Bits and pieces in the news

I have read some of Frank Brady’s books and generally I liked them.  I am not going to read his latest book on Bobby Fischer though…but don’t let that stop you!  I am certain you will get a lot of bang for the buck.

I stopped reading newly published books about Fischer way back in 1998 when I realized that the so-called ‘experts’ on Bobby Fischer were generally just talented writers doing semi-reasonable  research based on already published or un-classified documentation that missed the whole point: Bobby Fischer had become a paranoid-schizophrenic sometime in the late 1970’s. His crazy statements (anti-semitic, anti-American) were just the rantings of a  sick man who had fallen in the cracks somewhere along the way of greatness…

Why 1998?  One night I had dinner during the Linares Open with a friend of mine–the late Dr. Eugene Martinovsky–and we discussed the Bobby Fischer that he knew.  Eugene was a clinical psychiatrist in New York.  It became evident during dinner that Eugene had thought a lot of Fischer’s decline of mental health over the years, and as someone who had known Fischer since he was a youngster, there was some sadness in his voice.

Eugene died in 2000.  You can read about his life at the link immediately below:

Dr. Martinovsky told me that he felt there were many paranoid-schizophrenics in the chess world.  He said that often you can tell by the eyes.  (Anyone who ever met the late Lembit Oll–who threw himself out of his second story window one wintery evening–would know what I mean.)

But being a health professional, Eugene was understandably reluctant to come out and say that Fischer was a paranoid-schizophrenic.  He instead limited himself to say that without a proper diagnosis we would never really know.  And Bobby Fischer never let himself be diagnosed.



But I trust Eugene’s intuition.  Bobby Fischer’s behaviour was not that of a monster or hate-monger.  As I have not read Brady’s latest book on him, I have no idea of whether this subject was discussed.  I am not interested:  the Fischer myth is still worth quite a few more best-sellers, documentaries and films. Fischer deserves the fame for his chess achievements alone–but I am tired of how the media has focused on the man’s failings rather than trying to understand his illness.

In anycase, here is an excerpt of a book review on Brady’s latest.  The reader obviously enjoyed it!

I don’t know if you have been following the tit-for-tat confrontation between Israel and Iran that has (fortunately) been taking place over the chess board.  But I for one have certainly gotten a big kick out of it!  First Israel set the ‘world record’.  Now Iran claims the record.  What is next?

(Israelnationalnews.com) An Iranian grandmaster is claiming that he has taken back a world record in chess that was set by an Israeli last October.

AFP reported this week that 28-year-old Ehsan Ghaem Maghami claimed that he regained the Guinness record for simultaneous chess games after facing more than 600 players in over 25 hours. He said that he won 96 percent of his games which began on Tuesday in the Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran, and had to win 80 percent of the games in order to break the record.

A representative of the World Chess Federation was present during the event but did not confirm Maghami’s victory.

The previous record was set by Israeli grandmaster Alik Gershon last October in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square. Gershon played against 525 other players simultaneously, and beat 454 for a victory rate of 86 percent. Another 58 games ended in a tie, Gershon lost 11 games, and 2 players withdrew from the competition.

Maghami assured Iran’s ISNA News Agency on Wednesday that the World Chess Federation would report his win to Guiness, and added that he would have played with the same zeal even if the previous title holder was a non-Israeli.

“Iran is great and deserves the best,” said Maghami. “Let’s not talk politics… even if this record was held by another person, I would have gone all out to break it.”

He added that “now I have to break my sleep record,” and said that he would not be surprised if his record will also be broken soon.

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Apparently they both played chess against each other, and often!  Recently parts of a chess set believed to be the actual set that was used in these encounters has been uncovered in an excavation at Madison’s Montpelier estate.

Parts of a pawn uncovered

Archaeologists excavating James Madison’s Montpelier estate have unearthed portions of two chess pawns belonging to the founding father.

“The discovery of the pawns is a wonderful example of how Montpelier’s archaeologists and curators are together rediscovering James and Dolley Madison and their plantation,” said Montpelier President Michael C. Quinn in a press release. “Each new discovery and acquisition brings us closer to knowing the Father of the Constitution and the woman who inspired the term ‘First Lady.'”

Montpelier, located in Orange, Va, is the lifelong home of America’s fifth president. It is here that Madison would engage Thomas Jefferson in chess matches, likely using the chess pieces that were uncovered.

The portions of the pawns allowed researchers to understand what James Madison’s chess set looked like, leading them to purchase an identical set from the 18th Century. Following Montpelier’s $25 million dollar restoration, this acquirement is another step in efforts to refurnish the home with items once belonging to Madison, or similar to them

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I read with some sadness the above news just a couple of weeks ago.  Though I did not really know Greg very well, our paths crossed several times at chess events.  I played him in my first appearance at the Commonwealth Championship in Hong Kong in March of 1984.  At the time he was mere 20 years old , gifted in both chess and math.  He was uncertain of what he really wanted to do with his life, and at 20 that is how it should be. 

In the end he chose math, though it was not an easy decision to make. It was simply the most practical decision.   On the ‘net you can find several interviews with Greg where he discusses this issue and others related.  Curiously, there is a parallel between choosing math as a career and chess.  On Greg’s homepage at UCLA (http://www.math.ucla.edu/~greg/) he gives some advice to those who might want to consider a career in math, and I can’t but relate this to his inner struggle before arriving at his own personal decision: 

If you are thinking of doing a PhD in pure math, especially with me, here are some points you may want to consider before entering.

(i) One of the huge differences between graduate and undergraduate education is the intensity in which one needs to learn the material. As an undergradute, it is mostly fine to learn material well enough to keep it together until the next exam. It is often not necessary to truly understand the material to its core. A PhD, on the other hand, involves learning to the point of being competitive with the leaders in the field — or at least, proving something which they would consider interesting and worthwhile. From time to time there is a student who is such a genius they step off the plane and make a sudden advance. For the rest of us, for the 99.9 percent of the human race outside this exceptional category, the process through to becoming an expert is similar to the process of becoming a concert musician, or fluent in a foreign language, or an outstanding athlete. Constant training and even a certain amount of repetition — going over things you thought you understood, trying to understand standard proofs in a new way, and so on.

(ii) On a related point, people sometimes underestimate the extent to which apparently novel and even revolutionary research is based on simply developing a deeper understanding of the work from before. Everyone remembers Newton’s quip about standing on the shoulders of giants — what people often don’t realize is the profound efforts Newton made to understand Kepler’s work in a way it had not been understood before, and that even “Kepler’s three laws” were in fact Newton’s carefully constructed isolation of the most valuable ideas among a sea of calculations and speculations. For a young mathematician who wants to become a leading researcher, I would recommend that before anything they try to understand the work of the predecessors in their own research specialization as well as possible — in fact, try to develop their own understanding.

(iii) I personally consider doing a PhD in an area of research that you love to be one of the most positive and uplifting activities in life. Not everyone does it, but it is one of the truly worthwhile things you can do for the brief spell on this planet. However, I cannot sugar coat the economics. The simple fact is that most people who complete a PhD in a pure research area (such as pure math, philosophy, theoretical physics, history, literature, and so on) will never gain full employment in their area of study. I would say do not do a PhD in the expectation of it being a valid career path, parallel to engineering, medicine, or an apprenticeship. Only do it if you have a deep desire to pursue the research and see it as having a transcendant value.

(iv) On a related note, doing a PhD for 4-7 years and then being unable to find a job in academia is not the worst possible outcome. The difficulties start in the case you do find a temporary job or postdoc. I have seen cases where people shuttle between one short term job and then another, only to eventually see the jobs dry up at some point in their 40’s, at which point they are largely unemployable. If you finish the PhD, and you get a temporary job offer, now is a very good time to think long and hard, in the most cold blooded way possible, about your economic future.

(v) For students who want to work specifically with me, I ask that they make some effort to find out about my research area before hand. For instance, most of my papers can be found on line, and a certain amount of googling should give an idea of how my area fits in with other parts of mathematics.

(vi) I work in descriptive set theory, and all my past PhD students have been in this area, or at least on the edge of it. Although I am not necessarily completely opposed to taking on a student outside descriptive set theory, I am wary of it. Given the commitment invovled in pursuing graduate work, you probably want a recognized world expert as your advisor — without that there is certainly a lot less help in the technical support, but also there is the risk of spending a lot of time proving a result which the experts consider trivial or uninteresting. If I ever were to have a student who absolutely wanted to work with me (e.g. for geographical reasons) but not in descriptive set theory, then I would probably try to arrange a co-supervisor in the specialization.

(vii) In actually organizing a PhD student, I place a considerable emphasis on learning “basic” techniques. This usually takes 6-12 months, or longer. Kechris’ “Classical Descriptive Set Theory” contains most of the basic techniques in bold faced descriptive set theory — and I usually try to get students to read the first 18 chapters. Then depending a bit on the orientation of the student, spend some time learning effective techniques (e.g. I learnt effective descriptive set theory from the relevant chapters in Jech, and still consider this a fairly concise source). There is a circle of ideas involving low level lightfaced sets, admissible structures, and infinitary logic — there are no source books here which do the job exactly, but it is something I usually try to get my students to learn since it provides such a valuable calculative too. It is often helpful to learn some of the basics of recursion theory. Higher set theory, such as forcing, is another valuable part of the arsenal — though it usually takes a bit longer than the other material. At some point it makes sense to start exploring possible research topics, and I prefer to do this as a process of collaboration between student and advisor. Maybe start reading through some topical papers, come to a sense of what is most interesting personally.

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[Event “Commonwealth Ch”]
[Site “Hong Kong”]
[Date “1984”]
[Round “”]
[White “Hjorth Greg”]
[Black “Spraggett Kevin (CAN)”]
[Result “0-1”]
[Eco “A48”]
[Annotator “”]
[Source “”]

1. Nf3 Nf6 2. d4 g6 3. Bg5 Bg7 4. Nbd2 d5 5. Bxf6 Bxf6 6. e4 O-O 7. exd5 Qxd5
8. Bc4 Qa5 9. Qe2 c5 10. O-O-O cxd4 11. Ne4 Bg7 12. Nxd4 Qb6 13. c3 Nc6 14.
Nxc6 Qxc6 15. Ng5 Qc7 16. h4 Bf5 17. Bd3 Rac8 18. Bxf5 Qf4+ 19. Kb1 Qxf5+ 20.
Qd3 Qa5 21. Rhe1 h6 22. Nf3 e6 23. Qe4 Qb6 24. Qe3 Rc5 25. Rd3 Qa6 26. Red1
Ra5 27. a3 Qb5 28. Ka1 Qb3 29. Nd4 Qa4 30. Nf3 Bxc3 31. Kb1 Rb5 32. R1d2 Bxd2
33. Rxd2 Rc8 34. Ne5 Rbc5 35. Rd4 Qc2+ 36. Ka2 Rb5 37. Nd3 Rc3 38. Rd8+ Kh7
39. Qd4 Rxa3+ 40. Kxa3 Qb3# 0-1

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CFC ARTICLE 1309

Just when we think it can not get any worse, we are proven wrong.  In the past 3 years the CFC has been virtually gutted like a pig on a farm.  What was once a fledging $250,000 a year book and equipment business went belly up and was sold for something less than $1,000.  The CFC office in Ottawa was sold for less than what it was worth 6 months before. The CFC members’ magazine was discontinued and its immediate replacement (an e-zine) never saw light of day.  Membership numbers have dropped and the long announced membership-drive has not even been initiated.  The CFC website’s homepage has not been updated in months, and what was once an excellent example for other federations to follow has been allowed to disintegrate thru neglect and worse.

More bad news this week for chess fans in Canada.  CFC president Bob Gillanders wrote in the CFC news-letter ”“We received a registered letter [from CRA] just before Christmas telling us that our tax status as a charity has now been annulled.”