Mass lockdowns and "The Queen's Gambit" have brought unexpected gains for chess during the coronavirus, Indian grandmaster Vishwanathan Anand told AFP, praising the hit TV show's "accurate portrayal" of the game.
Anand, who spent three months stranded in Germany waiting for a flight back to India, said chess has enjoyed a surprise boom during the pandemic, with millions more people playing and following games online.
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It has been helped by the runaway success of "The Queen's Gambit", which follows the rise of a troubled chess genius -- based on America's Bobby Fischer -- and has set new viewing records for Netflix.
"People sitting at home seem to have discovered the game of chess," Anand, a five-time world champion, said in a phone interview from his home in Chennai.
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"There are now 13 million people playing online. And then during the pandemic there was also a Netflix show about chess, 'The Queen's Gambit', and that is also a bit spectacular."
While many sports have suffered during the pandemic, chess has thrived. Online platform Chess.com last month said it had added 2.5 million new members since the release of "The Queen's Gambit".
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"Just like other sports have TV audiences, our audiences are principally online. So all that happened was that the chess players moved online to join the spectators," said Anand, 50.
"That's not to say there were no adjustments to be made. It was quite complicated and there was a learning curve, but yes chess has done very well."
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- 'Federer, Maradona in your room' -
Anand, acclaimed as the greatest player India has produced, said technology had brought about deep changes for chess, with the internet now providing the platform to take it to a mass audience.
"Almost anyone, even someone who doesn't know the rules of chess can follow online," said Anand. "A spectator-friendly experience is being created."
Anand won his first world title aged 30 in 2000, three years after super-computer Deep Blue's epochal defeat of Russian world champion Garry Kasparov.
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"I was the crossover generation. I was 17 when the first chess database came along. I have pretty much worked with computers from that time onwards till today," said Anand.
"I think computers have changed the way you study the game. Every person no matter how weak, how isolated, has the world's strongest chess player sitting in the room with them always willing to answer any question.
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"Think of it, you have a Roger Federer and Diego Maradona in your room and saying, 'Ask and I will give you any answer'. That's been the impact of chess computers."
Anand enjoyed great rivalries with the likes of Kasparov, Russian grandmaster Vladimir Kramnik and Soviet-born Israeli Boris Gelfand.
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He said there are still muscular showdowns such as Magnus Carlsen against Fabiano Caruana -- the current leading players -- and tipped teenage sensation Alireza Firouzja, who was born in Iran but plays for France, for future stardom.
- 'You need that tension' -
He said Russian domination is increasingly being challenged, with Ding Liren and Wang Hao leading a wave of Chinese players and Caruana at the forefront of a growing US onslaught.
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"China may have peaked recently in terms of having two really strong players stand out but they have had considerable depth for a while," said Anand.
"And the other thing is that they are very good in chess Olympiads, so they play well as a team. So we aren't surprised by good Chinese results any more."
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Anand, who became a grandmaster at 18 and remains in the world top 20, was playing in a chess league in Germany when most international travel came to a halt in February.
He kept himself busy following his favourite football team Real Madrid, doing commentaries and leading India in the Online Nations Cup before finally returning home in May.
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But despite the advances in technology, he said it was impossible to replicate the tension and atmosphere of a live game.
"If you want to play, you need that sense of being sitting there in the hall feeling that tension," he said.
"All those things, I think I need to remember again. It has been a very, very long break.
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"We never had the world grind to a halt like this."
Cyberpunk 2077, a video game reported to be one of the most expensive ever made, launched worldwide on Thursday after a publicity blitz worthy of a Hollywood film.
The run-up to the debut has been anything but smooth.
The release has been delayed twice this year and the developers were forced to add warnings after one reviewer complained it had caused an epileptic seizure.
But entertainment rating website Metacritic has given the game a score of 91 out of 100 based on 47 reviews, saying it has received "universal acclaim".
Reviewers said the game was deeply immersive and praised its portrayal of a futuristic cyber city, as well as the freedom given to players.
But many reviewers also pointed to bugs in the game, reigniting a debate about developers selling an unfinished product at full price.
Marcin Iwinski, director and co-founder of the game's Polish developers CD Projekt RED, told AFP that gamers could expect a "new quality" of experience when they enter its dystopian world.
Iwinski said the studio had created an "immense" online world. The English language version has 450 hours of dialogue voiced by 125 actors.
The main character of Cyberpunk 2077 is the gun-toting "V", who makes his way through Night City -- a conflict-ridden American megacity.
The game also features the face and voice of Hollywood star Keanu Reeves, best known for the "Matrix" trilogy and "John Wick".
- 'An imaginable reality' -
The budget for the game is estimated at 1.2 billion zloty ($328 million), according to analysts at Polish bank BOS, which would make Cyberpunk 2077 one of the most expensive video games ever made.
CD Projekt RED's hugely successful "The Witcher: Wild Hunt" was a sombre fantasy whose monster-slaying hero endowed with superhuman powers was a product of the imagination of Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski.
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It was launched in 2015 and is still much loved by gamers for its storyline, dialogue, graphics and humour, as well as the openness of its world.
"The Witcher" propelled CD Projekt RED's stock value to a whopping 42.7 billion zloty, ($11.6 billion), allowing it to vie with France's Ubisoft for top spot among European gaming developers.
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CD Projekt RED is betting that the punk fantasy world of Cyberpunk -- the popular pen-and-paper role-playing game written by Mike Pondsmith -- will be an even greater hit.
The marketing campaign featuring yellow posters with "V" reached 55 countries and media reports estimated its budget ran into the tens of millions of euros.
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"We are an innovative company and it is not in our DNA to take shortcuts," said Iwinski.
He pointed in particular to the widespread use of futuristic cyberware in the game, calling it "an imaginable reality" before adding: "We'll see if it turns out like that".
SpaceX test flight of ‘Starship’ prototype ends in fiery crash
SpaceX launched its shiny, bullet-shaped, straight-out-of-science fiction Starship several miles into the air from a remote corner of Texas on Wednesday, but the 6 ½-minute test flight ended in an explosive fireball at touchdown.
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It was the highest and most elaborate flight yet for the rocketship that Elon Musk says could carry people to Mars in as little as six years. Despite the catastrophic finale, he was thrilled.
“Mars, here we come!!” he tweeted.
Mars, here we come!!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2020
This latest prototype — the first one equipped with a nose cone, body flaps and three engines — was shooting for an altitude of up to eight miles (12.5 kilometers). That’s almost 100 times higher than previous hops and skimming the stratosphere.
Starship seemed to hit the mark or at least come close. There was no immediate word from SpaceX on how high it went.
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The full-scale, stainless steel model — 160 feet (50 meters) tall and 30 feet (9 meters) in diameter — soared out over the Gulf of Mexico. After about five minutes, it flipped sideways as planned and descended in a free-fall back to the southeastern tip of Texas near the Mexican border. The Raptor engines reignited for braking and the rocket tilted back upright. When it touched down, however, the rocketship became engulfed in flames and ruptured, parts scattering.
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The entire flight — as dramatic and flashy as it gets, even by SpaceX standards — lasted six minutes and 42 seconds. SpaceX broadcast the sunset demo live on its website; repeated delays over the past week and a last-second engine abort Tuesday heightened the excitement among space fans.
Musk called it a “successful ascent” and said the body flaps precisely guided the rocket to the landing point. The fuel tank pressure was low, however, when the engines reignited for touchdown, which caused Starship to come down too fast.
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“But we got all the data we needed!” he tweeted.
Musk had kept expectations low, cautioning earlier this week there was “probably” 1-in-3 chance of complete success.
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who founded the Blue Origin rocket company, offered swift congratulations.
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“Anybody who knows how hard this stuff is is impressed by today’s Starship test.”
Two lower, shorter SpaceX test flights earlier this year from Boca Chica, Texas — a quiet coastal village before SpaceX moved in — used more rudimentary versions of Starship. Essentially cylindrical cans and single Raptor engines, these early vehicles reached altitudes of 490 feet (150 meters). An even earlier model, the short and squat Starhopper, made a tiny tethered hop in 2019, followed by two increasingly higher climbs.
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Wednesday’s test followed SpaceX’s latest space station supply run for NASA by three days, and the private company’s second astronaut flight by less than a month from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center.
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Starship is actually the upper stage of Musk’s envisioned moon- and Mars-ships. It will launch atop a mega booster still in development known as the Super Heavy. The entire vehicle will tower 394 feet (120 meters) — 31 feet (9.4 meters) taller than NASA’s Saturn V rocket that hurled men to the moon a half-century ago.
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SpaceX intends to use Starship to put massive satellites into orbit around Earth, besides delivering people and cargo to the moon and Mars. Earlier this year, SpaceX was one of three prime contractors chosen by NASA to develop lunar landers capable of getting astronauts on the moon by 2024.
Right before Wednesday’s launch, NASA announced the 18 U.S. astronauts who will train for the Artemis moon-landing program.
While accepting an award in Berlin last week, Musk said he’s “highly confident” of a human flight to Mars in six years — “if we get lucky, maybe four years.” But Musk is the first to admit his timelines can be overly optimistic.
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Saudi Arabia is pushing for a compromise to end a damaging three-year Gulf dispute, but a full resolution remains out of reach despite its offer of concessions, sources close to the negotiations say.
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Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan told AFP last week that the kingdom and its allies Bahrain, Egypt and the UAE -- who imposed a blockade on Qatar in June 2017 -- were "on board" to resolve the crisis, with an agreement expected soon.
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The potential thaw comes as Gulf states position themselves for the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, who will welcome the resolution of a row which has undercut US efforts to rein in arch-enemy Iran.
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The blockading countries accused Doha of being too close to Tehran and funding radical Islamist movements -- charges it staunchly denies.
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They originally presented Qatar with a list of 13 demands including shutting down Al Jazeera, a popular regional broadcaster which has rankled Gulf rulers with its high-decibel criticism, and downgrading links with their rivals Turkey and Iran.
Doha flatly turned them down. And after a bitter standoff, the Saudi-led bloc is willing to substantially water down their demands in the final deal, sources familiar with the negotiations say.
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A figure close to the Saudi government indicated the kingdom was ready to make concessions by reopening its airspace to Qatari aircraft -- saving them from fuel-guzzling detours -- if Doha stops funding its political opponents and restrains its media.
"Saudi is pushing (for) it -- and Saudi holds the key card which is its airspace for Qatar," the source told AFP.
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The impasse snapped transport links, separated families, and cost billions of dollars in lost trade and investment, damage which the Gulf economies can ill afford as they try to power out of the coronavirus slump.
On Tuesday, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates officially threw their support behind efforts to heal the rift. But the Saudi source said the UAE, a staunch rival of Qatar, had been resistant.
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"Emirati anger cannot be allowed to keep this fire burning... (It's) time to put this issue to bed."
- 'Limited scope' -
Another Gulf-based source close to the negotiations told AFP that the Saudi-driven process could result in a peace of sorts but not fully resolve the underlying issues.
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The final deal will likely be a joint document setting out the terms, they said, possibly a reformatted version of the 2014 Riyadh agreement between Qatar and Gulf states -- a secret pact believed to promote non-interference in each other's affairs.
According to a Western diplomat in the Gulf, mediators from Kuwait are pushing to get the three main leaders on board -- Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Qatar's ruler Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani.
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"Those three men will have to agree," the diplomat told AFP, adding that despite the Emirates' resistance, Abu Dhabi's leader was "closely involved" in the process.
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"We're looking at a possible interim solution within a few weeks... I don't think anyone expects a complete resolution. Everyone will be looking at how warmly the communique is worded."
Doha-based diplomats cited a senior Qatari official as saying that the final deal had been "agreed in principle" but was "limited in scope".
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The official, they said, suggested Saudi Arabia was unwilling to announce the deal before the end of Trump's term, possibly to strike a positive tone with Biden who has pledged a tough stance towards Riyadh over its human rights failings.
The US is keen to lift the air embargo which has prompted Qatar to use Iran's airspace, contributing to the approximately $133 million that Iranian media says Tehran receives annually for overflights, undermining US efforts to squeeze it economically.
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- 'Existential' differences -
There are already signs that media in both Saudi Arabia and Qatar have begun softening their shrill rhetoric.
Writing this week in the pro-government Okaz daily, which typically lambasts Qatar, Saudi columnist Tariq al-Homayed hailed the "optimistic" mood and called for "unity and cohesion" in the Gulf.
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But the real bellwether will be the level of Qatari representation at an upcoming Gulf Cooperation Council summit expected before the end of the year. The attendance of Qatar's emir would signal a rapprochement is well underway.
The Saudi-led blockade was designed to choke Qatar and force it to align with Gulf interests, but it only propelled a self-sufficiency drive, and pushed the deep-pocketed emirate closer to Iran and Turkey, observers say.
In an embarrassment for Riyadh in July, a UN court ruled in favour of Qatar over the airspace dispute.
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Despite Riyadh's de-escalatory stance, mistrust between both sides runs deep, with Homayed warning the "differences are fundamental and existential, and do not end only with a handshake".
"It will take a lot of time and sustained effort by all parties to rebuild ties," said Kristian Ulrichsen, a fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute in the United States.
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"Any agreement will be the start of a longer process of reconciliation rather than an endpoint or a return to a pre-2017 status quo ante."
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