Indian Chess Set Gifted by Elena Burmistrova to Russian Museum

Moscow: Elena Burmistrova, Deputy Chairman of the Gazprom Management Committee/Director General of Gazprom Export, has presented the CFR Chess Museum with a unique art gift for the New Year. 

It comes from a limited edition of handmade chess sets titled "Indian," manufactured at the porcelain enterprise "Delta-X" of Kislovodsk in the 1990s. To design the chessmen, the artist A. Lyubkin resorted to ancient legends and tales' motives. Pieces of gilt and overglaze painting join the combat on a chessboard of marble and serpentine stone, with a unique house for chess pieces being a rare and distinctive feature of this particular set. The tradition of tucking the pieces away "to rest" in a dedicated "accommodation" instead of a dark wooden box dates back to several centuries ago. This is both a respect for the wise game's porcelain participants and a practical solution to keep beautiful pieces on the table as a kind of display.

"Indian" chess set by A. Lyubkin takes an honorable place in the exhibition of the famous G. Alexandrov's Museum of Porcelain Chess in St. Petersburg. It is now at the full display to visitors of the Russian Federation of Chess as well.

Andrey Filatov, President of the Chess Federation of Russia, expresses his gratitude to Elena Burmistrova for such a valuable New Year’s present.

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True Story of Chess Kid Tani: I Believe in Miracles!

Excerpted with permission from My Name is Tani by Craig Borlase and Tanitoluwa Adewumi published by HarperCollins.

Prologue 

My name is Tani, and my family says I like to ask a lot of questions. They’re right. I like puzzles. I like riddles. I like trying to figure out why things happen and how things work.

But things have been different lately. Instead of asking the questions, I’ve been the one trying to answer them. A lot of people have wanted to know all kinds of things about me and my life. They want to know what life was like for me and how I feel about the way things have changed. They want me to tell my story, and I want to tell it, but there’s never enough time to say everything that’s in my head.

So this book is going to be my answer.

But if I’m going to tell you my story, I need to start by saying that I don’t remember much about Nigeria. I know that I was six years old when these really bad people called Boko Haram tried to kill my dad and we had to leave — but honestly, I was asleep most of the times they came looking for my dad, so you’d have to ask him about that.

What I do remember about life in Nigeria is playing soccer and my brother, Austin, trying to teach me chess and how one day I was watching the news on the TV and there was this airplane pilot on it who had just done something amazing. He was Nigerian like me, and there must have been a really serious problem with the plane because everyone was excited about the fact that he had landed safely, and everyone survived. From that moment on I wanted to be a pilot. It’s not because of money, though. Being a pilot makes you rich, but I don’t mean money rich. I liked the idea of doing something like that, to help people.

I remember a lot about life in America. Like how when we moved to New York I learned about chess properly this time and discovered that the very best players in the world are called grand masters, and so, from then on, I started to think that it might be good to be a grand master too. And then one day Coach Shawn actually took me to meet Fabiano, who is the number-two chess player in the whole world! He shook my hand and we talked, and from that moment on, I decided that I definitely wanted to be a grandmaster.

And then something happened.

I won a chess competition, and lots and lots and lots of people wanted to talk to me. It wasn’t just people from New York or even America. People from all over the world wanted to know my story. Some of them still do.

A lot of the people I have spoken to ask me about chess. They say things like how has chess changed your life? Or, what do you like most about playing chess? I mostly give them the same answer to both questions, which is chess has taught me how to do deep thinking. 

Sometimes people laugh when they hear me say that, but I don’t see how it’s very funny.

The more I think about all this, the more I know that I can’t answer either of those questions quickly. I 

need a lot more than one minute to be able to explain everything. And I don’t think I can even do it all myself because there’s so much that I don’t remember.

So the best way to tell my story is to have my parents help me. They know all the details of everything 

that’s happened, and they’re also my heroes. None of this would’ve even happened if it hadn’t been for them.

I would have asked Austin to help tell this story, too, but he likes basketball a lot more than he likes 

writing. But he’s still my hero as well.

After I won the chess tournament and spoke to all those people, life changed really quickly for all of us. 

Recently I’ve been thinking again about being a pilot. Since talking to everyone, I now know that there are a lot of places I’ve not been to, and if I was a pilot, maybe I could go see them. I could fly to China, Japan, Arizona, Washington, DC, Kentucky, Turkey, England. I want to go to these places and live there for maybe one whole year or maybe just five months. I read in a book that the average person lives to be seventy-one years old, but I think I’m not going to live the average. I think I’m going to live to be more than one hundred. So maybe I’ll do 

both—be a grand master and a pilot too. I’d like that.

I don’t know what I’m going to be. My dad says that’s okay.

But I do know this much. I believe in miracles.

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Aman Goel Wins CCBW Bruce Lee Memorial on Lichess

Lucknow, July 20, 2020: Aman Goel (Sil3entAman) won the Remembering Bruce Lee Memorial CCBW Global Online Lichess Tournament on July 20.
Shaan Garg (brrrruuuuuhh) came in a creditable second with Enaith Habibullah (Enaith) standing third.  PreciousBansal (preciouschesschd) was the Best Girl (overall third).

Aman, playing strategically, put up some nice ideas in the Sicilian and English. In an interesting Najdorf battle, Aman polished off the runner-up with a back rank mate.
Shan Garg dropped only two games for a creditable second playing totally unlike Aman with tactical mad fire on the chess board.
Enaith Habibullah, home from boarding school, showed remarkable resilience in his 1.e4 games to take the third place.
Precious Bansal, held her own, amidst the strong competition to easily pick up the Best Girl Prize without much difficulty.

Martial Artist legend Bruce Lee's poem, "Be water, my friend" is the philosophy for Chess Club Black and White (CCBW).

"Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless, like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend."

A nice quora post explains it as, "Water is easy-going. Water doesn't fuss, it doesn't push, or pull. It fills the space allowed, no more, no less. This saying is basically to remind you to just relax, go with the flow, be present and in the moment; let things happen and enjoy that you're there to take it all in. Be water, my friend."
You can find a very nice podcast on the quote on the official Bruce Lee website at this link.

DO like the CCBW FACEBOOK PAGE PLEASE 

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800 Years of Chess Art in One Book: Amazing Research by Peter Herel Raabenstein

Chess has been a royal discipline for more than 1000 years…

“Chess teaches us that even when everything seems to be going badly for us we should not lose heart, but always hoping for a change for the better, steadfastly continue searching for the solutions to our problems.” Benjamin Franklin

Regardless of whether you consider yourself a very good or an average chess player, or prefer to watch the game from a distance with one of your loved ones who succumbed to the chess game, you still belong to a very prestigious circle of people. Only the initiate knows what such a true and genuine “game” entails.

Like any thing that has stood the test of time, chess has evolved and has influenced many personalities during that time. Chess can be seen as a tool that allows you to penetrate human development - artistic, social, political, industrial and technological. This game has been able to influence society for centuries. 

Peter Herel Raabenstein, a conceptual artist from the Czech Republic, realized the same thing. Chess has been his passion since 2003, when he was looking for a suitable gift for his uncle who loves chess, art and history. Peter decided to buy a special book for his uncle, but later found that no one had ever published any such publication. Finally, he collected 12 portraits on chess and made them a calendar. Uncle was enthusiastic and advised him not to give up his vision of creating a book that would connect the world of chess and art.

In the following years Peter continued his studies and deepened his artistic and chess knowledge. In 2009 he met his friend at the Wijk aan Zee chess tournament and introduced him his project. His friend liked the idea very much and the result was an epilogue for his book, which had not existed at the time. Soon after, both artists had to break up, but Peter was fascinated by the symbolism of chess and was still working on his book. 

“Enthusiastic reactions and support from my surroundings motivated me to complete the project. I knew it wouldn't be easy, but I couldn't stop and actually disappoint every lover of chess and art”, explains Peter Herel Raabenstein, author of the publication. 

Now after 10 years, he can finally introduce you to a unique publication “Chess in art” with a collection of chess themes. On 320 pages, the author captured 800 years of development through paintings by more than 700 artists with a detailed description of how they perceived kings' play through art. The book simply delights every chess player, painting and history. In other words, life is composed of various battles and not from just the chess battles. 

The book “Chess in art” will give you a few unforgettable moments when you will feel like a king for at least a moment. The author and the whole team behind the creation of this publication wish you not to get checkmate, not only on the chessboard but also in your life 

Web: 

http://www.chessinart.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chessinart/ 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chessinart/

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