Tuesday Coffee

Tuesday Coffee

Good morning, Tuesday  Wait! You don’t need to say it: I know that today is the last Tuesday of this month!  ‘Where does the time go?’ you are asking…Not sure how to answer that…but if you live everyday to the fullest then we can not complain, correct? In any case, have a good one today. You deserve it!

Giving up coffee just to see what happens…

Ever wonder what it would be like to just stop drinking coffee for a short period of time?  I am not really sure why I would want to, but the thought has crossed my mind. This article by Stephane provides insight into a serious effort to give up coffee for a 10 day period. You need to read it!

Apart from the initial shock to the system, loss of productivity as well as a clear search for a substitute were noted…reading this article has convinced me not to ever try it!

Carlsen wins record setting 6th title in Holland!

Magnus Carlsen won the 80th edition of the prestigious Tata Steel Chess Tournament in Wijk aan Zee, the Netherlands, on Sunday. Congrats! This year’s event saw as many as half a dozen participants changing the role of leader, but in the end Carlsen’s toughness and bulldog spirit pulled it thru.

Generally I find myself unable to remember any particular game of Carlsen from any of his many tournament wins. Rarely does anything spectacular take place in his games, probably because Carlsen’s style can be best described as pedantic. Effective, yes ofcourse, but not spectator-friendly. Tata Steel 2018 did not break this mold. The following is a small selection of Carlsen’s best games from Tata.

Coffee, politics and the cancer scare

As reported in September (2017) here on this blog, while the World Health Organization has recently taken coffee off the list of products that might cause cancer, our favourite drink is still not out of the woods yet!  All because of a naturally occurring substance called acrylamide that is produced when ever you roast or brown something.

In my blog article last September I compared the pro’s and con’s of the debate. Personally, I think the whole issue is ridiculous, hijacked by interest groups with nothing better to do. 

However, in California this kind of stuff is taken seriously. Land of the greatest gold rush ever of yester-year, and where today weed now blows in the wind and grows freely. Big coffee, it seems, has less friends than what would have be en expected. In coming weeks a single judge will decide once and for all. (Don’t hold your breath!) Read the whole story HERE.

Gibraltar TradeWise chess to fall victim of its own success?

I think it might just be a question of time before the #Me Too movement takes a good close look at what Nigel Short and Brian Callaghan have been trying to institutionalize in Gibraltar these past 16 years.

Battle of the Sexes ?!? Isn’t that a throwback erotic fantasy from the 1960’s and the time of Hugh Hefner? It may very well be, but the local business community in Gibraltar is lining up to get a piece of the action. Sex sells.  That is the bottom line. And the message of Gibraltar chess’ success…

The message: poor women chess players of course  LOVE rich chess organizers who have no teeth.

Yesterday on one of my favourite chess blogs, ‘Lost on Time’ editor Justin Horton carried a story about how Callaghan has promoted women’s chess. I suggest to take a look at it. Justin ends the blog writing:

”But it’s tacky, sexist, unnecessary and embarrassing. Darts is doing better. Couldn’t chess? Could we really not think about being a little more grown-up?”

GibChess caught with it’s pants down ?

Readers will no doubt remember the scandal in 2017 in the Gibraltar tournament when Hou Yifan resigned her last round game in protest over what she felt were gender-biased pairings.

The story quickly swept across the globe, racking up millions of YouTube views. The story was picked up by virtually every major news outlet in the world. Hundreds and hundreds of newspapers carried it. In the 12 months since, the Gibraltar organizers have DELETED the original video covering this insightful episode, and now news reports from Chess24, ChessBase and many others that embedded the YouTube video have embarrassing holes in their pages!

It is difficult to understand the motivation behind the Gibraltar organizers, as the video that I refer to got more views than ALL of the YouTube videos together ever produced by the organizers. And then some. Let the reader decide:

LINK to espn article

LINK to South China Morning Post article

LINK to The Telegraph article