Stone appeared on East 68th Street to find Cohn, just awakened, in his robe, sitting with one of his clients, Mob boss “Fat Tony” Salerno, of the Genovese crime family. “In front of [Roy] was a slab of cream cheese and three burnt slices of bacon,” Stone remembered. “He ate the cream cheese with his pointing finger. He listened to my pitch and said, ‘You need to see Donald Trump. I will get you in, but then you are on your own.’ ”Shortly after, Stone founded Black Manafort & Stone with Paul Manafort and Charlie Black and took on Donald Trump as their first client (3). Stone later introduced Trump to Manafort in 1988 at the Republican National Committee (4).
[Yelstin] was desperately in need of funds, and turned to men such as [Roman] Abramovich and Berezovsky, whom he invited to participate in the so-called "loans for shares" scheme in return for financial backing. (2)For Berezovsky and his protege, Abramovich, that was with Sibneft, which they acquired in 1995. In exchanged for being brought into the loans for shares program, Abramovich was forced to pay Berezovsky $1 billion across 6 years for “kryshna”, or mafia protection (3).
...Finkelstein worked with Stone and Manafort in Ukraine in or around 2005, 2006, for the same cast of bad guys.Finkelstein's longtime business associate and adviser to Netanyahu, George Birnbaum, would later reach out to Paul Manafort's deputy, Rick Gates, when Gates joined Trump's campaign, and presented a plan for a campaign of social media manipulation run by Israeli intelligence officers through Psy-Group, owned by Joel Zamel (25). Later Erik Prince would arrange for Joel Zamel to meet with George Nader and Don Jr. to discuss Zamel's proposal. Nader ultimately paid $2 million dollars for the work (26).
American Government officials acknowledged that embassy officials had told Mr. Lauder and other company officials about Mr. Rabinovich's conviction and his links to Grigory Loutchansky, a Russian whose company, Nordex, is suspected of having ties to criminal organizations.In 2003 the Lauder Institute teamed up with Russia Oligarch Michael Fridman and German Khan’s Alfabank to form the “Excellence in Foreign Investement in Russia” award, with Leonard Lauder and Richard Burt on the board (11). Richard Burt, working for Diligence, had previously worked as a lobbyist for Oleg Deripaska, Deripaska’s RusAl, and Gazprom, and was once implicated in a scam to steal information from an Alfabank competitor (12)(13). Diligence also happens to be owned by Deripaska's London-based business partner, Nathanial Rothschild (23). Burt, along with Paul Manfort and George Papadopoulos, edited Trump’s first speech on foreign policy, where Trump promised Russia a great deal (14).
Lauder had proposed running a back channel between the PA leader and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but the initiative ultimately fizzled.
By all accounts, the unexpected break for Murdoch in the Russian ad market came in 2002 after the assassination of Vladimir Kanevsky, then the billboard king of Moscow. In February of that year, at an intersection near the Kremlin, a man in a black ski cap walked up to Kanevsky's car and pumped five rounds into his head and chest.Murdoch's Russia ventures have been investigated for bribery. This was all in the background when, in 1999, Rupert Murdoch married Wendi Deng whom he and the FBI suspect of being a spy (3).
Since their divorce, Murdoch has been telling anybody who would listen that Wendi is a Chinese spy--and had been throughout the marriage.In 2006, when Jared Kushner bought the Observer, Murdoch became his close mentor (4).
When Jared Kushner took over the New York Observer in mid-2006 (around the time he met Ivanka Trump, whom he would marry in 2009) he turned to Murdoch for counsel.Kushner then directed the Observer erase such stories, and more (4).
Jared and Ivanka were known to double-date with Murdoch and his ex-wife Wendi Deng, and even after Murdoch’s split with Deng, the two women and the two men remained close.
The erasures first occurred under the leadership of then-editor-in-chief Elizabeth Spiers, who told The Post she was unaware of the erasure but said Kushner previously requested over the phone she couch stories about media mogul Rupert Murdoch, his mentor.In 2007 Wendi Deng, introduced Ivanka Trump to the wife of Roman Abramovich, Dasha Zhukova (5). In 2010, Jared Kushner's brother, Joshua, invested in a joint venture founded by Zhukova and Deng, Arsty.net (6). Then in 2014 Zhukova invited Deng, Ivanka, and Kushner to Moscow where they partied with Abramovich, Viktor Vekselberg, Len Blavatnik, and Alfa-bank execs, including the son-in-law of Sergei Lavrov (7).
...one conservative watchdog group in the US went after McCain half a year ago for facilitating a fundraiser at the home of Nat Rothschild, the Deripaska associate at the center of the Osborne-Mandelson row. Foreign donations, even "in-kind" contributions such as assistance raising money, are prohibited under American election law.In 2018 Ron Lauder awarded the entire Rothschild family the Herzl Award (12).
I just wrote this piece looking back at my favorite Rolling Stones album Let it Bleed (or maybe a tie with Exile!). I wrote about the music and the era in which it was recorded in. (It is also published here) submitted by Harry1T6 to TheRollingStones [link] [comments] https://preview.redd.it/r8kvy3hp3o341.jpg?width=280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fce981d098faef3e8cc8ef4456393e90d728efe5 This December marks the 50th anniversary of the Rolling Stones’ seminal 60s record, “Let it Bleed.” A record which, with its accompanying American tour, marked, and more broadly encapsulated, the end of an era: the 1960s. The 60s was defined by its youth, aestheticized by the carefree hippie counterculture movement that made pilgrimages to music festivals and experimented with psychedelics. The end of the decade, however, saw the political and social climate become increasingly turbulent. Domestically, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. Riots followed. Less than three months later, JFK’s brother Robert Kennedy met a similar fate. In 1969, a string of brutal murders in California by members of the Manson family followed by a deadly stabbing at a Rolling Stones’ concert at the Altamont Speedway further rocked the nation. Overseas, in Southeast Asia, America’s entanglement in the Vietnam War was at its peak. Meanwhile, in Europe, democratic, liberal reforms in Czechoslovakia were crushed under Soviet tanks as the Communists rolled through Prague. While the world around them was on fire, the Rolling Stones themselves were, by the end of the decade, on the brink of collapse, brimming with financial woe and internal conflict. They hadn’t toured since 1966 (except a few European shows in ’67) and under the new management of Allen Klein, had seen whole swaths of their royalties funneled into Klein’s pockets. Meanwhile, the band’s founder, Brian Jones, had been slowly deteriorating for years, succumbing to his worst, most self-destructive vices. He had been absent for most recording sessions, and, even when present, was barely able to function. While this was happening, his girlfriend, Anita Pallenberg, left him for Keith Richards. And bassist Bill Wyman was going through his divorce, while Mick Jagger’s relationship with his girlfriend, Marianne Faithful, deteriorated as she spiralled down the rabbit-hole of addiction herself. It was against this dark and disorderly backdrop that the Rolling Stones began sessions for their 8th U.K. studio album. The bulk of the record was recorded over six-months, beginning in February 1969. What resulted was a record that reflected not just the era in which it was recorded, but the internal state of the band recording it. Rather than allowing themselves to be consumed and destroyed by the turbulence and chaos surrounding them and boiling within, the Stones instead channelled that dark aura onto the grooves of their 1969 magnum opus, “Let It Bleed.” With Brian Jones’ mental state, weighed down by his addiction, not to mention the bevy of arrests on his criminal record hampering potential U.S. tours, the band had no other option but to replace the founder of the group. On May 30, 1969, Mick Taylor from John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers played his first session with the Rolling Stones in Olympic Studios. It was around that time that the band recorded the opening track, “Gimme Shelter.” There’s a reason Martin Scorsese used this song in three of his gangster films (“Goodfellas,” “Casino,” and “The Departed”). It starts with a subtle, foreboding guitar riff. Next, as the drums kick in, a new layer is added: a creepy, brooding background vocal, those haunting “oohs,” coupled with the creaking sound of guiros, leading up to Jagger’s vocals. The song is composed and structured to convey the dread of an impending storm, as well as its impact. It’s like a hurricane that starts with a trickle and builds to a thunderous pour. The opening lines, “A storm is threatening my very life today,” were written by Richards in his London apartment, staring out into the dreary, stormy skies and pouring out his anger and frustration at Mick Jagger over a suspected affair he was having with his then–girlfriend, Anita Pallenberg. The entire composition is elevated, rocketed through the stratosphere in its second half by the soulful Merry Clayton. Her gospel cries, pushing her vocal prowess to its breaking point as her voice cracks on the third iteration singing, “Rape, murder! It’s just a shot away, it’s just a shot away,” animate the aesthetics of the era – the late 60s – the racial tensions, the anti–war protests, et al. In those few minutes and simple lyrics, “Gimme Shelter” sends genuine shivers running down your spine. If “Let it Bleed,” as a record, marked the transition period from the Stones’ Brian Jones era to the Mick Taylor era, then its second track, “Love in Vain,” a Robert Johnson blues cover, is where Keith Richards officially replaced Jones as the blues engine of the band. The tragic irony of this track is that Brian Jones, the man who formed the band with intent to import the blues to Britain, was completely absent from these sessions where the Stones played the purest, most earthly blues they’d done yet. Richards, apart from playing his guitar parts, played all of Jones’, including Jones’ signature slide guitar. While covers are sometimes put on records as filler to make up for lack of material, the Stones’ “Love in Vain” is far from facile. Richards, influenced by Gram Parsons at the time, made the song entirely his own, rewriting it as a country-blues arrangement. The Stones’ latest single at the time was “Honky Tonk Women.” When it came to putting it on the record, Jagger and Richards stripped the grease and slickness clean off the twangy single, exposing its acoustic, country-blues underpinnings, and releasing it in all its rawness. “Country Honk,” the resulting track, isn’t showy or grand. Whereas “Honkey Tonk Women” is electric, refined, and written for concert venues, “Country Honk” is relaxed and laid-back. It exudes that country aesthetic of southerners sitting back in wooden rocking chairs and strumming their guitars at the ranch, off, somewhere in Jackson, Tennessee. Lucifer, from “Sympathy for the Devil” in their previous album, “Beggars Banquet,” makes his reprise in the dark, rugged blues epic, “Midnight Rambler.” But here, rather than presenting the devil as some abstract idea – reappearing throughout different moments in history, i.e. around St. Petersburg in the Russian Revolution – the Stones personify the devil. They make evil real, channeling it in the form of the Boston Strangler – a serial killer who raped and murdered 13 women in the early 1960s in Boston, Massachusetts. When Mick Jagger croons, “I’ll stick my knife right down your throat baby,” you can feel the strangler’s presence as it creeps up behind you. Opening the album’s B-side, “Midnight Rambler”features some of Jagger’s best blues harp playing overtop a pure Chicago blues shuffle from Richards, to create that spooky hook. Richards wrote the country love ballad “You Got the Silver” for his girlfriend, Anita Pallenberg. However, that Keith, for the first time, took the reigns as lead vocalist on this track, was mere happenstance. While trying to overdub different parts to the song, producer Jimmy Miller and the engineer accidentally deleted Mick’s vocals. Unfortunately, in 1969 – when the recording process was entirely analog – the nifty, lifesaving Control + Z undo operation was still a dream of the future. And with Jagger being abroad shooting a movie, the only solution was to have Richards fill in. In the end, it was a happy accident, as anyone who’s heard the bootlegged version (available here) with Mick Jagger on the vocals, can confirm it’s a bona fide Richards song. It’s hard to classify anything the Rolling Stones have recorded, let alone anything on this record, as underrated. But “Monkey Man” is as close to that marque as anything in their canon. Ask someone their favorite Stones riff and they will undoubtedly mention, “Satisfaction,” “Jumping Jack Flash,” “Brown Sugar” or “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking,” just to name a few (some might even suggest “Rocks Off” or “B****”) but everybody seems to forget the grooviest riff of them all: “Monkey Man.” This is about as good as The Rolling Stones ever got. Instead of opening with the main guitar riff, the song begins with a mischievous and enigmatic piano lick by Nicky Hopkins – added xylophone effects accentuate the aura of mystery – laid over a groovy bass line. In a similar, teasing manner, Keith Richards’ guitar starts playing along, slowly getting into the groove before finally ripping into this suave riff. And on top of that, did I mention some of the finest lyrics Jagger ever sang? “Well, I hope we’re not too messianic or a trifle too satanic. But we love to play the blues.” It’s a real shame the Stones themselves overlooked this gem because it wasn’t ever played live until decades later in their Voodoo Lounge tours in the 90s. By 1969, the Stones had already recorded what would be the last track on the record, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” Opening with the lush harmonies of the London Bach Choir, leading into Keith Richards’ acoustic guitar interwoven with Al Kooper playing the French horn, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” creates a sense of cinematic scale and beauty that transcends anything they had ever done prior. The choral ballad’s title verse – “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” – is a fitting a mantra to the end of the 60s. Where the love-and-peace hippie youth of the sixties were vying for idealism, the Stones offered realism. The anti-war hippie activists advocated for a future where war, nuclear weapons, and conflict didn’t exist, popularizing by the slogan, “Make Love not War.” What the Stones offered was alternative to naivety. They were never ones to advocate for a radical revolution. In their ostensible salute to protest, “Street Fighter Man,” (off “Beggars Banquet”) the Stones sang about overthrowing regimes, “I’ll kill the king and rail at all his servants” only to follow it up by jettisoning the call-to-arms, stating, “well, what can a poor boy do except play in a rock and roll band?” Effectively, the sentiment is that while you might feel rage and distaste with the status quo, a violent revolution isn’t going to solve anything. They hinted at this same thing in “Sympathy for the Devil,” when the devil, who was the song’s narrator, professed to being present at the Russian revolution when the Tsar was overthrown. “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” suggests a similar point, that, in the end, things will work out. You may not always get the idealistic, perfect outcome you envision; life doesn’t work that way. But you can get what you need. Wrapping up final mixes and overdubs on “Let it Bleed” in November, the Stones embarked on their first American tour in more than three years. Mick Taylor would take Brian Jones’ spot, who, after being fired from the band he founded, tragically died in July. Concluding their 1969 American Tour, the Stones played their last show on December 6. As a response to reams of complaints from fans disgruntled with soaring ticket prices, the Stones, together with Jefferson Airplane, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Santana, and the Grateful Dead organized a free concert at the Altamont Speedway in northern California, billed as “the Woodstock for the west.” Organizing Altamont was a lot like playing Tetris blindfolded, with twice as many blocks dropping and at three times the speed, while you were literally on speed. After a slew of back-and-forths between organizers, the Altamont was finalized as the venue on the night of December 4th – less than two days before the concert was scheduled to take place. The venue, built for a capacity of 7,500, was host to a crowd of over 300,000 hippies, almost all of whom were zonked out on myriad psychedelic drugs. For security, the Hells Angels motorcycle gang was recruited in exchange for $500 of beer (good luck declaring that on your tax forms). The Altamont was the perfect storm for a disaster. And the storm made landfall during the Stones’ set. When a drugged-up attendee, Meredith Hunter, drew a revolver as he approached the stage – while contrary to mythos which theatrically has the Stones playing “Sympathy for the Devil,” the Stones were playing “Under My Thumb” – the Hell’s Angels stepped in, stabbing him to death. The infamous Altamont Speedway stabbing, in conjunction with the spate of violent murders by the hippie denizens of Charles Manson’s commune, were the harsh winter that ended the summer of love. The counterculture youth of the sixties wanted the summer of love to continue forever. They didn’t want a Nixon presidency, and they wanted the war in Vietnam to end. With “Let it Bleed,” the Rolling Stones captured all of their woes and worries in one record, and they wryly responded, “you can’t always get what you want.” And they were right. The summer of love was over, and Nixon was president. But they got what they needed: the war ended, and heck, we all got a pretty damn good Stones album. |
"The Franklin child prostitution ring allegations began in June 1988 in Omaha, Nebraska and attracted significant public and political interest until late 1990, when separate state and federal grand juries concluded that the allegations were unfounded and the ring was a "carefully crafted hoax."[1][2].From the NYT:
In the Executive Board's public session Monday, Mr. Chambers said the activities of Lawrence E. King Jr., the credit union's manager for the last 18 years and the central figure in its collapse, were ''just the tip of an iceberg, and he's not in it by himself.'' But Mr. Chambers added nothing that would shed light on his cryptic assertion....Mr. King is a 44-year-old Omaha resident who wholly or partly owns several small businesses here and lives with his wife and school-age son in a large house in one of the city's better neighborhoods. He is a tall, expansive figure well known for his costly style of dressing, lavish celebrations and extensive travel, sometimes in chartered jets and often with an entourage of young men.In 1972 he headed a national political organization, Black Democrats for George McGovern. But he gained greater prominence after he had switched parties a while later, serving for a time as vice chairman of the National Black Republican Council, an official affiliate of the Republican Party, and becoming a familiar figure on the Republican social scene.Mr. King has maintained a $5,000-a-month residence off Embassy Row in Washington and has also entertained generously at Republican National Conventions. At the 1984 gathering, in Dallas, where he sang the national anthem on the convention floor, he rented the ranch where the television series ''Dallas'' is filmed and organized a party there for black Republicans....Mr. King's trouble with the authorities came to the surface early last month when officials of the Government's National Credit Union Administration, acting on information from the F.B.I. and the Internal Revenue Service, arrived at the offices of the Franklin Community Federal Credit Union and shut it down. Then, on Nov. 14, the agency, which oversees the nation's federally chartered credit unions and insures their deposits, filed the Government suit against Mr. King, whose salary as Franklin Community's manager had been less than $17,000 a year.(1989) Washington Call Boy Scandal
Craig J. Spence (1941 – November 10, 1989) was a Republican) lobbyist who was found dead in a Ritz-Carlton hotel room in 1989.[1][2] ...Spence was implicated in a gay call-boy ring scandal, that arranged after-hours visits to the White House, the Washington Times and other papers reported in June 1989. Afterward, Spence committed suicide in a Boston hotel....Spence's name came to national prominence in the aftermath of a June 28, 1989 article in the Washington Timesidentifying Spence as a customer of a homosexual escort service being investigated by the Secret Service, the District of Columbia Police and the United States Attorney's Office for suspected credit card fraud. The newspaper said he spent as much as $20,000 a month on the service. He had also been linked to a White House guard who has said he accepted an expensive watch from Mr. Spence and allowed him and friends to take late-night White House tours.[4]Spence entered a downward spiral in the wake of the Washington Times exposé, increasingly involving himself with call boys and crack,[5] and culminating in his July 31, 1989 arrest at the Barbizon Hotel on East 63rd St in Manhattan for criminal possession of a firearm and criminal possession of cocaine.[6]Months after the scandal had died down, and a few weeks before Spence was found in a room of the Boston Ritz-Carlton Hotel, he was asked who had given him the "key" to the White House. Michael Hedges and Jerry Seper of The Washington Times reported that "Mr. Spence hinted the tours were arranged by 'top level' persons", including Donald Gregg, national security adviser to Vice President George H. W. Bush at the time the tours were given.[5]When pressed to identify who it was who got him inside the White House, Spence asked "Who was it who got [long-term CIA operative] Félix Rodríguez) in to see Bush?", agreeing that he was alluding to Mr. Gregg.[5]Gregg himself dismissed the allegation as "absolute bull", according to Hedges and Seper. "It disturbs me that he can reach a slimy hand out of the sewer to grab me by the ankle like this," he told the reporters. "The allegations are totally false."[5]I'll let you decide how credible you find any of this so far. It should be noted that many of the people implicated in these affairs -- Wilson, Singlaub, Moon, Casey, Rodriguez, Bush, Stone, and Gregg -- were also involved to varying degrees in the Iran Contra Affair, which illegally raised money for anti-communist terrorists in Central America through the use of death squads, rape, and drug sales. One does not necessarily equal the other, but sexual blackmail and human trafficking don't seem like much of a stretch.
In summer 1987, Donald and Ivana Trump visited Moscow and Leningrad, following a personal invitation from the Soviet ambassador in Washington, Yuri Dubinin. The trip was arranged by Intourist, a travel agency that was also an undercover KGB outfit. Soon after returning from Moscow, Trump announced he was thinking of running for president. That presidential bid failed to materialise.In October 1988, on the eve of the US election, Ivana Trump visited her parents in Zlín, known at the time as Gottwaldov. According to the files she “confidently” predicted Bush’s victory to her father, who in turn passed the tip to local StB officers.“The outcome of the election confirmed the veracity of this information,” StB field agent Lt Peter Surý wrote, in a document dated 23 January 1989 and marked “secret”.The prediction came “from the highest echelons of power in the US”. Ivana was “not only a well-heeled US citizen” but moved in “very top political circles”, Surý stated....It is unclear when the KGB began a file on the future president. In Prague about 60,000 StB documents were declassified in the mid-1990s, after the collapse of communism. The StB destroyed most records.However, secret memos written by the KGB chief, Vladimir Kryuchkov, in the mid-1980s reveal that he berated his officers for their failure to cultivate top-level Americans. Kryuchkov circulated a confidential personality questionnaire to KGB heads of station abroad, setting out the qualities wanted from a potential asset.According to instructions leaked to British intelligence by the KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky, they included corruption, vanity, narcissism, marital infidelity and poor analytical skills. The KGB should focus on personalities who were upwardly mobile in business and politics, especially Americans, the document said.Another article in the Chicago Tribune notes:
A year before the 1989 collapse of communism in many parts of Europe, details about Ivana Trump's 1988 visit back to her homeland were recorded in a classified police report. The Oct. 22, 1988 report claimed that Trump refused to run for president in 1988 — despite alleged pressure to do so — because he felt, at 42, he was too young. But the secret report said he intended to run in the 1996 U.S. presidential race as an independent, when he would be 50."Even though it looks like a utopia, D. TRUMP is confident he will succeed," the police report said, based on information from an unspecified source who talked to Ivana Trump's father, Milos Zelnicek, about her visit.It was unclear where the alleged "pressure" was coming from. [Note: In "Get Me Roger Stone", Stone claims he was the one who convinced Trump to run.]...Trump's first wife was born Ivana Zelnickova in 1949 in the Czechoslovak city of Gottwaldov, the former city of Zlin that just had been renamed by the Communists, who took over the country in 1948. She married Trump, her second husband, in 1977. As she kept traveling home across the Iron Curtain on a regular basis, Ivana became a tempting target for the powerful, deeply feared Czechoslovak secret police agency known as the StB.And by at least 1989, Trump himself was in the social circle of both Iran Contra figures and the father of Epstein's alleged "madame", Ghislaine Maxwell:
“Everybody, but everybody at the party aboard British media mogul Robert Maxwell’s yacht Wednesday night had to doff their shoes before boarding the plush-carpeted “Lady Ghislaine.” Maxwell insisted, and his guests cooperated, including Donald Trump (minus Ivana), who has a much bigger yacht and was happy to compare notes with Maxwell. [Note: This is in reference to the Kingdom 5KR, originally owned by Adnan Khashoggi, international arms dealer and uncle of slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi.] There were John Tower [Republican Senator in charge of the Tower Commission, which investigated Iran Contra]; ex-Navy secretary John Lehman [Reagan appointee 1981-1987], now with Paine Webber; lawyer Tom Bolan [law partner of Roy Cohn]; literary agent Mort Janklow [clients include both Nancy and Ronald Reagan for their memoirs]; UN envoy Thomas Pickering [currently a board member at the world’s biggest pipe company, OAO TMK, in Moscow and Chairman of the Rostropovich-Vishnevskaya Foundation, “a non-profit organization based in Washington, DC that supports programs to improve the health of children worldwide”]; and Peter Kalikow, owner of the New York Post [awarded the Israel Peace Medal in 1982; created a super PAC for Herman Cain that was later revealed to be entirely financed by his donations]; Maxwell’s daughter, Ghislaine, and his niece, Helene Atkin of Macmillan, the publishing house Maxwell recently took over."[Note: This sentence wasn't in the Daily News article but shows up in a St Louis Dispatch piece a week later]: “Maxwell, who weighs about 300 pounds, went over the guest list personally.""No one could tell who didn’t make the final list, but we do know that Martha Smilgis of Time was disinvited by David Adler, public relations chief at Macmillan. She wrote the profile of Maxwell which he apparently did not like.”Who was Ghislaine’s father?
Ian Robert Maxwell "MC (10 June 1923 – 5 November 1991), born Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch, was a British media proprietor and Member of Parliament (MP). Originally from Czechoslovakia, Maxwell rose from poverty to build an extensive publishing empire….Maxwell had a flamboyant lifestyle, living in Headington Hill Hall in Oxford, from which he often flew in his helicopter, and sailing in his luxury yacht, the Lady Ghislaine. He was notably litigious and often embroiled in controversy, including about his support for Israel at the time of the 1948 Palestine war. In 1989, he had to sell successful businesses, including Pergamon Press, to cover some of his debts. In 1991, his body was discovered floating in the Atlantic Ocean, having fallen overboard from his yacht. He was buried in Jerusalem. Maxwell's death triggered the collapse of his publishing empire as banks called in loans. His sons briefly attempted to keep the business together, but failed as the news emerged that the elder Maxwell had stolen hundreds of millions of pounds from his own companies' pension funds. The Maxwell companies applied for bankruptcy protection in 1992....Shortly before Maxwell's death, a former employee of Israel's Military Intelligence Directorate, Ari Ben-Menashe, approached a number of news organisations in Britain and the U.S. with the allegation that Maxwell and the Daily Mirror's foreign editor, Nicholas Davies, were both long-time agents for Mossad. Ben-Menashe also claimed that in 1986, Maxwell had told the Israeli Embassy in London that Mordechai Vanunu had given information about Israel's nuclear capability to The Sunday Times, then to the Daily Mirror. Vanunu was subsequently kidnapped by Mossad and smuggled to Israel, convicted of treason and imprisoned for eighteen years.Ben-Menashe's story was ignored at first, but eventually The New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh repeated some of the allegations during a press conference in London held to publicise The Samson Option, Hersh's book about Israel's nuclear weapons. On 21 October 1991, two MPs, Labour's George Galloway and the Conservative's Rupert Allason (also known as espionage author Nigel West), agreed to raise the issue in the House of Commons under Parliamentary Privilege protection, which in turn allowed British newspapers to report events without fear of libel suits. Maxwell called the claims "ludicrous, a total invention" and sacked Davies.[44] A year later, in Galloway's libel settlement against Mirror Group Newspapers (in which he received "substantial" damages), Galloway's counsel announced that the MP accepted that the group's staff had not been involved in Vanunu's abduction. Galloway himself, however, referred to Maxwell as "one of the worst criminals of the century....The Maxwell companies filed for bankruptcy protection in 1992. Kevin Maxwell was declared bankrupt with debts of £400 million. In 1995, Kevin and Ian and two other former directors went on trial for conspiracy to defraud, but were unanimously acquitted by a twelve-man jury in 1996.”Epstein's own weird history has been spoken of to some degree, and I'm not sure I have much to add at this point, but perhaps it's important in context.
He taught calculus and physics at the prestigious Dalton School, a prep school in Manhattan, from 1973 to 1975, despite not having a college degree. Attorney General William Barr's father, Donald Barr, was headmaster at the time...Epstein left Dalton in the mid-1970s for a job at Bear Stearns at the urging of a student's father who arranged a meeting with the chairman of the investment bank, according to published reports. He later began his own money-management business, J. Epstein & Co....Epstein has long obscured the source of his wealth. Even after his arrest, he refused to provide authorities with even basic information about his income and assets. His attorney said Epstein's lawyers intend to provide the information but want to make sure it is correct first.This much is clear: "He is a man of nearly infinite means," federal prosecutor Alex Rossmiller said in court....Epstein also forged a relationship with Leslie Wexner, the retail titan behind Victoria's Secret, The Limited and other store chains. He started managing Wexner's money in the late 1980s and helped straighten out the finances for a real estate development Wexner was backing in a wealthy Columbus, Ohio, suburb.It was through Wexner that [in1996] Epstein acquired his Manhattan mansion, a seven-story, 21,000-square-foot former prep school less than a block from Central Park. It has been valued at about $77 million.Around the same time, Trump started dating Marla Maples, who was working at his Atlantic City Taj Mahal Casino:
Donald Trump, for his part, was becoming increasingly restless, and reckless. Despite fathering 3 children and having a devoted wife, by all accounts he didn’t spend much time with any of them, preferring work and play to the routines of domestic life. In the 80’s he made at least two life changing decisions-to step out on his wife publicly, and to expand his negligible empire into Atlantic City casinos. He built Harrah’s at Trump Plaza in 1984, and a partially completed building that became Trump Castle in 1985-a property that would be managed by his first wife, Ivana. He also scooped up the Taj Mahal in 1988, which at a cost of $1.1 billion made it the most expensive casino ever built at the time.Some weirdness starts to pop up here, at least allegedly. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer:
Resorts International, which opened the city's first gambling hall 5 1/2 years ago, broke ground yesterday for a second casino-hotel that will cost $250 million to build and will contain 1,000 hotel rooms and the world's second-largest casino.According to Wikipedia:
Resorts International was a hotel and casino company. From its origins as a paint company, it moved into the resort business in the 1960s with the development of Paradise Island in the Bahamas, and then expanded to Atlantic City, New Jersey with the opening of Resorts Casino Hotel in 1978.So how did a paint company morph into a multimillion dollar casino company? We're going to have to go to conspiracy theorists again. Make of it what you will:
Resorts International was largely a family affair that grew out of a company called the Mary Carter Paint Company."Mary Carter (she never existed) was pretty much a family affair controlled by Jim Crosby, two of his brothers, and his in-laws. Based in Tampa, Florida, the firm included in its directorate James Crosby, John Crosby (a plastic surgeon in Mobile, Alabama), William Crosby (a Tampa realtor), and the Murphy brothers, Henry and Tom, who'd married the Crosby daughters. Henry owned a funeral home in Trenton, New Jersey, while Tom was board chairman of Capital Cities Communications, a successful broadcasting business founded by explorer Lowell Thomas. The explorer too was an early shareholder in Mary Carter Paint, as was Republican Thomas Dewey." (Spooks, Jim Hougan, pg. 381)Acclaimed researchers Sally Denton and Roger Morris note: "... the Mary Carter Paint Company, which was widely considered to be a CIA front that laundered payments to the Cuban exile army in the early sixties..." (The Money and the Power, pg. 284).This is certainly quite plausible considering Mary Carter was then based out of Tampa, a hub for joint CIA-Syndicate efforts to assassinate Castro. As was noted before here, Tampa don Santo Trafficante, Jr. was one of the gangsters initially tapped by the CIA's notorious Office of Security to arrange for Castro's untimely demise. Trafficante, a close associate of Meyer Lansky (whom we shall return to again), had been deeply involved in Cuba's gambling operations prior to the revolution and would later become even more deeply immersed in the world heroin trade. As was noted before here, he was very close to the emerging Cuban Mafia, which provided ample recruits to the CIA during the early 1960s despite much suspicion that Trafficante was a double agent for Castro.Certainly the Mary Carter Paint Company would have been well positioned to assist Trafficante in these endeavors in Tampa. And such a connection would also explain why the corporation, in the mid-1960s (as CIA Cuban operations were winding down), abruptly sold off its paint business and boldly delved into gambling. By the end of the decade it was managing one of the most profitable casinos in the world on the Bahama's Paradise Island.What it amounts to is that by the late period James Crosby emerged as not only the CEO of Mary CarteResorts International, but as an extremely well connected figure within the GOP and beyond."... Crosby was himself uniquely situated in Republican circles: a sometime guest at the White House, he'd donated $100,000 to Nixon's 1968 campaign. He was also a friend of, and frequent host two, Bebe Rebozo (with whom he banked). Moreover, Crosby's private intelligence agency, Intertel, was even then working with White House aides and ITT executives to discredit Jack Anderson's revelations anent ITT and Chile. At the same time, Intertel was the de factocustodian of the demented billionaire Howard Hughes (his own $100,000 donation would later result in two volumes of Senate testimony in the Watergate affair). Indeed, the ties between Paradise Island and Richard Nixon's administration were of the sort that bind: Allan Butler, owner of the failing bank that was his namesake, claims the Nixon was a silent partner of Crosby's in his Bahamian ventures, sharing a healthy chunk of Paradise Island bridge revenues with yet another secret partner, Bebe Rebozo. And by by no means finally, James O. Golden, Resorts' vice-president and one of Intertel's founding spooks, had formerly served as Nixon's Secret Service shield, later taking charge of security for the Nixon forces at the GOP's 1968 convention in Miami Beach. That Paradise Island is a special place, and had a special place in the heart (or what passed for a heart) of the Nixon regime, is abundantly clear... (Spooks, Jim Hougan, pg. 180) ...And that brings us to possibly the most curious aspects of Resorts, namely its ownership of its own vast private intelligence network.It was known as Intertel, short for International Intelligence, Inc. Intertel was incorporated in 1970 as an almost wholly-owned subsidiary of Resorts International and hit the ground running. During its heyday, Intertel had an impressive roster and an international reach. It would turn up in host of intrigues throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Curiously, it had its origins with Robert Kennedy's "Get Hoffa" squad."... Intertel, known especially and remarkably for its composition of former organized crime strike force attorneys from Robert Kennedy's Justice Department... The IRS considered Intertel... 'an organized crime enterprise of some type aimed at the Bahamas,' as one account summed up the agency's view. Roberts Peloquin and William Hundley, Kennedy's top crime fighters, had joined the firm and recruited operatives from the CIA, FBI, IRS, Secret Service, and other intelligence agencies. Staffed exclusively by what one author called 'Get Hoffa agents,' it was likened into a corporate CIA.' (The Money and the Power, Sally Denton & Roger Morris, pg. 284)...Intertel's other ventures include spying of muckraker Jack Anderson) for ITT, investigating the Chicago Tylenol murders and the Bhopal disaster. Even more ominous, however, were its dealings with a shady Belgium-based private detective agency known as Agence de Recherche et d'Information (ARI). As was noted before here, ARI was linked to members of the neo-fascist terror organization known as the Westland New Post, a few of whom had also been implicated in drug trafficking and pedophile rings. Intertel reportedly hired ARI to do some work for them during the 1980s....What is of great interest to us here is Trump's third Atlantic City casino: the Taj Mahal. While now widely associated with Trump, thanks in no small part to it leading to his first bankruptcy, it was not in fact Trump who started the casino. That dubious distinction lies with Resorts International.The company had begun construction on the Taj Mahal in 1983, but had run into persistent difficulties in finishing construction in the following years. Then, in April 1986, James Crosby died suddenly. This left Resorts in turmoil (allegedly) and Trump stepped in. Trump bought a controlling stake in the company in 1987 and was promptly named its chairman of the board.Let that sink in for a moment: Donald J. Trump, the current President of the United States, was briefly the chairman of a corporation long suspected of being a CIA front, that had decades-spanning involvement with the Syndicate, numerous "rogue" financiers, various drug and arms traffickers and which owned a vast private intelligence network...."According to the Philadelphia Inquirer:
Developer Donald Trump took control of Resorts International Inc. yesterday in a $79 million deal that gives him his third Atlantic City casino, including what will be the largest gaming hall in the city.Trump sealed the deal in New York with those connected to the estate of the late founder of Resorts International, James M. Crosby.Trump paid a cash price of $135 a share for 585,068 shares of Class B stock, which has 100 times the voting power of Class A stock.He is expected to make a formal tender offer for the remaining 167,230 shares of Class B stock within the next several weeks at the same $135-a-share price. Owning all the Class B stock would give him 93 percent of the company's voting power.At a board meeting immediately after the transaction with the Crosby estate, Trump was elected chairman of the board of Resorts International, replacing Henry B. Murphy, Crosby's brother-in-law, who resigned.And his relationship with Ivana was falling apart:
After a painful scalp reduction surgery to remove a bald spot, Donald Trump confronted his then-wife, who had previously used the same plastic surgeon.“Your fucking doctor has ruined me!” Trump cried.What followed was a “violent assault,” according to Lost Tycoon. Donald held back Ivana’s arms and began to pull out fistfuls of hair from her scalp, as if to mirror the pain he felt from his own operation. He tore off her clothes and unzipped his pants.“Then he jams his penis inside her for the first time in more than sixteen months. Ivana is terrified… It is a violent assault,” Hurt writes. “According to versions she repeats to some of her closest confidantes, ‘he raped me.’”Following the incident, Ivana ran upstairs, hid behind a locked door, and remained there “crying for the rest of night.” When she returned to the master bedroom in the morning, he was there.“As she looks in horror at the ripped-out hair scattered all over the bed, he glares at her and asks with menacing casualness: ‘Does it hurt?’” Hurt writes.In 1992, Trump would divorce Ivana. It's this same year that we find him arranging a party of 30 for himself, Jeffrey Epstein, and 28 young aspiring calendar girls:
Part of a “calendar girl” competition organized at Trump’s request, the party was put together by a businessman named George Houraney, who spoke with the New York Times for a story published Tuesday.Houraney was also one of many to accuse Trump of sexual harassment, this time toward his former girlfriend and business partner, Jill Harth, who described an incident in 1997 as an attempted rape by Trump.“I arranged to have some contestants fly in,” Houraney told the Times. “At the very first party, I said, ‘Who’s coming tonight? I have 28 girls coming.’ It was him and Epstein.”...Before the “calendar girl” event, Houraney warned Trump about Epstein once again.“Look, Donald, I know Jeff really well, I can’t have him going after younger girls,” Houraney recalled telling Trump in the Times interview. “He said: ‘Look I’m putting my name on this. I wouldn’t put my name on it and have a scandal.’”[EDIT: MSNBC reports on 07/17/2019 on newly discovered footage of Trump and Epstein discussing women at a party in November of 1992.]
It was a snowy night in Manhattan, December 1992, and the festive group was embarking on a circuit of exclusive clubs after a sumptuous dinner at the Plaza Hotel’s Oak Room.As the limo wove through the city, Trump discussed his views on dating, according to one of the women riding along. The billionaire casino mogul declared that “all women are bimbos” and said most were “gold diggers” who would be smart to go after men with money. Like him.Rhonda Noggle, the model who relayed the story to the Globe in an interview, said that, at that point, she had had enough. Speaking sharply to Trump, she said, she asked him to stop the limo. The car grew silent.(1989-1995) The Untold Story of Trump Model Management (Part 1):
1989-1995 just so happens to be the same time period in which Donald Trumps world and empire was falling apart at the seams. In the beginning of the decade he was facing the end of his first marriage and a looming court battle. Despite his purportedly active dating life, by many accounts Trump was being rejected by many, if not most, of the women he pursued-including Carla Bruni and Jill Hearth. Marla Maples, after years of being the secret mistress and repeated rounds of being dumped and publicly humiliated by Trump, was starting to lose her patience. And the big gamble he took in Atlantic City was, by all accounts, failing miserably-a direct result of his jaw droppingly awful business practices and general incompetence. In 1991, his Taj Mahal Casino filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy. In 1992, he again filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy again, this time on his Trump Plaza Hotel (also in Atlantic City), at the time owing $550 million dollars. Recall that he would report an almost 1 billion dollar loss on his 1995 tax returns, according to the copies obtained by the New York Times. Indeed, the early 90’s were not a very good era for Donald Trump. In light of this fact, it’s worth noting that the sexual assault allegations against him are all clustered within this very time frame. [Note: This article was written in 2016, prior to more allegations]...By the time “New York Magazine” did a front page profile of him in 1988, Casablancas reputation for bedding young models was established and begrudgingly accepted (a price to pay in exchange for his “genius”) within the New York social scene, but the expose came as a shock to many outside the bubble. John Casablancas would soon find out that he was not as untouchable as he thought he was. In the article-which ran under the title “Girl Crazy”-Casablancas was portrayed as a champagne guzzling pervert, singularly dedicated to the “new look” department of Elite where he spent his days ogling the scantily clad, sometimes naked bodies of teenage girls. In light of Donald Trump’s more alarming comments and decisions around his daughter Ivanka, this quote stands out:"Casablancas talked about his seventeen year old daughter, Cecile. He said Cecile had been solicited by a photographer last summer on a beach in Ibiza. The photographer asked her to pose in a bikini, and Casablancas raced over to try to get a $2,000 fee for the shot. “She’s got a great little body” he told his models."Another quote that brings a chuckle and a nod of recognition in this story is Casablancas’s bizarre pride over never having changed a diaper. Donald Trump would make similar boasts in a Howard Stern interview a few years later. Compelling proof this is not, but I do believe it’s a hint at the kind of Don Juan persona that Don, far from a Juan, actually a dejected, balding husband with a crumbling empire....But the scandal did not end there, nor did it begin. Less than a month earlier 60 minutes aired a prime-time special on the abuses of underage girls in the modeling industry. Investigative reporter Craig Pyes portrayed the modeling industry as infested with agents who were notorious hustlers and playboys. His report revealed that both Claude Haddad- the head of European scouting for Ford- and Ford’s Paris-based agent Jean-Luc Brunel had been accused of horrific sexual misconduct by many models. [Note: Brunel's name appears multiple times on Epstein's flight manifests.] The special aired the interviews of dozens of women who accused both Brunel and Haddad of a litany of crimes, ranging from racist invective towards black models to violent rape. And in fact the hidden camera footage captured in filming the special caught it all- from Xavier lamenting about n**er models, to Haddad chuckling about drugging and raping 13 year old girls. According to Model At a retreat soon after the one-two punch delivered by the coverage, Haddad, Jean Luc Brunel and Casablancas were once again overheard (albeit not taped this time around) laughing about their crimes. Alternatively they were angry when confronted by interim scouting manager Trudi Tapscott - ”I’m a man and I have needs, I will not apologize for that!” Casablancas is said to have declared....Over time Donald Trump would emerge from the ruins of his empire with a new approach to business, and a new source of income-in 1996 he bought the rights to the Miss Universe franchise, and became the central figure in the running of these pageants. And in 1999 he started a modeling agency - T models, later changed to Trump Model Management. The correlation of interests is quite clear-for a man awkward around women but dependent on his public image saying otherwise, a stable of women under his employ was a way to boost his image-and even better, he was able to lock all of these women into non disclosure agreements, ensuring that his behavior with them had little chance of becoming public knowledge. It also appeared to have served as a useful tool regarding his business transactions-which, in the aftermath of his bankruptcy, were increasingly dependent on some less than savory characters. How he did this, and the breadth of this activity, will be explored in the next installment. But for the time being, there is one final aspect of this story that is breathtaking, and speaks more to the character of Donald Trump than anything else.More in Part 3.
Questions | Answers |
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Hey Naka, I'm a huge fan. Thank you so much for doing this. How much does it actually matter which opening a player chooses? | Openings matter only in so much as you are not worse or losing out of the opening! |
I've always wondered, does a gm have to have a bajillion games mostly memorized? How big a part of your study is analyzing the games of others? Do you spend time analyzing the games of people worse than you or only of other super gms? In a game of high level chess, does aesthetic count more than a computer-good position sometimes? Like, would you rather have a slightly worse position but one that more suits your style than your opponent's? Various databases that I've seen show that d4 is a more successful opening than e4 but e4 is more popular. Why is this? Why do master players online play so much blitz? Why not lengthy games? Who are your favorite players throughout history and who do you think are the best players? Thanks again. Good luck in chess! | I for one do not have a quadrillion games memorized. Mainly, it is more a matter of ideas/concepts combined with an understand of piece play and then of course tactics. But, because all professionals have studied and played chess for so many years, it is just inherently a part of our understanding. In this day and age, everyone is so good that being even slightly worse is too much! I will always take equality! I think in general, when you play chess on the internet its not serious competition, so the goal is to have a good time. Secondly, if I tried playing long games on the internet, I'd have trouble being motivated or keeping up the intensity. |
Are there still aspects of chess that humans do better at than computers? How incredible does a computer have to be to beat the best humans? Could my Macbook or cell phone do it? If a computer disagrees with you, do you always think that the computer must be right? How do you think Fischer would do against top players like yourself, Carlsen, or Kasparov? How would Morphy do? What's your top goal in chess? Do you think you'll achieve it? | 1.e4 is certainly NOT more popular at the top levels of chess today! I think in general because many of the great champions (Fischer and Kasparov specifically) opened with 1.e4, it remains very popular at the amateur level. The only two aspects of chess which humans are better at are: blocked positions where only one side has a break due to the long term concept and ideas which are beyond a computer horizon and secondly, pure attacks like in the Kings Indian. I am not sure if a computer on a cell phone could beat the top humans, but any laptop would be more than sufficient to trounce us pitiful humans into oblivion! Fischer would almost certainly lose to all of us, but this is due to the fact that the game has so fundamentally changed. If Fischer had a few years to use computers, I think he would probably be on the same level. I certainly hope to become World Champion, but it is a long process and I simply need to play good chess for now! |
My favourite players are Kasparov, Fischer and Tal. Mainly because they were more tactical and aggressive which is how I tend to play. | |
When you visualize a chess position, such as during a blindfold game, or when going over a score without a board present, what do you see? Do you see a full board and pieces, just like you were actually looking at a real board, or do you have some kind of abstract representation in your mind (such as a list of pieces and key squares and their attack/defense relationships)? | When I play 1 blindfold game or any amount, (I have done 15 on two separate occasions) I essentially see the whole board, but I very rarely calculate deep lines beyond 2-3 moves. In tournaments such as the Amber Blindfold and Rapid where it is 1 game against another top level play, I very often will calculate 2-3 lines of about 5-6 moves. I wish I could say that I am some sort of mathematical genius and I see a bunch of right triangles or some picasso style art lines, but that would be going too far! When I see the board, it is usually the blue board from the chess program chessbase with the white and black pieces. I suspect that for most modern day players, blindfold chess is a lot easier because of the endless hours we have all spent studying chess on computer screens. |
On chess.com, there is a mysterious GM Phoenix who has a very high rating, with much speculation as to his identity. The main guess was that it was you. When you officially showed up on chess.com, Phoenix stopped showing up, furthering that speculation. Were you GM Phoenix? | I will take the 5th on your question about GMPhoenix! :) |
We played in Round 3 of the 1997 Super Nationals chess tournament in Knoxville. We were both 2-0 and played on the podium while your dad took pictures from below-you were white and played the scotch. You had this intimidating strategy of standing behind me while I was pondering my next move. I still wonder, were you just trying to see the board from a different perspective, or intentionally trying to psych me out?! :) | I highly doubt that I could have come up with such a strategy at 9! :) I wish I could remember, but asking me to remember a game from 17?? years ago is too much! |
Do you think there will ever be a time in the future when Chess960 is a serious competitive chess format? Do you feel it does a good job of shaking up the theory-heavy metagame for more "casual" observers? | Great question, apetresc! |
I think chess960 is great as it is simply pure intuition and understanding without theory or computers. In my opinion, a lot depends on the trends. For example, at the moment everyone is playing the Berlin Defense which has severely reduced the number of games with 1.e4 If this trend of attempting to "kill" the excitement continues, it is hard to believe 960 won't take over at some point. However, if we start seeing a lot of deep preparation and exciting games in in the Najdorf or Dragon, then I think the scope of normal chess will continue for a very long time. | |
Hey, I was wondering how big of a role computers play in your chess life. | Hello Jack, your question is very pertinent not only to my chess career but the very future of chess as well. I would say that nowadays, when I study, computers comprise 90% overall. |
Do you ever play against them as practice? | I do not play against computers anymore because it is severely depressing to lose every game without ever even having a chance! |
What do you think we can learn from computer chess and what can't we? | I think mainly what can be learned from computers is a deeper understanding that almost all positions are ok with accurate play. In the past, many people assumed certain positions were automatically bad, but computers have shown that the rules and thought processes aren't always accurate! |
So when do you decide a position is gone as in unplayable? A full minor down or just a lack of counterplay and a pawn or something? Thanks. | In general, one gives up when either they are down too much material, mate is imminent or if there is little to no counterplay. If there is a chance of a swindle or a hope, then there is no reason to resign. Play till there are no chances left! |
How often does the average top-ten chess player get laid? | We aren't rock stars! :-D. |
Is chess still fun, or does it just feel like a job now? | Chess is certainly still enjoyable but it has taken on a more serious role as it is my full time career. It will always be fun, but it will never be the same as when I was 12-13-14 years old and just playing the game without any worries in the world. |
Why do you play chess? | I play chess because it pays the bills! ;) However, more importantly, I play because I enjoy the game! It is also really special having the opportunity to see lots of new and different cities and countries around the world! |
How much does being a professional chess player pay? | Being a professional chessplayer is not an easy profession, as you need to be in the top 30 to make a good living. Fortunately, I am amongst the top 30! |
Who do you support for FIDE president? | I do not particularly support one side over the other as both candidates have serious flaws. However, one must look at what the incumbent has done over the past 20 years. It does not seem as though chess has fundamentally moved forward in a new direction. At the same time, it remains to be seen whether the opposition leader will be able to bring in money and sponsors which he speaks of in his campaign. |
Hello there, very nice to see you doing an AMA. I've been wondering if there are times or any major time in your life that you've found chess to be boring? Also if that has happened what have you done to change this, or have you changed yourself so that you understand it's work and do it despite it being boring to you? Thanks again :) | I have tried to avoid being too philosophical, but I think in general, everything becomes boring after a while. Nothing is as fun as it was when you first started playing. The key is to stay motivated and just continue trying to learn more. |
You are considered one of the best blitz players in the world, if not the best. You should comment some of your games and post them to YouTube, a la KingcrusheChessexplained/curtains. I would pay to see that! What do you think? | To start, I have actually seen a few of Kingcrusher's videos on youtube and they are pretty good! At the moment, I am the #1 rated blitz player in the world, so I am certainly competitive. However, I do believe that because of my focus on becoming a better classical player over the last few years, I have gotten worse at blitz. |
Do you think that, with perfect play, chess is a win for white, win for black, or draw? Will we ever be able to mathematically prove this, or find the hypothetical "perfect game of chess"? | With perfect play, chess is and always will be a draw! Perhaps we will one day be able to prove the result of chess, but there will need to be a quantum leap in computing technology as well as storage capacity in order for this to be possible. I sincerely hope that this does not happen in my lifetime. |
It seems that you are more in control of your emotions currently than has been the case in the past. Is this something you agree with and if so, is it something you consciously work on or do you feel it's something that has come with age? | Hello Veritas, and thank you very much for your question which I will try to answer very truthfully! ;) |
I'm not sure that I am ever really in control! I would never really say that I worked consciously to become calmer and more mellow, but I think that lifestyle plays a big roll. In my late teens and early 20s, I spent a lot of time out on the west coast (Vancouver in particular) and this really helped a lot. Although, I do think that with every passing year, I become more mellow! | |
Thank you so much for your response. I'm so happy that you answered. I lived in Vancouver for a couple of years myself. I am looking forward to watching you play your next tournament. Thanks again. | You are very welcome! My next tournament will be in Azerbaijan from April 20-30. |
I have been wondering about your Japanese heritage. How often do you visit and can you speak Japanese? | I was born in Osaka, Japan to a Japanese father and am American mother. However, my parents separated and I moved back to the US when I was 2 years old. After that, I grew up with only English. I did take some Japanese lessons when I was about 10, and also took Japanese 101 during my 1 semester at Dickinson College. |
However, at this point my Japanese is pretty mediocre and I wouldn't say I know more than 20 words. Sadly, it's probably my 4th best language :( | |
I went back to Japan about once every 3 years growing up until I was 18. While I saw my Japan dad, I never had the opportunity to meet my half-siblings. | |
EDIT: How do you view your fellow Top Ten players in the world relative to the greats of other time periods? | I find that it is almost impossible to compare different generations of players. All of us are only as good as we are because of the greats who came before us. |
II: When you're watching a super-tournament that you're not participating in (such as the Candidates this year) do you watch it as a fan or do you use it to size up the competition, examine others opening preparation and search for new ideas? | As I mentioned above, the cycle for getting to a Candidates tournament, let alone winning it is a very long one and my next chance is 2 years away! Therefore, I can only focus on playing top level tournaments and trying to improve my overall results and game! When I am not competing, I watch the top level tournaments mainly to see what openings are popular and who is coming up with the best ideas. |
What is a typical day like for you when you're not playing in a tournament? | A typical day for me when I am not playing chess varies, but I will always study a few hours a day, (2-3) watch some of the BBC series, whether it is Frozen Planet, Planet Earth or one of the others, I will read some (I recently finished reading Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Chernow) and study about 1 hour of Italian! However, when tournaments are happening within the next week or two, I will be studying a lot more chess! |
Favorite unorthodox opening? | I would have to say that my favourite unorthodox opening has to be 1.b3! If it was good enough for Bent Larsen, then surely it is good enough for me! |
I sometimes (just because) play 1.e3 and then follow that up with b3. Is there any particular reason to play b3,Bb2 first? | It is chess! Be creative, and have fun! Your question is too deep and nuanced even for me! :) |
Are you good at other strategy games, such as RISK or strategy computer games? Does chess translate to other types of strategy like that? | The only other board game which I am pretty decent at besides chess is backgammon. As for computer games, I cannot really comment as I was pretty terrible at StarCraft! |
What is the most common mistake new chess players make when trying to learn the game? What's a better way to get started on the path to improvement? | I think the most common mistake new chess players make it that they are too impatient and want to know everything right away. Everything is a process and you need to not rush! Beyond that, I think just playing as much as you can, studying tactics and essentially trying to take in as much chess as you can, ESPECIALLY if you are young! |
Hello Hikaru! Big fan here! In a time where the majority of elite players choose safe and dry positions I really appreciate your aggressive and entertaining style, constantly going for complications. | Thanks for the compliment weasl! My general approach/philosophy is that we are all going to die, so might as well try to create some interesting games which will be remember 50-100 years from now! |
Is it easy for you to switch off from chess completely, or do you pretty much think about or calculate positions in your head all the time? | Unless I am thinking about chess, I find it quite easy to not think about it. For example, after my recent tournament in Zurich, I did not have a single though about chess during my 2 weeks of vacation! |
You have been known to play non-mainstream openings at times. Is this mostly a tactic to throw off booked opponents, a trick to force a certain type of position, general curiosity, trolling, or something else? | Thank you for the question LastChance! |
For the most part, I tend to consider myself a creative person in almost any endeavour I am actively involved in whether its games like chess or tennis, I like to be creative. Therefore, when I play offbeat openings its more because I prefer the pure aspect of just playing moves and seeing fresh new positions. There is certainly a psychological aspect as well since most people tend to frown upon offbeat openings. However, I will always take creativity, new positions and playing the game over studying the Berlin Defense for 6 hours every day! :-D | |
What's going on in your head when you realize during the game that you are winning? | Thank you for the question, ColoradoSheriff! |
In general, I try not to think too much about outside factors during the game except for the position on the board. However, it does get difficult not to start wandering off and thinking about the future during especially critical games. Nevertheless, as with any other game or sport, focus focus FOCUS is the key! | |
– for you personally, what was the most fun tournament you ever participated in, and why? | The first question has been asked many times, and there isn't one particular moment which stands out. It is more due to a special significant event. For example, winning the US Championship in 2005 will always be very special as it was my first US Championship! Just as, for example, the Turin Olympiad in 2006 was special since it was both my first Olympiad, and the first time I got a team medal (bronze)! |
– do you still play poker? What was the 2011 WSOP experience like and do you plan to enter again someday? | I do still play poker occasionally, but due to the ban on internet poker here in the US, it is rather inconvenient to have to drive a few hours to a casino. Therefore, while I still play occasionally, it isn't something which I spend much time. |
Thanks so much! Looking forward to watching you shaking up Candidate’s this year! | I did not qualify for the Candidate's tournament this year, but thank you for the compliment! |
I am sad neither yourself nor Fabiano will be playing in it this year. | In general, it seems to me that the entire system needs to be overhauled as you have 4 out of the top 10 players in the world not playing in the Candidates. |
Do you often hang out with other professional Chess player's in non-chess contexts? Is there down-time at tournaments where you just socialize with one another? | Most of my life has been spent around chess tournaments and chessplayers so it is only natural that many of my friends come from the chess world. However, I do not hang out with other "professional" players. We all are amiable, but at the end of the day it is a competition! |
Thank you for the AMA! As a fellow Japanese American, you are one of my biggest inspirations in chess. Here are my questions: - who was the player that you looked up the most when you were a child? - what do you think are the major differences between chess in Japan and in the states? - what are some characteristics (both in and out of the games) that made some legendary chess players in the past (Kasparov, Fischer, etc)that you think made them so difficult to beat at the time? | When I was a child, I looked up to Kasparov. He was both the best and most charismatic player as well as having an aggressive and exciting style. I think the main difference between chess in Japan and the US is that in Japan there is the Japanese version of chess (Shogi) which really limits the number of kids who are exposed to chess. This is why there are so few Japanese players, let alone masters. |
I think with Kasparov and Fischer it was everything from their personality to their play which was very intimidating. | |
Will the sunglasses strategy ever return? | I would love to wear sunglasses more often, but unfortunately due to concerns (unfortunately justified in this day and age) about cheating, I doubt I will be doing it very often. |
I really like your aggressive style and that you play for wins. | Elmobob, thanks for the question! |
What do you do up in your hotel room after a particularly awful defeat? | I usually watch some Breaking Bad! |
What is your favorite part about being a Grandmaster? Travelling? Not having a '9 to 5' job? Thanks. | My favorite part about being a professional chessplayer (not a Grandmaster as plenty of them do work normal 9-5 jobs) is that I am my own boss and make my own schedule. |
What kind of board and pieces do you prefer playing with? Does the degree of simplicity/luxury have any impact on your level of enjoyment? | For the most part, I just like a nice wooden board with weighted pieces. However, I have some antique sets which I thoroughly enjoy as well. |
Which is the mountain peak you are the most proud of? | I have done many day climbs, but I would have to say my two favorites are Sawtooth in the Sierra Nevadas and Black Tusk in Vancouver, British Columbia! Sometime in the future, I will go to Colorado and do a few 14ers! :-D. |
Can you give an example of something new you have learned about chess within the last one or two years? | Almost every day, I learn something new about chess from looking at old games or studying tactics! |
Have you ever thought about producing any content for the community, perhaps live commentating some games on the ICC? | I have considered doing content, and I will be doing some commentary on chess.com shortly! |
Are you still technically the chess960 champion? What is the future of chess960 do you think? Would you be happy if all tournaments switched to 960? | I am still currently the 960 champion, but as to the future who knows! I attempted to answer this question earlier response. |
Are you playing in the US Championship this year, since it doesn't overlap with Norway? | I have not decided on the US Championship, but I have chosen to play a tournament in Prague instead of Norway. |
How high is your level on ChessTempo? | Hello Dance, |
I have never played chess on ChessTempo, but I will check it out. At the moment, I am playing on chess.com! | |
Are you familiar with Go at all? Any interest? | Yes, see the link below! However, I am a terrible player! |
Link to scontent-b-ord.xx.fbcdn.net | |
Who has been the most challenging opponent you've faced? And also who has surprised you the most in a match (someone you predicted wouldn't have a chance but came close/won)? | Without a doubt, I am having the most problems with Aronian! I have lost something like 6 games in a row! |
@GM Hikaru Nakamura are there any books that you feel after reading helped you improve? | Recently, I have really taken a liking to the My Great Predecessors series by Kasparov. |
I love Chess and hate it at the same time. What is the fastest game you have ever played? The longest? | The fastest game I have ever played is maybe 20 minutes (I can't recall the shortest offhand). My longest game would have to be an 8 1/2 hour game I played with GM Meier in Dortmund back in 2011. |
As a world class, how many hours do you focus on chess per week? Describe what the study plan for a GM is like. Like percentage do you work on opening prep, what percentage on going over past games, etc. What books/study plan would you recommend for a class A-B level player? | I already gave a general response to a schedule during a week. As for specifics, I think it's probably 80% openings 10% endgames, 10% reviewing your games. |
I was thinking that when Deep Blue beat Kasparov the problem was that the board is too small. A supercomputer can numbercrunch an 8 by 8 board. But a human could adapt to a board 100 times bigger more easily. What do you think? (For you it might be too late too change ;) ) | There have been many proposed changes to the chess rules, but none of them have worked so far! I think the problem is that its hard to remain pure to the game without changing a major rule. Perhaps you are the person to introduce the new groundbreaking idea! |
You're known to get quite emotionally invested in your games. Why is this? Do you feel it helps or hinders your game overall? | When one plays a game or has a job, it seems natural to take pride and want to do your absolute best. This is probably why I give everything for the game of chess. |
On chess improvement: what would you say is the best advice for amateurs to follow to help them get better? | Best advice for amateurs is to try and play as much as you can, but also study your games and try to understand the mistakes and why you made them. |
Can you comment on the psychological aspect of the game, and how much mental strength plays a role? It seems as if some players almost use a sort of sorcery to psych out their opponent. Does that aspect exist at the top levels? | In terms of the psychological aspect, mental strength is crucial. If you do not have absolute confidence and belief in yourself or are feeling insecure in any way, there tend to be dire consequences on the chess board. This will tend to affect both your calculation and evaluation assessments. |
Also, was this factor partially at play in your recent near defeat of Carlsen? Thanks. | My recent game against Carlsen had nothing to do with the psychological aspect. I just had a 1 in 100 hallucination. |
In most of your interviews I see you wearing a Barca jersey, what do you think their Chances are of winning the champions league this year? | I think there chances are reasonable, and it will certainly be exciting. As long as Real Madrid doesn't ever win, I am happy! :) |
Hello Hikaru. Thank you for doing this AMA. | No problem, any time! |
Do you ever get "tired" of chess and what do you do when/if it happens? | I certainly have moments where I get sick of chess. Usually when this happens, I take a long break and look or do anything except chess. |
Your games and playing styles have always been marked by a reckless, aggressive, attacking style which is usually decisive one way or another. How were you been able to reconcile your attacking instincts with the positional play that is necessary to succeed at a high level? What advice would you give to somebody who is enjoys dynamic, tactical games, but struggles in positional planning? | I think the main way to learn is by playing those types of positions. So essentially, I think it is necessary to make a conscious effort to force yourself into those less tactical positions where you need to find different ways of playing instead of just tactics. |
Hello, Hikaru. Thanks for the AMA. At the top levels of grandmaster play, how many moves are made that are either prepared, memorized, or from book before you are into unknown territories and playing strictly from the OTB position? | I would say on average, someone will introduce a novelty or play a lesser known variation by about move 15. There will almost never be any surprises before move 10. |
Howdy, thanks for doing this- I'm a huge fan that tries to follow all of your tournaments. | Sheer-Luck, amusing question! |
It seems like someone can't play chess for long without observing some unusual people and/or situations. What do you think is the most amusing chess anecdote you've picked up over the years that you'd be willing to share? | There are way too many stories which I will save for my book of chess stories in 20 years! Nevertheless, I remember a game from a tournament quite a few years back, where someone got up went to the restroom then came back only to see someone else sitting in their spot having played 3-4 moves. Suffice to say it was a very confusing situation! |
Mr. Nakamura, Nice to meet you, thank you for your contributions to the chess world and for doing this AMA. My question: How do you like your olives? Small and black and fleshy or are you the large green juicy type? Have a great day! | I love olives! They are especially good with a nice vodka martini! |
Here's a tough one. In the past, sometimes your tweets have rubbed some people the wrong way, e.g. after the Olympiad, "A sad fact of team competitions, you're only as strong as your teammates." (I'm paraphrasing.) How do those statements affect your relationship with colleagues and other players? | My teammates understood perfectly well that it was not intended at them. It was a simple statement, but sometimes people choose to see extra hidden meaning. |
Gata and I will always be the bruisers for Team USA. | |
You also follow Napoli FC, a football club in the city of Naples, whose manager ideologically believes that the game is similar to chess in the aspect of exerting control from the center. How did you actually end up following the club though, which I believe is not an automatic choice for mainstream followers of the game? | Buona sera, aravindreds! |
My fiancée is Italian and lives in Naples. Therefore, I have been spending quite a lot of time there in the past year and a half. One day, I hope to meet Rafael Benitez! | |
What other "board games" do you play? Baccarat? | Primarily backgammon. I have never learned enough about games like craps or baccarat. |
I've always wondered how the top players treat each other outside of the playing rooms. Do you guys ever grab a beer together or something? From tournament streams it just seems like the relationships between players are purely respectful and professional. | I would say that in the past 60s 70s 80s even the 90s, chess was a lot more fun and enjoyable with everyone being good friends. Nowadays, there is quite a bit of separation and we all do our own thing. |
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