Greetings from up North!

(Lifestyles Magazine Founder Gabriel Erem and Oscar Winner Michael Douglas)

Greetings from Canada! I arrived in Toronto for the special 40th anniversary bash of Lifestyles Magazine and to help with the 2016 Toronto World Chess Olympiad bid.

With over 140 nations taking part, this is an outstanding opportunity to advertise both Toronto and Canada to the world. The multicultural make-up of Toronto makes this city the perfect host.

As an intermediate step, we also aim to host the Commonwealth Chess Championship and the Pan-American Chess Championship. Various World Chess Championship are also available for bidding, such as the World Youth Chess Championships and the World Chess Championship itself.

This is an excellent opportunity to market Canadian products and services to countries around the world. The event will also be of interest to Canadian and global firms interested in reaching Canadian customers. (http://www.canadianchess.info)

Chess is like life in one sense

Lennox Lewis receives honorary degree at Laurier convocation

• By Jeff Hicks, Record staff
• Fri Oct 28 2011

WATERLOO — Landon Lewis took the ceremonial tam from his dad Lennox and plunked it on his head.

The purple hat looked like a large heliotrope umbrella on a seven-year-old’s noggin. On dad? The same tam looked like a small, wide-brimmed skull cap on the 46-year-old Kitchener-grown behemoth of boxing.

Everyone laughed in the corridor of the Waterloo Memorial Recreation Complex as Pomp and Circumstance began to play on Friday afternoon.

“This is the reason I’m bringing him to this kind of event,” said Lennox Lewis, before the last great heavyweight boxing champ the world may ever know received an honorary doctor of laws degree at the fall convocation of Wilfrid Laurier University.

“So he can actually see his father accepting his honorary degree and see him in a different light than in the ring.”

Lewis is seven-years retired from the world of boxing now.

He escaped with his dignity and his priorities after winning all that there was to win, including an Olympic gold medal for Canada in 1988.

Now, the British-born Lewis is rich beyond the dreams that he held competing in football, basketball, track and wrestling at Cameron Heights high school.

It’s not that he’s worth an estimated $150-million or that he lives in Miami and Jamaica.

His true wealth rests in his family.

Remember when once-fearsome foe Mike Tyson threatened to eat the champ’s children before being demolished in the ring by Lewis?

Tyson better have an appetite.

Lewis, a kid who grew up without a dad, expects to be a father of four come Christmas.

His wife Violet, a former Jamaican beauty queen, is expecting. Their daughters, Ling and Leya, are five and two respectively.

“I love the fact I have time for my kids,” said Lewis, who was mentored as a teen by his Kitchener trainer, the late Arnie Boehm. “They have such young minds. And they depend on their father and mother for information. I’m glad to be there for them.”

Landon held hands with his grandma Violet Blake, who had purple streaks in her hair, as the procession worked its way into the main arena, where 1,150 Laurier students were up for graduation on Friday.

Laurier’s new chancellor Michael Lee-Chin, a wealthy philanthropist like Lewis, gave a purple-robed Lewis his doctorate. Lewis later introduced his mom, son and niece to the crowd. Lewis, who used to play basketball with the Laurier hoopsters as a teen, wants his kids to graduate from university one day.

“They’re excelling already,” he said. “My son is very intuitive, inquisitive. At his age, he’s learning to play chess. Me and him play chess as many times as possible.”

Boxing was the sweet science to Lewis. He was a thinking-man’s heavyweight who could outsmart opponents as well as knock them out.

His ascension to becoming the last in a long line of boxing monarchs has been one long chess game. Lots of thinking between moves. Lots of strategy between bouts.

“Chess is like life in one sense,” he said. “You make a move in life, you have to make sure it’s the right move. You have to make sure you are protected and it has to be a positive move.”

Do something positive and give back, Lewis told the new graduates.

His boy Landon listened intently too.

“Education and knowledge are the tools,” Lewis said.

This was a much different ring where fists could not talk. Lewis looked comfortable in it.

His mom still had a front-row seat.

“I’m glad she’s had the opportunity to come here,” he said.

“And see her son in such a great light.”

Source: http://www.therecord.com

I want him to be a grandmaster

Windsor's budding chess star, 8, going to world championships
By Dalson Chen, The Windsor Star
October 28, 2011 9:44 PM

WINDSOR, Ont. -- Eight-year-old Forest Glade resident Rohan Talukdar usually has trouble keeping still — except when he’s in front of a chess board.

A local and provincial champion in his age group, Rohan predicts that his upcoming match at the World Youth Chess Championship will be his longest ever: more than six hours.

“Chess is a mind game,” says the Grade 3 student. “It makes you get more focused. I feel happy when I play.”

Matches four to five hours in length are his norm.

Next month, Rohan will travel with his parents to Caldas Novas, Brazil, where he will represent Canada against chess players from around the world.

Rohan qualified for the event by taking first place in city, county and Ontario tournaments.

This summer, he took third place among national competitors at the Canadian Youth Chess Championship.

Rohan’s father, Mridushyam Talukdar, can barely contain his pride in his son’s accomplishments.

“I want him to be a grandmaster,” says Talukdar.

But it’s not just about winning trophies. “Because of chess, he can concentrate more,” says Talukdar, an engineer. “For his studies, it is helping very much. Concentration. Mind control.”

“Sometimes it’s pressure, but he wants to go forward,” Talukdar adds. “He enjoys it. Even if he loses, he’ll say ‘OK, I’ll win next time. It’s a game.’ He is like a sportsman.”

Chess runs in Rohan’s family. He learned the game from his mother, Mayuri, a pharmacy technician who was herself a champion chess player in her birthplace of Assam, India.

The Talukdars came to Windsor in 1999, and Rohan was born here in 2003.

Talukdar says Mayuri would cradle the infant Rohan in her arms while playing chess online, and he would become transfixed by the pieces moving on the screen.

By preschool, Rohan had learned the rules of the game and was playing against his mother.

Talukdar says that after a few years, no one in the family could offer Rohan a challenge.

These days, Rohan practises by playing against a computer program — set at its highest level.

“I beat it, like, all the time,” Rohan says.

Despite his skill, Rohan considers himself only a “medium level” player and points out that there are “many people” with stronger games.

“I’m a very quick attacker,” he adds.

His favourite openings are the King’s Indian (when he’s playing black) and the English (when he’s playing white).

The upcoming international tournament will undoubtedly be a higher-stress environment than any of Rohan’s previous competitive experiences. But he’s not feeling too nervous.

“It’s not my life, chess. Everyone needs something else,” Rohan says. “It’s just going to be my hobby.”

The Forest Glade public school student plans on becoming a doctor.

Until then, traveling to Brazil will be expensive. The Talukdars are holding a fundraising dinner Sunday at 5 p.m. at the Serbian Centre, 6770 Tecumseh Rd. E.

All the tickets for the event have been sold, with 200 people expected to attend.

This year’s World Youth Chess Championship takes place Nov. 17 to 27.

Read more: http://www.windsorstar.com

Near Miss of Setting Canadian Simultaneous Blindfold Record

Near Miss of Setting Canadian Simultaneous Blindfold Record

Even though the world record for number of simultaneous blindfold games was achieved by Miguel Najdorf in 1947 when he played 45 opponents at once, in the past 50 years there have been fewer than ten players who have played 20 or more such games and no one (except for Flesch’s dubious exhibition in 1960: see pp. 99-110 of our book) has played more than 28. Although displays of 10-12 boards have been fairly common in recent years, chessmasters have turned to more regular forms of chess to make a reasonable living, rather than working as hard as is necessary to take on 30 or more opponents at once without sight of the board. From around 1850-1940 you were often not considered a major target for money-making displays unless you could give simultaneous blindfold exhibitions. Now the proliferation of weekend tourneys with large prizes, internet chess, chess writing and teaching, and one-on-one blindfold tourneys have taken central stage for chess professionals. However, recently there has been an increased interest in blindfold chess as an educational device and small blindfold displays and tournaments are becoming more and more popular, as our book relates.

One of the players who falls into the select group of those who have played more than 20 opponents without sight of the boards in the past half-century, and the last one to accomplish that feat, is Hans Jung (left) of Ontario, Canada. He is now a FIDE Master (FM) and has been the official chess coordinator for the city of Kitchener since 2002 (is there any other city, in North America or elsewhere, that has established such an appointment?)

Canada is one country that has continued to maintain a strong interest in blindfold chess. But one big, rather sad story involves Jung’s attempt to set the Canadian record for total number of simultaneous blindfold opponents (see p.124 of our book for even more information). By playing 26 at once in 1993, he attempted to beat what he thought was the Canadian record of 25 games, set by Leo Williams in 1982. To his great surprise Jung soon afterwards discovered that Williams had exceeded his own record by playing 27 opponents in 1986.

So a few weeks after his 26-board display Jung arranged a 30-board display at a different mall in London, Ontario. Two hours after that exhibition began, a punk rock band began blasting out music for a CD promotion release at a nearby record store. Since very noisy surroundings make blindfold displays almost impossible to give, for the exhibitor as well as the players, it had to be stopped. Jung never again had the chance to surpass his 26-board performance and to exceed Williams’s 27. What a near-miss!

During his chess career Jung has given more than 100 blindfold exhibitions of at least 10 boards. Not many players in the history of blindfold chess can come close to that achievement. For our book we could not locate any of his game scores to publish, but at our request Jung recently supplied a few.

The following three games are dear to Jung’s heart, because they were played in his first display of more than 10 boards and also commemorated the reopening of the London, Ontario City Chess Club in his home town in 1984. He played 12 games at once and scored 10 wins, two draws, and no losses against opposition that included two experts, five Class A players, and 5 Class B players — quite strong opposition. He averaged just over 30 seconds per move, very fast for a blindfold player.

More here.