Extra Ball

August 5, 2022 by mccreadyandchess

Ok, so we are on track and it’s full steam ahead. We’ve agreed that since chess and pinball are virtually identical let’s take more features from pinball and put them into chess. We’ve said all chess boards must now be electronic, table-based and themed. They must have ramps, flippers, bumpers and flashing lights, this we’ve agreed is the new future of chess. We’ve got multiball into the game but what about ‘extra ball’. You know that extra ball you get when you’ve used your three balls up. I’ve got it, when you’ve had three pawns captured you get an extra one but we’ll call it extra ball instead of extra pawn. But normally you have to lite up the extra ball feature in pinball so what we could do in chess is lite up extra ball by positioning the pawns and pieces carefully on their squares by using J’adoube tactics. When they are all positioned perfectly, then the extra ball feature can be lit. So that’s multiball and extra ball in. We are getting there. I know of two people who are going to pump £50 million into this, so it’s looking good. It’s estimated it will bring over 2 billion pinball players into chess and will be a big hit with the kids. It’s a win win situation as it stands.

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Was it a dream?

August 5, 2022 by mccreadyandchess

Early this morning I was drifting off and suddenly had images of chess clubs deep in the Soviet Union where players sit around tables. Then in bursts a bear and mauls a 1. d4 player. It got me thinking.

In modern day Russia, there must be clubs in the countryside where players are mauled by bears more than others but which one is the worst? Is it just 1. d4 players they go for, are they more likely to maul someone playing with the black or white pieces.

Bears aside, which animal attacks chess players the most? Are any famous incidents regarding them?

My money is on dogs being the worst but they are not mentioned in the FIDE rule book, so I don’t know. Do you get extra minutes on clock if you are attacked by an animal during a competitive game…what about insects? Is there a definitive guide listing the animal or insect and the time increments granted for these unwarranted attacks.

FIDE makes chess players feel unsafe. There is no code of conduct regarding creature habits and fending them off. Something should be done about this. For example:

Wasp 25 second increment

Vulture 30 second increment

Sealion 35 second increment

Leopard 2 minute increment

Hippo 5 minute increment

Something like that to get the ball rolling, what do you think? Should I contact FIDE about this? I might not get a reply. It’s just a thought and maybe it was just a dream after all. To some this is all just fantasy, to me it’s humour. No matter what, it’s my life.

Mark. J. McCready

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It’s our job to get multiball into chess

August 5, 2022 by mccreadyandchess

Chess must be changed. It’s got to have multiball in like in Pinball. What we could do is make chess sets all electronic with a themed table, then when the multiball feature kicks in, just have balls fired across the chess board. They don’t become part of the game itself, they just jazz it up. Have a few steel balls flying around, make it look more attractive. It would attract a lot of kids to chess if we could.

It’s got to be done.

That could be adapted into the resemblance of a chess board

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The introduction of multi-ball has got me thinking

August 5, 2022 by mccreadyandchess

This morning I read that in the premiership they will introduce ‘multi-ball’ this season, which is 10 balls placed around the pitch. When the ball goes out of play, they can quickly replace it with another held by a ball boy and speed up the game. Initially I thought they were referring to the pinball version of multi-ball where you get three or sometimes five balls on the table at the same time, which would indeed make football a lot more interesting if they implemented that one.

Then it got me thinking, what can chess take from pinball and implement? We could use ramps and build them into the chessboard. Pinball tables always have ramps on them. We could have bumpers around the side of the board, and put lights on them to make it look more flashy. We can implement the ‘extra ball’. If we lost a pawn three times, we get an extra one at the end of the game. Not extra ball all lit up but extra pawn instead! And chess boards could be fitted with a tilt function, so that if anyone moves the board lights start flashing and everything goes into lock down, making it impossible to play. The great thing is that chess and pinball are almost identical to one another, so there probably are more options available. One last question, should we make all chess boards electronic and in need of highly trained mechanics to fix them if they go wrong down the pub?

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Oh so noctural

August 4, 2022 by mccreadyandchess

There is a rule of thumb in play, do you know what it is? Most likely not so I shall tell you. It is: I do not write when there’s daylight, I only write when it’s dark and everyone is asleep. I have said in a previous post that neglecting parental duties isn’t acceptable and so here we are at 6am. The sun isn’t up yet and yesterday was relatively chess free.

Somehow I want to say I am suffering but I’m not neither am I in pain. Somehow I want to reflect on misadventure in Laos but I can’t let myself do that. It’s undignifying for a start, and didn’t we have enough of that last night and haven’t we heard enough about Laos of late? This morning my mood is clearer, I’m not sombre or saddened by anything at all and it just so happens that I put a little masterpiece on here before this post.

Admittedly, I have said something is slightly wrong and here we are again. I am talking to someone but I don’t know who and I cannot tell if they listen or not. Is this just loneliness I wonder? I’m not feeling it or anything else right now except contentment but I am a loner and maybe I do it more than I realise. It’s strange to say the least because I do not write to be read.

I think I shall lie down and just look into the gloom. My child is beside me. I am so attached to her woe betide any fool who tries harming her. I will lie down and remain alert in the gloom. It’s unclear to me what my purpose is here. Yes I love to write and of late I have conflated my abilities. I was doing this last month and once more, with intense scrutiny I do sense loneliness, and with it the loss of interlocutors.

I will lie down and remain clear-minded. All is okay.

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An act of kindness

August 4, 2022 by mccreadyandchess

It’s fair to say that from the very first to the 500,000th time I nearly had a heart attack at the chess board I wasn’t too bothered about it but there were times between the 500,000 to the 1,000,000 mark where I was. Nobody wants medical emergencies at the chess board but even in the current Olympiad we had one, in which an act of kindness helped save the day.

Medical emergency during the 2022 Chess Olympiad R3 and the generous act of the opponent

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2 versus 1

August 4, 2022 by mccreadyandchess

The greatest tragedy of chess in the context of the modern game is that not enough women play it. Not enough by far in fact and until the balance is readdressed globally, there will always be work to be done on that. When women do play chess, it isn’t very often you see them playing whilst heavily pregnant, so here is a rather touching video of the current Olympiad where that clearly is the case -must be tough to do!

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But it’s always human error?

August 4, 2022 by mccreadyandchess

Having photographed more than enough international chess tournaments and worked behind the scenes with senior Arbiters when doing so, the point made in the video below I find rather strange. So an arbiter made a mistake? What is so unusual here, it goes on all the time. But because it involved the Norway team, the prestige of result was elevated and it drew attention even though such mistakes are made more frequently than what is suggested here. I don’t see why Svidler is so surprised tbh.

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With modernity stereotypes are easily displaced

August 4, 2022 by mccreadyandchess

These days it’s a crime in all first world countries to allow your offline life to remain dominant over your online life, and carries a jail sentence of variable lengths ranging from half a minute to a few days…well so it seems.

It is, of course, the rest day of the 2022 Chess Olympiad in Chennai. You might wonder what chess players do on their day off. Stay in their room and read books? Go for a walk in a park somewhere? Maybe even go for a coffee and chat chess with fellow players? The public perception of chess players isn’t, on the whole, positive. We aren’t renowned for being the most exciting bunch on the planet and are often thought of as bookish and boring.

Well, I have linked below a video or two of the Bermuda Party, the central feature of the rest day, and it does a pretty good job of breaking down certain perceptions of what chess players might do on a day off. Like most, if not all, they party!

If I may be allowed to bring my warped sense of humour into the post, I’ve watched both videos and can confirm there were no punch ups on the dance floors. No knuckledusters seen! No one was bottled or baseball batted and no one was hit by flying pints, flying chairs and flying tables! Just thought I’d let you know! Do take note of how young the audience is. Most non chess players would find all this rather surprising methinks when in fact it’s all quite normal.

Mark. J. McCready 11.10pm August 4th

BKK

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Something very slight is going wrong

August 4, 2022 by mccreadyandchess

Preferably, today won’t be like yesterday and just total chess. At some point I am going to take a closer look at some very recent posts. I don’t know who I am talking to in them, and that is not right at all. You don’t need to be able to define your audience but developing a voice matters, and when that voice is pitching a message to unknown characters, something is definitely wrong.

It would appear I shall have to pull back and take a look at what is going on here because if the purpose for writing remains unidentifiable what are you writing for in the first place?

Just perhaps I have become too self-indulgent and need to give it a break. refocus and stop trying to make everything humorous. I think we can safely say overkill is rapidly approaching.

That aside, I very subtly pick up on a sense of loneliness in play…I am trying to talk to someone but who?

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