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HO CHI MINH CITY, VIETNAM - Media OutReach - 2 December 2021 - Within the framework of President Nguyen Xuan Phuc's visit to the Russian Federation, Ho Chi Minh City Development JSC Bank (HDBank) signed a memorandum of understanding with the World Chess Federation (FIDE) and the Vietnam Chess Federation (VCF) in Moscow on December 1, 2021, for organising international chess tournaments in the next 10 years.

FIDE will include the annual HDBank International Chess Tournament held in Vietnam in its list of official tournaments and help improve its field.

The VCF will organise the tournament, improve the skills of Vietnamese team and players and get players from all over the world.

As part of the tournament, the parties also agreed to organise workshops for referees, coaches, and organisers and chess classes for teenagers and younger children by grandmasters.

They will undertake a programme called 'Chess in schools' and organise events in 2022, a year that has been designated by FIDE as The Year of Women in Chess.

Cooperation between the three parties is of great significance in improving the skills of Vietnamese players, referees and organisers to help chess in the country grow stronger and become more professional.

Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao, permanent vice chairwoman of HDBank, said: "Chess, with its special language of intelligence, has been a bridge to help people get closer together and blur borders between countries, religions, languages, and cultures.

"That is why HDBank has chosen to embrace it for nearly a decade as part of our sustainable development programme."

With the signing of the memorandum of understanding, HDBank will continue to foster chess and collaborate with the VCF as it has done for more than a decade since 2011.

The HDBank International Chess Tournament is held in March every year since 2011 and has become a unique sporting event. The tournament has twice welcomed the FIDE President: Kirsan Ilyumzhinov in 2018 and Arkady Dvorkovich in 2019.

In 2020 and 2021 the tournament was not held due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Over its nine years the HDBank International Chess Tournament attracted players from 42 countries and five continents.

Their numbers kept increasing every year as did the field and organisation.

With an average elo rating of 2370 - 2400, experts consider the HDBank International Chess Tournament the most elite in Asia.

#HDBank

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International Chess Federation ties up with HDBank for 10 years - Taiwan News

Lt. Gen. Saltzman: 'We are seeing a shift to where the first strike advantages are encountered in space'

WASHINGTON China and Russia for decades have watched the United States display its military power, much of it enabled by satellites in space. Chinas recent demonstration of an orbital hypersonic weapon and Russia blowing up a satellite in orbit are expected countermoves, said Space Force deputy chief of operations Lt. Gen. B. Chance Saltzman.

What is happening in space is a natural consequence of how military powers historically behave as they try to gain a leg up on adversaries, Saltzman said Nov. 29 during a Mitchell Institute online event.

These are dynamic times in the space security environment, he said.

Military capabilities acquired by the United States such as GPS-guided weapons and overhead sensors that detect missile launches are all dependent on satellites in orbit. China or Russia have an incentive to develop space weapons that could serve as first strike capabilities in the event of a conflict to deny the U.S. these advantages, Saltzman explained.

We are seeing a shift to where the first strike advantages are encountered in space, he said. Theyre the first mover advantage, whoever can go first on the offense has an advantage.

China demonstrated a hypersonic glide vehicle that can be launched to orbit, reenter the atmosphere and strike a target on the ground. Now, what the military minds have to do is offset that. And we have to figure out how you defend against that capability so that first mover advantage is not there, said Saltzman.

I think what were seeing is a cycle of history. When you are behind, you look for ways to seek vulnerabilities in your competitors so that you can regain your advantage. And were seeing that play out, he said. Weve had an advantage for a long time.

Russia earlier this month launched a Nudol suborbital missile that intercepted a defunct Soviet satellite 468 kilometers above Earth, creating a large cloud of debris that could endanger other satellites and the International Space Station.

This sends a signal to the United States that the U.S. advantage derived from space is at risk, said Saltzman. Theyve watched how weve prosecuted campaigns from Desert Storm and beyond. And they know that if they can take those capabilities away from us, that it can bring more parity to the strategic military environment.

The U.S. now has to figure out what to do next to restore strategic stability. Saltzman said the answer does not have to involve aggression. The Space Force sees as one its primary responsibilities to deter a war that starts or extends into space. And so deterrence is at the heart of what were trying to accomplish.

Space Force Chief of Space Operations Gen. John Jay Raymond frequently has compared space to the lawless wild west where anything goes.

Saltzman said Russias latest demonstration proves that point. Space is a global commons so its imperative to have an international agreement in place that lays out rules of behavior and punishes violators. Its hard to hold people responsible for any kind of behavior because you havent really defined whats acceptable and whats not acceptable.

I dont think we should underestimate how important setting the framework for what responsible behavior in space looks like, he said. Once we set that framework, we can hold other nations accountable in a broader sense, through maybe the United Nations or through other international coalitions and I think that international peer pressure is actually pretty valuable.

To enforce a code of conduct, it will be important for the United States and other nations to have accurate intelligence about space activities. Russia shooting down a satellite was clearly an intentional act, but there are other times when two objects just run into each other and create a debris field. So a debris generating event can occur by accident, as much as it can occur deliberately. And we have to have that capacity to rapidly characterize, figure out where those orbits are, and then start doing projections about potential hazards that those new objects created on orbit could cause.

Better detection needed

To counter Chinas advances in hypersonic weapons, the immediate response will be to deploy sensors that can detect these threats, said Saltzman. Its incumbent on the Space Force to make sure that were developing the capabilities to track these kinds of weapons before theyre launched, ideally, but then throughout their lifecycle, either on orbit or in execution of their mission.

If we can track we can attribute, and if we can attribute I think we can deter, he said. One of the imperatives of the Space Force is to make sure that were developing those capabilities to be able to hold accountable nations who are using these kinds of destabilizing weapons.

One way to deter anti-satellite attacks like that performed by Russia is to make it costly for the aggressor. An approach favored by the Space Force is to deploy large numbers of lower-cost satellites to create a disaggregated system, instead of relying on a handful of costly and sophisticated satellites that Russia and China would target.

We think that our ability to have more resilient capability, maybe disaggregated capability on orbit creates a problem for an adversary, said Saltzman. If they dont know what to shoot at, then whats the benefit of shooting? And so we are actively pouring our resources into building a resilient architecture that no one satellite destruction would dismantle.

Of course theres no guarantee that strategy will work, he added. If they think they can get away with things scot free, then it changes the calculus. At least, the Space Force will look at what research and development are required to see what it would take to impose costs. And so thats our thats our strategy initially.

The satellites the U.S. military currently operates were not designed for space warfare, Saltzman noted. When I started flying satellites our primary concern was the longevity of the system. It was so expensive to put these capabilities on orbit that we did trend analysis on batteries and solar array efficiencies. And we designed a very efficient architecture with regards to that.

What the United States has is certainly not an architecture designed knowing that you are going to have to provide those services in a contested domain. And so now we have to shift.

Saltzman cautioned that this transition could take years. Its not going to be overnight that we can shift like this.

The Space Force stood up an analysis center to help design the future space architecture. Theyre using modeling and simulations that we really havent had in the past, he said.

Some of these things take a while to get on orbit. But a journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step. So thats thats the path of the journey were on.

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Space Force official: Satellites in orbit have become pawns in geopolitical chess games - SpaceNews

The Kasparov Chess Foundation announces the second annual KCF University Cup to take place online, February 5 - 6, 2022. The tournament is open to teams from colleges and universities from all over the world.

The KCF University Cup is an international online event open to teams from a post-secondary school (university, college, community college, etc.) and players enrolled in at least one class for the January 2022 semester. A team consists of four players plus two alternates. There is no entry fee for teams to participate in the University Cup, and this year will enforce a rating cap, with no team allowed an average rating exceeding 2400.

The 2022 KCF University Cup will be a nine-round team, Swiss system tournament over both days, using a rapid time control. The event will be played on the free and non-commercial chess platform lichess.org.

First place winning team will receive the KCF University Cup, as well as an exclusive team training session with legendary World Champion Garry Kasparov. The top team in the U2200 category will also receive an online team training session with Kasparov. Plaques will be awarded to the top-three teams in the overall standings, as well as to the top team in each the U2200, U2000 and U1800 rating categories. Plaques will also be awarded to the top team per FIDE Continent (Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe). In addition to the prizes above, another plaque will be awarded to the top "Mixed Doubles" team two males and two females to represent the school on each day.

The Kasparov Chess Foundation established a multinational team of officials and organizers to ensure a fair and friendly competition. These officials include:

For complete rules and registration details, visit kcf.chessstream.com or send an email to KCFUniversityCup@chessstream.com with any questions.About Kasparov Chess Foundation Founded by World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov, KCFs mission is to bring the many educational benefits of chess to children worldwide by providing a complete chess curriculum and enrichment programs. The Foundation promotes the study of chess as a cognitive learning tool in curricular classes and after-school programs for elementary, middle and high schools, both in the public and private school sectors. The not-for-profit educational organization also organizes tournaments and competitions on a local and national basis. For more information, please visit http://www.kasparovchessfoundation.org.

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Kasparov Chess Foundation to Host University Cup Online Global Tournament - uschess.org