Tuesday Coffee
Tuesday Coffee, Chess and Potpourri
Good day, Tuesday! Have you had your coffee ‘fix’ today? According to the British Coffee Association, we drink more than 2 billion cups of coffee each day, making it easily the most consumed beverage in the world.
That is really a LOT of coffee when you think about it! And a lot of people. Imagine what could happen if we were to unite the coffee community and make its voice heard.
That is exactly what happened on March 1 when a smartphone app called Coffunity was launched. Its tagline is ‘drink better coffee’!
For now Coffunity only seeks to help coffee drinkers share favourite coffees, restaurants and insights. But the sky is the limit! Remember how the ‘green movement’ got started?
FIDE has been pretty quiet recently…
After the raucous of last February initiated by Prof.Dr. Adrian Siegel one would have expected the current FIDE leadership (minus Kirsan) to follow up with something concrete to put on the table. Afterall, this year is an election year in our beloved FIDE.
Indeed there were expectations at the end of last week since the FIDE leadership held a meeting in Abu Dhabi and it had been speculated that a rich arab sheik might appear as a candidate for the FIDE presidency later in September. But, alas, the expectations did not pan out:
So who is FIDE and Makropoulis going to back in the upcoming election? As I have written numerous times here on this blog, Azmai and Makro are not interested. Kasparov is out of the question. My favourite would be the French Kouatly (and he would make an excellent president, in my opinion) but he does not want to risk losing should Kirsan stay in the race.
So who?
Our good Danailov, former trainer for Topalov and disgraced former ECU president, seems to be the only one willing to forward names. This is the first time that I heard Malcolm’s name for the post.
A gentleman of impeccable reputation, I would think that Malcolm Pein would be an unlikely candidate for the top FIDE spot. If only because Malcolm is too clean and honest an individual. But who knows…stranger things have already happened. The big question is this: would Malcolm be willing to take his white gloves off and wrestle with the other pigs?
Aron Kaptsan RIP
Januray 19, 1929 to February 17, 2018
Sad news for the Winnipeg chess community. Aron, originally born in Odessa, Ukraine, was a vibrant force in Winnipeg chess ever since emigrating to Canada from Latvia in 1982. I first met Aron in the Canadian Zonal held in Winnipeg in 1986, and I can not remember a single time that he did not participate in any tournament that I played in since in Winnipeg! Aron was a tough competitor and a perfect gentleman.
You can read Aron’s obituary HERE. My most sincere condolences to his children and grandchildren (Aron outlived everyone else).
Siegel-gate revisisted
Following the massive confusion and misunderstanding created by Prof. Dr. Adrian Siegel’s February 12 letter, already painstakenly explained here on this blog last week, Reuters decided to correct its February 14 story.
On March 6, Reuters re-printed the story but with several important changes:
‘An earlier version of this story was corrected to make clear that the U.S. Department of Treasury did not state that Ilyumzhinov had helped the Syrian government buy oil from Islamic State. The U.S. agency said it sanctioned Ilyumzhinov in 2015 for materially assisting and acting for or on behalf of the Government of Syria and the Central Bank of Syria’
It is fitting that Reuters published this correction, but unfortunately did not go far enough in clearing up the misunderstanding. Reuters still maintained in the story that the UBS bankaccount held by FIDE would be ‘frozen’. Had Prof. Dr. Adrian Siegel mentioned ‘Section 18’ in his original letter of February 12, as UBS carefully and painstakenly explained to FIDE, then even this misunderstanding could have been avoided.
Once more, it is important to be clear when explaining details. Something that Siegel was not.