The coronavirus, and its effect on chess

My plans were fixed: I was invited to the Grenke Chess Open & Classic, where many good friends would be playing (Magnus, Vishy, Fabiano, Maxime, Levon, Alexei, Vincent). I had enjoyed it tremendously last year and planned to stay longer this time. Then it was cancelled. Then a wonderful Summer Nostos Festival 2020 in June in Athens, at which I was billed to do a section (as were Garry Kasparov and Judit Polgar), was also cancelled. In mid-June we have Dortmund 2020, which I also love to attend. They are still hanging on, but I have faint hope that it will happen. And hard and fast the cancellations are coming, top tournaments, leagues and opens.

The last major event (of this year?) is the eight-player Candidates tournament that determines who will challenge Magnus Carlsen for the title of World Chess Champion. The picture shows what it was like getting there — that's Anish Giri at an airport on his way to Yekaterinburg in Russia.

The World Senior Team Championship in Prague, from March 5-15, was terminated after seven rounds. The US Chess Championship has been cancelled, and there is little hope that any major event will take place in the next months. ChessBase India is keeping track of popular tournaments, worldwide, that will not be happening.

All of this, as you doubtlessly know, is due to the coronavirus Covid-19 epidemic which has swept round the world, bringing society and commerce to a standstill. Here are some facts you need to know — and some advice you would do well to heed.

The lockout — what it looks like out there

A lockdown is an emergency protocol that is implemented by government authorities and prevents people from leaving their homes. "Shelter in place" is another way of telling people they must seek safety in their places of residence (and not community or emergency shelters). This, and social distancing — avoiding groups of ten, five or even three people — is currently being adopted all over the world. All movie theatres, pubs, sporting events, barber shops, etc. are closed. Only food outlets and pharmacies remain open and accessible. In Italy the lockdown is total; in New York it will soon be, as far as I can tell.

Working from home

In Germany all schools are closed, and home schooling is part of the daily agenda. The schools are sending daily lessons by email to the students. Incidentally, grandson Enders (above right) is writing a Journal of the Corona Year. It's supposed to emulate something Daniel Defoe did for Yersenia pestis in the 17^th Century.

The staff in the ChessBase office is down to five people — the others can all work without much difficulty from their homes. Each of the five who come to the office have their own rooms and will, hopefully, come through this unscathed. I want to advise our customers to opt for the download versions of our products. It is very easy and convenient, and there is absolutely no delay in delivery. People are moving more comprehensively than ever onto the Internet. It's a good time to join them.

Master Class Vol.2: Mihail Tal

On this DVD Dorian Rogozenco, Mihail Marin, Oliver Reeh and Karsten Müller present the 8. World Chess Champion in video lessons: his openings, his understanding of chess strategy, his artful endgame play, and finally his immortal combinations.

From Cornwall to Rio

From our colleagues we are getting pictures of empty cities, town squares and beaches.

John Nunn, who is currently in Cornwall, sent us this picture of a popular beach

This is what Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, can look like in normal times

This is a picture Fat Fritz author, Albert Silver, took from his flat on the beach highway, yesterday

Ken in California say he finds it difficult to keep six feet away from prople when there is nobody to keep away from. Friend Ashwin, who works for Intel Bangalore, writes: “India is on a complete lockdown. Guideline is that no one steps out of the houses, apart from few exceptional roles/situations. No public transportation within or inter-city, no flights, no commercial establishments open, schools shutdown since ~10 days now, police on the road etc.). Across the entire country for 21 days starting today!” — I remind you: India has 1.3 billion people!

The Spread

This is graphic (by Dr Siouxsie Wiles) illustrates how the coronavirus can spread if left unchecked, and what happens if social distancing is applied.

Illustration of how to curtail the infeaction spread

It is clear that isolation and working from home is an effective weapon against the coronavirus.

Naturally every scientist, or institution involved in any kind of medical research, has dropped everything to look for the ideal solution: medical relief for the symptoms of the disease, and a vaccination that will prevent it from infecting people and spreading in the first place.

It is a trillion-dollar search.

Outbreak

Kevin Simler has posted quite a remarkable page, which provides playable simulations of a disease outbreak. "Playable" means you'll get to tweak parameters (like transmission and mortality rates) and watch how the epidemic unfolds.

On the left is a screen shot (click or tap to enlarge) of the "Full Model" that is located at the end of Kevin's article. It lets you set the parameters like incubation, symptoms, self-quarantine rate, strictness, encounters per day, hospiral capacity, fatality rate, and then displays the running results (red dots = infected, grey = recovered, black = dead).

I advise you to spend quality time running this simulation. It is highly informative and greatly improves your understanding of the spread.

Especially interesting is to try and find parameters that will most effectively stop the virus from spreading, and bring the outbreak to a halt. I spent an hour working on this. You should try as well — and let us know which (realistic) settings work best. Do it at:

Outbreak by Kevin Simler March 16, 2020

Deep Mind

I consulted Demis Hassabis, whom I have known since the 1990s. Demis is the founder of DeepMind, the company that built AlphaZero. Currently they are using their AI software technology to calculate the folding of proteins. My simple question was: "Demis, isn't there anything DeepMind could do about Covid-19?" His reply: "Yes, we are doing everything we can. Did you see this?" — and sent me to a site which describes their work:

Computational predictions of protein structures associated with COVID-19

The scientific community has galvanised in response to the recent COVID-19 outbreak, building on decades of basic research characterising this virus family. Labs at the forefront of the outbreak response shared genomes of the virus in open access databases, which enabled researchers to rapidly develop tests for this novel pathogen. Other labs have shared experimentally-determined and computationally-predicted structures of some of the viral proteins, and still others have shared epidemiological data. We hope to contribute to the scientific effort using the latest version of our AlphaFold system by releasing structure predictions of several under-studied proteins associated with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. We emphasise that these structure predictions have not been experimentally verified, but hope they may contribute to the scientific community’s interrogation of how the virus functions...

Chapeau! Read the full DeepMind article...

Irina diagnosed with Covid-19

Irina Krush is an old and treasured friend, whom I have known since her mid-teens. We were recently in contact regarding her Grandmaster Chess School, whose mission is to help young chess players achieve their full potential by learning from top players and each other. Suddenly our correspondence was interrupted — she untypically stopped replying to my emails. 

Irina Krush with students

I was slightly alarmed, and justifiably so. The reason for her silence became plain to me when I read a post on her Facebook page, of which I give you a few excerpts:

“Last Wed night, March 11th, I started to feel a little bit under the weather. By Friday night I lost my sense of smell completely [a known symptom – Ed.]. I could not smell the cup of coffee right in front of my nose. On Monday evening, I felt a shortness of breath, a symptom I’ve never experienced before. On Tuesday morning, I had an internet lesson. I just couldn’t talk without taking extra pauses to breathe.

I went to CityMD right after my lesson. When they saw I had no temperature, that my chest X ray was clear and there were no signs of pneumonia, the doctor visibly relaxed (since it didn’t look like I had coronavirus). She had no explanation for the shortness of breath, though, and suggested a CT scan at the ER to check for blood clots. The CT scan showed “early coronavirus” and pneumonia in both lungs. I was also given the actual test, which only came back today [March 20] (positive). I spent a couple days in the hospital, I guess mostly under observation as there wasn’t much that needed to be done for me…they did test my blood for oxygenation and found it was fine. So now I am home…taking the hydroxychloroquine tablets.

I thought I’d share this as I know the trajectory of my illness was not completely typical, and it can help some of you get tested/treated/go into quarantine earlier. And it absolutely made me see the importance of staying home and doing your part to slow the spread of this. Wish you all to stay healthy!”

You can read Irina's full text on her page

Anand trapped — in Germany

Five times World Champion Viswanathan Anand came to Germany in late Febuary, to play in the Bundesliga, and found himself trapped in his flat in Frankfurt, unable to return home. Let Vishy tell us the details: 

Master Class Vol. 12: Viswanathan Anand

This DVD allows you to learn from the example of one of the best players in the history of chess and from the explanations of the authors how to successfully organise your games strategically, and how to keep your opponent permanently under pressure.

Flightradar24

This is a global flight tracking service that provides you with real-time information about thousands of aircraft around the world. Flightradar24 tracks 180,000+ flights from 1,200+ airlines, flying to or from 4,000+ airports around the world, in real time. You can keep checking and see how the number of flights decreases, and make any travel arrangements you might be contemplating accordingly.

www.flightradar24.com

Vitamin D3

This is valuable advice I got from a highly respected (and conscientious) expert: Take Vitamin D3! I am following his advice and have passed it on to friends and colleagues, who are passing it on to others. Snowball effect.

Vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol) is responsible for increasing the absorption of calcium, magnesium, and phosphate. It has many other biological effects — like reducing the body's ACE2 enzyme. All Coronaviruses, including Covid-19, attach to the ACE2 enzyme in human cells. Researcher have been trying prevent or alleviate Covid-19 infections with massive doses of Vitamin D3. They advocate increasing the D3 levels in your blood to over 50. The natural source for Vitamin D is sunlight on your skin. In winter in northern latitudes, with heavy clothing, this is a tad hard to come by. On the specific advice of my expert I am taking a large dosage of D3 — and augmenting this with capsules that contain Vitamin C, Quercetin, Zinc, each of which improves immune systems. But of course: you should consult your doctor before taking any medical supplements.

If you want to know the scientific background of what I am saying watch this video lecture by highly qualified Ivor Cummins. It is long and technical, but very convincing in its conclusions.

Positive feeling and humour

One other piece of advice from the experts that I adhere to is keeping your spirits up. In this global crisis there is certainly reason to be scared, and depressing news keeps coming hard and fast. This exacerbates your ability to cope. "Lower your stress," says the New York Times.

"Worries about the coronavirus, the stock market and the general disruption of life have added to our stress levels. We know that stress also can make you more susceptible to respiratory illness – and other injuries as well. Did you know that marital or partner conflict is especially taxing to the immune system? In a series of studies, researchers at the Ohio State University inflicted small wounds on the arms of volunteers, and then asked the couples to discuss topics both pleasant and stressful. When couples argued, their wounds took, on average, a full day longer to heal than after the sessions in which the couples discussed something pleasant. Among couples who exhibited especially high levels of hostility, the wounds took two days longer to heal." Source: New York Times.

So, in summary: you should react more calmly to the crisis than this!

Keeping calm and cheerful is what I am trying to do, and receiving daily assistance from my good friend Vladimir Kramnik, who shares my opinion, Vlady is similarly in lockdown with his family in his flat in Geneva. He never fails to send me (and probably other friends), once a day, some snippet of information or a cartoon that makes me smile, and lift my spirits. I want to share a small sample with you.

The fresco painting by Italian artist Michelangelo, appropriately modified

This is how you may have pictured yourself during an Apocalypse — and this is reality today

Protection? There is a world-wide obscession to stock up on — toilet paper, of all things!

Hey mum, when is this corona thing gonna be over?
Just shut up and eat your toilet paper.

A video Kramnik sent me: Fred Klett: Women Know Things That Men Don't — genuinely funny nine minutes on YouTube. Thanks, Vladimir, for helping us keep our spirits up!

Links

• The Candidates and Corona in tweets
• Superbugs — the biggest threat to mankind