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Kramnik, t-shirts, Christmas

So, how ’bout that Kramnik blunder? The world champion, famous for careful, flawless play, lost a game Monday in the latest batch of Man vs. Machine matches. He got checkmated in one move with a blunder that, to someone on that level, is similar to forgetting which way bishops move. I wanna see them put Judit Polgar against Deep Fritz so we can have a Woman vs. Machine match for once.

Speaking of womens’ chess, here’s a gallery I stumbled on recently. Alexandra Kosteniuk is the #3 woman in the world and promotes chess as a model. I follow womens’ chess in part because it’s a nice break from the nerdy-guy stereotype and in part because the more I watch it the more I notice gender barriers and subtle biases and the like. There’s a lot that can be said about gender, and it’s not a subject I want to jump into without a lot of free time and maybe a stiff drink, but that’ll have to wait for another day. Kudos to Judit, as always, for refusing to play in womens-only events (for a while, her sister Susan was the womens’ world champion, and their third sister sister Sofia is no slouch either). They’re like the Williams sisters of chess.

I’m really more of an armchair chess player myself. I mean, an armchair without a chess board. I don’t really have the patience and the competitive tension gets to me. But I find the people who play it really interesting and I’ve been having fun learning more about them over the years.

There’s a new t-shirt in the store. It’s based on Comic #55 and will start shipping by next Wednesday. The deadline for Christmas orders is Wednesday, December 13th, but supplies are limited and we may run out of stock in a particular size so order now and so forth!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 29th, 2006 at 2:43 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

21 Responses to “Kramnik, t-shirts, Christmas”

  1. melydia Says:
    November 29th, 2006 at 2:58 pm

    That’s one of my favorite comics of yours, but I’m not sure I would wear it as a t-shirt. Any plans for posters or calendars someday?

  2. starshine_diva Says:
    November 29th, 2006 at 3:24 pm

    I would totally buy it as a poster.

  3. Kaoru Says:
    November 29th, 2006 at 3:27 pm

    I’m wearing my “Maybe if this T-shirt is whitty enough somebody will finally love me” T-shirt today… I find it really splits people into two camps, those who don’t get it and look kinda awkward after reading it, and those who do get it and laugh. :)

  4. Chris Says:
    November 29th, 2006 at 3:32 pm

    It was even more incredible to hear that the audio commentators didn’t realise he’d made a blunder either. :)

    I used to play a lot of chess, but these days I play Go instead. It is much awesomer. (Not least because it’s much harder to lose an entire game through a single bad move..)

    - C.

  5. Mark Says:
    November 30th, 2006 at 12:46 am

    hmm, why the change in the last equation?

  6. Claire Says:
    December 2nd, 2006 at 12:22 am

    Chris, Go rocks. So simple, and yet so difficult.

  7. Mark Says:
    December 3rd, 2006 at 12:04 am

    In reply to the other Mark, looks like he’s switched to a Lagrangian for some reason?

  8. Mike B. Says:
    December 3rd, 2006 at 2:55 am

    Wow. I have that comic saved to my desktop, because it’s one of my favorites. I just now happened to open it, was and thinking it’d be a really cool one to make a shirt out of. And then I thought “you know, haven’t checked the xkcd blog in a while”, and ended up here. You, sir, are a true precog.

    Though now that melydia mentioned it, I agree that I’d be more apt to buy it as a poster.

  9. Raymond Francis Says:
    December 4th, 2006 at 2:43 pm

    Marks, he’s using a Laplace Transform instead. It may just be because it’s more popular than the Fourier. Everybody who does frequency analysis uses Fourier, but everyody who does engineering, physical science, or really just mid-level undergraduate calculus has probably seen the Laplace.

  10. Mark Says:
    December 4th, 2006 at 10:54 pm

    Raymond,

    D’oh! you’re right. I had been doing some heavy reading in mechanics recently, that’s why I had the cursive L for Lagrangian on my mind. Compariing the original and the new, I see your point clearly. :-) Thanks!

    BTW, don’t know if anybody else saw Sean Carroll’s comment to Jen of when she knew she was in love with him - seeing the Pacific ocean, he says “Wouldn’t it be fascinating to take a Fourier transform of those waves?”

    see - http://twistedphysics.typepad.com/cocktail_party_physics/2006/11/otherwise_engag.html

  11. theneb Says:
    December 11th, 2006 at 10:36 am

    Most Excellent Tshirt!
    I’m currently taking a module on differential equations including Fourier Series and Laplace Transforms, I don’t think they’d let me wear this tshirt in the exam.

    The big question though is with the matrices if Heart Matrix = Matrix Heart?

  12. GKaushik Says:
    January 19th, 2007 at 12:10 pm

    cool t-shirt. i would like it more as a poster though. in response to theneb: that matrix is the identity, so it would only apply to the heart in order to make it a matrix and not just a number. so yeah, matrix heart = heart matrix.

  13. Matt Says:
    March 11th, 2007 at 3:56 am

    If someday you’d like to learn a bit more about chess, there is a great program called Chessmaster that I think you’d really love.

    It allows you not only to play chess with a huge number of computer opponents of every conceivable difficulty, but it also has a large library of lessons that you can go through. They start with basic fundamental ideas (capture towards the center, trade when you are up in material) and can take you through rather complex strategies. These lessons are annotated by, for the most part, either Josh Waitzkin or Bruce Pandolfini. Waitzkin is a young guy, in his 20’s or 30’s. If you’ve ever seen the movie “Searching for Bobby Fischer,” Waitzkin is the young boy that movie focuses on. Pandolfini was Waitzkin’s mentor for most of his career.

    The best part, in my opinion, are the annotated games by Waitzkin. He verbally takes you through a number of his games that he believes show certain themes. There’s a large portion he entitles “The Psychology of Chess” where he analyzes a number of games where the mental state the players were in had a huge influence. If you want to get an inside look at the psyche of high level chess players, Chessmaster is the way to go.

    Ubi Soft, the creators of Chessmaster, have released ten versions to date. The latest one, Version 10, I haven’t used but doesn’t appear to be quite the same. I would suggest getting Chessmaster 9000, the second most recent version. I own it and love it. It can be found on Amazon.com for only $10. Really a great investment.

  14. Phill Says:
    May 3rd, 2007 at 1:15 pm

    Sigh.

    You know what’s really, really sad?
    The first thing through my mind was still, “Ooh, she’s pretty.” Which, to be shallow, I suppose gives you another reason to follow women’s chess.
    http://www.kosteniuk.com/albums/sashaalmiraxmas05/pictures/img_1374b.html

    This raised some annoying conflict for me:
    On the one hand, why do I want presumably highly intelligent women NOT to wear revealing/shapely dresses and NOT to have to be sexualised? Is that too not an act of sexism, by having a clear divide of “stupid, sexy” and “smart, plain”? On the other hand, isn’t it always undue pressure on any girls to have this “be pretty” constant expectation on top of being a Chess Grandmaster Vice Champion?

    That stiff drink is a good recommendation.

  15. Aristotle Pagaltzis Says:
    May 3rd, 2007 at 9:14 pm

    Phill: I say let the women dress however the hell they want to. Isn’t that the point of not harbouring prejudices? That gender, beauty and intellect are disjoint criteria and should be treated as such?

    Now, with regard to that specific picture, what do you think: would male chess champions dress sloppily for such a photo?

  16. Bean Says:
    December 10th, 2007 at 9:28 am

    Man, I’m getting caught up on the blag, and just read through that chess game…. Now I’m *headdesk*ing (still, after ten minutes) in sheer amazement that he didn’t see that!

  17. Andy S. Says:
    December 11th, 2007 at 2:25 pm

    It’s an odious t-shirt. as for me, i would never wear such a strange thing. As for Kramnik, i say he is a genius chess player of all times!

  18. Captain Shite Says:
    July 6th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
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  20. video Says:
    November 8th, 2008 at 1:21 pm

    I was playing around with the audio feature.

    And instead of saying “I am” it says “I A-M”.

    It made me giggle.

  21. yalvac Says:
    November 14th, 2008 at 5:54 pm

    thanks

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