The best chess apps (2024)

 

Here are some of the best chess apps you might want to consider:

1. chess.com: offers online games, lessons, videos and puzzles. It's one of the most popular platforms and has a great community.

2. lichess.org: completely free and ad-free. Allows you to play, practice with puzzles, and analyze games. It also has a wide variety of game modes.

3. chess24: offers online games, chess courses, and tournament coverage. Great for those looking for educational content.

4. stockfish: although it's a chess engine, many apps integrate it. It's great for analyzing games and improving your game.

5. play Magnus: designed for playing against different age version of Magnus Carlsen. It also has lessons and challenges.

6. shredder chess: offers a strong chess engine and various difficulty levels, as well as puzles and analysis.

7. chessable: combines learnign with playing. Has a wide variety of courses on openings, tactics, and strategy.

Each one has its own characteristics, so I would recommend trying several to see which one best suits your needs.

Jon Rahm is a new legend from Spain...

Jon Rahm Rodríguez (Barrica, Vizcaya, November 10, 1994) is a Spanish professional golfer, current number 3 in the world. He was number one in the World Amateur Golf Ranking for sixty weeks, holding the absolute record as number one in said classification. He started as professional in 2016, the year in which he participated in the United States Open, which he would win only five years later, on June 20, 2021, making him the first Spanish golfer to win this tournament.

In 2017 he was champion of the San Diego Open, the Irish Open and the Dubai World Championship. On July 19, 2020, he won the Memorial Tournament (Ohio) and reached the number one position in the PGA world golf rankings, ousting Rory McIlroy, thus becoming the twenty-fourth number one in history, the tenth European and the second Spaniard after Severiano Ballesteros.

In 2023 he became champion of the Augusta Masters (the fourth Spaniard after Severiano Ballesteros, Jose María Olazábal and Sergio García) and won his second Ryder Cup (2018, 2023) with the European team. 

World champions in chess 2023

 

Ju Wenjun (Chinese: 居文君; pinyin: Jū Wénjūn, born January 31, 1991 in Shanghai, China) is a Chinese chess player, current Women's World Chess Champion. In March 2017, Ju Wenjun became the fifth woman to surpass an elo ranking of 2600.3 She has won the last four women's world chess championships, in May 2018, November 2018, and 2020. Most recently, Ju Wenjun defended her world champion title in 2023.

Ding Liren (Chinese: 丁立人; born in Wenzhou, Zhejiang, China on October 24, 1992) is a Chinese chess Grandmaster. He is the current world champion, having defeated Ian Nepomniachtchi in the 2023 World Chess Championship. In August 2015, he became the second Chinese player, after Wang Yue, to reach the top ten of the FIDE rankings. . Ding is the Chinese player to have achieved both the highest FIDE ranking and the third highest Elo rating.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button...

 

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a 2008 American fantasy romantic drama film directed by David Fincher. The storyline by Eric Roth and Robin Swicord is loosely based on the 1922 short story of the same name by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The film starts Brad Pitt as a man who ages in reverse and Cate Blanchett as the love interest throughout his life. 

The film also stars Taraji P. Henson, Mahershala Ali, Julia Ormond, Jason Flemyng, Elias Koteas and Tilda Swinton. Producer Ray Stark bought the film rights to do the short story in the mid-1980s with Universal Pictures backing the film, but struggled to get the project off the ground until he sold the rights to producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall in the 1990s.

Alghough it was moved to Paramount Pictures in the 1990s, the film did not enter production until after Fincher and Pitt signed on along with the rest of the cast in 2005. Principal photography began in November 2006 and wrapped up in September 2007. Digital Domain worked on the visual effects of the film, particularly in the process of the metamorphosis of Pitt's character.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was released in North America on December 25, 2008 to positive reviews from critics, who praised Fincher's directing, Pitt's performance, production values, and visual effects. The film was a box office success, grossing 335.8 million dollars worldwide against its 167 million dollars budget. 

The film received thirteen Academy Award nominations, the most of the 81st Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director for Fincher, Best Actor for Pitt, and Best Supporting Actress for Taraji P. Henson, and won three, for Best Art Direction, Best Makeup, and Best Visual Effects. About the plot we have to tell, in August 2005, Daisy Fuller is on her deathbed in a New Orleans hospital as Hurricane Katrina approaches.

She tells her daughter Caroline, about blind clockmaker Mr. Gateau, hired to make a clock for a train station in 1918. When it was unveiled, the public was surprised to see it running backwards. She reveals that Mr. Gateau made it as a memorial for those who lost their sons in World War I, including his own son. Daisy then asks Caroline to read aloud from Benjamin Button's diary.

On the evening of November 11, 1918, a boy is born with the appearance and maladies of an elderly man. His mother, Caroline, dies soon after childbirth and his father, Thomas Button, abandons the infant on the porch of a nursing home. Caretaker Queenie and cook Mr. Tizzy Weathers find the baby, and she raises him as her own, naming him Benjamin. 

As the years pass, Benjamin physically blends in with the elderly residents but has the mind and curiosities of a child. He eventually transitions from a wheelchair to crutches and learns to walk. He befriends visiting African Pygmy named Oti, who teaches him to look beyond the physical, and resident Mrs. Maple, who teaches him to play de piano. 

On Thanksgiving 1930, Benjamin meets seven-year-old Daisy, whose grandmother lives in the nursing home and they connect instantly. Later, he accepts work on the tugboat Chelsea captained by Mike Clark. Thomas Button introduces himself to Benjamin, but does not reveal his true identity. In Autumn 1936, Benjamin leaves for a long-term work engagement with the tugboat crew and travels around the world...

Black hole

 

A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing, no particles or even electromagnetic radiation such as light, can escape from it. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can deform spacetime to form a black hole. The boundary of no escape is called the event horizon.

Although it has a great effect on the fate and circumstances of an object crossing it, it has no locally detectable features according to general relativity. In many ways, a black hole acts like an ideal black body, as it reflects no light. Moreover, quantum field theory in curved spacetime predicts that event horizonts emit Hawking radiation, with the same spectrum as a black body of a temperature inversely proportional to its mass.

This temperature is of the order of billionths of a kelvin for stellar black holes, making it essentially impossible to observe directly. Objects whose gravitational fields are too strong for light to escape were first considered in the 18th century by John Michell and Pierre-Simon Laplace. In 1916, Karl Schawarzschild found the first modern solution of general relativity that would characterize a black hole.

David Finkelstein, in 1958, first published the interpretation of "black hole" as a region of space from which nothing can escape. Black holes were long considered a mathematical curiosity; it was not until the 1960s that theoretical work showed they were a generic prediction of general relativity. The discovery of neutron stars by Jocelyn Bell Burnell in 1967 sparked interest in gravitationally collapsed compact objects as a possible astrophysical reality.

The first black hole known was Cygnus X-1, identified by serveral researchers independently in 1971. Black holes of stellar mass form when massive stars collapse at the end of their life cycle. After a black hole has formed, it can grow by absorbing mass from its surroundings. Supermassive black holes of millions of solar masses may form by absorbing other stars and merging with other black holes.

There is consensus that supermassive black holes exist in the centres of most galaxies. The presence of a black hole can be inferred through its interaction with other matter and with electromagnetic radiation such as visible light. Any matter that falls onto a black hole can form an external accretion disk heated by friction, forming quasars, some of the brightest objects in the universe.

Stars passing too close to a supermassive black hole can be shredded into streamers that shine very brightly before being "swallowed". If other stars are orbiting a black hole, their orbits can determine the black hole's mass and location. Such observations can be used to exclude possible alternatives such as neutron stars. In this way, astronomers have identified numerous stellar black hole candidates in binary systems and established that the radio source known as Sagittarius A, at the core of the Milky Way galaxy, contains a supermassive black hole of about 4.3 million solar masses.

The Bear

 

Bears are carnivoran mammals of the family Ursidae. They are classified as caniforms, or doglike carnivorans. Although only eight species of bears are extant, they are widespread, appearing in a wide variety of habitats throughout the Northern Hemisphere and partially in the Southern Hemisphere. Bears are found on the continents of North America, South America, Europe, and Asia. Common characteristics of modern bears include large bodies with stocky legs, long snouts, small rounded ears, shaggy hair, plantigrade paws with five nonretractile claws, and short tails.

While the polar bear is mostly carnivorous, and the giant panda feeds almost entirely on bamboo, the remaining six species are omnivorous with varied diets. With the exception of courting individuals and mothers with their young, bears are typically solitary animals. They may be diurnal or nocturnal and have an excellent sense of smell. Despite their heavy build and awkward gait, they are adept runners, climbers, and swimmers.

Bears use shelters, such as caves and logs, as their dens; most species occupy their dens during the winter for a long period of hibernation, up to 100 days. Bears have been hunted since prehistoric times for their meat and fur; they have been used for bear-baiting and other forms of entertainment, such as being made to dance. With their powerful physical presence, they play a prominent role in the arts, mythology, and other cultural aspects of various human societies.

In modern times, bears have come under pressure through encroachment on their habitats and illegal trade in bear parts, including the Asian bile bear market. The IUCN lists six bear species as vulnerable or endangered, and even least concern species, such as the brown bear, are at risk of extirpation in certain countries. The poaching and international trade of these most threatened populations are prohibited, but still ongoing.

Castling

 

Castling is a move in the game of chess in which a player moves the king two squares toward a rook on the same rank and moves the rook to the square that the king has crossed. It is the only move in chess in which a player moves two pieces in the same move. 

Castling may be done only if neither the king nor the rook has previously moved, the squares between the king and the rook are unoccupied, the king is not in check, and the king does not cross over or end up on a square attacked by an opposing piece. 

Castling with the king's rook is known as castling kingside or castling short, and castling with the queen's rook is known as castling queenside or castling long; here, short and long refer to the distance the rook moves. The notation for castling, in both the algegraic and descriptive systems, is 0-0 for castling kingside and 0-0-0 for castling queenside.

Castling originates from the king's leap, a two-square king move added to European chess between the 14th and 15th centuries form in the 17th century; however, local variations in castling rules were common, persisting in Italy until the late 19th century. Asian games of the chess family, such as shogi, xianggi, and janggi, but it is commonly included in variants of Western chess.

When castling, the king is transferred two squares toward a rook of the same color on the same rank, and the rook transferred to the square crossed by the king. There are two forms of castling:

- Kingside castling (castling short) consists of placing the king on the king's knight's square (g1 for white and g8 for black) and the rook on the king's bishop's square (f1 for white and f8 for black).

- Queenside castling (castling long) consists of placing the king on the queen's bishop's square (c1 for white and c8 for black) and the rook on the queen's square (d1 for white and d8 for black).

Castling is permissible provided all of the following conditions hold:

- Neither the king nor the rook has previously moved.

- There are no pieces between the king and the rook.

- The king is not currently in check.

- The king does not pass through a square that is attacked by an opposing piece.

- The king does not end up in check. (True of any legal move.)