Girls and Youth Power!!!
Welcome back!
This time we will discuss about prejudices of contemporary society on women and the new generations. We will dismantle the prejudice by showing instead how they have always been the pillar of society. It will be nice to see together how many young people and how many women are giving prestige to the world and chess.
It will be a very long article, but exciting.
Before starting it is time to introduce myself.
Enjoy the reading
DocSimooo
TABLE OF CONTENTS
GIRL AND YOUTH POWER TO THE TEST OF FACTS
Hi everyone!
It's time to introduce myself! My name is Simone Mori, I live in Italy, Cavalese, a small Mountain village, really loved by tourists. 
She is Stefania. We've been engaged for six years.
No children in mind. I didn't feel ready. Then Stefania got me on the ropes.
So I finally changed my mind. I was ready to have a son...
...and a baby girl was born 😄
Newborn
Today
Her name is Ludovica Miki and, needless to say, it's an INFINITE LOVE!!!!!
Now, in the case of other children, I only want daughters.
I am a doctor, dividing my time between the Emergency Room, the Medicine Department, the Cardiology and Diabetes Clinic of the city.
In my spare time these are my favorite activities, besides chess.
That's me
Campanil Basso - Brenta group of Dolomites - Rhaetian Alps
Grostè - Brenta group - Gran Paradiso - Graian Alps and Monte Rosa - Pennine Alps
In the background the Cimon della Pala - Pale di San Martino group (my preferred peak and my only solo ascent with a half rope)
It was 2018-2019, just before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Activities that can be done at a young age, right? But the real young people, those who will inherit our beautiful planet Earth, are them!
Nowaday adults have many prejudices about young people.
They think that they have no values, that they are mostly spoiled and overprotected by their parents, with a little desire to commit and work and only looking for futilities and immediate pleasures.
They attribute the spread of violence, bullying and the success of trap music to this.
FALSE!!! FALSE!!! FALSE!!!
Today's society was built by us and the task of educating the new generations is ours.
It is probably true that social gaps (the world is full of them) create frustration and anger, emotions that are difficult to manage constructively, but these are short-sighted generalizations and the reality is much more complex and nuanced.
The role of adults is, first of all, to lead by example, then to advise and guide those who are younger.
And, above all, we have to trust young people. Not 50%, but 100% !!!
The keyword is TRUST.
Not only young people, but also women deserve social redemption.
Human society has always been patriarchal.
Men have always had easier access to political leadership and moral authority. Religions, some more than others, have sealed this status quo.
It’s interesting to mention an ancient cult of the Incas and other Andean populations (of odiern Peru). They worshipped Mother Earth (PACHAMAMA), the great goddess of agricolture and fertility. The curanderos are shamanic healers consulted still today by the local population. Well, it seems that the most powerful curanderos are women.
There is a beautiful book by the Peruvian writer Hernan Huarache Mamani on the amazing process of awareness achieved by a young woman, Kantu, thanks to her deep spirit of research.
She began a wonderful journey to face and overcome love pains.
Looking for a mentor she slowly learned to look inside and know herself until she finally discovered her inner power, a strength that does not seek clash. Finally confident and in peace, she became a teacher of life and love, where Love is dedication, experience and knowledge.
This book has been translated from Spanish in Portuguese, Swedish, Danish, Italian, French, German and even Czech but, strangely, not yet in English.
This is the title of the book in the different languages “El poder de la mujer”, “La prophetie de la femme medecine”, “A profecia da curandeira” and in Italian “La profezia della curandera”.
Women give life and, before that, they welcome and protect the fruit of conception that otherwise would not come to light. Mothers give unconditional love and protect their children even at the cost of their own lives.
If this world were ruled by women and ordinary people with solid values maybe things would be better.
It may seem strange but this is a beautiful movie on the theme of patriarchy and female emancipation
GIRL AND YOUTH POWER TO THE TEST OF FACTS
So what are young people capable of?
Who accomplished the most heroic action in history?
Of course there is no ufficial ranking.
Joan of Arc's life is certainly impressive. In Rouen (France) on 05/30/1431 she was burned alive, accused of heresy and for wearing men's clothes. She was just 19 years old. She is recognized as one of the most famous women of the Middle Ages and a French national heroine. At 17, driven by both her strong faith and sense of mission she took part in the Hundred Years War and successfully led the French army against the English and the Burgundians, allies of Henry V of England. Fallen into the hands of the English, she had this terrible end. It was May 30, 1431.
There is a very beautiful movie about her story: “The story of Joan of Arc” – 1999 – directed by Luc Besson starring Milla Jovovich, John Malkovich, Dustin Hoffman, Dorothy Faye Dunaway et al.
In 1920 Joan of Arc was canonized by Benedict XV; the church made amends for its shameful act of murder.
And young people in the scientific field?
Hypatia of Alexandria (AD 355-415) mathematician, astronomer and philosopher of ancient Greece, wrote some books on arithmetic and Euclidean geometry. She was an example of humanity and interreligious tolerance, but she was murdered by Christian fundamentalists (since she was a representative of pagan culture). Her life is narrated too in a beautiful movie “Agorà”.
Other joung brilliant minds:
Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), inventor, physicist and engineer was very young when he gave his enormous contribution to science for his studies on electromagnetism and alternating current. The most famous brand of electric car is named after him. "Tesla" today is also a unit of measure for magnetic flux. He would certainly be honored;
Maria Montessori (1870-1952), an Italian doctor, great pedagogue and educator. She is internationally known for the educational method, adopted in thousands of nursery, primary, secondary and high schools throughout the world, that have her name. She was among the first women to graduate in Medicine in Italy;
Alan Turing (1912-1954), an English mathematician, was 20 years old when he managed to design a machine to decrypt the coded messages of the German Nazis. Providing a formalization of the concept of algorithm and computation, with his Turing machine, a protocomputer, he's widely considered the father of theoretical computer science;
Vera Rubin (1928-2016), a physicist, astronomer and cosmologist who was the first to find indirect evidence of the existence of the “dark matter”.
Do young people have a role in artistic creations?
They are so many in every field, from music, to poetry, writing, sculpture, street art. I will only mention Banksy, an anonymous young street artist and political activist who is very famous. With his works he make us reflect on the hypocrisies and controversies of today's society.
Caresses... and lullabies
In short, young people and women, despite making history, still do not have adequate political weight or great consideration.
And the most overwhelming feeling? It can happen at any age, but how beautiful is first love!? Has anyone ever forgotten the total infatuation you feel at a young age for your first love?
♥️
Let's get to chess. Most of the champions have shown early talent.
Paul Morphy, the last of the unofficial world champions (the first official championship was held just two years after his death), certainly deserves to be remembered for the heartbreaking beauty of his story.
Born in New Orleans in 1837, he was 8 years old when he defeated Winfield Scott, a pompous general of the American army, passing through Louisiana after a campaign against the Indians. The Indians, because of the fanfare of his army, his way of behaving and dressing, used to call him "Old Feathered Din".
The general asked to play against the strongest challenger. Morphy was already an ace of the blindfold game and the absolute champion in the city. His name was becoming famous.
When the general saw this child who could barely reach the table with his nose, he thought it was a joke.
He told him that the children had to be home at that time of the evening.
Everyone around them was serious.
"I asked to play against Mr. Morphy."
"Of course! He is Mr. Morphy," they replied.
He asked him: "How old are you?"
"Eight and a half" was the answer.
He loosened his tie and settled down to play. The defeat was a huge blow to the general's pride. He left the club furious.
Several years later, after graduating in Law, Morphy triumphed at the first American Championship. He won the final against Louis Paulsen playing with black. A memorable match. The sacrifice of the Queen on the 17th move (!!) triggered an unstoppable winning combination.
That victory, for better or for worse, will seal his fate.
At that point he invited Howard Staunton to the United States for an official challenge. They were considered the strongest of the two continents. Staunton refused because of non negotiable work commitments. So everyone expected the young Morphy to embark for Europe. So he did.
He left New York for Liverpool on a steamer. A 11 day journey, certainly not an easy one. He arrived on June 20, 1858.
He challenged and defeated the greatest champions of the old continent, proving without any misunderstanding that he was the best, but the match against Howard Staunton was never played.
There is a long-standing controversy between supporters of Paul Morphy and Howard Staunton.
The latter, always giving different excuses, did not accept to play with him for fear of being defeated. It must be said, however, that a few years earlier (in 1851), Howard Staunton lost the first official European Chess Tournament, announced by himself. The tournament was won by Anderssen and even in the direct clash between the two, Anderssen prevailed. So Howard Staunton had not been the best player in Europe for several years.
Anderssen's defeat against Paul Morphy put an end to any debate about who was the best in the world at the time.
Certainly Howard Staunton, with his touchy and vindictive nature, could never have won the world award for the most sportsmanship player.
The game of the famous "Opera mate", which every chess lover knows, certainly deserves to be remembered, even though it wasn't an official match.
Morphy played blind an amazing game during the interval of the Barber of Seville at the Opera House in Paris against the Duke of Brunswick and Count Isuard in consultation.
The sequence that led to the mate, so beautiful and elegant, has gone down in history.
Game commented by Bobby Fischer!!!
Morphy used to play blind in other occasions in Europe. At the café de la Regence in Paris he played blind and simultaneously against the 8 best Parisian chess players. The match lasted over 10 hours and the champion's result was 6 wins and 2 draws.
An enthusiastic French journalist wrote that Morphy in Europe had been superior to Julius Caesar, because "he came, he did NOT see and conquered!".
Morphy's memorable initiative to travel to Europe for the glory of chess will have significant repercussions on his private life.
The woman he loved, who was also his fiancée, and the society of the time, too formal and respectable, would never forgive him, despite his fame, for having neglected his lawyer career to devote himself to chess (considered a pastime for idlers and bad guys).
When he returned to his homeland, his beloved rejected him and no one took him seriously anymore, not even at work, despite the fact that he was a skilled lawyer.
This shock revealed in him the first symptoms of a mental illness which led to his premature death. It was 1884 and he was 47 years old.
The first official World Championship would be held just two years later.
His story is wonderfully told by the Italian writer Paolo MAURENSIG in his novel “THE ARCHANGEL OF CHESS”.
Jumping into the present and the reality of ordinary people…
Here is my first FIDE tournament thanks to which I obtained an official ELO for the classic game:
Kaltern Trophy 2024 October 18-20, 2024
Open C (Elo < 1700), Open B (Elo < 1999), Open A (Elo > 1800)
I took part in the Open C
5 games lasting 90' (+30'')
These were my results:
He won the Open C (20 years old) and he arrived second (a child):
Open A (Elo > 1800): he came first and is now a Candidate Master (he is not yet of age):
These two young girls were the first in the Women's Category:
He was the youngest talking part in the tournament, awarded together with the oldest:
All photos were taken by the official photographer of the tournament with the consent of the participants in respect for privacy
Chess is an intergenerational passion that unites and breaks down every distance.
My current hero is him anyway. Look how sweet he is. Surely you know him!
Faustino Oro. At first I thought he was Italian, because his name would suggest that, but he is Argentinian.
Born in Buenos Aires on 10/14/2013, he learned to play at the age of seven during the COVID-19 pandemic thanks to his father Alejandro, a great enthusiast, and began attending the chess club.
In December 2021 he became the Argentine Youth National Champion in the under 8 category, and only 6 months later (June 2022) Pan-American Champion. At the age of 10 he reached an ELO of 2300, the youngest player to have achieved such a result. Then the family moved to Spain. The success in tournaments continued so he obtained (he was not yet 11 years old) the title of International Master.
He is Ambassador of ChessKid.com and will certainly be an inspiration for many other young talents.
Look how nice and cute he is! How he exults joyfully for his victories against the greatest champions!
Exultation after victory over Nakamura Blitz match 3':
Victory in 1' bullet game against his majesty Magnus Carlsen, the Mozart of chess:
Now Faustino Oro is called the Lionel Messi of chess! He has a 3000 rating in Blitz and 2900 in bullet.
More than a promise for the future, he is a beautiful fact.
But is the world of chess male or female?
I want to tell the story of these great players, who bring prestige to the chess world.
Natal'ja Andreevna Pogonina is a young Russian chess player born in Vladivostok on March 9, 1985.
She became a female Grandmaster in 2004, at the age of 19.
Best Elo 2501; fourteenth place in the women's ranking.
She won several gold medals at the Russian Women's Championship (under 14, under 16 and under 18). Bronze medal at the 2003 World Junior Championship. She won numerous other tournaments even in adulthood, the last one in 2018 (Russian Women's Championship).
She studied Law at university, has a positive and friendly personality, always ready to help those who turn to her for support or to develop their talents.
Source Wikipedia.
Fiona Steil-Antoni (Niederkorn, January 10, 1989) is a Luxembourgish chess player, Female International Master.
Best ranking 2184 Elo points
She joined seven Chess Olympiads, winning the gold medal at the 2006 Turin Olympiad.
From 2018 to 2022, she was a member of the FIDE Commission of Chess Journalists.
She learned to play chess from her father at the age of nine and, after a year, she was already part of the junior national team.
You surely know her also because, for chess.com, she offers some of the most beautiful daily puzzles with comments.
Anna Muzychuk, Ukrainian, born in Lviv on 28/02/1990 and International Grand Master since 2012.
Highest FIDE Elo rating 2606 in July 2012, when she represented Slovenia, third in the world behind Judit Polgár and Hou Yifan, first among female players in her country.
In the 2000s, at the age of thirteen, she won the Ukrainian Women's Championship in Mykolaiv and at fifteen the World Youth under-16 Women's Championship in Belfort, France.
In 2016, at the Rapid and Blitz World Championships, held that year in Doha, Qatar, she won both the women's rapid and blitz World Championships.
Unwillingly she gained media fame outside the chess world in November 2017 for her decision (shared by other champions such as Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura) to boycott the World Championships in Saudi Arabia scheduled for Riyadh the following December as a protest against the backwardness of women's rights there.
Sara Khadem, Tehran 10/03/1997
Best ranking 2476 Elo points
Iranian naturalized Spanish and International Master. She has also already obtained the first norm for Grand Master.
She was Iranian champion and participated in four Chess Olympiads.
She has won everything since her youngest age (it is worth remembering the victories at the Asian under 12 Championship in 2008 and the Youth World Championship in 2009).
In December 2022 she joined the World Rapid and Blitz Chess Championship in Almaty - Kazakistan, where in protest against the Iranian government she did not wear the hijab (Islamic veil), mandatory for women in the Islamic Republic.
Because of the protest she was forced to emigrate to Spain, where she obtained the transfer for the Spanish federation in July 2023.
Judith Polgar and sisters deserve a great bow.
Judit Polgár (Budapest, July 23, 1976) is a Hungarian chess player and Grandmaster since 1992.
Best ranking 2735 Elo points.
Considered by many to be the best female player in the history of chess, she has broken numerous female and absolute chess records. She was the youngest chess player to enter the list of the best 100 chess players in the world at the age of just 12 and also the only woman to have entered the top ten and to have taken part in a competition valid for access to the world championship (the Candidates tournament) in 2005.
In 1991 at the age of 15 years, 4 months and 28 days she gained the Grandmaster title, the youngest person ever at that time. The previous record was held by Bobby Fischer.
In 1994, this record was outdo by her compatriot Péter Lékó for only 6 days!
Judit, together with her two older sisters Zsuzsa (Grandmaster) and Zsófia (International Master), took part in a great, praiseworthy educational path carried out by her father László Polgár, a psychologist, intent on demonstrating that a child can achieve exceptional results if trained from an early age in a certain field.
His motto was: "genius is created, it doesn't come by itself".
Together with his wife Klara, a Ukrainian linguist, they educated their daughters at home, specializing in chess, preferred to languages and mathematics due to the presence of objective reference indexes, such as the Elo score used by FIDE to classify players.
Judit chose in her career to never participate in women's tournaments. Her goal was the title of World Chess Champion. In her career she was able to defeat many World Champions such as Garry Kasparov, Veselin Topalov, Vladimir Kramnik, Anatoly Karpov, Viswanathan Anand and Magnus Carlsen as well.
At 10, her first victory against an International Master, Dolfi Drimer.
Before she turned 13 she was already ranked among the top 100 best players in the world. The British Chess Magazine declared: «Judit Polgar's recent results clearly outclass the performances of Fischer and Kasparov at her age»
Perhaps not everyone knows that in the 90s Fischer was in close contact with the Polgar family for a long period after his ran from the chess arena and society in general. He was quite like a member of the family.
Judith Polgar was already a very young GM. Both Judith and Susan trained together with Bobby, expecially playing "Fischer random chess" (the odiern Chess960, basically a Fischer invention).
Fischer as an "uncle" and a second mentor... what a wonderful experience!☺️
In 2003, at the Wijk aan Zee Tournament (Beverwijk - Netherlands), she took second without a defeat, half a point behind Viswanathan Anand and one ahead of Vladimir Kramnik.
In 2005 (after her first maternity) she took part in the Sofia Tournament - Bulgaria and had the third place. So she earned the right, first woman in the world, to take part in the Candidates Tournament, but she didn't qualify.
In July 2005, at the age of 30, she reached her best Elo rating of 2.735 points, eighth in the world.
After a period of absence from competition due to her second pregnancy, in October 2006 she returned to play, winning the Essent Quadrangular Tournament in Hoogeveen - Netherlands - with equal points (4.5 out of 6), beating Veselin Topalov twice.
In May-June 2007 she was readmitted to the Candidates Tournament, and was narrowly eliminated.
In January 2009 she is in 36th place in the FIDE ranking with a score of 2.693 points.
British Grandmaster Nigel Short called Polgár "one of the three or four prodigies in the history of chess."
Garry Kasparov in 1989 said, and it was a shame: "She has a fantastic chess talent, but she is, after all, a woman. It all comes down to the imperfections of the feminine psyche. No woman can sustain a prolonged battle."
In september 2002 during Russia vs rest of the World match, Garry Kasparov was defeated by Judit Polgar. A fair retribution for his past statements.
It was a rapid tournament (25'+10").
She won the game with exceptional positional play.
Kasparov with black chose the Berlin Defence instead of his usual Sicilian and Polgár proceeded with a line which Kasparov had used himself.
Polgár was able to attack Kasparov's king (which was still in the centre of the board) with her rooks, and when he was a pawn down with a positional disadvantage Kasparov resigned.
The game helped the World team win the match (52–48).
For Judit Polgár that moment was one of the most remarkable of her career. It was the first time in chess history that a female player beat the world's n.1 player in competitive play.
from chessgames.com
Personal life: while Zsófia emigrated first to Israel and then to Canada and Zsuzsa to the USA, Judit remained in Hungary where she married Gusztáv Fonts, a veterinarian from Budapest. In 2004 she became the mother of a boy, Olivér, and in July 2006 of a girl, Hanna.
On 12/08/2014, during an interview with "The Times", she officially announced her retirement from the chess arena.
Young people are making history, the future is in their hands!
Do we want to help them?
They don't need it. But let's try not to hinder them and be available if they ask.
Defeating the Patriarchy is a complex objective that requires education from childhood and awareness of civil society, acting united at cultural, social, economic and political levels.
Let's try to leave our children a better world than the one we inherited from our parents. Everyone can give their contribution, that is not insignificant.
Happy chess to everyone.
See you soon.
DocSimooo
