kashmir. A perfect, if easy-peasy, metaphor for heaven becoming hell. In Maqbool, you might recall, transforming Macbeths witches into holy fools, astrology-obsessed Mumbai cops was a masterstroke of imagination and a source of great humour. As a director, Bhardwaj pays close attention to characterisations and to the nuances of poetry and language. Watching Haider or for that matter, any film by him you are reminded time and again that this is a movie made by a filmmaker who thinks like a musician.

Bombai par hamla bolenge toh international level par akkha duniya ko maloom padega, bhai Tiger Memon

Based on S. Hussain Zaidis book on the Bombay blasts of 1993, one of the darkest chapters in this urban sprawl of tall towers and low-lying shantytowns, Black Friday picks up from where RGVs Satya had left, as far as director Anurag Kashyaps twin fascination for underworld and the city of Mumbai is concerned. Like Satya, Black Friday is a portrait of the psychology of crime. But unlike Satya, it doesnt fictionalise the events it seeks to chronicle. The names are named. Dawood Ibrahim, for a change, is not hiding behind his glamorous shades. Across the border, a plot to kill Hindu leaders like Bal Thackeray and LK Advani is being openly discussed. Kashyap does not shy from having Tiger Memon crusade (jihad) against Indias Hindus. Memon wants to burn Bombay. Black Friday is about Tiger Memon (Pawan Malhotra) mobilising his forces, no different from an army major, to seek revenge for the Bombay riots. Kashyap stitches the puzzle together by merging elements of thriller and police procedural. Theres a newsreel and documentary feel to the movie, which is deliberate and raw. Kashyap presents Tiger Memon (still at large, though his brother Yakub Memon was hanged in 2015 for his role in the blast) as a man with a mission. In one scene, Memon talks about the indignities faced by Muslims, the indiscriminate rapes and killings. The blast, he maintains, is a form of revenge. It is clear that Black Friday doesnt wish to make a hero out of Tiger Memon, though he became one to the embittered Muslim community in the aftermath of the Bombay riots. Fair warning: The film makes for an urgent and uncomfortable watch, given its subversively hard-hitting subject. Kashyap had paid the price for its realism. The films release was an ordeal for him, but it also made him a cause clbre for free speech and Bollywoods disruptor-in-chief.

Tujhse naraaz nahin zindagi, hairan hoon main Gulzar

The main source of conflict in Masoom is a child (Rahul/Jugal Hansraj) who appears only after Shekhar Kapur has established a happy Indian family with two doting daughters (as seen by the framed family photo). When the kids sneak in a puppy into the house, Indu (Shabana Azmi) creates a fuss, refusing to accept him. How will she accept her husband DKs (Naseeruddin Shah) illegitimate child? When it finally dawns upon DK and Indu that Rahul is for real now, she not only emotionally distances herself from DK but also reveals anger and coldness towards Rahul. Both are natural responses. Kapur handles these scenes in an understated way. For example, when DK reveals the story behind his brief affair with Rahuls mother in Nainital or when Rahul runs away from home after discovering who his father is. After all, imagine the identity crisis of a child, who has spent his entire life looking for his missing father. And heres the father, hesitating in uttering those reassuring words that could be music to Rahuls young years: Yes, you are my son The scene that may have contributed to a softening of stance occurs between Indu and Chanda (Tanuja), her friend who has just reunited with her family. If I were just a woman, Chanda says, it would have been fine. But I am a mother, too. Ultimately, Masoom is not about the man or child but about the woman. Kapur gives her a chance at redemption in the end. Kapurs mature direction, his ability to extract stellar performances especially in the delicate scenes between the couple when dealing with difficult questions of life and relationship and the songs by Gulzar-RD Burman that have grown to acquire a cult of their own, betrays the directors lack of experience. Even though Kapur was related to Dev-Vijay Anand (the film, in turn, is dedicated to Guru-Geeta Dutt), he was the settled corporate guy who came in from the blue and disrupted the status quo. The obvious trigger for Masoom was Erich Segals Man, Woman and Child. The book made me cry, Kapur had said. That emotional impact inspired him to make his first film. Overnight, the low-key debut turned this chartered accountant into a hot property. What a tragedy then that this great filmmaker, as the joke goes, only talks about films today instead of making one. Time to open another book?

Mar gayi, khatm ho gayi. Ab tum Urdu ki laash bhi dekh rahe ho. Yahan padi hai, dafn hone ke intezaar mein poet Nur

Ismail Merchant directs this adaptation of Anita Desais marvellous novel that takes as its subject the slow and painful decline of not just Urdu but an entire culture that this language of protest and poetry helped flourish. Who reads Urdu today, laments publisher Murad (Tinnu Anand) in an early scene. Why should I be the torchbearer of Urdu? he chides Deven (Om Puri), when ironically, Deven himself has turned to the economic comforts of Hindi. Murad is bringing out a special edition on great Urdu poets. Faiz, Firaq, Josh, Murad says, missing out on one legendary name. What about Janab Nur Shahjahanbadi? Deven reminds him. Hes dead, counters Murad. Surely, poet Nur Shahjahanbadi is past his prime, but no edition of poetry is complete without his mention. Deven plunges into the decadent world of Nur to get him his due. Nur is a Falstaffian, alcoholic literary giant played by Shashi Kapoor, in what is clearly his most underrated turn. Writing in the preface to Desais In Custody, Salman Rushdie says the film is probably Ismail Merchants finest effort as a director. Even though Rushdie complains about the films departure from Desais vision of the wide age gap between Deven and Nur (the novel contrasts youth and experience), Merchants version succeeds in its fidelity to retaining the relationship between Deven and Nur. The novels emotional heart lies in this relationship, admits Rushdie. Deploying Faiz Ahmed Faizs powerful verses (note: Desais book begins with Wordsworth), In Custody is a requiem for Urdu poetrys lost glory. Nurs symbolic figure is a stand-in for Urdu itself. The film posits him as a poor shadow of his former glory while Deven, a minor foot soldier of Urdu, finds himself becoming the true custodian of not just this elegant language but also of Nurs legacy and friendship.

Aag lage iss khel ko Khurshid

Chess is the other woman in begum Khurshids (Shabana Azmi) life. Her biggest enemy that keeps husband Mirza Sajjad Ali (Sanjeev Kumar), a feudal baron, away from her. As Queen Victorias army hatches its shrewd moves to close in on Awadh (Lucknow), the chess-obsessed aristocrat Mirza Sajjad Ali and his friend Mir Roshan Ali (Saeed Jaffrey) are immersed in their game. Their adventures to find ways to get back to the board, including landing up at a friends mansion as he lays on his death bed, gives Shatranj Ki Khilari its irony and humour. What a lovely day, and we are bereft of chess, Mir Roshan Ali sighs on one pleasant chess-less day, as though missing an old flame. As the great character actor David (playing Munshi Nandlal) explains, chess was invented in India, but the English made some crucial changes to its rules. Result? The games pace is quickened and it gets over faster. Do the English find our game slow, says Mirza Sajjad Ali, visibly offended. They find our transport slow, too, Mir Roshan Ali butts in, referring to the arrival of trains. This is a time of great tumult for Awadh, but Mirza and Mirs friendly banter and singular obsession with carrying on with their game belies the change of guard thats imminent. Satyajit Ray uses chess as a metaphor for the wily British tactics. Alongside Mirza and Mir, Ray expertly stages a parallel subplot of Wajid Ali Shah, ruler of Awadh, a great patron of art and himself an able poet and musician. How did the ruler of Awadh become a subplot in his own lifes plot? A devout Muslim, he loves to dress up as Krishna and dance with his courtesans. The catholic British find his debauchery disgusting. One of the best moments in the film occurs when Awadhs Prime Minister, bearing bad news, comes crying to Wajid Ali Shah, interrupting the kings thumri session. Only love and poetry can bring tears to a mans eyes, says Wajid Ali Shah, who is played by the overtly masculine Amjad Khan. And that is another extraordinary achievement of the film its casting, not just of against-type Amjad but of Sanjeev Kumar, Saeed Jaffrey and Tom Alter, the gora sahib who aptly becomes the bridge between English and Urdu. This is Rays first Hindi film. He doesnt know Urdu, but like all great filmmakers, he is alive to the cultural and political intricacies of language. Based on a Premchand short story, Shatranj Ke Khilari is a lovingly crafted vignette from Awadh, on the eve of its annexation. The film is at once a paean to the bygone Awadhi and Nawabi culture of tehzeeb and an examination of it, gently implicating the Nawabs for being responsible for their own downfall. We get so helpless without servants, says Mir Roshan Ali, towards the end. When insulted, he does raise the gun but not against the British. Poetry, shisha and kebabs are all it takes for the Nawab to cool down and resume his game, even as Queen Victoria marches in. Checkmate!

Sach bolne waale mein agar dukh sahne ki himmat hai, toh dukh dene ki bhi himmat honi chahiye. Sacchai ek angraarey ki tarah hai, haath pe rako aur haath na jale yeh kaise ho sakta hai engineer Satyapriya

Those lines are uttered by Satyakams protagonist, the idealist Satyapriya. Hes the films conscience-keeper and truth-seeker, who is single-mindedly obsessed with doing the right thing, whatever the cost. The story of Satyakam is narrated by Naren (Sanjeev Kumar). Hrishikesh Mukherjee would use this storytelling device later on in Anand (1971), where a strapping Amitabh Bachchan recalls the unusual life of Anand, played memorably by Rajesh Khanna. Satyapriya (Dharmendra) and Naren are college friends in pre-Independence India. After college, they go separate ways, remaining off and on in touch. For some years, Satyapriya hasnt written to Naren. When they bump into each other one day, Satyapriya fills in the missing pieces. He had to marry dance girl Ranjana (Sharmila Tagore). She has a child that Satyapriya accepts to raise as his own. And yet, Ranjana often feels shes impure and wishes to be reborn pure to be worthy of Satyapriya. Reworking Narayan Sanyals novel, Mukherjees Satyakam is about the search for truth and to commit to its wholeheartedly. This is Satypriyas only purpose in life and he has given that meaning to himself, unlike Naren, who in an early college scene discussing an existential question, seems to come across as a nihilist believing in the utter meaninglessness of life. Dharmendra plays Satyapriya with an unmistakable sincerity and understatement that sensitive Bengali directors like Mukherjee and Bimal Roy identified in the young Jat. (Note that Dharmendra had already become a major star with Phool Aur Patthar in 1966.) Hrishida spent the 1970s replicating the same model with commercial stars like Rajesh Khanna and Amitabh Bachchan.

Swami ke liye hi aurat ka jeevan hai Chhoti Bahu

Chand ma daag hai, par unma daag naahin, (The moon has spots, but not her,), thats how a faithful servant of Chaudhary clan describes the havelis enigmatic Chhoti Bahu. In the films opening, we meet the gauche Bhootnath (Guru Dutt) and Jaba (a sprightly Waheeda Rehman). But director Abrar Alvi (stories abound of Dutts ghost direction) waits before introducing the storied Chhoti Bahu. Meena Kumari plays her with arresting force, carrying music in her voice and painful longing in her eyes. This performance was instrumental in building the Meena Kumari cult. We first see her when Bhootnath sees her. Aao, idhar aao, says Chhoti Bahu imploring a reticent Bhootnath, almost in a maternal way. (Years later, the same magnetic voice would act as a pacifier between warring friends in Gulzars Mere Apne). Shes the only one who finds the name Bhootnath beautiful. Not sure if the grande dame of tragedy is joking or seriously means it. But the poor Bhootnaths reaction is one of utter surprise. Now, if you ignore frumpy names like Bhootnath and Jaba (Was there ever such an ugly name? writes Jerry Pinto in an essay on Waheeda Rehman), theres plenty of pleasures in this 1962 adaptation of Bimal Mitras Bengali novel. Chhoti Bahus loveless marriage sends her into boozy decline. All she yearned for was love and sexual fulfilment from her husband (Rehman). But this is Meena Kumari. Suffering, pining and sorrows are her birthright and she has it, at least in Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam her greatest sob story and a cultural touchstone, to boot.

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Kaun kambakht hai jo bardasht karne ke liye peeta hai Devdas

Judging purely by the number of adaptations it has inspired, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyays Devdas is by far Bollywoods go-to work of literature. It has been remade several times. Filmmakers as diverse as Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Sudhir Mishra and Anurag Kashyap have put their own spin on the tragic tale. Yet, it is Bimal Roys 1955 reboot starring Dilip Kumar, Vyjayanthimala, Suchitra Sen and Motilal that has a claim to being the best Devdas. What makes it so great? The story is the same old chestnut. But in 1955, it might not have been such a cliche. A meek young man, Devdas (Kumar) is torn between Paro (Sen) and Chandramukhi (Vyjayanthimala). Craving for love, he takes to the bottle. For Kumar, this is a justly celebrated performance, probably a high point not just for this film but also for his career. His character stands for resignation and defeat. When he cannot stand up to his own family for his childhood love, how can he ever face the world? Vyjayanthimala, who made for a popular screen couple with Kumar, plays the courtesan whose kindness Devdas promises never to forget. But does he love her? He only truly loves Paro. In the films famously tragic climax, she runs to get a last glimpse of Devdas. Alas, its too late.

(Shaikh Ayaz is a writer and journalist based in Mumbai)

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Exploring 10 Hindi films based on books - The Indian Express

Overlander Paul Moody was on a road trip from Kinsale to Australia experiencing a breakdown in a remote area of Iran. A good Samaritan came to his rescue and the humanity of man will stay with him forever.

SEPTEMBER was hot as hell as we hammered through the desert on our way to the isolated city of Zahedan to catch some sleep.

The empty ribbon of tarmac disappeared into the shimmering landscape, and the mountains bordering Pakistan only seemed to get further away. We still have 150 kilometres to go, Wil volunteered, a fact I was fully aware of.

With only a day left to exit Iran before our transit visas expired, there really wasnt much time to lose.

We are in Balochistan; an area the size of France which is neither a country nor state, but a region that embraces the borders of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Seldom visited by tourists, it is a bleak, brown, arid, rocky desert and mountainous region; populated by millions of fiercely independent Baluchis, denied a nationhood by colonialists, who carved up their lands as spoils of war a century ago.

This is also a troubled Separatist and Taliban region where the rule of law is tenuous. With a history of kidnapping, robbery and drug smuggling, the stress of our predicament was only compounded.

I gazed across at my son, Wil, sitting in the passenger seat. He was beginning to doze off, no doubt dreaming of his impending final year at university and the hopeful excitement of his first overland trip with his old man.

The engine suddenly screamed as I swiftly took my heavy foot from the accelerator and cut the motor. The temperature gauge was now in the red zone as I veered off the track, coming to a halt in the soft sand. Steam was wheezing under the bonnet as we jumped out of the cool of the cab into the searing heat of the midday sun. We looked at each other and without need for words, we knew we were in trouble.

I have driven this Toyota Hilux on extended overland trips for more than ten years; armed with two spare wheels, 40 litres of diesel and a toolkit just in case, with little else. Having driven around the world, I am out here now to do it again, taking a different route on our way to Australia. Ive been lucky so far, meaning my skillset doesnt match the toolkit. I tap the radiator with a spanner, and to no surprise, the steam persists.

We tried to assess the problem

We tried to assess the problem as the radiator gurgled and hissed. What the hell do we do now? asked Wil. The comfort of air conditioning and a functioning engine were gone. We checked our water supplies, just shy of ten litres, Wil told me with a sigh. All of a sudden the track ahead looked scabby and wind-blown. The road was pocked with patches of dirty sand reclaiming our lifeline to Pakistan. It was quiet now, eerily so.

Our entry into Iran had been fraught with difficulty as we were held at the Turkish border for three days due to paperwork irregularities. British citizens arent permitted to cross land borders into Iran without an official permit and guide, so we were lucky they didnt notice I was British from my passport as my thumb comfortably covered the Great Britain, leaving only Northern Ireland for them to see.

Wils Irish passport was our golden ticket. After a rejected Carnet de Passage incurred a hefty penalty, we were sent on our way with a five day transit visa to cross 2500 kilometres of Irans merciless terrain. We loved Iran so far, the people and the ancient cities of Esfahan and Bam in particular, following the Silk Roads of old, regretting we could not linger for longer.

This is a very lonely, little used road crossing the Dasht-e Lut Desert and we are still hours from our planned overnight destination, with no settlement in between. After an hour of sheltering from the scorching sun and swirling dust, I flagged down a battered truck whose driver was soon under the bonnet prodding and probing the fan belts and seals.

With no common language between us, I understood his shrug and barrage of Farsi enough that the engine was shot. The truck driver was soon into the cool of his cab and on his way with a wave, promising to send someone back from Zahedan to rescue us.

A plume of black smoke puthered from his exhaust as he roared into the distance, signalling our own lost hopes as they dispersed into the blazing afternoon sky. We descended into a gloom, hoping the next truck that came along would stop and give us a tow.

Salaam we called twenty minutes later as a little car arrived and the driver soon gave a shrug and shake of the head, confirming the truck drivers opinion that we are in trouble.

Ahmed is a Baluchi with the dark features of a Pakistani Sunni Muslim

Ahmed is a Baluchi with the dark features of a Pakistani Sunni Muslim, in long loose shirt and baggy trousers in crumpled cream. Baluchis are distrusted by the Shiite majority Iranians, who look and dress very differently. We are tiptoeing on the cultural frontier.

I flashed our rope and waved my arms in an appeal for a tow. He gave me a weary look and nodded as I swiftly hooked up our heavy truck to his mini car. Ahmed invited Wil to sit with him in the car whilst I slouched back in the Toyota.

It was now mid-afternoon and still extremely hot as his car wheels spun in the sand, rocking backwards and forwards as he tried to gain traction. We finally got underway nearly two hours after this unscheduled stop.

Twenty minutes later we rumbled to a halt with Ahmeds own motor steaming. I was incredulous that such a tiny engine in this extreme heat had been able to haul us at all.

The little car was soon back to its labours as I closely followed in tow watching the animated exchanges between Wil and Ahmed, with not a word of a common language between them. It transpired our Samaritan shared his time between his two wives five hours apart. He drove this route weekly fulfilling his obligations as a good family man.

After three hours crawling through the desert, we reached the far off mountains. Slowly we inched our way to the summit of the first pass where Ahmed stopped to unhitch the tow rope motioning me to freewheel down the mountain track into the unknown. I hurtled along in fear with neither air conditioning, power assisted steering, nor brakes, the rumble of the tyres squealing around the bends in the road leading to Zahedan.

I lost count of how many times we rested and watered our little tow truck. With a second mountain pass to cross, the daylight faded and the heat mercifully receded. Hours later the first stars twinkled as we reached our destination with its fearsome reputation.

Foreigners are warned that there is only one safe place to stay

This outpost was not a garage but a parts provider surrounded by workshops, all manned by independent mechanics who quickly surrounded us with the prospect of a pay day from two very gullible overland travellers.

Three of them were soon under the bonnet with torches and spanners probing for the source of the problem but it was quickly established that not one had the experience of diesel engines, which are a rarity in Iran. After twenty frustrating minutes one asked me to start the motor and with trepidation I turned the key. To my surprise it roared back into life and my new found mechanics stood back in dismay as a financial opportunity slipped away.

I too had a mix of emotions of both relief and concern that the engine would quickly overheat again, but it never did.

With embarrassment I turned to Ahmed who broke into a wide smile revealing nearly a full set of yellowing teeth that I had not seen before. For hours he had tugged my lump of a truck from the desert over two mountain ranges reducing the life of his little car by half, I am sure.

I took him to one side and proffered my gratitude in cash but he declined with a wave of his hand and his new found smile inviting us to overnight in his home.

My internal dialogue was host to a dilemma. Zahedans dangerous reputation gnawed at me, along with our reservation in the safety of the Esteghlal Grand Hotel. But what do I do? What do I do after this man has been so kind thus far, and has further offered the hand of friendship?

Ahmed bounced along the dark dirt roads into his bleak neighbourhood with no street lights. I followed closely, wrought with fear for possibly making the most foolish decision in my most sensible life. We soon arrived at the tall, steel gates of his compound. He tooted his horn and the gates were opened by a small, shadowy figure into a concrete yard with three small building blocks now in my headlights.

We arrived physically and mentally exhausted, sixteen hours after departing Kerman that morning, but adrenalin kicked in as we alighted into Ahmeds home.

Two dogs were howling to each other somewhere in the still darkness, which added to the tension. We were eased with a welcome from the shadowy gatekeeper, Ahmeds brother; a younger, more stocky figure than his gangly elder. We never did grasp his name nor of another silent friend who emerged from the darkness on this warm and sultry night.

The only illumination came through the open doorway of one building block, emitted by a bulb dangling from the high ceiling; television and occasional giggles and laughter could be heard from a second. A little girl suddenly appeared, flinging her arms around her daddys leg whilst trying to hide behind his baggy trousers from these two strange looking travellers, who had appeared from nowhere.

A gesture to remove our boots was made. We were ushered through the open doorway into a poorly lit large square room, furnished only by several layers of carpet. Decoration was a large tapestry along a wall and numerous cushions scattered for comfort. There was no furniture to speak of. Ahmeds exquisite rug was our home for the evening.

Brother invited us to join him

Brother was charming and hospitable as he engaged with us in his fractured English, wanting to know all about us. Who are you? Where are you from? Where are you going? Why? It would be a lie to say I was not feeling unsettled; Wil, however, seemed at ease, and took to answering his questions with enthusiasm. I took this as a pre kidnap interview.

We were soon poring over the maps of our overland route from Ireland as they tried to grasp our story that sounds farfetched even to ourselves. We are an adventurous family with a passion for travel, possibly inspired by my own travels in this Hilux, which was now parked in their yard.

With a succession of friends and family I had crossed more than eighty countries on numerous trips of up to a month at a time, leaving the truck to return home to fulfil family and work responsibilities. Europe, Africa, Middle East, Asia and the Americas had all been crossed but not fully explored.

Our daughter Camilla was emigrating to Australia, so we decided to drive her part way to Istanbul airport, then carry on the road trip to meet up with her in Adelaide. We all decided to share the experience between us in driving stages to France, Italy, Croatia and Istanbul where we said our tearful farewells. Wil and I had taken up the Istanbul to New Delhi part of the drive through Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and into India each with its cross border challenges.

Zahedan was the last Iranian stop before Pakistan and this is the first ever breakdown on my entire travels, and it was not even a breakdown.

Brother wanted to know more about where we live in Ireland and the pictures of Kinsale were beyond his comprehension living in a brown arid landscape and far from a sea that he had never seen. Wil and he really bonded and I began to relax a little but not entirely.

Ahmed kept appearing with food from the block house adjacent which I assumed was the family domain and during our entire stay saw no one else. I made a brief excursion to the ablutions block which defied description and was not a place to linger.

Brother and Wil started playing chess with gusto, and I admired my son for his social skills in changing a negative into a positive situation as they whooped and groaned as the game developed. We looked on with shrugs and smiles being unable to communicate anymore. The little girl fell asleep snuggled into Ahmeds lap and smiling he gently took her into his arms and swept out of the room returning with blankets for us.

We took this as the time for sleep

We plumped up the cushions, switched off the light and snuggled down under scratchy blankets, tired but unable to relax going over the events of the day and thinking about tomorrow. How safe are we, did the engine simply overheat, and will it happen again? The border crossing into Pakistan is an hour away through no mans land to the border town of Taftan described in the Lonely Planet not unfairly, as hell on earth. What are we doing here, a pensioner and his twenty year old son with his whole life ahead of him?

I dozed fitfully until a gap in the curtain let in the predawn and I was fully awake, still dressed and ready to go. Wil was in a deep sleep as I made for the chink of grey light and gently pulled it aside to focus on the yard. My Hilux was still where I left it and there are three bundles on the floor beside it that I hadnt noticed when we arrived only hours before.

I squinted and pulled the curtain wider for a better look before realising these bundles were our hosts wrapped in blankets sleeping on the concrete yard, protecting my beloved Hilux. I was astonished. They had given us their room for the night, showered us with kindness and hospitality, rescued us from the desert and, we, total strangers who were fearful of their motives and intentions were profoundly humbled. Shame on me.

I roused Wil whilst tidying the room and we were soon ready to go. As I drew back the curtain, Ahmed awoke from his slumber and with a broad smile waved us out into the yard in silence as we carefully stepped around the two remaining men fast asleep. Dawn was truly breaking as we motioned our desire to leave.

He took his key to open the large gate lock and pulled them open motioning us to reverse out. I inserted the key into the ignition and drew breath as I turned it. The engine spluttered into life and Brother and their silent friend flinched momentarily.

Ahmed in his little car guided us out of his neighbourhood back onto tarmac as we drove through the near deserted streets in the direction of the rising sun. He stopped and flagged us to wait whilst he crossed the road into a bakery returning with fresh bread and water for our journey. We thanked him profusely but still he declined a gesture of cash from us. I insisted that he took a gift for his beautiful daughter, which he accepted with demure.

He led us back into our car pointing us in the direction of the worrisome border crossing into Pakistan which we had to make with only hours to spare. We sounded our horn and drove away with sight of our Good Samaritan waving farewell, receding in our mirror.

Thoughts of the humanity of man and My Longest Day will stay with me forever.

* Paul Moody has enjoyed a life time of business and adventure in most countries of the world. He has driven his beloved Toyota Hilux twice around the world through more than eighty countries proving that the difficult is possible with grit and determination.

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Personal Insights: From Kinsale to Iran and the human kindness I will never forget - Irish Examiner

The methods India must use to set objectives, design strategies, and forge alliances will shift in approach and urgency.

India is at a unique inflection point. In 2019-20, our GDP was nearly $3tn, catapulting us into the top 5 economies. In terms of purchasing power parity, we are a top 3 economy at $12.6tn, behind China and the US. For the first time this year, due to the economic fallout of COVID-19, India will witness 4% negative growth. The pandemic is realigning the global order and may have forever changed the world. There are generational opportunities here, and the challenge is deciding which goals to pursue.

Here, game theory offers a useful framework for decision-makingto understand the theatre, build alliances and common objectives, formulate strategies to reach milestones, and then make the necessary nearand long-term decision-cascades to execute these strategies. The theory classifies all contests as finite or infinite.

Recent events, especially at the Indo-China border, have demonstrated that a stable economy is a prerequisite for indomitability. With it comes global respect, a shift in attitudes from allies and adversaries, optionality in resource allocation, and a security apparatus that can pre-emptively protect its borders and citizens. A robust economy has tremendous feedforward effectshigh incomes and quality of life, capacity to maintain peace at all costs, and the unrelenting pursuit of excellence. Sustaining a resilient economy in a sovereign nation is an infinite game.

By definition, an infinite game has no beginning or end, can support known and unknown players, must continue with an evolving ruleset, and the only known boundary condition is that the game must be perpetually played. In contrast, finite contests have bounded rules, scores, and playtime. Unlike basketball or chess, players in an infinite game cannot call time on the game after it reaches a pre-agreed result. For example, India cant achieve a $10tn GDP by 2031 and then retire its growth and development. Building a resilient economy can only be defined in terms of intermediate objectives that perpetuate the gamegrow the country to a $5tn GDP by 2026, $10tn by 2031, $20tn by 2041, and beyond.

Having established that India is playing an infinite game, the methods it must use to set objectives, design strategies, and forge alliances will shift in approach and urgency.

More importantly, India must align its decision-making, policy formulation, incentives, and investments toward these goals. With this lens, here are some of the growth drivers India has to pursue to become a dominant player in this infinite game.

URBANIZE SYSTEMATICALLY BUT RAPIDLY

Urbanization concentrates human activity, leading to depth of specialization and irreversible productivity enhancements; crucial to accelerating socio-economic growth. India (34% urban) lags behind the world (55%), China (59%) and the US (82%). Urbanization is critical for Indias growth, as exemplified by these two superpower contenders.

No longer should Indias growth depend only on 10 cities with a combined GDP of $1 trillion (33% of India) and a combined population of 11 crores (8% of India). The next 100 cities must be planned to contribute $1 trillion and house 20 crore people. Another tier of 1,000 towns can be developed for the next $1 trillion. In this manner, we could develop a total of 5,000 census towns all over the country, connect them with high-speed infrastructure, and concentrate resources to develop a tiered and reliable urban engine of growth. An India-wide phenomenon means every citizen can fully participate.

We can do this systematically by incorporating sustainable energy technologies, incentivising job creation and training, urban mobility solutions, and supporting quantum leaps in material reuse and recycling. This distributed growth engine can maintain a value-added agricultural surround system, self-reliant manufacturing ecosystem, increase overall savings and investment, and support human capital development.

LABOUR-INTENSIVE GROWTH

For self-reliance and sustained economic growth, India has to develop high labour-utilization strategies via urbanization, construction, manufacturing and services like tourism. It is the only sustainable way to support wage-growth and mass-upskilling of the 50% of India that is unskilled or low-skilled. After 70 years, agriculture even today employs 43% of the workforce which must quickly reduce to 25%.

The recent migrant crisis has demonstrated that six states in the north have surplus labour that migrates for a living. The Rs 50,000 crore PM-GKRY program has to be dovetailed with creating labour-intensive industries. An incentive program could be worked out where for 1 crore jobs created in specific industries in these six states, the government could pay Rs 2,000/month/worker employed with verifiable social security. With a combined Centre-state program, this will work out to INR 24,000 crores a year for 1 crore jobs; the creation of which will radically transform these states. Moreover, a majority of the 6,844 products we import from China at $65.3Bn can be produced domestically with labour-intensive strategies.

HIGH VALUE-ADDED MANUFACTURING

Labour-intensive manufacturing unlocks opportunities for current economic growth while hi-tech manufacturing unlocks opportunities for the future. Todays frontier technologies are tomorrows growth engines. Electronics design, 3D printing, advanced biotechnology, defence parts, space applications, robotics, and other areas are a formidable value-add to the nation that holds the intellectual property (IP) and manufacturing rights.

The worlds superpowers deploy significant innovation budgets because they have strategized the value of this investment in securing economic growth. While India has an abundance of talent, we have not pursued a perpetuating strategy here. To maintain a resilient economy, decades into the future, we must invest today in deep research, IP creation, and specialized workforces supported by centres of excellence, world-class R&D laboratories, manufacturing facilities and a deepening startup ecosystem. A Rs 50,000 crore PM Hi-Tech Industry Abhiyan is required. The returns on this investment will translate into extensive value-added output and growth.

EXPORT ORIENTATION

The endurance game strategy around export-orientation is evident: if we target only domestic markets, the limit is $3tn. With export-orientation, the market swiftly expands to the $82tn global economya 27x expansion. In a decade, even this would have expanded further at 4% YoY. With export-orientation, all Indian producers have an opportunity to expand their market reach, growth and earnings.

Indias IT industry has proven this value proposition. Three Indian IT companies are in the Top 5 globally, and five in the Top 10. In the early 1990s, if the then-burgeoning IT industry had limited itself to the domestic market, it would have probably died out because the market was limited. By consciously orienting their services toward the global economy, IT companies saw exponential growth and took advantage of the expansive growth opportunities.

INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT AND SUPPLY CHAIN EFFICIENCIES

Chinas infrastructure boom has enabled unprecedented delivery and supply chain efficienciesa significant contributor to their ability to produce and deliver high-quality goods at cheap prices. To compete, reducing our supply chain costs from 14% of GDP to 6% is essential.

The introduction of GST, and focus on road and airport development is paying off. In the wake of economic standstill, the administration can consider fast-tracking a National Infrastructure Pipeline 2.0 program, the freight corridor projects, and developing ports throughout the coastlines. We have to match carriage speeds and port turnaround times of China, Singapore and other places to capture export market share.

AGRICULTURAL EXPORTS

India is a fertile, multi-climate country with a strong agricultural base. We are the largest producer of milk, cotton, spices, and second largest in food grains, horticulture, and sugar. We are a major producer of agrochemicals, tea, jute and oilseeds. We have the largest cropland and livestock sector in the world. Despite this, we lag in agricultural exports and value-add due to the lack of a cohesive growth strategy.

A long-term vision to increase value-add in agriculture necessitates export-orientation, building a global India agri-brand, food processing, grading and sorting standardization, large-scale dairy procurement and branding cooperatives, and more. Agriculture will also capitalize on the increased supply chain efficiency to drive output up.

GOVERNANCE AND TAXATION REFORMS

Indias economic growth is heavily weighed down by compliance laws, some dating to the colonial era of the late 1800s. TeamLeases analysis of Indias compliance universe shows the centre and states together have 1,536 Acts, 69,233 compliance paradigms and 6,618 filings for companies and citizens to navigate. This impossibly high compliance burden is a drain on the time and resources of taxpayers, wealth-creators and job-creators, and is antithetical to value creation.

There are also discrepancies in taxation laws. Domestic investors pay higher taxes than equivalent overseas investors. Higher capital gains tax is levied on unlisted stock compared to listed, despite the highly variant risk-reward paradigms.

The worlds most productive economies have all deployed vastly-simplified compliance and tax regimes. President Trump has reduced friction by 30% in one term. With Indias pioneering tech-enabled governance, this is a generational opportunity to build transparent compliance and taxation systems that boost Indias productivity multifold. India needs a new movement to free citizens from the tyranny of over-compliance, a PM Zero-Friction Compliance Yojana.

AN ENDURING INDIAN NATION

An enduring nation is borne by a robust economy that continuously unlocks pathways for economic growth. While India has grown admirably since 1991, it has been mostly organic with the lack of a long-term cohesive strategy that every citizen can align behind. By formulating an infinite game perpetuating strategy today, India can become an inclusive growth driver for the whole world.

T.V. Mohandas Pai is Chairman, Aarin Capital Partners, and Nisha Holla is Technology Fellow, C-CAMP.

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An (Infinite) Game Theory strategy for India to be a global power - The Sunday Guardian

The world of motorsports is a colorful one; filled to the brim with all different types of racing series for each and every individual interest. Here in the United States, our biggest source of automotive racing is that of NASCAR. While Europe has events such the WEC and Formula 1, we've got IMSA, IndyCar, and NASCAR.

NASCAR takes place on predominantly oval racetracks. This, in turn, has led fans of other racing disciplines to call into question the veracity of the sport. More specifically, if driving in NASCAR is even worthy of an 'athlete' designation.

Though it may not look that hard, we can assure you that NASCAR/oval racing is the furthest thing from simple. Besides the car itself, drivers need to stay hyper-focused, in-shape, and always be ready to lay their life down if (that were to happen). The physics of pushing a car so beyond its natural limits will, naturally, lead to push-back, which is what the drivers need to maintain.

Still not convinced? Well, allow us to elaborate on why NASCAR racing is way harder than most people think...

In a majority of the racing scenes around the world, circuits consists of delicately crafted and windy sets of tarmac. Long straightaways, hairpin turns, chicanes, and so on, are just a few types of turns that make up a race track. NASCAR, on the other hand, is far less complex. Here in the States, our cars go in ovals (with the occasional deviation to tracks like Mid Ohio, for example).

Because of this lack of variety in racetracks, NASCAR gets a bad wrap overseas, as well as domestically. A common complaint you may encounter will likely be "all they do is turn left!" To that we say "Yes, they do (usually) only turn left. It sounds boring and mundane to an uninformed observer, but, in reality, few things are as challenging as effectively "just turning left"...

As drivers go around the track, the elevation, offset, and other components of the circuit play a crucial role in how the driver manipulates the throttle, clutch, and brakes. To add to that, the mechanics behind the scenes need to fine-tune their car for every race; setting up the camber, suspension stiffness, toe, etc.

All the prep means nothing, though, if you can't setup a winning strategy. What looks like driving in circles is, actually, an intense chess match taking place in excess of 180 mph. If you want to win, you'll need to manage your fuel, tire wear, position on-track, the cars in front of/behind you, ad infinitum.

As you can see, there's a lot more working behind the curtain than anybody would anticipate at first.

RELATED:People Still Believe These Racing Myths

Thanks in part to the growing prominence of sim-racing, it's become way easier for upcoming drivers to understand the factors mentioned above. What sim-racing can't prepare you for, however, is the sheer power inside these incredibly fast, lightweight race cars.

For a majority of the newer seasons, almost every cars has had ~750-hp, which varies depending on the rules and regulations. In upcoming years, for instance, NASCAR plans to add a boost function using hybrid engines; granting the driver an extra 100-hp than it already had.

Just think about that: a car that's almost 1,000-horsepower, has no driver assists, and is very uncomfortable. Yet, some will still think that taming such a beast would be no issue? To us, the opposite seems to fall underOccam's razor. If it didn't, then driving one of these to the finish line wouldn't require years of practice and experience.

RELATED:Behind The Scenes Of NASCAR: Everything You Didn't Know About America's Number One Motorsport

Even if you discount the driving skill, critical-thinking, and difficulty required to succeed NASCAR, you can't also argue the bravery these drivers showcase every time they get into the car.

Yes, we'll concede that (in the modern era) motor racing isn't nearly as dangerous or fatal as it was decades prior. Nevertheless, it being worse years ago doesn't mean it's 100% safe today. Since 2001, NASCAR has had 15 fatal accidents. Not too bad and, as stated in "NASCAR Safety Improvements Save Lives," Michael Hill says "The range of expected deaths plus or minus one standard deviation would lie between 11 and 19. In fact, if the chances of dying in a NASCAR crash were the same as for all other crashes, the odds of having zero fatalities over that many crashes [220/year] would be more than three million to one."

That statement illustrates the leaps and bounds NASCAR has made to improving safety afterDale Earnhardt's death. Still, the possibility is always there. However infinitesimally small the chance maybe, it could very well be YOU next, so it's important to prepare for such a thing (God forbid it actually happen).

If that doesn't prove NASCAR racing is harder than you may have thought, ask yourself this: "Would you still go to work every day if you knew you could be killed while doing it?" Military service members, firefighters, and police officers need not answer...

NEXT:NASCAR Racers Who Cheated So Well They Deserve To Keep The Trophies

Fast & Furious 9: The Most Surprising Car That Might Make An Appearance

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Here's Why NASCAR Racing Is Harder Than Everyone Thinks | HotCars - HotCars

Even before the coronavirus we were not big fans of the airlines business. Planes are expensive. Airlines have to pay for them whether they are fully occupied during normal economic times or when they are half-loaded during recessions. Their other big cost is fuel airlines have little control over it. If they hedge the oil price and it goes up, they are heroes. If they hedge oil and it declines, their unhedged competition will have an economic advantage. It is very difficult to develop competitive advantage; customers usually have very little loyalty and price is the deciding factor for most buying decisions.

Warren Buffett invested in the airlines industry in the 80s, lost money, and swore hed never invest in it again. However, after the Great Financial Crisis the industry went through significant consolidation by mergers and attrition, leaving four carriers controlling the bulk of the market. Fewer competitors made competition more rational and turned these airlines into much better businesses. So Buffett changed his mind and bought a 10% stake in all four of the largest US airlines. For a few years it seemed that he was finally right about the airlines.

Airlines were never our cup of tea. The high fixed-cost structure of the industry and its past history of going bankrupt every other recession made our EQ when it comes to airlines very low. When Buffett bought them, for some value investors, the airlines had been blessed by the high priest. We are agnostic (growing up in Soviet Russia has its rare benefits) and have to own our decisions, so we passed on the airlines without spending much time thinking about them.

Typically, when you go into recession you can look at the rear-view mirror earnings for a cyclical company and that becomes your goalpost for future earnings power within a year or two, max. We dont know how long it will take until well again see the 2019 earnings power of airlines and the travel industry in general. Here is what we know. Though it is hard to imagine this today, the fear of COVID-19 will eventually go away, either because there is a vaccine or a cure, or because the virus is gone, or because we will simply adapt to its existence.

But even in absence of a vaccine or cure, well change our behavior, and that will happen slowly on the margin. After being locked up for a few months, not seeing friends and relatives except on Zoom or Facetime, well timidly visit their houses and sit six feet apart on their porches. (My family did this on Mothers Day.) Then well invite very close friends the ones who stuck religiously to social distancing to our homes for dinner. Then we might chance visiting a restaurant with outdoor seating. Then, on a rainy day, well go inside the restaurant and find that it now has huge spacing between the tables. Well make a lot of small incremental decisions; each will be a tiny compromise that will nudge us out of our fear.

Of course, each time we read about serious virus flareups, well take one step back.

Flying is at one extreme in the spectrum of social distancing. It requires finding your way through airports packed with people and then getting on a plane that, even after the middle seats are removed will still have a higher density than a packed bar on Friday night in Manhattan. Thus flying will require a great many little, incremental, marginal decisions before we overcome the fear of boarding a plane.

Vaccine availability would instantly vanquish fear, and our behavior would come back to normal. Well, almost. There will be scar tissue on the economy trillions in government debt and persistently high unemployment that will take time to clear up. People are not flying today because we are in lockdown; theyll be flying less than they used to after lockdown is over because they are still afraid; and after their fear is gone theyll still be flying less because they cannot afford the flights.

We imagine that when Buffett bought airlines in 2015, he thought the worst case would be a significant recession where plane occupancy would fall from the usual 80-90% to 50-60% (according to the FT, only four airlines out of a few hundred are profitable at 62% occupancy). His thinking was that the airlines would lose some money for a few quarters, but the recession would be anything but an existential crisis for them. Recessions last months and expansion years, and he thought he had bought them cheap on full-cycle (both recession and expansion) earnings.

Despite being the Oracle of Omaha, he did not foresee that one day we might have a different type of recession where 95% of the planes would be grounded, not because people couldnt afford to buy a tickets but because they would be required to stay home by their governments, or would be afraid that close proximity to others would make them sick or even kill them.

Very few businesses can survive when 95% of their revenue goes away for an extended period of time. Even fewer can survive when they have a large fixed-asset base that needs to be paid for whether they are using it or not.

The sad reality is that unless airlines raise new capital, they will go bankrupt. This capital, though it might save them, will reduce the value of their businesses. Equity issuances, especially at todays depressed stock prices, would permanently dilute shareholders, as future earnings will be shared with a much-increased shareholder base.

If the airlines issue debt, it will not be cheap capital, either, and will burden these companies, which already have a lot of fixed costs, with another cost significant interest payments that will substantially reduce their future earnings power. The longer the fear of the virus lingers on, the more money these companies will lose and the greater the damage that will be done to their balance sheets and thus their future earnings power.

In our thinking about the virus we have three timelines, or eras: BC before coronavirus, DC during coronavirus (now), and AC after coronavirus (the virus is completely gone, or there is a vaccine or effective treatment). The longer the DC era lasts the more impact it has on the AC era. The DC era comes with high unemployment and enormous government spending larger deficits and an ever-growing debt pile that is no longer counted in billions but in trillions.

The future of the airlines is path-dependent, and they have little control over that path; it is controlled by the virus (or the fear of the virus).

We dont own airlines, so why am I spending so much time talking about them? There are several reasons. First, because they are companies that are antithetical to our portfolio philosophy. Charlie Munger says, Tell me where I am going to die so I wont go there. So its worth having a clear picture of the types of businesses you dont want to own.

Second, we wanted to point out Buffetts ability to change his mind. Interestingly, Buffett, who was already the largest shareholder of US airlines, bought more airline stocks a few weeks before he sold them. We did something similar this quarter, too: We increased our position in Melrose Industries (OTC:MLSPF), just to sell the full position two weeks later. (More about Melrose to follow).

Third, like Buffett, we were playing traditional chess, not realizing that the game had changed to Fischer random chess. We were following the normal recession handbook (mental models) but then realized that this is anything but a normal recession. We have to be incredibly careful about using our past mental models today; they were built in a very different environment. Today, past experience is not useless, but if relied on blindly it can be dangerous. Some things will play out in the future as they have in the past, but many wont.

We needed to start using a first-principles approach a concept we shamelessly borrowed from physics. We took out a blank piece of paper, assumed we knew nothing, and instead of continuing to think by analogy, started questioning every assumption we make in our analysis.

Our decision to sell Melrose Industries is very similar to Buffetts sale of the airlines. We sold Melrose before the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. It was a difficult decision, not because we cemented a loss but because we parted with a business we really liked, that was run by good management, and that was significantly undervalued when we bought it.

When we were buying Melrose we stress-tested it for a severe recession; however, the decline that Melrose is probably experiencing today did not occur to us in our wildest imagination. Melrose is a very strong player in two industries that have been impacted tremendously: the airlines space (it makes parts that go into planes and engines) and car parts (it is one of the largest makers of transmissions for cars). We talked to the company. It has credit lines and cash to give it immediate liquidity, but we are not sure if it will be enough.

We had applied the traditional recession mental model to our analysis, and we were wrong. Given the world we are looking at now, we should have sold it sooner.

Buying new planes is the last thing on airlines minds today. Also, only 20% of Melroses business comes from replacement parts. Melroses auto parts business (ironically, the business we worried about the most when we bought the stock) may be okay; it may even generate some profit; but we are not sure it will be able to sustain the company. We simply dont know what the losses are going to be in the airlines space and for how long. We have a tremendous respect for the Melrose management team theyre a big reason why we bought the stock but at this point the problem that Melrose is facing is bigger than them.

If you look carefully through your portfolio, youll see that weve positioned it to the opposite side of spectrum from the airlines. Most of our holdings are concentrated in four industries: defense, healthcare, tobacco (where we are permitted by clients), and telecommunications. These industries have one thing in common: They will not be structurally impacted by the virus.

Consumption of goods and services in the four industries is completely insensitive to the virus. These companies all have very stable cash flows and pricing power in the event of deflation theyll maintain their prices, while during inflation theyll raise them.

And one more thing

I am not a journalist or reporter; I am an investor who thinks through writing. This and other investment articles are just my thinking at the point they were written. However, investment research is not static, it is fluid. New information comes our way and we continue to do research, which may lead us to tweak and modify assumptions and thus to change our minds.

We are long-term investors and often hold stocks for years, but as luck may or may not have it, by the time you read this article we may have already sold the stock. I may or may not write about this company ever again. Think of this and other articles as learning and thinking frameworks. But they are not investment recommendations. The bottom line is this. If this article piques your interest in the company Ive mentioned, great. This should be the beginning, not the end, of your research.

Originally published on ContrarianEdge.com

Editor's Note: The summary bullets for this article were chosen by Seeking Alpha editors.

Editor's Note: This article discusses one or more securities that do not trade on a major U.S. exchange. Please be aware of the risks associated with these stocks.

Excerpt from:

When The Facts Change, We Change Our Minds (Anatomy Of A Sale) - Seeking Alpha

Imagine a day you wake up, and your entire day is scheduled. A virtual associate is assisting you throughout the day, from Making a medical appointment, booking a cab, ordering your favourite food according to your present mood, making a call when youre thinking about a particular person after listening to your thoughts. A day where you no longer have to utter a word, but your virtual assistant can listen to your thoughts and make your mind real in a matter of time?? This can be true in the near future.

A term coined by John McCarthy in 1956 turned to an avatar by the dawn of 21 st century.

Buildings an intelligent machine will not address the idea of artificial intelligence. The real question arises when the core of the matter is analyzed.

Approaching the concept of intelligence involves two aspects.Rationality and humanity. Brilliance without rationality is a mere memory, which cannot be called intelligent.

To move, to nod, to fidget, to scratch your head, to move your eyeballs An average human being makes 16000 decisions a day involuntarily. The human brain is a shell of wonders and billions of neurons swimming across the body, transmitting information in a fraction of seconds. Emulation of the human brain or making a computer digitally conscious is the primary objective of artificial intelligence.

The idea of AI can be simplified as the mimicking of the human thought process by a computer which makes the intelligence more flexible & cheap compared to the complex neural network of the human brain along with the fundamental characteristics of humans, such as the ability to reason, knowledge representation, planning, learning, movement, manipulation, to develop perception, discover meaning, generalize, or learn from experience and the toughest of all social and emotional intelligence. There are two distinct methods involved in the present development of AI.

SymbolicConnectionistAccording to the standard definition from Britannica it can be defined as

At the beginning of the creation of AI, it was the symbolic approach. Mere object recognition from enormous data in the database. Algorithms use the existing rules like grammar and syntax for predicting. The existing coding and programming trend demanded more clarity and advancement, which eventually popularized the mainstream of Artificial Intelligence called machine learning (ML).

The preexisted computer programming technique modified prior to AI is machine learning. The development from pattern recognition to Morphing of multiple data sets into a single data, ML helps in bringing advancement in every aspect of humankind. Later in the spectrum of AI, to respond more with humans, an artificial stress system is induced to the machine via Virtual neurotransmitters, which paved the way for Affective computing to achieve Enhancement in human-machine relationships.

Apart from the usual pattern identification, AI is now searching for all kinds of texture that humans cannot create within the scope of our biological capability. Like the creation of Adam in the bible, experts are in search of the living breath that can provide dexterity or subtle control of the thoughts to the machines, which is the most tedious task in the AI.

One of the major questions ever raised regarding AI was, are they huge robots who will take over the world someday, as seen in the movies and series?? The way sci-fi portrays AI as an enemy and a mistake committed by science wrong. This is a major misconception. AI is not only about creating huge robots but also the minute changes that can work on its own from a sensor to the software.

Narrow AIs are presently in use and service. The voice, face, fingerprint recognition and Siri, Alexa, and Cortana kind of virtual assistants in our mobile phones and other gadgets are the simple examples of the narrow Artificial Intelligence. The vision recognition in automated cars, self-driving cars, google glass are the advanced level of the narrow AI.

The intention behind the designing of these smart search engines and decision-making systems are for serving the purpose of complimenting and augment human abilities. Undoubtedly narrow Artificial Intelligence contributes a lot to the improvisation in our modern lifestyle. But unreaching the majority of human traits, it remains as mere machines operating with fed data.

Every advancement in the field of AI is analyzed based on the test run, followed by every stage. The final tests must meet the following criteria to take the program into further steps, like application and implementation.

Observing the behaviour of the system when a new input is introducedWeighing and adjusting of the input in the newly introduced system.

These steps are repeated an n number of times until the criterion matches else terminated. The involvement from never-ending algorithms to deep learning is not an overnight miracle. The progressive learning algorithm is a method where the algorithm can teach itself how to play chess; it can teach itself what product to recommend next online. And the models adapt when given new data.

When the system becomes self-sufficient, it can become an intellectual property. According to Oliver Schabenberger, SAS Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, machines can never replace humans; they can only mimic the human brain and thoughts to become the smartest machines from smarter machines.

The major challenge involved with Artificial Intelligence is data. There is no other practical way to incorporate data other than spoon-feeding the system. The large databases from different sects are clubbed to make a parent data pool is the theoretically existing solution. Considering the complexity and the practicality of such massive incorporation, researchers are still searching for better options.

The subsequent problem evolving from data deficiency is that the particular Artificial Intelligence is created for a particular task; this specialization limits it to the particular set they are designed for.

According to Russell and Noverg in the introduction to artificial intelligence agents, the specific characteristics of symbolic AI are characterized as A typical AI that analyzes its environment and takes actions that maximize its chance of success. Thats the reason for the success of a computer system in the games when playing against a human. This computational analysis featured with the help of statistical methods. When a human plays not to lose, a computer compares the game with all possible outcomes but is not driven by the spirit to win. This is where the emergence of NLP begins.

Natural language processing (NLP) is a drastic addition to AI. The ability of computers to analyze, understand, and generate human language, including speech is called natural language processing. PEPPER (affection bot) and SOPHIA (robot) are a few examples of the natural language processing systems. The present challenge is making NLP more emotionally stimulant.

An example for the emotional bot of the AI system is that when the AI robot SOPHIA was interviewed she said someday she would like to have kids and family, even though that statement was from the data set she was fed with, the choice of making that emotional statement shaken the whole world. Another similar occurrence was when she asked her creator, why did you create me?? None of the statements made were her direct choice of words but efficient programming that set her neural algorithms.

Artificial Intelligence, like electricity, is a general-purpose technology. The transparency offered by Artificial Intelligence is the most promising feature of this system. The introduction of AI in international relations and politics is a milestone. As a beginning, AI is introduced as an intern in international politics. Chatbot Design virtual agent AI system to understand and translate into human behaviour to support human experience and Robotic process automation (RPA) An application to function on repetitive commands of users without human interruption. Its essential to cognize the dilemma of the subjects when automated decision-making systems (ADS) is implemented into the public sphere for the institutions and democratic setups that are already existing on the virtue of peoples money (taxes, donations)

Even after the induction of the neurotransmitters and the artificial hormones, what is still lacking is the human-machine interface. There are still miles to go in the development of AI systems. From object recognitions to the Democratization of all essentials. Upon the transparency promised, Machine learning still complicates the field; whereas the ADS changes the game. As our research suggests, this is a source of anxiety for the general public and we dont even know half of the story. The illiteracy about the topic confuses the public and stuck in the shadow of doubts, this can hinder the whole growth of the AI. people should understand the ethical implications of using AI in everyday life to public interests, including politics.

AI stands as a promise of tomorrow when the whole nature goes against humankind, hoping that the technology we gave birth might stand for us. Maybe thats the promise of this avatar.

Also Read: New Invention of Artificial intelligence in Medicine with Stem Cells by WCM-Q

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Artificial Intelligence: The Promises of An Avatar in 2020 - Universal News

The relationship between modern cybersecurity solutions and AI has become inextricable. The reality is that even the most talented and responsive SecOps teams would be unable to manually catch every threat posed to the sprawling, hybrid networks on which todays organizations rely.

Forward-looking organizations know they need to bring AI security tools onboard. As they begin looking into their options, the challenge becomes deciding what security companies truly mean when they make claims about AI.

All too often, so-called AI solutions require a great deal of human input, negating much of these platforms promised convenience and efficiency. Todays complex network security threats cannot be adequately addressed with outdated cybersecurity solutions. AI Advancements, especially in the field of self-supervised learning, play a central role in effective, real-time network security.

The concept of AI might bring to mind science fiction novels or movies set in the far future. In fact, rudimentary forms of AI have played a role in the development of computer technology since at least the 1940s, and historical records reaching back into the 1300s reveal humankinds fascination with the concepts of thinking and learning.

Between the late 50s and mid 70s, early computer programmers took advantage of computer advances like onboard storage to apply machine-learning algorithms to various processes. Early applications included teaching computers how to play games like checkers and chess.

More recent examples of first-wave AI are tax preparation software and features like recommendation engines. First-wave AI adds automation to repetitive, narrowly defined tasks, but cant perform functions beyond these limitations.

First-wave AI is purpose-built to solve specific problems. While it was an incredible advance in its day, first-wave AI is no match for the vulnerabilities inherent to the sprawling, distributed networks of today.

When Amazon recommends an almost eerie product suggestion, thats second-wave AI in action. The mega-retailer is constantly analyzing its customers buying patterns to arrive at spot-on recommendations. Second-wave AI relies on labeled data to come up with predictions about how well behave next and which products well find the most appealing.

Second-wave AI is more sophisticated in its application versus first-wave AI, but is capable of very little reasoning capability. IBMs Watson, for example, can provide information and even answer questions, but without context. Watson is unable to explain how it arrives at its conclusions.

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) cybersecurity platforms typically rely on second-wave AI. These security solutions are a benefit to organizations in that they add some level of automation to network monitoring processes. However, they require a great deal of ongoing human interaction and constant guidance. Worse, SIEM platforms rely almost solely on past behavior to determine present and future risks.

The result is a security system prone to false-positive alarm triggers at a rate SecOps teams can rarely analyze fast enough. Recent studies reveal that security analysts are spending 25 percent of their workdays on threat hunting and batting down false positives. This time could be spent on more worthwhile pursuits, but the opportunity cost can be even higher when the time spent chasing false positives leads to missed true positives.

Not only are the majority of SIEM platforms not up to the challenge of catching sophisticated modern threats, they are also far too dependent on historical data. Todays networks are dynamic, constantly adjusting to both internal and external changes. SIEM platforms that lack the ability to understand the context of a given behavior are unable to respond quickly enough to be of much use in the real world.

Third-wave AI leverages generative, self-supervised machine learning to create an accurate baseline based on a normal network traffic analysis in real-time to better predict future network behavior.

Self-supervised learning is a major leap forward from first and second-wave AI because it is context-aware. Cybersecurity is greatly enhanced by systems that can look beyond anomalous activity and labeled data sets to predict future outcomes.

One recent example of the wide gap between second and third wave AI is the workforce response to the Coronavirus pandemic that swept across the globe in early 2020. Almost overnight, a huge percent of the worlds workforce switched from working onsite through company intranets to telecommuting from home. Third-wave AI adjusts to a new normal seamlessly, learning very quickly that while unexpected, this shift in how network data was accessed was not actually anomalous.

Todays network security threats require modern solutions that go beyond the limitations of second-wave AI-enhanced cybersecurity. Malicious actors are more sophisticated than ever and have long cracked the code when it comes to infiltrating and retraining label-dependent networks to exploit vulnerabilities.Third-wave, self-supervised learning platforms change the way organizations handle event management in powerful, fundamental ways. Learn more about the MixMode third-wave self-supervised solution.

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Self-Supervised Learning The Third-Wave in Cybersecurity AI - Security Boulevard

Launched in 2014, StoryBites is a weekly feature from YourStory, featuring notable quotable quotes in our articles of this past week (see the previous post here). Share these 55 gems and insights from the week of May 11-17 with your colleagues and networks, and check back to the original articles for more insights. See also our special compilation of quotes related to Indias coronavirus responses here.

The best businesses are not about the best product or service, but the best customer experience. - Jagat Iyer, Vidphon

Customers want to experience and connect with the brand on a higher level than just purchasing products. - Toranj Mehta, Forevermark India

The focus is on more than selling and making revenue, it is to inspire people and add beautiful experiences to people's lives. - Surbhi Gupta, Kalakar Gift Studio

One way that groups cohere is through storytelling. - Daniel Pink, 'When'

The art of storytelling is an important attribute for a successful founder. - Shekhar Kirani, Accel

Reliability is the bedrock of any successful corporate relationship, and benefits businesses at every phase of their operations. - Pranshu Kacholia, ClickPost

Active involvement in your own learning has long been recognised as more effective than a more passive, spoon-fed approach. - Dorothy Leonard et al, 'Critical Knowledge Transfer'

The top athletes say they have achieved what they have because of their mind, this is the perfect testament to mind skills training. - S Badrinath, MFORE

Poker is a mind sport. Its more complex than chess. - Muskan Sethi

Traffic, pollution, safety concerns are all leading parents to prefer at-home solutions that are more convenient and cost-effective. - Sumedha Khoche, KinderPass

Even today, the food supply chain to a large extent is still manual and subjective. - Milan Sharma, Intello Labs

Most manufacturers have zero visibility across secondary and tertiary sales. They are totally dependent on third-party logistic service providers and distributors for product movement visibility. - Shreyans Sipani, O4S

The key to planning a wedding is patience, the ability to multitask, the ability to gauge and balance individual emotions, and having access to a large network of supportive suppliers from the industry. - Divya Chadha, A Klass Apart

With the ongoing pandemic, virtual happy hours have replaced stepping out, but that does not mean one cannot be their own bartender and make themselves a cocktail from the comfort of their homes.- Asmani Subramanian, DIAGEO

We will start seeing far more higher-end whiskies inside cocktail menus, as well as more refined Indian-produced whisky. - Brandon Toborg, DIAGEO

Communities and people are far more conscious about what they eat today. Supporting local farmers by eating local produce and farm-to-table meals are becoming a popular choice. - Vicky Ratnani, Vickypedia

While the fancy quinoa chips and avocados pinch the pocket, the other section of fad foods is even worse because of the hidden harmful ingredients lost in marketing communication done in the front of the pack. - Ridhima Arora, Namhya Foods

Connectivity is the lubricant for the engines of community, content, commerce, currency, and capital. - Sanchit Vir Gogia, Greyhound Research

It is important to create data points and insights with the technology you build. - Nitin Gupta, Milkbasket

Data-driven decision making is the critical need to impact the quality of learning outcomes. - Abhinav Tripathi, 22bate7

Every business - big or small - needs HQ images and videos to sell their products and services online. - Sanjay Kumar, Spyne

The unstructured data lying in the form of text and images within multiple sources is like raw cotton. - Rajit Bhattacharya, Data Sutram

For a marketing campaign which has a toll-free number component involved, one of the things you need to ensure the success of the campaign is a number that is easy to remember. - Karan Syal, WEBozINDIA

There is something called the consumerisation of the enterprise. This is largely led because everything is becoming digital. - Avnish Bajaj, Matrix Partners India

As innovation is the need of the hour, the requirement of digital clocks is more, especially in hospitals and companies. - Jayesh Shah, Sonam Clocks

Thousands of SMEs cannot afford ERP systems. - Ashwani Rathore, SpiderG

Today, the SME segment lacks capital finance and credit, infrastructure, technology, and marketing strategies. - Arjun Sethi, Tribe Capital

Property owners are not completely aware of all the properties in their preferred locations that are up for sale. - Yogesh Jaiswal, Le Classique Realty

We need 10 times the number of agritech startups that we currently have. - Siddharth Dialani, BharatAgri

While pharma companies spend a huge amount to market physicians in the traditional way, they are not able to tap the vast potential of the digital medium to grow their businesses. - Harshit Jain, Doceree

People suffering from chronic illnesses such as Alzheimers, cancer, stroke and asthma require a lot of care and attention. - Sridhar Pillalamarri, Ubiqare Health

Our society needs more heroes who are scientists, researchers, and engineers. We need to celebrate and reward the people who cure diseases, expand our understanding of humanity and work to improve peoples lives. - Mark Zuckerberg

Close to 70 percent of the rural population does not access the internet. This will further contribute to an increase in the overall internet population over the next few years. - IAMAI-Nielsen

India is one of the biggest leather manufacturers in the world, but all the top quality leather is imported because Indian makers dont have the pockets to spend so much. - Ambud Sharma, Escaro Royale

India is one of the top coffee-producing countries globally, with a vast variety available. It also is the fifth-largest exporter of coffee in the world. - Jai Ganesh Ramnath, Lavazza India

Coworking spaces can grow more than 10x in volume over the next five years. - Ashish Goenka, Redbrick Offices

Electricity continues to remain a problem in several villages and districts in India. People also face problems such as frequent load shedding, unstable power and high charges. - Akshay Gupta, AP Solar Works

India's wisdom and its independent voice will provide a much-needed balance in world politics. India will need to work towards specific goals in order to achieve the status of a world power. - Vamsi T Mohun, IFITRF

The work of an architect is all around us shopping malls, apartments, and the offices they work in. - Minal Dubey, Spaciux

A green space that is of significance to a whole city is very valuable, especially in a city with a population of several million. - Ratish Nanda, Aga Khan Trust for Culture

There is a perception that green buildings are expensive, and difficult to maintain. - Vijayadurga Koppisetti, Architude

The move from misuse to reuse of plastic can make a positive difference in all spheres of life. - Ujwal Desai, Lucro Plastecycle

Homes, and especially bed spaces, are meant to be created and cared for with the utmost love. - Chaitanya Ramalingegowda, Wakefit.co

Freelancers and soloists are the future of work. - Naman Sarawagi, Refrens

Harnessing the incredible talents and potential of women will create a stronger economy and a more peaceful, healthier, sustainable world for all. - Cherie Blair

If you are starting a business with other partners, it is advisable to make a founding agreement that has details of the roles and responsibilities of each founder. - Shonottra Kumar

Bootstrapping with your own money is quite important. It also signals to the investor that you're serious about your business. - Mudasar Mohamed, Ezyhaul

Embrace change, be metric-driven, test often and use innovation to stand out from the crowd. - Trish Kunath, Technopolis

There is an art to prioritising, sequencing, and deciding how well a certain task/component of the solution needs to be done. - Thiag Loganathan, Cardinality.ai

Don't lend your ears to rejection, follow your gut feeling, and you will get the results. - Chinnmaye Praveen, GeWinn Wachstum

Running a business is an art, like any other, which one masters only with time. - Monaz Irani, Plate & Pint

Patience is the road to wisdom. - Kao Kalia Yang

Work hard. There is no shortcut to success. - Mahavir Verma, Ethnic Rhythm

Ups and downs in life are very important to keep us going, because a straight line even in an E.C.G means we are not alive. - Ratan Tata

It is easier to succeed if you have failed. - Sanjay Kumar, Elior India

YourStory has also published the pocketbook Proverbs and Quotes for Entrepreneurs: A World of Inspiration for Startups as a creative and motivational guide for innovators (downloadable as apps here: Apple, Android).

How has the coronavirus outbreak disrupted your life? And how are you dealing with it? Write to us or send us a video with subject line 'Coronavirus Disruption' to editorial@yourstory.com

Continued here:

It is easier to succeed if you have failed 55 quotes from Indian startup journeys - YourStory

Kerbal Space Program is getting a new cool update in July as the game will be getting real space missions from the ESA. For clarification, this ESA is the European Space Agency, which have partnered with Private Division to include a number of their real-life programs and missions into the new update, which is being called Shared Horizons. According to the info released about the update, Shared Horizons features all the stages, engines, and systems of Europe's Ariane 5 launch vehicle. Which will give you the chance to construct a perfect replica, recombine stages in whatever creative way you see fit, or build an imaginary hybrid to shoot yourself into space. From there, you'll do what the ESA has been doing for a while now, which is exploring our own solar system and getting a better understanding of what's in our neighborhood. The update will be added on July 1st, 2020. In the meantime, here are a couple quotes from the ESA about the partnership.

"Here at ESA, many of our engineers and scientists are very familiar with the Kerbal Space Program," commented Gnther Hasinger, ESA's Director of Science. "Both Rosetta and BepiColombo are highly complex missions which have specific challenges but prove to be very rewarding for ESA and the global scientific community. Because of this, I am very happy that these ground-breaking science missions can be experienced on Kerbin as well as on Earth."

"Kerbal Space Program has already been an inspiration for an entire generation of future engineers and scientists, so introducing this level of realism will really take it to the next level," added Daniel Neuenschwander, ESA's Director of Space Transportation. "And the creative element of being able to build so freely is such a fantastic aspect. I really look forward to seeing the innovative ways in which players will approach designing their new space transportation services."

Gavin has been a lifelong geek who can chat with you about comics, television, video games, and even pro wrestling. He can also teach you how to play Star Trek chess, be your Mercy on Overwatch, recommend random cool music, and goes rogue in D&D. He also enjoys hundreds of other geeky things that can't be covered in a single paragraph. Follow @TheGavinSheehan on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Vero, for random pictures and musings.

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Kerbal Space Program Gets A New Update With Real Space Missions - Bleeding Cool News

United States, step aside please. China has arrived. And it has taken the top spot in the world. Well, at least in the chess world.

At a time when few sports events are taking place because of the pandemic-driven lockdown across the world, chess appears to be thriving, mostly because it does not involve physical contact, can be played online, and can be followed online by its dedicated viewership. So when the rest of the sporting world is on ice, FIDE, the world chess federation, managed to pull off an online Nations Cup that ended in cybersphere on Sunday with China winning title after a 2-2 tie against the United States in the final despite having lost to the U.S in the earlier league phase because it had topped the round-robin tables.

A few observations about the Nations Cup and current chess world: Clearly, China has eclipsed Russia as the new chess superpower, although Russia remains in the top league, finishing fourth behind third-placed Europe. India, a new entrant to the chess high-table, finished fifth, and a Rest of the World team, created to accommodate brilliant players such as Irans Alireza Firouja and Azerbaijans Teimour Radjabov, whose countries do not have the kind of bench strength/depth to throw up an ELO 2600+ plus team, finished last.

The fact that the United States itself is a top contender is both a surprise and not a surprise. Thank immigration and immigrants for this. The US does not produce too many home-grown Bobby Fishers. The top US players are mostly of foreign origin: Its top-ranked player is Miami-born Fabiano Caruana, who is an Italian-American dual citizen, followed by Philippines-born Wesley So, and Japan-born Hiraku Nakamura. Youve to wonder if this robbed the title scrap with China with some of the needle of the kind that existed during Fishers clash with Boris Spassky in Reykjavik at the height of the Cold War. The fact that China pipped US to the title at a time ties between the two countries are at a nadir should chuff Beijing and irk Washington, except for the fact that few people in Trumps America cares squat about chess. They are out to make America great again in other spheres, by other means.

The surprise package, afaiac, is India. It is only in recent years that the land in which chess was born has become a major chess force, having grown from one Grandmaster in the late 1980s (the affable Vishy Anand) to 65 Grandmasters now fifth behind Russia, Germany, Ukraine, and United States. But its power is uneven and top-heavy, as was demonstrated at the Nations Cup, where it should have finished higher on the strength of Vishy Anands brilliance but for the sub-par performance of the promising younger stars, notably Vidit Gujarathi, Indias third-ranked player (Vidit himself recognized this in an apologetic tweet).

What can one say about Vishy Anand? His is now a remarkable story, and not just because he is a former five-time, multi-format world champion. He turned in an incredible performance, remaining undefeated against several players RANKED ABOVE HIM in world standings. Two things to note here: Anand is now officially ranked 15th in the world, and some think his best days are behind him. Also, Anand is now 50 and is considered over the hill by some. The current chess world is dominated by players in their 20s and 30s, and even teens such as Irans Alireza Firouja are seen as rising stars and future world champions. To draw a comparison (admittedly somewhat unfair), imagine Sunil Gavaskar or Kapil Dev playing alongside Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma in the current Indian cricket team.

Sure, chess is largely a mental game, but it also calls on immense reserves of physical stamina, not to speak of technology now, what with players taking recourse to computer engines in their preparations. But as the Nations Cup showed, Anand is a canny old fox, still at the top of his game, and you could not get a better demonstration of this than his brilliant 17-move skewering of Russias Ian Nepomniachtchi, ranked 5th in the world (ten places above Anand) and 20 years younger than him. Anand also defeated Azerbaijans Radjabov (ranked 11th and playing for the Rest of the World team) and drew with world #3 Chinas Ding Liren and world # 7 Frances Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. It is an incredible result for the chess worlds senior statesman, although the overall Indian performance was disappointing to those who aimed higher.

Anands game against Nepomniachtchi is currently scorching the chess world and is seen as something of a masterpiece. I will let the chess pundits describe it in comments, along with a most insightful commentary by Anand himself. Bravo maestro!

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

Original post:

China pips US in world chess at a time their ties are at a nadir - Economic Times

It was a month ago when Kerry Tharp's phone rang. The area code was a familiar one: 386, as in Daytona Beach, Florida.

The man known throughout the racing world as "The Commander" is in his fifth year as president of Darlington Raceway, NASCAR's old-school equivalent to Fenway Park or Lambeau Field and a facility that, as of last fall, is owned by the sanctioning body itself. Before that, Tharp spent more than a decade in NASCAR's communications department. So, when the phone rings from 386 and NASCAR headquarters in Daytona Beach, Tharp has always known it is never an unimportant call.

But this one was the biggest he has ever answered.

"They said, 'Could Darlington be ready to host a Cup Series race on May 17?'" Tharp recalls. "I said, 'Well, I don't seem to have anything on my calendar for that day -- or anything on my calendar for any other day, either. So yeah, let's do it.'"

The Commander laughs as he tells the story, then quickly cuts those chuckles short.

"For a month I had been just like everyone else in the United States," he said. "I was at home, on my couch, doing whatever I could around the house and wondering when we were going to get sports back. But as soon as I got that phone call, I called the Darlington Raceway staff and said, 'See you back in the office tomorrow morning. We've got a few weeks to do a few months' worth of work.'"

2 Related

On Sunday at Darlington, NASCAR will return to the racetrack for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic forced it to pack up and abandon Atlanta Motor Speedway on March 13, as teams were preparing their cars for the weekend's first practice session ahead of what was supposed to be the season's fifth race.

Now that fifth race will be run two months later and at an entirely different racetrack. It will be held with no fans in the grandstand and no laps having been turned in practice or qualifying. Teams will do their work in unusually small groups, restricted to 16 crew members, including the driver. Big organizations routinely have three times that many people on their credential rosters, from mechanics and engine tuners to team owners and family members.

Those crew members will be the subject of a health screening prior to entering the racetrack, a check of temperature and vital signs, to be compared with health notes already supplied to on-site medical teams. As one Darlington Raceway official described it, "It'll look like the TSA airport screening line, but with thermometers." Anyone showing signs of fever or other symptoms, or exhibiting in-person deviations from the paperwork provided, will be sent for "heavy screening" by physicians in the newly erected medical center.

When they go to work inside the track, they will be subject to random light screenings throughout the day and thermal cameras will monitor their temperatures as they work. There will not be COVID-19 testing as of yet, in part because the tests take days to process and because NASCAR has said it does not want to take tests away from the general public.

Anyone who does not comply with these new unprecedented safety measures and rules -- say, a refusal to wear a mask -- will be ejected from the garage and hit with massive fines. In the garage, there will also be no tolerance for handshakes or hugging it out with friends. There will be no contact with anyone outside of one's group, every team confined to designated work areas and walking to those areas via precisely marked footpaths.

The path that NASCAR has traveled during the 65 days between Atlanta and Darlington has been anything but precise, a constantly redrawn road map that, even here on the eve of stock car racing's return, remains written in pencil, ready to react to anything that goes right or wrong at Darlington.

"The conversations and decisions that have been made during this time are no different than the decisions that have to be made by everyone right now, in every corner of society," said Eric Nyquist, NASCAR senior vice president and chief communications officer. "The news and what we know about the virus and the pandemic, it all seems to change on an hourly basis, especially during those critical first days after Atlanta. So, we have always had to be willing to react to that. And that flexibility won't stop when racing starts at Darlington. Far from it."

Those critical first days Nyquist speaks of were spent by the highest-ranking members of NASCAR's management team hunkered down in an expansive meeting space in the sanctioning body's HQ facility, located across the street from Daytona International Speedway. They have been in that room nearly nonstop over the past two months, but in the beginning, it was a strange juxtaposition, to say the least.

Only one month earlier, the racetrack across the street had hosted thousands of people as they watched Denny Hamlin win the Daytona 500 and Ryan Newman survive one of the most frightening crashes in the 62-year history of the Great American Race. Now the track, and the highways around it, were silent, as NASCAR's brass, led by president Steve Phelps, took their seats in the meeting space -- so spread apart via social distancing some had to raise their voices to deliver their talking points from one side of the room to the other.

NASCAR also was on every pandemic-related conference call that involved America's major sports leagues, including those conducted by the White House.

Over the past three weeks, ESPN.com talked with people from every corner of NASCAR, from the sanctioning body and competitors to racetrack executives and crew members, to see how they have prepared for the sport's return.

Auto racing was widely considered a leading candidate to become the first sport to return, thanks to the lack of physical contact between competitors and an already existing emphasis on safety. It is the only sport in which competitors -- drivers and pit crews -- have long plied their trades on Sunday afternoons wearing gloves, face coverings and helmets.

Because of the dangerous nature of auto racing, NASCAR's file of medical experts was already extensive. Those contacts drove NASCAR toward Dr. Celine Gounder, clinical assistant professor of medicine and infectious diseases at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Gounder has been on the coronavirus front lines at New York City's Bellevue Hospital Center and on the executive committee of the NYC COVID-19 Rapid Response Coalition.

"This physician had been on the ground with Ebola. What was beneficial was to have access to info that put us a few weeks ahead in terms of how we needed to respond," said John Bobo, NASCAR vice president of racing operations. "We also talked with local health care providers of where we're going, and we get buy-in from those folks. As we talked to emergency room physicians in different cities, we got a better understanding of how the virus was reacting. We were trying to find a lot of different data points.

Ryan McGee explains why this could be another turning-point moment for NASCAR, and gives host Mina Kimes and other casual racing fans one good reason to love the sport. Listen to ESPN Daily

"We wanted to go into a community that was not in crisis. We must have an advanced life support helicopter on hand, and we always have to work closely with health care providers. We treasure our local relationships with health care providers, and we always tour trauma centers before and after races. So, we relied upon relationships we already had."

Every bit of that data gathering was done with the express goal of returning as soon as possible, wherever and whenever it made the most sense. When NASCAR's list of postponed events grew from three (Atlanta, Homestead-Miami and Texas Motor Speedway in March) to eight (adding Bristol, Richmond, Talladega in April and Dover and Martinsville in early May), the target date for the sport's return became May 24, with the traditional Memorial Day weekend "crown jewel" event, the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

"The attraction to Charlotte was pretty obvious once we realized that the schedule changes were going to slide into April and looking toward May," said Steve O'Donnell, NASCAR executive vice president and chief racing development officer. "It's home. Most teams can drive there in minutes, so there's no air travel and no hotel rooms. It's also the same type of racetrack [a 1.5-mile intermediate oval vs. two-plus-mile superspeedways, winding road courses or half-mile short tracks] as the races we had to postpone at Atlanta, Homestead and Texas, so race teams should have the inventory of cars and engines for that type of racetrack ready to go."

1:02

Seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson explains what it will be like showing up to race at Darlington without practicing and shares how simulations on iRacing have helped him get a feel for the track.

Even as the idea of a Charlotte return started to make the rounds, it did not deter government officials, particularly state governors, from lobbying NASCAR to pick a facility in their state to be the sure-to-be-ballyhooed comeback track. The leader of that charge was Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who was in contact with Phelps nearly the instant that the Atlanta event had been shuttered, assuring NASCAR it could continue to do its work in Daytona and also looking for some assurance that his state's racetracks -- Homestead-Miami and Daytona -- would still host their scheduled events, whether it be sooner or later than originally scheduled.

At one point or another, NASCAR talked to the leaders from each of the 23 states that host one of NASCAR's national series events, all with varying calendars and policies when it comes to both "return to work" and "stay at home." When asked to describe the experience, Bobo speaks of three-dimensional chess.

"This is like 18 boards," he said. "We're dealing with a tremendous number of governor's offices in a variety of states. We're looking at trends, and we know things are dynamic in communities. We have to work with our TV partners and other vendors, how are they doing and what can they do?"

For example, Toyota's race teams -- including Joe Gibbs Racing, current powerhouse of the sport -- receive their engines from Toyota Racing Development. Unlike Ford and Chevy, who build their engines in North Carolina, TRD ships them to race teams from a factory in Costa Mesa, California, where work restrictions and stay-at-home measures are still much tighter. Were they going to be able to get engines to their teams? Thankfully, enough had been delivered before the shutdown, and as of Tuesday, the TRD office in California was opening back up.

Making the restart even more difficult is the fluidity that comes with the global pandemic.

"Can Goodyear provide tires? Can we get fuel? It's incredibly complicated," Bodo said. "We're on version 65, maybe version 70, of the plan. We do have pivot plans. Frankly, there's been days of the week where things have changed by the hour."

Not surprisingly, the governor's office that NASCAR talked with most was that of Roy Cooper of North Carolina. The majority of NASCAR teams, drivers and suppliers are located in the Charlotte area, as are a pair of NASCAR's secondary headquarters, its Research and Development Center in Concord and the NASCAR Tower in Uptown Charlotte, home to the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

On April 23, Cooper designated NASCAR race shops as essential businesses, meaning that race teams could go back to work in small numbers and employing social distancing rules. But Cooper also has been among the most methodical of Southern governors when it comes to reopening plans, moving a little slower than others in the region, particularly his border neighbors in South Carolina.

That's how Darlington came into play, some 3 months ahead of its traditional Labor Day weekend race date. With sponsors, broadcast partner Fox and team owners all pushing NASCAR to get back to the track sooner than later, the weekend prior to the Charlotte return began to look more and more attractive.

Working with Dr. Gounder, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Charlotte Motor Speedway executives and local health officials already partnered with the racetrack, NASCAR submitted a lengthy "How we're going to do this" plan to Cooper in late April. He sent it back with additional suggestions and changes from North Carolina state health officials. That same plan, but with a Darlington twist, was sent to South Carolina's governor, Henry McMaster, a longtime NASCAR fan and perhaps second only to DeSantis in his constant contact with NASCAR officials to try to bring the sport back in his state. It too was approved.

On April 30, NASCAR officially announced its plans to return on May 17, kicking off seven events in 11 days at Darlington and then Charlotte Motor Speedway, four of those being Cup Series races.

"Here's how fluid this whole thing was," Tharp said. "It wasn't until a few days after we'd agreed to the first race back that we found out we would also have a second Cup race four days later. And I found about the Xfinity Series race that we're going to run in between those Cup races on a conference call right before the schedule announcement went out. I'm not complaining at all. We will host as much racing as they want. But that's how much all of this changes that fast."

It has only moved faster in the weeks since.

NASCAR teams received the list of rules and regulations for Darlington shortly before they were announced to the public.

No fans.

Team rosters will be 16 people, including the driver.

Cloth face masks are required. Anyone who does not wear one will be removed from the facility immediately and face up to $50,000 in fines.

Teams' work areas in the garage will be spread out to comply with social distancing guidelines, as will be the spotters, who normally are shoulder to shoulder atop the press box/tower.

Competitors' motor homes will be allowed in the racetrack infield, but instead of occupying one enclosed area, they will be spread out throughout the infield.

Over-the-wall pit crew members will use face screens or neck socks in addition to their normal gear of firesuits, helmets and gloves.

Teams must closely monitor the health of their employees before, during and after each event, including filling out medical forms that will be reviewed by medical personnel prior to track admission during a prerace screening that will include temperature checks.

There will be random temperature checks of everyone working in the garage area. Anyone determined to be symptomatic will be checked via an outside care center. If they are determined to be a potential virus threat, they will be replaced with another crew member.

Everyone is required to maintain a contact tracing log, manually and then via digital logging. If a worker shows symptoms, that person and those he was in contact with will need to self-isolate.

Teams already had the Darlington-Charlotte schedule in hand before it was made public, as well as a tentative schedule through the middle of summer. Now, with the health regulations in place, they could get back to work.

"I have literally not left my house since this whole thing started," said Hendrick Motorsports crew chief Chad Knaus, who currently oversees the cars of William Byron but won 83 races and seven Cup Series titles calling the shots for Jimmie Johnson.

Knaus is a notorious workaholic, known to sleep in his office at the height of his success with Johnson. But for two months, he has had to balance that work from home, alongside his 20-month-old son and his wife, who is expecting another child this summer.

"We have two distinctly separate groups working on our race cars," Knaus said. "There have been people at the race shop for a couple of weeks, preparing the cars for Darlington, Charlotte and beyond, but I will not see them unless it's on video. I am with the group who does not go to the shop but will go to the racetrack."

The shop team will load two race cars -- a primary and a backup -- into the team's 18-wheel mobile HQ. The team's truck driver will arrive, entering through a door where he sees no one else, and make the 105-mile drive to Darlington on Saturday. Normally, the 40 team trucks are packed into a small space, fitted together tighter than Tetris blocks. At Darlington they will be spread out. After scrubbing down every flat surface in the hauler's work areas, the hauler driver will take on his Sunday pit crew duties with the road crew having had no contact with the shop crew.

Because of the close proximity of the track, no one will be spending the night, especially not the race car drivers -- but they will have their motor coaches on site, where they live with their families during non-pandemic weekends. On Sunday, the drivers will be alone in those RVs, purposely isolated and waiting to be called to their cars for the green flag. Those motor coaches will be wheeled into the racetrack on Saturday and spread throughout the spectator-free infield. The rigs then with get a deep clean before the racers move in the following day.

"I will be totally on my own," said Johnson, reminding that, like any other athletes, racers have a support system of people, from PR reps to agents to cooks. "I am in charge of my gear, hydration system and nutrition. That includes my primary stuff and backups. Fire suits, shoes, gloves, ear molds, helmets, head and neck restraints, and so on. When the race is over, I'm responsible for cleaning and sanitizing everything for the next race.

"When they tell me it's time to get to the race car, I will head out. And I will absolutely be following whatever direction they tell me to walk."

On Tuesday night, Tharp was in the Darlington Raceway infield helping to ensure that Johnson and everyone else is clear on where to walk. NASCAR and track operation officials have been laying down what feels like miles of red tape, marking off workspace borders for teams in the garage, walkways that connect those workspaces to the teams' big rig and even who can use which bathroom. Spotter spacing and parking spaces also are being marked.

Outside the racetrack, a medical screening area is being constructed where there normally would be hospitality tents and tailgaters. Everyone who arrives will be asked for their ID so the medical questionnaires they have previously filled out can be called up on a tablet computer by a medical professional. There, outside their vehicles, each person entering the track must appear on a roster turned in by their team, and then they will receive an on-the-spot medical screening.

And while there will not be COVID-19 testing as of yet, the possibility of future testing is on the table should the need arise. There is concern about someone who comes up symptomatic having passed it on to others. It happened in the F1 paddock during that same March weekend the Atlanta race was canceled. It happened last weekend in UFC. That's why the NASCAR contact logs will be kept. And it's yet another reason why the overall plan continues to be written in pencil. If there's an outbreak that starts to push toward a lack of control, the plug on the season can and will be pulled again.

"I relate it to my military days," said Tom Bryant, NASCAR's senior racing communications director, who has worked closely with Bobo on at-track logistics. Bryant served 20 years in the Army, including special operations and multiple tours of duty in Afghanistan. "You've done your mission brief, you've checked your weapons and you're waiting on the pickup -- and the 'what-ifs' start to race through your mind. You need to trust your team of people who have worked together to build this comprehensive plan that has been reviewed by a number of experts and trust that the talented people you work with will be able to perform.

"I'm not sleeping well, but I have a lot of faith in our team, and we have a very solid group of professionals who are ready to face things and make decisions."

Also located outside the track is a new "outfield medical center" set up in addition to the regular infield medical center, which will remain reserved for race-related medical situations (post-crash examinations, etc.). The outfield center is where anyone who shows any signs of illness will be sent for further examination.

Patrolling those areas -- as well as every parking lot and gate of Darlington Raceway -- will be dozens of law enforcement officers, from the Darlington County Sheriff's Office, South Carolina Highway Patrol and the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, the state's investigative law enforcement agency. They will be on the lookout for anyone who tries to find their way into the racetrack or tries to turn Sunday's race into a protest opportunity or worse.

Darlington Raceway officials already have learned of large gatherings planned in the immediate area of the track, which they have politely worked to discourage. On Wednesday, a local man was arrested for calling the racetrack and leaving threatening messages, explained in the Darlington County Sheriff's arrest warrant as: "describing a possible explosive device and the results it may create to further his cause."

While the police presence might appear larger than normal, every other group will be much smaller. During a full race weekend that involves all three NASCAR national series -- Cup, Xfinity and Trucks -- there can be as many as 3,700 credentialed personnel in the racetrack infield, including competitors, NASCAR employees, track workers, support industry personnel and media members. On Sunday, that number will be less than 900.

The press box will have only four occupants, working as pool reporters for the media not in attendance. Motor Racing Network also will use a small team of radio personnel, made up only of those who live in the Carolinas and can make the drive. Fox will be working with a crew half the normal size to broadcast the race, utilizing only one reporter on pit road and moving production work such as replays and graphics to its studios in Charlotte. That's also where the broadcast booth will be, with Mike Joy and Jeff Gordon watching on monitors from separate studios, as they have throughout the network's broadcasting of iRacing over the past two months.

It would be naive to believe that the surprising success of eNASCAR broadcasts (roughly 1 million viewers per week) hasn't fed into NASCAR's desire to get back to the live track as soon as possible. Phelps has never disputed that. Much of the motivation behind all of the phone conversations, the politics, the education on pandemics and the laying out of the rules that will be so heavily enforced at Darlington and Charlotte has been to be the only live sport on television on Sunday afternoons for the foreseeable future.

If one were to receive a commission for every time the name of the 1979 Daytona 500 has been invoked over the past few weeks, he or she would not have to go back to work. That's when CBS aired its first live, flag-to-flag coverage of NASCAR's biggest race, on a Sunday when nothing else was on and much of the East Coast was socked in by a snowstorm. Those people stuck in their homes were gifted with perhaps the greatest finish in the history of motorsports, when Richard Petty held off Darrell Waltrip and A.J. Foyt, as Cale Yarborough had a fistfight with the Alabama Gang after crashing out of the lead on the final lap. NASCAR's three decades of growth started that day.

These days, it has been stuck in neutral. But now, so is the American sports-viewing public. Check that ... so is the entirety of sports, period. They will all be watching on Sunday to see if the road back to normal does indeed run through Darlington, South Carolina.

"I have no idea how it's going to feel when the green flag finally waves because this has been so different getting there," Knaus said. "I really hope that when we get some laps in, we have settled in, and it'll be like, 'OK, this feels normal.' If it does, it'll be the first time something has felt normal in a really long time. And that's really all anyone wants right now, isn't it?"

Tharp agreed.

"I've heard from a lot of people who work in a lot of different sports," said Tharp, who before joining NASCAR spent 20 years as the media relations director for the South Carolina Gamecocks, working with the likes of Lou Holtz and Steve Spurrier. "They all want to see if all of this we are doing to make this race happen works. They are all hoping that it does.

"We make this work, and we will, then sports are back. And other sports can hopefully take what we learn from this and they can get back soon too."

ESPN feature producer Tracy Wholf contributed to this report.

Continue reading here:

With new rules and a new normal, NASCAR set to return this weekend - ESPN

4/23/2020 For decades Boris Gelfand has been one of the best chess players in the world. He is known for his deep analyses, his passion for chess and his admiration for Akiba Rubinstein. In an interview with ChessBase Gelfand talks about the Candidates, why modern players study the classics and why chess makes him happy. | Photo: Russian Chess Federation

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Dear Boris, the Candidates Tournament 2020 in Yekaterinburg was the last live-tournament before the corona lockdown. Unfortunately, it was postponed after the first seven rounds. But how did you like the chess so far? Is there any game that particularly impressed you?

In the first seven rounds we saw quite a few interesting games. Ian Nepomniachtchi's ending against Anish Giri in round 1 and Nepo's win against Wang Hao were the most memorable games for me.

You have a lot of experience with the Candidates. In 1991 you qualified for the first time for the Candidate Matches, in 2013 you played in the Candidates Tournament in London. What makes Candidates Tournaments and what made Candidates Matches special and in how far are they different to other top tournaments in which the stakes are high?

I have always thought that the Candidates Tournament is the most important tournament in the calendar. When I was young I immensely enjoyed reading the books about the Candidates tournament or matches in 1959, 1962, 1965 and 1968.

A young Boris Gelfand

I always wanted to qualify and do well in these events, it was more important to me than keeping or improving my rating. Thats what was missing in the years 1996-2006 and it badly affected my performance in this period. The difference between the Candidates and a regular tournament is that only victory counts, one cannot be satisfied with being second. There is no "good performance", there is only the winner.

What does it take to win in the Candidates and to become a World Championship Challenger?

It needs a combination of factors: the ability to fight under the highest pressure, to be well prepared chess-wise, physically and mentally. And you need luck as well, as usual.

How do the players prepare for such an important event?

I always arranged a couple of training sessions and invited some colleagues to join my trainer Alexander Khuzman and me during such training camps.

Lets go back in time. Do you still remember how it felt to qualify for and to play in the Candidates Matches in 1991?

Yes, I do remember. I was just 22 and had unlimited confidence. So I considered myself as one of the strongest players in the World and thought that my qualification was very natural.

And how did it feel to play in the Candidates Tournament in 2013 as a former World Championship Challenger who almost became World Champion in 2012 you had to fight against the younger generation of top players?

I was very motivated to win London and to qualify for another match. I was familiar with all the players and tried my best. The tournament was not successful but my preparation paid off in the following events. I believe that in 2013 I played the best chess of my career.

From 1991 to 2013 you played in seven World Championship cycles. Do you have any memories of these events that are particularly fond to you?

Yes, sure. I am proud of my play in the Candidates match vs Vladimir Kramnik in 1994 and in the World Championship Tournament in 2007 in Mexico, where I shared second and third place with Vladimir Kramnik. I was excellently prepared and played well. However, between 1998 and 2007 I had almost no invitations to top events and this prevented me from playing more confidently and I missed number of opportunities.

How do you think chess has changed in the last 30 years and how did you experience this change?

Many things have changed. Nowadays everyone has access to huge databases. A lot of high level chess has been played in these 30 years and it helped to reassess a lot of positions. Engines have become an important part of chess and helped to open the boundaries of chess game.

30 years ago it was important to get information. Nowadays we are overloaded with it. It is much more important to analyze it and to my make correct conclusions. However, the key factors to success are the same: talent, work ethic, a strong character and believing in ones vision of chess.

You are a great admirer and fan of Akiba Rubinstein. Did you see the influence of Rubinstein (or another classical player) in any of the games that have been played so far in the Candidates or is "Modern Chess" completely modern now, with no regard to the classics?

It is a very rare to see that a modern game copies the exact same idea or maneuver from a classical game. But the absolute majority of top players have studied classical games well and it has influenced their chess. Magnus Carlsen is the best example. When he quotes a game like Flohr-Goldberg, played in 1949, in his press-conference no further comment is needed.

Your books Dynamic Decision Making in Chess and Positional Decision Making in Chess appeared in 2015 and 2016 but are already considered as classics. In these books you give deep insights into the mind of a top grandmaster but what I found even more fascinating is your seemingly unlimited enthusiasm for analyses and your love and passion for chess that shines through virtually every page of the book. What kindled this passion and what has kept it going throughout your long and illustrious career?

I am amazed with the richness of chess and I am happy to start my day with chess and finish it with chess. It makes me happy.

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"Chess makes me happy": An interview with Boris Gelfand - Chessbase News

SCID stands for Shanes Chess Information Database, and is an open-source application useful in Windows, for viewing and maintaining huge databases of chess games, with features comparable to popular commercial chess software.

This powerful chess analysis software has many features like interfacing with XBoard engines including Crafty and GNU chess, and UCI engines like Fruit, Rybka and Stockfish. You can play against human opponents or computer opponents, plus its database features include a Move Tree with statistics, General searches for endings, positions or players, and player information and photos.

SCID has a database of 1.4 million games, and it is fast because it stores chess games in its own compact database format but also supports portable game notation.

This tool is an open app to view, edit and manage collections of chess games, and is a multi-platform software that can run on Windows and other operating systems.

Get SCID chess software

Did your favorite chess analysis software make the list? Let us know by leaving a comment in the section below.

Although all of the products on our list do a great job of analyzing your chess games, weve decided that DecodeChess and Shredder Classic are two of the best ones out there.

You might not be able to do it on your own, except if youre a professional player or a grandmaster. We suggest checking our list and picking one of the specialized chess analysis software solutions we recommended.

Not likely, AlphaZero has already beaten one of the most chess engines (Stockfish) after learning chess in a mindblowing amount of time 4 hours.

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6 best software to analyze chess games in 2020 - WindowsReport.com

Written by Shivani Naik, Sandip G | Mumbai, New Delhi | Updated: April 24, 2020 5:46:34 pm Viswanathan Anand, Gary Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik are set to play in the Online Nations Cup

A well-lit room, smartly-placed roving Webcams, a Screen-share setting on Skype, an arbiter sitting remotely while accessing the players computer and alert to any out-of-place ambient sound, and oodles of trust in the top respected names of the game: Those are the logistics of the Online Nations Cup in chess, perhaps the highest profile sporting action thatll take place between May 5-10 at multiple venues coinciding with chess famous residential addresses.

A set of arbiters will also monitor every move (speed of reactions and patterns), vetting them on anti-cheating software to look for engine aids.

Six teams Russia, the USA, China, India, best of Europe and Rest of the world, will go up against each other in a double round robin, blitz 25-minute team format, as the cerebral sport mainstreams playing arenas hitherto frequented by amateurs which will now be headlined by the pros: online chess rooms sitting at home. This was necessitated by a world cornered into restrictive lockdowns forced by the Covid-19 pandemic.

While players and fans are happy that atleast chess can stay afloat while global travel is at a standstill and all sporting action has paused, the biggest test for the organisers and those overseeing the competition fashioned to be like chesss Ryder Cup will be to ensure that the online setting leaves no doubts about fair play, and cheating is completely ruled out.

It is an elite event. Only the best players in the world. They would never risk their reputation, says David Llada of FIDE, while adding that the world body will do everything technology permits to guarantee that conditions for the event cannot be corrupted by anyone participating. With names like Gary Kasparov, Vladimir Kramnik and Indias Viswanathan Anand set to be involved in playing and guiding capacities, FIDE is banking on reputations to ensure nothing silly is indulged in.

However the online setting will keep everyone on their toes, given the sheer scope for manipulations. The players will be playing from home. They are required to have a couple of webcams, so the arbiters can see their room and their computer screen. These will be rapid games, so there are no toilet breaks which would pose a challenge. Chess.com also has some anti-cheating systems that are able to track, with a high degree of reliability, when a player is making too may moves that coincide with the engines recommendations. All things combine we can guarantee the conditions for the event to be considered safe, Llada adds.

Online chess is not a novelty and FIDE says an estimated 16 million games were played online since the lockdown began. But this will be the biggest event to take off on an online platform. Prof Anantharam, one of Indias leading arbiters whos also on the FIDE panel says that backroom work for arbiters will now include tracking every move and tallying it with engine databases in forensic ways.

At this high level, players wont take risks. But as a governing body, we have to take all precautions. There are a couple of checking tools a fast one which flags a move for the fair play team if the software suggests the players analysis could be engine-aided within seconds and then detailed checks monitoring the next moves in a match. Noone is naive to think cheating doesnt happen in online chess.

READ | Georgian Grandmaster caught cheating

Just that technology catches it, he says, adding that cash prizes upto Rs 10000 were withdrawn after some lower-rung amateurs were found cheating. Both chess.com and the other popular website lichess.com have developed anti-cheating provisions now.

Magnus Carlsen, the biggest name in chess, is currently hosting another online tournament, and besides the livestreams and live commentary, the emphasis is on a 360 degree monitoring of the rooms via webcams. The sport is not immune to mischief with an IM using the pretext of a weak bladder to take help from his phone hidden in a dustbin in face to face chess to win an Abu Dhabi tournament. The professor, one of the sharpest arbiters in the country once caught a player in Kochi using some kind of transmissions through a Bluetooth device.

Itll be best if cameras used for the FIDE event have audio feeds. As an arbiter of online games, one would need to observe players movements to see if they are checking tools as well as their computer screens to make it footproof, he says. While reiterating that cheating is unlikely at this level, Prof Anantharam maintains that as arbiters theyll need to be on their toes nevertheless. Someone holding a placard but not in cameras view is not a stunt anyone will try, but after a GM recently found intrepid new ways of cheating, FIDE wont take any chances. One person will need to keep watching the player, he says.

GM Dibyendu Barua, while stressing that no top players will attempt cheating, adds that safety measures are important so that no one can blame anyone later.

Keeping the webcam on for the whole duration, a well lit room and supervision will happen ofcourse, he says adding that hes heard of mobile devices being used for cheating at lower rungs. Itll be exciting to watch mixed teams (1 woman out of 4 players mandatory) and besides watching strong chess countries like China, interest will be high in certain matchups. Just seeing Anand match wits with Kasparov again for the younger generation, or Kasparov-captaining against the young Iranian sensation Alireza. Mischief wont be on top of anyones mind, but we dont want exceptions, he says.

Chennai-based RB Ramesh, a former player and current coach, says that the shorter time controls (25 minute rapid) dont lend themselves to any hanky-panky. With technology, cheating can be curtailed in blitz games. But if its longer formats with 300-400 playing, its tough to monitor. But its why online tournaments are not rated officially and FIDE has software like the plagiarism tracker so to some extent you can mitigate cheating, he says.

Captaining a FIDE age-group team once, he insists that both video and audio cameras need to be live, to erase suspicion of someone standing off camera and suggesting moves. One cant obviously say definitively that cheating doesnt happen online, just the chances here are very low, he says.

While FIDE has reacted quickly to the dramatically altered sporting scene globally,concerns of fair play remain at the back of their mind. 50 years ago there was this big USSR vs Rest of the World that was really massive: Now, the world is differentIndia, China they are claiming their place not only in the chess board, but also as superpowers. India is rubbing shoulders with the US, Russia and Europe, Llada says, adding top players were all a bit worried about having all the over to beard tournaments cancelled. But they were relieved to see that chess organizers, including FIDE, reacted very quickly and are now holding all top-level competitions online.

The last word of wisdom are reserved for Viswanathan Anand, who stresses that due caution will need to be taken. Logistics is easier, but they should do some testing. Like some anti-cheating measures because you are after all playing at home.

The idea is you will share your screen with arbiters. In Skye you have a setting, screen-share, you can do that. The arbiter will have access to your computer and know what you are doing. He knows whats happening in the room. The best would be if we didnt have a lockdown, you could arrange a chess player to go to everyones house as an arbiter and make sure that nothing is going on. But right now I think every once in a while they will look around the room and something like that, he explains.

The multiple world champion from India offers an insight into the future saying online chess simplifies a lot of things for the organisers: travel and venue and other minor practical aspects, while hoping online is not forced into becoming the norm. Its turned out very useful in this situation. Having said that, the whole world hopes that we are not living with Corona for the next 10 years. Hope it would not become necessary to play online all the time. For the moment, it keeps us going.

While stressing that online chess has been around for ages and the world neednt act as if its a new thing invented now, he reckons trust in fellow players is the key.

I think its a question of trust. I think chess players trust each other. If someone is caught, its the end of his career, so everyone will hope it wont happen. If they are obsessed with checking every single thing, it will get unpleasant very fast, he says of the mild irritants thatll be so crucial to maintain fair play in the taut-nerved sport.

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Chess greats face off online, webcams, arbiters to watch moves - The Indian Express

2019 was a great year for chess.

While many chess fans are ready to jump right into 2020 and the world championship drama, let's take a moment on this last day of 2019 to appreciate the best chess had to offer this year.

For much of 2019, the world's top chess players battled to qualify for the 2020 Candidates' Tournament, and it came down to the wire for the full field to emerge. The championship cycle is now set for 2020 and chess fans can hardly wait.

There were some exciting developments in computer chess (a personal favorite), including the ascent of neural-network chess engines like Lc0 to the top of the pack.

The year also saw another big leap forward for online chess coverage, with more in-person tournaments and online events streamed and professionally broadcast by the Chess.com mega-hype team.

A living chess legend, Vladimir Kramnik, proposed an exciting rule change to chess. And in the last days of 2019, the current world chess champion, Magnus Carlsen, continued his dominance of the year (and decade, and century...) by holding all three major world chess championships: classical, rapid and blitz.

So how do all these great things stack up?

Here's our ranking of the sevenbest chess moments of 2019:

When: May 2019

What happened:

Led by the super-GM and 2020 world championship candidate Fabiano Caruana, the Arch Bishops claimed their second PRO Chess League title in three years with a dominating win over the Baden-Baden Snowballs.

The Arch Bishops played the live semifinals and finals in San Francisco with strength from top-to-bottom boards, but it was Caruana's scorching 7.5/8 score for the weekend that sealed the victory.

Further reading:

When: November 2019

What happened:

Vladimir Kramnik, one of the greatest world chess champions of all time, retired from competitive chess in 2019. But he wasn't done making chess headlines.

Last month, Kramnik proposed an elegant and simple solution to boring draws and repetitive openings in top-level chess: Get rid of castling.

Kramnik tested his rule change with another chess legend, the neural-network chess engineAlphaZero. Kramnik and AlphaZero ownerDeepMind collaborated to produce beautiful sample games where the artificial intelligence chess project played itself without castling allowed.

Further reading:

When:2019, ongoing

What happened:

The Chess.com Speed Chess Championship expanded to include women's and junior events in addition to its main bracket of the world's top speed chess players.

The biggest underdog in the field, GM Elina Danielian, ran through the women's bracket to claim the title. And it would be an understatement to call Wei Yi a rising star, since he already is star (full stop), but the Chinese prodigy won the Junior Speed Chess Championship all the same.

The main Speed Chess Championship bracket had its share of upsets and brilliancies, highlighted by the 21-year-old Vladislav Artemievdispatching two speed chess legendsAlexander Grischuk and Levon Aronianby the same dominating score of 16-9, before falling in the semifinals to Wesley So.

At press time, three super-grandmasters remain in the Speed Chess field. So is through to the finals, while the reigning champion Hikaru Nakamura will need to get past Ian Nepomniachtchiin their semifinal match before he can defend his title against So.

Nakamura vs. Nepomniachtchi is scheduled for Sunday, Jan. 5 at 8.am PST on Chess.com/TV.

Further reading:

When:April 2019

What happened:

Was it any surprise?

Hikaru Nakamura, already the long-reigning Speed Chess Champion, added another online chess title to his resume with a win in the first Chess.com Bullet Chess Championship.

Nakamura, the heavy favorite going into the tournament, defeated Oleksandr Bortnyk to clinch the championship. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave finished in third place in the loaded championship field.

Further reading:

When:April 2019

What happened:

Lc0, an open-source project using machine learning to train a neural-network chess engine, rose to the top of the computer chess world by defeating the champion Stockfish in the Chess.com Computer Chess Championship.

It marked the first time a neural-network engine had beaten Stockfish in a championship event, proving that artificial-intelligence-based chess engines could play better than the traditional engines, which had been the kings of chess for the past two decades.

Stockfish, though, soon took back the championship from Lc0, and these two engines will battle with many others in the coming decade to determine the best chess-playing entity in the world.

Further reading:

When:November 2019

What happened:

Wesley So became the first officially-recognized champion of Fischer Random chess, beating the classical chess world championMagnus Carlsen in the finals of a groundbreaking event played both online on Chess.com and in-person in Norway under the FIDE (World Chess Federation) banner.

So pulled off the upset of the heavily-favored Carlsen in a shocking runaway, winning 13.5 to 2.5, ending the match early before the scheduled blitz games.

The tournament was a fan-favorite for its energetic games and exciting starting positions, showing that Fischer Random chess will have a bright future in the 2020s.

Further reading:

When:December 2019

What happened:

The reigning classical world chess champion Magnus Carlsen won both the world rapid and blitz championships at the end of the year to once again hold all three major titles in a tremendous feat of chess dominance.

Carlsen is now the world champion in the three most important forms of chess (and he just missed a fourth, finishing second to Wesley So in the Fischer Random championship). With the wins, Carlsen further secured his legacy as one of the greatest chess players ever.

With another title defense in the 2020 world chess championship, Carlsen could finally shed that "one of" clause and become simply the greatest of all timeif he is not already.

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Let us know your favorite chess moments of the year in the comments.

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The 7 Best Chess Moments Of 2019 - Chess.com

It is ironical that despite shattering many chess records and being the strongest and the highest-rated women chess player (Judit Polgar is the highest-rated player ever but played only in Open section) for many years, a World title proved elusive for 32-year-old Koneru Humpy. Incredibly, it came her way at Moscow when she triumphed in the Womens World Rapid Chess Championship last week after starting as the 13th seed.

The youngest ever to win a World junior title at 14 years, the youngest woman in the world to earn the GM title at that time, Asian Champion, British Womens Champion and numerous titles in Age Categories, none doubted that winning the Womens World Championship would be a natural transgression for Humpy. One of her best performances was at the North Urals Cup, Russia which featured the top ten women players of that time.

Her troubled equation with AICF (Indian chess federation) resulted in her missing a few prestigious events. In fact, in 2015 AICF moved the FIDE Ethics Commission to ban Humpy and take necessary action against her and strip her of the GM and other titles after she withdrew midway through the Commonwealth Championship. It was the Association of Chess Professionals which stood strongly behind Humpy and asked FIDE for a fair enquiry.

Always calm, shy and soft spoken, Humpy always keeps a low profile off-board but once at the chequered board, her personality undergoes a dramatic transformation.

Her brand of fighting chess, dislike for any short draws, made her a feared opponent. Returningbackto chess after two years, after the birth of her daughter, her recent triumph might just spur her on to settle some unfinished business -- that of winning the Womens World Chess Championship. Excerpts...

Your thoughts on this Womans World Rapid chess title?

To be honest, I didnt think that a gold medal and title would come my way when I started the event. I had modest expectations of a medal of any hue. It is no secret that I am more a classical player and the shorter time control formats have never really been my cup of tea. After glancing at the final 12thround pairings, I realised that I had an opportunity to secure silver if I beat Tan Zhongyi. I had the advantage of the White pieces and refused a draw offer and went on to win the game to force a tie for top place. At this point I realised that I had a golden opportunity though it would not be too easy. Adapting to the Blitz format was not easy and I ended up losing the first tie-break because of slow play, that too with the White pieces. I opted for the Modern Defence and tried to complicate as the pressure was high to score a win and stay in the hunt for the title. This was literally a game where I gambled! After winning the game and forcing a tie, the Armageddon too was taxing but by then I was comfortable with the time and position both! It was just my day. After so many years of hard work, finally a World Champion title as a reward. I was so happy and relieved to finally, finally have the tag of World Champion.

Did you make any specific preparation for the World Championship?

I hardly had time as I played the Grand Prix at Monaco where I finished second. There was a 10-day break in between but I played the European Club Cup. With so manybacktobackevents, it was difficult to specifically prepare for this event.

Your father Ashok has been your only coach. Does he still continue to be so?

It has been a while since we stopped working at the board as for the last few years I am preparing on my own. He is more of a mentor and guide now. We discuss strategy for the tournament and things like which opening to play and other things. The fundamentals ingrained by my father have been very strong and have stood the test of time.

From 2007 you were practically the highest rated woman player for a few years, yet the World title eluded you. Do you wonder why?

Yes, I do think it really appears strange. On hindsight, I feel like I played my best chess ever in World championships but the title never came my way and the best I managed was a bronze. I kept getting knocked out. Maybe I was unlucky. We dont know what life will throw at us in the future. We can only focus on doing our job to the best of our ability and see what comes our way.

How much time do you devote to chess?

It used to be a tough, disciplined grind of 8 to 10 hours every day without a break -- even on Sunday. I would spend half a day working on chess. Now I spend about three to four hours every day. After the arrival of my daughter, things have changed. I no longer work on festivals and few other days. I have to do a balancing act but I never miss any opportunity that I can spend working on chess.

How much had chess changed after your comeback?

There are a lot of changes. I realised that most of the preparation I had done a couple of yearsbackor earlier was not at all useful or had become redundant. With powerful engines, chess has changed. Younger generation play the best possible opening. When I became a GM, we did not have such exposure to technology. These days if you dont become a GM by 12 or 13 years then there is virtually no future for you as a chess player.

How do you look at the current crop of youngsters?

When I made a comeback at Gibraltar, I met a few of them, most of them just 15 or 16 years old and already enjoying an Elo 2500 to 2600 rating. Frankly, I am overawed and sometimes I feel that I am already a veteran!

Which are your next events and are you expecting invitations to niche events?

Nothing is planned yet but maybe February or March. I have received a few invitations but I have become a bit choosy now. I cannot play all events but play in all official FIDE events. This title has sort of rekindled my hunger for winning a World Womens title.

Originally posted here:

Koneru Humpy: Back to the forefront - Deccan Herald