Lifestyle FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2016 Norwegian grandmaster adds sex appeal to

This file photo shows Ukrainian-born Russian chess grandmaster Sergey Cuban children learn to play chess at the Latin American Superior Institute of Chess (ISLA). Karjakin (left) and Norwegian State-subsidized, black-and-white pam- women. The country’s current chess star is grandmaster phlets for aficionados sell here for less than 1 Leinier Dominguez, who is ranked number 17 US cent, with information on chess history, in the world-the only Latin American in the pose after the players and tactics. Chess even stars on state- top 100 of the World Chess Federation (FIDE) Chess controlled television in Cuba, which broad- rankings. Dominguez, 33, is the best Cuban tournament in casts lessons and programs on the history of player to come along since the legendary Jose . the game. The director of ISLA, Danilo Buela, Raul Capablanca, who was world champion —AFP photos is one TV teacher. from 1921 to 1927. He remembers being dis- He beams when he talks about Cuba’s covered at school by talent scouts. “That has orwegian world chess champion Magnus Westerner to hold the world title since chess successes. “Cuba has trained 43 grand- always been an advantage in Cuba with Carlsen is hoping to prove that “smart is America’s Fischer in 1975. Carlsen quickly masters. There are other countries that have respect to other countries: the program to Nthe new sexy”, as he prepares to defend became a ruffled-looking regular of the chess more, but they don’t have a population of just bring chess to the masses,” he told AFP. “You his title against Russia’s Sergei Karyakin. circuit, his shirt untucked and at times yawning 11 million inhabitants,” he said. realize that people in the street know a lot Interest in chess in the Nordic country has sky- and stretching during games, while reading Nine of those grandmasters have been about chess.” — AFP rocketed since the photogenic 25-year-old Donald Duck to relax between playing sessions. international grandmaster took the game’s He also won the Chess Oscars, awarded by global throne in 2013. International chess mas- Russian chess magazine 64 to the world’s best ter Atle Gronn described enthusiasm among player, for four consecutive years from 2009 to Norwegians for the game as “completely crazy”. 2012. A fashion model in his spare time, Carlsen “Chess is associated with intelligence, or a made it to the Time magazine list of the 100 narrower activity. Thanks to Magnus Carlsen, it most influential people in the world in 2013. has gained a popular image as well,” Gronn told AFP. “He has a style that appeals very broadly, Bigger than football which also girls and women in the population In 2013, Carlsen’s long-held dream came true Cuban children find interesting,” he added. Carlsen faces when he dethroned his Indian rival Viswanathan learn to play Karyakin in New York from November 11-30, in a Anand as world champion. During the chess chess at the Latin 600,000-euro ($660,000) match some are hyp- world championship that year, there were more American ing as a clash between East and West that internet searches about the game than for foot- Superior Institute echoes the Cold War. ball, according to the Norwegian chess federa- of Chess (ISLA). tion, while Norwegian media reported that Oslo Cold War parallels The showdown has drawn parallels with the 1972 world championship match between American grandmaster Bobby Fischer and Chess: An ancient game Soviet star Boris Spassky as it comes during another surge in tensions: this time over Ukraine and Syria. Carlsen has his homeland which goes back to India right behind him as the world championship will be broadcast primetime on Norwegian he ancestor of the game of chess is ing rules with their own codes. Even national television, while numerous books have believed to date back to India in the though they had the same origins, the early been published on him and on the game. A Tsixth century. However, in the ancient Indian, Chinese and Japanese games had Norwegian documentary about Carlsen will also Orient, from China to Egypt, several similar nothing in common with Western chess. be released in New York movie theatres on games representing a combat between From 1200 Western books on chess began November 18, as the competition heats up. But pawns on a kind of draught board also exist- to appear, including, towards 1315, “The he wasn’t always so popular: Carlsen has told of This file photo shows Norwegian world chess ed. Legend has it India exported the ancient moralized game of chess” by Italian how he was bullied by other students in the champion Magnus Carlsen posing with his form of chess to Persia, giving King Dominican Jacques de Cessoles. Towards ninth grade at school. “I am in one sense an favorite chess piece (a bishop) in Paris. Chosroes Anushirvan a game that was the end of the Middle Ages and the begin- outcast because I am very different from the invented just for him: the game of “four ning of the Renaissance, the “new” game of rest of the class,” he said at the time. “It is diffi- shops had sold out of chessboards. Since kings”, or “chaturanga”. As Arabs conquered chess emerged, the queen and the bishop cult to be cool when I play chess.” Carlsen took the throne in 2013, the federation Persia, they discovered then fell in love with adopting their current positions, with the reported a 36 percent jump in the number of the game. The first technical books on chess queen becoming the most powerful piece Child prodigy members. were written in Arabic, and the caliphs of and the game becoming quicker. Introduced to chess by his father, Carlsen Kristoffer Gressli, head of marketing and com- Baghdad hosted the best players. Since the 17th century the game of showed off his photographic memory as a tod- munications at the federation, called it the Chess then spread as Arabs established chess has not gone through any major dler. At the age of two, the self-taught prodigy “Magnus effect”. “The entire Norwegian popula- their influence in newly conquered territo- modifications, apart from the addition of knew by heart all the car brands and later mem- tion in three years has gone from being chess ry. In the West, the game reached North the chess clock and, in 1850, the modifica- orized the long list of all Norway’s municipali- novices to knowing all the chess rules,” Gressli Africa and the Mediterranean. It took hold tion of the style of the chess pieces. It is ties, with their flags and administrative centers. told AFP. When Carlsen defended the title in the new province of Al-Andalus, now cur- called the “Staunton” style, after the English He played in his first tournament at the age of against Anand in a reprise game in 2014, some rent-day Andalusia, southern Spain. champion Nigel Staunton. eight and burst onto the chess scene in 2004, at 2.76 million people in Norway-population five Universities the Moors established there In the undisputed style for chess tourna- the age of 13, when “The Mozart of Chess” was million-tuned in to watch on public broadcaster taught Islamic culture, which included ments, the pieces are made of ebony, box- born, according to the Washington Post at the NRK, giving it higher ratings than cycling’s Tour chess. The game of strategy reached the wood or ivory, weighted down with lead time. That was the year Carlsen first defeated de France. The federation now aims to offer a Christian West in the late 10th century-and and the underneath covered with felt. It former world champion Anatoli Karpov, and free introduction to chess to all schools in the even earlier in China and Japan. Trade also was only with the creation of the World pushed legendary chess champion Garry country. But shaping a future generation of tal- brought it to Scandinavian and Russian Chess Federation (FIDE) and its 1929 con- Kasparov to a draw in March. He became a ent is one thing and giving birth to a new super- peoples by the end of the 11th century. gress in Venice that the first official interna- grandmaster the following month. star is a more complex move. “I don’t think that Over the centuries the game has been tional regulations governing the game of Kasparov described Carlsen as a Harry Norway will have a new Magnus Carlsen,” Geir profoundly modified, each society develop- chess were created. — AFP Potter-type “super talent” long before the Nesheim, the general secretary of the federation, Norwegian superstar became the first told AFP. “He is so special.” — AFP