If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.
Policy / Politique
The fee for tournament organizers advertising on ChessTalk is $20/event or $100/yearly unlimited for the year.
Les frais d'inscription des organisateurs de tournoi sur ChessTalk sont de 20 $/événement ou de 100 $/année illimitée.
You can etransfer to Henry Lam at chesstalkforum at gmail dot com
Transfér à Henry Lam à chesstalkforum@gmail.com
Dark Knight / Le Chevalier Noir
General Guidelines
---- Nous avons besoin d'un traduction français!
Some Basics
1. Under Board "Frequently Asked Questions" (FAQs) there are 3 sections dealing with General Forum Usage, User Profile Features, and Reading and Posting Messages. These deal with everything from Avatars to Your Notifications. Most general technical questions are covered there. Here is a link to the FAQs. https://forum.chesstalk.com/help
2. Consider using the SEARCH button if you are looking for information. You may find your question has already been answered in a previous thread.
3. If you've looked for an answer to a question, and not found one, then you should consider asking your question in a new thread. For example, there have already been questions and discussion regarding: how to do chess diagrams (FENs); crosstables that line up properly; and the numerous little “glitches” that every new site will have.
4. Read pinned or sticky threads, like this one, if they look important. This applies especially to newcomers.
5. Read the thread you're posting in before you post. There are a variety of ways to look at a thread. These are covered under “Display Modes”.
6. Thread titles: please provide some details in your thread title. This is useful for a number of reasons. It helps ChessTalk members to quickly skim the threads. It prevents duplication of threads. And so on.
7. Unnecessary thread proliferation (e.g., deliberately creating a new thread that duplicates existing discussion) is discouraged. Look to see if a thread on your topic may have already been started and, if so, consider adding your contribution to the pre-existing thread. However, starting new threads to explore side-issues that are not relevant to the original subject is strongly encouraged. A single thread on the Canadian Open, with hundreds of posts on multiple sub-topics, is no better than a dozen threads on the Open covering only a few topics. Use your good judgment when starting a new thread.
8. If and/or when sub-forums are created, please make sure to create threads in the proper place.
Debate
9. Give an opinion and back it up with a reason. Throwaway comments such as "Game X pwnz because my friend and I think so!" could be considered pointless at best, and inflammatory at worst.
10. Try to give your own opinions, not simply those copied and pasted from reviews or opinions of your friends.
Unacceptable behavior and warnings
11. In registering here at ChessTalk please note that the same or similar rules apply here as applied at the previous Boardhost message board. In particular, the following content is not permitted to appear in any messages:
* Racism
* Hatred
* Harassment
* Adult content
* Obscene material
* Nudity or pornography
* Material that infringes intellectual property or other proprietary rights of any party
* Material the posting of which is tortious or violates a contractual or fiduciary obligation you or we owe to another party
* Piracy, hacking, viruses, worms, or warez
* Spam
* Any illegal content
* unapproved Commercial banner advertisements or revenue-generating links
* Any link to or any images from a site containing any material outlined in these restrictions
* Any material deemed offensive or inappropriate by the Board staff
12. Users are welcome to challenge other points of view and opinions, but should do so respectfully. Personal attacks on others will not be tolerated. Posts and threads with unacceptable content can be closed or deleted altogether. Furthermore, a range of sanctions are possible - from a simple warning to a temporary or even a permanent banning from ChessTalk.
Helping to Moderate
13. 'Report' links (an exclamation mark inside a triangle) can be found in many places throughout the board. These links allow users to alert the board staff to anything which is offensive, objectionable or illegal. Please consider using this feature if the need arises.
Advice for free
14. You should exercise the same caution with Private Messages as you would with any public posting.
Anyway, it related to matters of gold reserves by various states, and Ukraine is certainly in the news. It`s my understanding all that gold went to ... the US.
I don`t pretend to understand all the ins and outs of gold reserves, as Ed and Gary and others seem to, but there is another piece on the subject over here .
MacLeod seems to suggest a "schism in the world's dollar-based monetary order" as a result of "successful remonetisation of gold by a major power such as Russia". The author has a good historical sense of currency matters, which is already leap-years ahead of those who live in the United States of Forget, to use the late Gore Vidal's humorous and critical expression.
Meanwhile, in Ukraine, a stunning announcement by the head of Ukraine's central bank on primetime TV notes that almost ALL of Ukraine's gold is ... gone. "Vaporized", in the parlance of Jon Corzine.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f62_1417619984
"Gontareva is charged with abuse of power or misuse of office under Article 364 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.
The plaintiff is lawyer Rostyslav Kravets, the newspaper said. . He confirmed this information in his post on Facebook, saying that the decision was taken by the court at the third attempt, and in November 2014, the prosecutors declined to bring an action to meet his claim."
Whether they are trying to "corner the market" or not, there are calls for France, Switzerland and Germany to repatriate their gold reserves to national vaults. The Netherlands recently repatriated $5 Billion worth of gold from New York.
Meanwhile, in Ukraine, a stunning announcement by the head of Ukraine's central bank on primetime TV notes that almost ALL of Ukraine's gold is ... gone. "Vaporized", in the parlance of Jon Corzine.
"A Kyiv-based court has instructed Kyiv prosecutors to bring an action against National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) Governor Valeriya Gontareva on charges of abuse of power or misuse of office to obtain illegal profit, the Vesti newspaper reported on Tuesday."
"This decision was taken by Kyiv's Pechersk district court on December 1 after it had examined case No. 757/33660/14. It ordered the Kyiv prosecutor's office to launch an investigation and include it in the register of pre-trial investigations.".
Can anyone say, "failed state" ? Yikes.
Last edited by Nigel Hanrahan; Thursday, 4th December, 2014, 06:57 AM.
Reason: edit
For those who believe in environmental stuff, I guess with all those energy deals and pipelines the only thing which gets screwed is the environment. :p
I was reading today Russia has made a deal with Turkey on natural gas sales. Even though it's at a 6% price reduction. They generally pay more for natural gas than we do here in Canada....
Once you eliminate the spin and look at what is actually taking place it looks like a good deal for both Russia and Turkey.
Turkey is already one of Russia's largest customers as the biggest in the region after Germany. They didn't join the political sanctions against the Russians and now will make millions transporting gas. Too bad for Serbia, and some other countries, but it's understandable. The Bulgarian regime refused to give the go-ahead so the Russians were stuck with a pipeline that would end at the [Bulgarian] territorial limit in the Black Sea, going nowhere, at the cost of dozens of billions. The decision will cost Bulgaria about €400 million in lost transit fees.
As it stands, the pipeline will go to a hub at the Turkish-Greek border from whence they will be able to serve the entire south European market. Beware of Turks bearing gifts! ha ha.
This result may also slow the support for ISIS which, it is alleged, was getting support from the direction of the Turkish border. We are living in interesting times.
Last edited by Nigel Hanrahan; Tuesday, 2nd December, 2014, 02:40 PM.
I was reading today Russia has made a deal with Turkey on natural gas sales. Even though it's at a 6% price reduction. They generally pay more for natural gas than we do here in Canada.
It would have been expensive to build the pipeline they are scrapping.
In case you're wondering how they increase the amount of natural gas they will send through the existing pipeline, I'm assuming they will do that by increasing the pressure of the natural gas going through the pipeline allowing greater volumes. Likely the pressure is well below the pressure capacity at present. With natural gas and volumes Boyles Law and Charles Law of gases comes into play. Basically, if they can increase the pressure of the gas by say 200 PSIA it will add roughly 13 atmospheres to the the equation and the amount of natural gas shipped with be much greater. Turkey should be OK from that deal.
Once you eliminate the spin and look at what is actually taking place it looks like a good deal for both Russia and Turkey.
Although FIDE's monopoly is not absolute, no one will challenge it with something like an alternate federation because chess is seen in the investment world as something that can't be sold outside of its niche market of serious players.
That's good information to know. I'll keep it in mind. ;)
To try to corner the market on any non-essential commodity like gold is somewhat foolish and almost certain to result in ruin. For every commodity there are substitutes and alternatives. Hunt brothers and silver.
This seems to be indicating that FIDE is doomed. After all, organized chess could be looked at as a product, and a definitely non-essential one, and FIDE has 'cornered the market'. Given FIDE's unwillingness to update the product to reflect modern times and what is needed for growth (except to handle cheating, which itself is done in a way that actually hinders the product and makes it look even worse to outsiders), the product and its monopolizer could be in jeopardy.
Many entrepeneurial types (Andrew Paulsen, Maurice Ashley and Amy Lee, Rex Sinquefield) are trying to update the image of chess, but prettying it up won't do the trick. Their efforts are not in any way challenging FIDE's monopoly, and that is a critical mistake. It leads to no real changes.
Although FIDE's monopoly is not absolute, no one will challenge it with something like an alternate federation because chess is seen in the investment world as something that can't be sold outside of its niche market of serious players.
The overall result is that chess players, both casual and serious, are a very underserved market. Some of them do realize how bad they are served, but apparently there is a feeling of powerlessness. It will take an entrepeneuranial breakthrough in the form of a paradigm shift to more properly serve this market, and that shift will reap rewards for those leading the charge, as well as for the currently deprived market of players.
What will come is a new kind of chess to which standard chess afficionados, even those vast numbers of adults sitting on the sidelines of today's organized chess, will be drawn. With that will be an explosive growth in spectator appeal via use of elements that FIDE would think of as anathema.
And so, Vlad, your own statement above ("For every commodity there are substitutes and alternatives") should prove true even applied to organized chess and to FIDE and thus the CFC.
Nigel, what do you think of the way we have sacrificed Alberta's economy to apply sanctions on Russia?
I'm not a fan of Putin by any means, but he made a smart deal with China to deliver Natural Gas for 30 years after the sanctions started.
There are some comments in English-language Russian media about how the sanctions are harming those who are applying them, but most of such comments are related to the European countries, which Russia trades with a lot more than with Canada. The sanctions seem to violate WTO guidelines, so they are creating a disorganizing effect on international trade generally. Pepe Escobar, who writes for a Hong Kong Chinese paper, calls it "Empire of Chaos" for this and other reasons.
It's weird to see the Canadian government, led by an Alberta Conservative who's been such a uncritical cheerleader of the oil and gas industry, implement foreign policy that does harm to that industry. But then, Harper's pro-US political views maybe trumps his support for domestic industry.
It's clear with the recent OPEC meeting that the views of countries like Nigeria and Venezuela and Iran, which depend on a higher price of oil to break even, differ radically from the views of some of the Gulf States and the Saudis. Probably a higher price is better for those who want to see less dependence on the oil and gas industry for Canadian economic growth.
Anyway, political sanctions ought to be more widely agreed than these ones are to be effective. The Russian government has implemented counter-sanctions, especially relating to agricultural products from Europe, and it seems they are hurting the Europeans at least as much as the NATO-country sanctions are hurting the Russians.
I don't really agree with the reasoning behind them, in any case, as it seems to me that NATO expansion, and what the Russians are calling "the US playing chicken with Russia" , are the real reasons for the conflict in Ukraine, just as the Americans goaded Saakashvili in Georgia to attack South Ossetia and Abkhazia in August of 2008. The neo-cons, whose views Kasparov is a shill for, dominate US foreign policy and think of global affairs as a chess board (Brzezinski's idea) on which they can manipulate pieces and pawns at will. I don't believe they really care about Ukrainians, they just want a fight or war. Gives chess a bad name if you ask me. The beauty of chess is uglified by this unnecessary association with the shallow materialism and spiritual impoverishment of the neo-cons.
eta: the Russians have "pivoted" to Asia - and China in particular - and Obama has the short stick at this point. Lame duck city. The way the Chinese managed the US President at APEC was brilliant. The Chinese have always been masters at this sort of thing. Good on them. I think the neo-cons expected the same sort of venom in Chinese-Russian relations that characterizes their own relations and attitudes towards the rest of the planet, and, lo and behold, not everyone shares the same misanthropy of the neo-cons. May they choke on their own bile.
The world is changing, a unipolar world of a single Empire is unsustainable, and all sorts of unpredictable things are happening. I think we live in interesting times.
Last edited by Nigel Hanrahan; Friday, 28th November, 2014, 11:44 PM.
Reason: eta
Re: Gold repatriation, eg, Netherlands in the amount of 5 Billion or 122 tons
Nigel, what do you think of the way we have sacrificed Alberta's economy to apply sanctions on Russia?
I'm not a fan of Putin by any means, but he made a smart deal with China to deliver Natural Gas for 30 years after the sanctions started. Most energy uses for oil can be filled with natural gas at a lower price so the full demand for oil may never come back. Which translates to lower oil prices over an extended period.
In North America they will work through the glut by less drilling and exploration.
I wonder if it will become more economical for high rise buildings and industry, many of which can burn oil or natural gas, to switch from the cleaner burning natural gas to oil. All you really need for that is Bunker C (or number 6) oil. A thick oil.
Gold repatriation, eg, Netherlands in the amount of 5 Billion or 122 tons
Whether they are trying to "corner the market" or not, there are calls for France, Switzerland and Germany to repatriate their gold reserves to national vaults. The Netherlands recently repatriated $5 Billion worth of gold from New York.
To try to corner the market on any non-essential commodity like gold is somewhat foolish and almost certain to result in ruin. For every commodity there are substitutes and alternatives. Hunt brothers and silver.
I figure the only way gold gets to $15,000 per troy oz in the next 25 years is if the U.S. has to exchange One New Dollar for Every Twenty Old Dollars. Like if people need to take a wheel barrel full of money to buy a loaf of bread.
Khazin takes the view that the global dominance of the US currency will be replaced by what he is calling regional currencies. Others suggest a basket of alternative currencies. ETA: As you probably know, since the institutional establishment at Bretton Woods after WW2 of creating global financial institutions such as the IMF, World Bank, WTO, and the US dollar dominance, the US has had their way financially. But nothing lasts forever. We see through Chinese efforts generally, the recent establishment of a Development Bank outside of IMF dictat through BRICS, Russian steps of solidifying their sovereignty in the face of anti-WTO sanctions by NATO-member states, and other steps of this seemingly inexorable global trend. In any case, if I am reading him (and others) correctly, this process has already begun on a smaller scale. A massive de-valuation of the US dollar at some point during this transition isn't beyond the realm of the possible.
Last edited by Nigel Hanrahan; Thursday, 27th November, 2014, 09:04 PM.
Reason: more info
Today this “fork” (in current dollars) is seen somewhere at the level of $ 4,500 - $ 15,000 per Troy ounce.
That from your quote.
I figure the only way gold gets to $15,000 per troy oz in the next 25 years is if the U.S. has to exchange One New Dollar for Every Twenty Old Dollars. Like if people need to take a wheel barrel full of money to buy a loaf of bread.
Leave a comment: