Monday 7 May 2007

Random News

I had hoped to do some blogging about the Oceania Zonal, but the website is a little slow in updating. If news comes through from Fiji I'll try and post something.
Instead I decided to trawl through various chess news from around the world. There have been a couple of big events held/about to start in the shape of the Aronian-Kramnik match and the Mtel Masters, but some other items struck me.
The Hindu is reporting that 7 year old Harshal Sahi has become the countries youngest FIDE rated player. I'm not sure whether this is a credit to the Indian chess scene or an indictment on the FIDE ratings system, so I'll let you decide. Full article is here.
A small article in the Wall Street Journal titled
Chess Teaches Kids Skills, But Not the Ones Claimed looks interesting. It addresses the claims that chess is a shortcut to becoming smarter, and looks at it with a skeptical eye.
And in somewhat minor news, Gary Kasparov has been named as one of Time magazines 100 most influential people for the year. While this list also includes Hillary Clinton and comedian Sascha Baron Cohen (in the guise of Borat), at least he doesn't have to share the honour with George W. Bush, whose influence didn't even extend to the editors of Time.


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