After the successful return of the China’s space capsule Shenzhou VII from orbiting Earth, another unique space event will happen on outer space. It will be a challenge of chess in the floating International Space Station. Astronaut Greg Chamitoff, a chess aficionado and the International Space Station’s flight engineer and inhabitants of Earth will have a chess match starting September 29. Greg Chamitoff will be battling against Earth’s move.
According to Chessbase.com,
Key players in the game will be the kindergarten through third grade U.S. Chess Championship Team and its chess club teammates from Stevenson Elementary School in Bellevue, Wash. The K-3 champions will select up to four possible moves on Earth’s turn. The public then will vote on the move transmitted to orbit. The USCF will facilitate the match on its Web site at http://www.uschess.org/nasa2008.
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The game against the public will move at a pace of one move per day on weekdays only. Play may be slower, however, because Chamitoff only makes moves when his workload permits.
I will surely participate to this once in a lifetime chess event of the year and this will be a new experience for all the chess enthusiasts like me. As of today, the first move of Chamitoff was 1. d4 and the Earth’s chess players voted for 1… Nf6 as the response for this opening of Chamitoff.