[ExI] sturgis - washington post

[spike at rainier66.com]

-----Original Message-----
...> On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat



>.... I never use the term around them and I don't recall any of them
calling me a 'Yank.' (Not that I'd take offense.)

 

Teams need nicknames.  Open to suggestion.

 

>>. Aside not having to do with food: at the Chess Olympics, the strongest 

> two teams, or rather among the strongest teams in the world (nearly 

> always in the world top 5) are from Armenia and Azerbaijan.  

> Considering current events, naturally this leads to tension.

 

>...Are chess participants more nationalistic than average? It'd be nice to
think that many of them don't simply hate other people because they're from
another nation. Maybe hate is too strong a term.

 

Regards,

 

Dan

 

 

I suppose they are as nationalistic as any other sport.  Azerbaijan/Armenia
is a very special case: that is one where two small adjacent nations somehow
continue to present the world with the strongest teams.  I don't know how
they do it, but it has been that way for a long time: at the internationals,
we understand Russia, USA, China being up there, but right up at the top
five we find Armenia.  If you look at the concentration of chess talent in
Armenia, it is a hundred times higher than USA: they compete head to head
with 1% of the population.  Open to suggestion on how they do that.  It
creates a lot of tension when Armenia and Azerbaijan play each other.

 

If you go back to 1924, these are the team rankings:

 



 

This is 43 international competitions.

 

This year's Olympics were cancelled, but there is a hell of a battle brewing
between the US and China teams.

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