A Brooklyn cat in honor of Gata Kamsky's win over Anand. He's now beaten Vishy twice in a row. Every ten years like clockwork!
A close-up of Morrigan taken with my new Canon Rebel XT and a 28mm f1.8 lens. Love that bokeh! Happy thoughts for the weekend, look at the pretty kitty. Open thread, topic suggestions, questions, etc.
Honestly Mig... I don't like pictures of people's cats on the web. As a sysadmin, it's a running joke that bandwidth around the world is being swallowed up by pictures of people's friggin' cats.
Just my GHO. (Grumpy Humble Opinion).
;)
To keep the post on the non-topic:
When are Garry's new books coming out?
-Matt
Now, now, you aren't thinking of the pretty kitty. Preeeeetty kitty. Feel your anger melt away...
Books are supposed to be on schedule, meaning Vol 5 coming out late Feb. or early March. The publisher is already hounding him about the new Vol 6 (opening revolution). Don't know the intended publication date of that one offhand, but probably in the fall.
Preeeeetty kitty.....
Ah, anger all gone now. Thanks, Mig!
***BEGIN AUDIT***
Our records indicate that "Mig Greengard" is 97.2% biased in Kamsky's favor. Please retract this entire post or we will be forced to inform your ISP of your lack of objectivity.
***END AUDIT***
On the random topic stream:
Has there ever been a chess players' beauty contest? I know that it is a generally accepted rule that playing chess makes one ugly, but I have had the fortunate experience to see some exceptions to the rule...
Oh, no, that "off-topic" again.
Yes, there has been quite a few chess beauty contest. From the informal arbiters polls in the girls sections (yes, I participated once) to Sam Sloan olympics reports to the infamous World Chess Beauty Contest:
http://www.1wcbc.com
It was heavily discussed here. The creators of the site (Tkachiev brothers) say that it is a good-humored contest, where only the interested can submit their photo to participate. However, some people (mostly women) are offended for it.
In the other hand, it is clear that for some reason, the photos of young, pretty chessplayers attract a lot of people. It is not coincidence that many chessbase reports include photos of "Miss Smith, 2097" :)
Photos of young, pretty people attract a lot of people. That they may or may not play chess an excuse that makes other chessplayers more comfortable with their own desires to look at them.
How come you're not the author of ChessBase Cafe anymore? Are you going to write for ChessCafe again in the future?
It could be summed up as my getting very busy with the Kasparov book and being late on deadlines and their being rather strict about such things. Considering this clash of respective attitudes it's unlikely I'll contribute there again. I respect their project and enjoyed doing the column, though I rarely visit their site now that Winter is elsewhere. I didn't even know Steve had taken it over until reading this and checking just now.
Well it is a nice cat, but those eyes....
Glaucoma? Accident? Cataract? (no pun intended)
Strange flash artifact?
She's very sweet. And tiny. Mostly blind in her right eye from an infection before I got her from a shelter. Left eye is fine, just squinting.
I love the kitty! Let's see if she compares to my daughter: www.erichongisto.com/ursula ?
We also have a black and white kitty named Puku who was also picked because of her chess like looks.
Great blog. Keep it up!
Hey Mig, "Mostly blind in her right from an infection BEFORE I got her from a shelter." I have a tendency to write tongue-in-cheek (my nature) from time to time, some of that directed at you, but in all seriousness the above information warms my heart. Thanks
On Gary's books - is there any chance of getting them in soft format? I'd buy the whole set in an instant if I could get a version with all the games and comments in PGN or CBH format. I'd settle for book and CD, although ideally I'd prefer just a DVD/CD.
Paul
Shall we flood Mig with pictures of cats? He did use one I sent him and even gave me credit.
Way to go KAMSKY!
I played the game over but need a lot of help to understand it. Was that a poison pawn Anand took?
What is this with these F**KING ugly cats?? Stick `em in a F***KING Curry, that`s what I say . . .
Superchess, I remember your comment not long ago about arthritis. Now I see that your just one miserable individual. Mig, if you want to delete his pscho babble, feel free to delete my responce.
Will there be a second edition of MGP I ? (as I understand, there were some analytical errors)
Some cretin has spammed Susan Polgar Chess Blog, no updates since then, has she abandoned it ?
Hmm, that sucks. Blogger is vulnerable to that sort of thing though. I run my own installation, although I get some spam here now that the latest version of Movable Type ruined a good thing. All its fancy new spam-killing stuff isn't nearly as effective as the plugins for the previous version.
I don't know anything about the next edition of MGP 1 but will ask Garry tomorrow. My guess is that the publisher would prefer to sell all the ones they have of the first and/or wait until the series is completed before confusing people with a second edition of an earlier book.
Publishers don't like digital versions of books because they get pirated rampantly in small communities like the chess world. There is no satisfactory DRM for PGN or CBV. I have PGN versions of the first two books, but without annotations of course. But they are handy.
Don't feed the trolls, CT.
Cat pictures welcome, preference given to black and white animals of all species.
BTW, Why is Garry so down on Kamsky? I mean, if your going to slam someone repeatedly, why not have a little more respect for beating Anand. It is still a remarkable result even if he is 2600 strength.
PS. Garry, come back and play, kibitzing is easy.
Peace...
Kamsky is stronger than 2600 strength. Otherwise, he would not have made it through in Khanty.
Hotep,
Maliq
what a horrid game by anand. he looked lost after a few moves, cramped pieces, no room to manoeuver. Why does he insist on periodically playing gawd awful variations of the QGA and getting stomped? Looked like the kind of game i would play as black..Smooth performance by kamsky of course, but Anand probably feels like stomping on a few cats right.. Speaking of cats, Mig I want to see a tabby!! Why the insistence on black and white???
Okay, send a pic of a tabby. But a black and white picture!
Anand was looking for something more active than the usual QGD so he could do what everyone else was doing: beat Kamsky.
Great bokeh on the 1.8 indeed - just a shame about the specular highlights...
Looks like they breed kitties pretty tough in Brooklyn.
R:
Rock on with your bad kitties, Mig.
My wife and I are facing a sort of hard decision: our cat has glaucoma in one eye, and vets are saying we should have the eye removed. The eye is blind and the pressure is causing chronic pain for our cat, something like a low-level migraine.
But the vets say that the operation is almost nothing for the cat, and kitties and dogs who undergo such an operation almost invariably feel much better afterwards.
Anyway, cheers from a fellow cat- and chesslover.
Mine's overall vision would probably improve without that bad eye, but she doesn't know that and gets around fine. Not the best depth perception in the world, but she doesn't have to hunt anything other than catnip mice.
I quite enjoyed the Gato picture:)
The German versions of MGP (Edition Olms) have a CD with all the games inside.
Dear Mig, I wish you and your pretty kitty many happy years together. I am happy that you two found each other.
Charley
have you people checked out www.kittenwars.com? you want cats... there are many. Go Mickey Adams!
Mig, my girlfriend just commented that you must be single, well are you?
I think this is the place to ask where is John Henderson?. I miss his reports.
I just thought of something else, something that I really want to get off my chest.
I am very, very annoyed by the way punctuation (if I may use that term) is used in annotations these days.
Bad moves are very often given a "?!". That is for *dubious* moves, not *bad* moves. "?" is, quite accordingly, used more and more rarely. (Yes, egregious blunders still get "??", and that is as it should be.)
But what I deplore even more is the total disappearance of the very useful "(!)" and "(?)". A rough explanation for the younger generation: the former denoted a move that was good, although not at first sight, the latter a move that seems reasonable, but has its drawbacks.
The only stalwart I know of is GM Hübner in ChessBase Magazine, at least in the German version. I am glad that he apparently managed to convince Mr. Friedel to allow him to use these useful descriptors which CB software does not offer...
Morrigan turns a blind eye towards Red Commie mafia cheaters throwing games right and left to each other, and is one cool cat. You can be cool too. Or else...
Deletion of posts by moderator inky has become a public nuisance on this board, so I like to weigh in with my view.
I was attracted to this board because I happen to see one of Mig's humerous writings, and thought his blog must be entertaining too. Lo and behold, inky deleted my humerous posts.
I said nothing at the time, but now I post occasionally in the daily dirt only, and not in the discussion groups, at least so long as inky is deleting posts over there.
For inky, there are her opinion and wrong opinions. This is the same lack of integrity that FIDE exhibits in deleting other people views.