gregshahade.com Blog

The Round Robin format of a chess tournament?

How in God’s name are 90%+ of major tournaments using this format? The NBA and NFL used to have some stupid rules too. The NBA had no shotclock for a while until slowly it became bigger and the media and people were like “this is boring”.

Let me guarantee you something, if somehow some very rich person gave tons of money to chess AND chess became a major sport on television (obviously not very likely), the round robin would be gone almost immediately. If NBC suddenly had control of the way a chess tournament could be run, or anyone who actually cared about a format being interesting to the casual viewer, within 10 years the Round Robin would be virtually extinct.

I love those guys in Saint Louis, they are doing great unbelievably amazing for U.S. chess, but I cannot get into this women’s championship which has unsurprisingly turned into just 2-3 of the top women trying to see who can gang up on the weaker ones the most (obviously it’s not really their fault since basically every tournament uses this structure, it’s just that I happen to care more about these tournaments so it frustrates me more than usual). What is that? I don’t care who can beat Abby Marshall and Beatriz Marinello the largest % of the time, I want to see how they do when they play against each other, and not just one time out of 9 games.   Thank goodness at least that Tatev is doing well too so it’s not the two horse race that everyone expected. Give me a match between Krush and Zatonskih and I’ll watch. Let more people in if you want, but for the love of Jesus please let the two best players/performers face off head to head at the end of a sporting event.

Certain things work in the United States of America if you want people to care about you and the Round Robin format is not one of them. Someday I will make some fun tournaments. Someone give me lots of money please, thanks!

Hello everyone, for July I donated to the family of an MMA fighter who died in the aftermath of a fight. This is only the second time this has ever happened in the United States, as contrary to what many might believe, the sport is quite safe. For example there have been many times more deaths stemming from boxing, football and even from basketball.

In any case the fighter (Michael Kirkham) had a family and five children. Also I know how close knit MMA communities can be, from what I saw it’s a very positive environment. I joined an MMA gym for a few months out of curiosity. I didn’t stick with it due to time constraints and travel constraints (it was a bit too far away for me to want to go there too regularly), but you could see that it was a really positive atmosphere.

Here is a link for more information on the story:

http://mmajunkie.com/news/19782/donations-being-taken-for-fallen-fighter-michael-kirkhams-family.mma

They seem pretty awesome, I emailed a few times and asked some questions and got very detailed responses from the guy who seems to run the site. Here is the website

In any case just check out the site, someone recommended them to me, I can’t remember who, but they just seem to be really into philanthropy, and it’s focused towards people who are in their 20s and 30s.

I’m giving a smaller amount than usual this month, which is what I do when I take a large % of the month off of work (I was away for about half of May), but still a decent enough amount, as I was paid something while I was away. It won’t be one percent of my income, which I think prohibits me from voting as to where they will use the funds, but whatever I’m too busy to ever write a journal post so better they deal with the voting anyway.

They seem to have a lot of principles there, although I’m not sure if this is a good thing. It’s clear that they don’t want people who don’t give 1% of their income to have partnership status. This is possibly going to encourage some people not to donate and cost them money. On the other hand maybe it’ll encourage others to donate more than they usually do, and it also provides a foundation concept for their charity.

My suspicion is that overall it will cost them donations, and I say this because even though I really don’t care about being a partner or whatever, I was slightly annoyed (because their idea is that one should donate 1% of their money to charity and obviously I donate a lot more than that, just not all to them) and considered not donating because of it, but okay I did it anyway.

Also if you have a charity or know someone with one, keep posting in the comments section, I’ll probably get to yours someday if it’s something that I believe in!

The things that the Saint Louis Chess Center are doing for chess are out of this world, and so I want to show them a little bit of support, even if it’s possible that they don’t need it. At least they certainly aren’t asking or trying to generate donations from what I’ve seen. (edit – I lied, they are now officially a non-profit and have a place on their website to solicit donations.)

Anyway so I donated a little bit of money to the U.S. Championship prize fund…probably it will be used as some kind of brilliancy prize? I’m not really sure. Anyway just felt like the right thing to do to show that I appreciate all they are doing for chess in the United States. Also note that I will be in STL for the entirety of the U.S. Championship helping with various things in some way, shape or form.

Also note that they are actually called the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis. Somehow I find this name cumbersome and excessively long so I’ve given them my own name. Hope no one is insulted.

A quick note of thanks for those whom have been donating along with me the last few months! Yay!

Anyway this month, since I took about half the month off from work due to going to Italy, I’m only giving half my usual amount. But anyway, I had no idea who it would be for until I read the following CNN article. Who knows if it’s the absolute best cause in the world, but it’s just too sick and fucked up that this family had to go through this, and so I shall help slightly.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/03/30/westboro.baptist.snyder/index.html?hpt=T2

This month I decided to support 9 Queens, a non-profit headquartered in Arizona that was founded by Jean Hoffman and my sister!

They are simply a chess teaching non-profit that puts a special focus on girls and at-risk youth.

Give them lots of money!!!!!!!

Rescued Media

Hey, so I’m going to make this quick, for Feb 2010 I donated to a film project about the school I used to work at in Brooklyn, I.S. 318. In case you didn’t know they are huge chess machines led by coach WFM Elizabeth Vicary.

The filmmakers have been doing a ton of work putting together the film, and have been travelling with the team to various events for a few years now. Check out the trailer by clicking the link above, you’ll see it’s awesome!

Camden Film Project

Ok so a few things…..basically there is no point in having a blog. I mean whenever I post a status update on Facebook I get like 30 responses, and everyone I know is already there. So probably will just keep this blog to the monthly updates, which I am also extremely lazy about posting.

Anyway this is a film project by my sister’s friend Daniel. He teaches these kids in Camden about filmmaking. I went to one of their fundraisers and it seems like really great stuff. These kids have ridiculous lives compared to mine as a youth. There are like six of them heavily involved I think…one of them recently got shot, and this wasn’t even considered to be so unbelievable! Let me tell you if I get shot it’s a huge surprise!

Anyway they are doing great things, Here you can see some good clips

Take some time to watch them, they are really great!, especially the one on Broadway.

- Also I went to Barcelona and it was great! That about covers it….oh and I think I know my charities for the next few months….which is cool.

Save the Children!

Okay so I am two things:

1. Extremely Lazy

2. a huge sucker

I was walking down the street one day when I was accosted to give some money for a charity. I told them I would listen but that I don’t give the money on the street, but she was very persistent. Refused to let me leave without agreeing to sign up for some monthly pledge, so long story short I ended up deciding to just give them a bunch of money and make them my monthly charity.

They help children all over the world. To be honest I sort of regret the decision as they aren’t usually the type of charity that I like to give to, as I really have no idea if my donation makes any real difference. However it was clear the woman was really behind their cause and they also don’t work by commission (she just gets an annual salary). In fact she told me her salary because I asked her something about how much she made, which was in reference to the company’s CEO which we were talking about, and she thought I was asking her how much she made. They have some high score on charitynavigator and some good reviews all over the internet but also some bad ones, but I think this is the same for almost all large organization. A good review on charitynavigator is nice, and they put a very large % of their funds towards actual charity work, or so it seems?

But despite all of that I think that in the future I just need to be more steadfast in refusing to give on the street, or at least agreeing to, but only my standard $20-$30 in this situation.

I have a lot more to say about the situation but due to personality weakness #1 listed above, I will just leave it at this. I already know my charity for next month, so I’m now looking for one for the month after, but it shouldn’t be hard, as I have a bunch in mind.

My friend Carrie alerted me to this site a few months ago and after looking at it I decided it was really cool and so I chose it as this month’s charity.

Here are her words:

“Greg!

As a product of public school, Philadelphia public school to be exact, I know how shitty some of those classroom can be because of lack of new books, interesting tools, simple supplies, whatever. That’s why I use my blog to give money to specific classrooms through Donor’s Choose.

http://www.donorschoose.org/

I focus on science at the middle school level, but you can look at all different classrooms in different locales, poverty levels, grade levels, etc. Each teacher writes a synopsis of the project that they want funded, so I usually pick the most passionate and explicit one.

I like that, besides a small administrative fee, all the money goes directly to the project–not so in some of the largest charities.”

I ended up giving to eight different classrooms, all of them based in Philadelphia and all dealing with relatively varied subjects. I wasn’t too particular, there were 200 to choose from and I didn’t feel like sifting through them all, and spending huge amounts of time trying to pick and choose, as they basically all involve teachers who are trying to help make the learning environment better for their students. Below are links to the eight I donated to:

http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/proposal.html?id=310382&verify=1005584600
http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/proposal.html?id=297649&verify=572627382
http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/proposal.html?id=301636&verify=1883480750
http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/proposal.html?id=334607&verify=1587762398
http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/proposal.html?id=332571&verify=-615676694
http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/proposal.html?id=335688&verify=560649495
http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/proposal.html?id=295067&verify=498020256
http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/proposal.html?id=329091&verify=-1792003246

The good news is that also I think the classes are supposed to write thank you notes to the donors, which will be fun of course