To our surprise, it was the first time when the players’ assessment of the situation on board was diametrically opposite. Both claimed an advantage – maybe because both wanted to win the game and the match. However, it ended in a draw by perpetual, thus postponing the match conclusion by one day.
– Vladimir, what is your score against Topalov in rapid chess, and will it affect the outcome of the tiebreak in any way?
– The match booklet states it is +4 in my favor. However, it counts rapid and blindfold games to-gether. Will the score matter? I hope it will, but actually tiebreak is a lottery. A lot will depend on small details: luck, night’s sleep, etc. It is impossible to predict the result. In principle, I already won the match from my point of view, so I think this will make playing easier for me.
– Could you do without tiebreak? What can you say about today’s game?
– It is a very interesting and combative game. I exerted pressure, but the opponent managed to create counterplay and made a draw. Maybe I could play more accurately, I cannot tell without de-tailed analysis. But the draw is generally logical.
– And yet, you had White, which means something at the WCC …
– Modern chess theory develops in such direction that it is very difficult to find sharp positions with advantage. So it is not surprising that both opponents were satisfied with a complex position. Maybe my advantage wasn’t big, but playing White was more pleasant. Veselin was lucky to or-ganize his defense on time, but there was a chance for me, too! I did my best, but alas… I played for a win, but did not want to go too far. My attitude in the Game 10 was the same – and that time it worked.
– Are you superstitious? The tiebreak is scheduled on Friday, 13th… Also, tomorrow is 13th, 10th month, year 2006, and the sum of all digits gives 13. Kasparov would have been very pleased, and what about you?
– Fortunately I am not playing against him tomorrow. So I am alright! All these horrors are ap-plicable to my opponent as well, so I do not feel any discomfort…
– Which color is better to have at the start of the tiebreak?
– I think it doesn’t matter. Tiebreak is decided by nerves.
– You wrote an open letter before the 11th game. What further steps will you take, and do you think the unification idea works?
– I have nothing to add to the letter. As for the unification, you realize it is difficult to talk about reconciliation in such a heated atmosphere…
– One could note certain rotation order of your suits during the match against Kasparov in London. Why did you alter it today?
– I began to experiment by the end of the match: wearing the same dress is boring. I changed trousers and jackets, and even combined a jacket with jeans in the Game 10. I am trying to catch my luck!
– Do you consider this research promising?
– I don’t know; we’ll see tomorrow. I have to consider my dress for tomorrow quite seriously!
– Did you feel any agitation during the game?
– I was a bit nervous in the end, as I felt I am winning the game and the match. The opponent made several saving moves to make a draw. As for agitation – this is not my first game at the highest level…
– How do you evaluate the course of the match in general?
– On the whole, I was better prepared, and obviously had more fresh ideas and winning opportunities. I had the initiative in most games, but only managed to convert two chances. Kramnik, on the contrary, utilized everything he had. It was a very strange match: after a false start I not only managed to tie the score, but even took the lead at some point. And then committed another blunder, making the score even again.
– Do you feel the burden of unforced errors?
– It is impossible to make an error if you agree to a draw after 15 moves. If each of your games lasts 50 moves, errors are unavoidable. Errors are natural consequence of struggle! If we always played at maximum effort, there would be more errors – we are humans.
– You always play for a win, but if you were told before today’s game that it is going to end in a draw, would you feel happy?
– That depends on the way this draw is achieved. I am not satisfied with the way I drew today, because I felt the victory is very near; but maybe the feeling was false, and the position was drawn.
– Veselin, how do you see the future of chess? For example, for the next 10 years… How will it develop, and will it become unified?
– Unified? I have no idea why some people consider chess split! In my opinion, chess is unified since San Luis. The unification has already taken place!
I don’t know what will happen in 10 years. There is FIDE, and there is FIDE President and Executive Committee; it’s their business. The only thing I can do as champion is to try improving the image of chess. I cannot solve all our problems.
– Let us talk about tomorrow. What do you think about the tiebreak? You had a chance to play rapid against Kramnik in Monaco…
– To be honest, I am still not sure whether we will play 25 or 15-minute games. In general, Kramnik has a small plus… Actually, talking about the tiebreak, I’d rather blunder a queen or a mate in one than appear in the situation of Leko in 2004. He did not yield to Kramnik two years ago, but Leko is nobody now, and Kramnik is a world champion. Tiebreak is a good thing, and it doesn’t matter for me how it ends. If I lose, it will happen because of my own fault, not because of the regulations.
– This match arose many suspicions. Don’t you think such scandals will soon scare away everybody but fanatics?
– I don’t think the popularity of chess suffered because of the misunderstandings that occurred during the match. Looking back at the history of chess, it enjoyed maximum popularity at times of political confrontation. First it was Spassky-Fischer match, then Karpov-Korchnoi, and then Karpov-Kasparov. A high point for 20 years straight! At the same time, only a small group of professionals was interested in pure chess content. Others are excited by scandals.
– So, ‘world peace’ does not benefit chess in your opinion?
– No, I am against war! And we did not plan unleashing it. Our team just submitted a casual ap-peal… Laymen do not always understand complicated maneuvers of pieces or players’ ideas, but they like watching hand flicker in time trouble…
The number 13?
There were 13 original colonies that fought English tyranny and became the United States of America.
13 may be the luckiest number.
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In mathematics
Thirteen is the 6th smallest prime number; the next is seventeen. 13 is the second Wilson prime. 13 is the fifth Mersenne prime exponent, yielding 8191. 13 is also the third lucky prime.
13 is the second star number and the seventh Fibonacci number. As it is an odd-indexed Fibonacci number, it is a Markov number, appearing in solutions to the Markov Diophantine equation: (1, 5, 13), (1, 13, 34), (5, 13, 194), …
There are 13 Archimedean solids.
13 goes into 999,999 exactly 76,923 times, so vulgar fractions with 13 in the denominator have six digit repeating sequences in their decimal expansions. It is thus the smallest half period prime (integer sequence A097443).
13 is the largest number whose factorial is less than 1010. This means 13! is often the largest factorial a pocket calculator can represent without scientific notation.
At 13, the Mertens function sets a new low of -3, subseded later at 31 with a value of -4.
13 is the only positive integer that is the fourth root of the sum of the squares of two successive positive integers (119 and 120).
The 13th root is the most famous integer root calculation record, because 13 is the first prime number over 10 such as the last digit of a 13th integer power is the same as the last digit of its 13th root.
In base 10, the smallest prime with a composite sum of digits is 13.
13 is a repdigit in base 3 (111).
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In science
* The atomic number of aluminium
* The number of dimensions in some theories of relativity
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Astronomy
* Messier object M13, a magnitude 7.0 globular cluster in the constellation Hercules, also known as the Hercules cluster. It is one of the brightest and best-known of the globular clusters.
* The New General Catalogue object NGC 13, a spiral galaxy in the constellation Andromeda
* The Saros number of the solar eclipse series which began on -2561 September 12 and ended on -1046 March 9. The duration of Saros series 13 was 1514.5 years, and it contained 85 solar eclipses.
* The Saros number of the lunar eclipse series which began on -2313 May 20 and ended on -1015 July 6. The duration of Saros series 13 was 1298.1 years, and it contained 73 lunar eclipses.
* The 13th moon of Jupiter is Elara.
* The known universe is currently thought to be about 13.7 billion years old, with an error of about one percent.
* There are 13 zodiac constellations, which consist of the 12 signs in the astrological zodiac and Ophiuchus.
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In religion
* The number of participants at the Last Supper
* Counting both Judas and Matthias, there were thirteen apostles
* Thirteen was once associated with the Epiphany by Christians, the child Jesus having received the Magi on his thirteenth day of life.
* In Judaism, 13 signifies the age of maturity (bar mitzvah) for boys
* The number of principles of Jewish faith according to Maimonides
* According to the Torah, God has 13 Attributes of Mercy
* In modern day Wicca, thirteen is considered the maximum size of a coven, and in some traditions is the ideal number of members. There are also 13 goals of a witch
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Lucky or Unlucky?
Legendary NBA superstar Wilt Chamberlain wore the number 13 on his jersey throughout his career. It signified that the number 13 was not unlucky for him, but unlucky for his opponents. Wilt once scored 100 points in a single NBA game, is the only NBA player to average more than 50 points a game for an entire season, and also never fouled out of a single game.
Another legendary athlete who wore the number 13 was Dan Marino, who passed for more yards than any other quarterback in NFL history.
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In mythology
* The number of circles, or “nodes”, that make up Metatron’s Cube.
* The number of gods (there were 12) at a banquet that was crashed by the evil spirit Loki (making 13) who killed one of the guests with a poison arrow.
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United States of America
* The number of original colonies the United States was founded from. The original flag had thirteen stars, one for each state. New stars have since been added whenever a new state joins the union, but the idea of adding stripes for new states was soon dropped, so the American flag to this day has thirteen horizontal stripes: six white ones and seven red ones.
* The Great Seal of the United States has:
– 13 levels of the truncated pyramid,
– 13 letters in “E Pluribus Unum”, which appears in the banner running through the eagle’s beak on the right side of the bill’s reverse.
– 13 letters in the phrase “Annuit Coeptis”, which appears over the pyramid on the left side of the bill’s reverse.
– 13 stars above the Eagle,
– 13 leaves on the olive branch,
– 13 olives on the olive branch,
– 13 arrows held by the Eagle, and
– 13 bars on the shield.
* The number of guns in a gun salute to U.S. Army, Air Force and Marine Corps Major Generals, and Navy and Coast Guard Rear Admirals Upper Half.
* The Naval Jack of the United States has 13 stripes, 7 red and 6 white, the rattlesnake has 13 buttons on its rattle, and the motto “Don’t Tread on Me” has 13 letters
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In other fields
* The original number of members of The Thirteen Club.
* The number of loaves in a “baker’s dozen”
* The expression, “A year and a day” refers to 13 28-day lunar months plus 1 day
* The number of Popes named Innocent, for which an honor society containing 13 members at the University of Nebraska is named (“The Society of Innocents”)
* The number of cards in a single suit of a standard deck of playing cards
* The ASCII and Unicode value for carriage return
* “Unlucky for some”, according to bingo callers
* The number of players in a rugby league team
* The number of Plutonium slugs in Fat Man, the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki
* The number on a Hell’s Angel’s patch or tattoo that refers to the thirteenth letter of the alphabet, M, for “marijuana”
* 13, or “X3”, is the number of the Mexican street gang Sureños. It refers to the thirteenth letter of the alphabet, M, for Mexico
* In rugby union one of the centres, most often but not always the outside centre, wears the 13 shirt
* Israel Naval covert unit – Shayetet 13
* Former professional wrestler Tazz used the number 13 in his ring gear, merchandise, and Titantron video, signifying the 13 years he wrestled in the independent circuit and ECW before being signed by WWE
* A card game very similar to Tien len.
* The ancient card game ‘Boumpha’ has 13 different cards
* In tarot, card no. 13 is “Death”
* Though some football (soccer) clubs omit the number 13 shirt, it is the current shirt number of the following notable players:
– Michael Ballack of Chelsea (previously William Gallas
– Cristian Chivu of A.S. Roma
– Aliaksandr Hleb of Arsenal
– Alessandro Nesta of AC Milan
– Ji-Sung Park of Manchester United
* There are traditionally thirteen steps leading up to a gallows and thirteen turns in a hangman’s noose
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13_(number)
I would say the English ‘tyranny’ was more benign than most, eg France, Prussia, Russia.
More like the Americans tried to get out of paying their fair share of the cost of the French 1756-1763 war.
But they should have been given parliamentary representation in exchange.
I would say the English ‘tyranny’ was more benign than most, eg France, Prussia, Russia.
More like the Americans tried to get out of paying their fair share of the cost of the French 1756-1763 war.
But they should have been given parliamentary representation in exchange.