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James Plaskett
Harold James Plaskett (born 18 March 1960) is a British chess grandmaster and writer. Biography Early life and personal life Plaskett was born in Dhekelia, Cyprus, on 18 March 1960 and was educated at Bedford Modern School, England. In the 1990s he was a chess columnist for the ''New Statesman'' while working various jobs in London. He is married to the poet Fiona Pitt-Kethley. They relocated to Cartagena, Spain in 2002. Chess career At the European Junior Chess Championship 1978/79, which was won by John van der Wiel, Plaskett became third with 8 points out of 13 games. At the Junior EC 1979/80 Plaskett reached a shared fourth place with 8.5 points out of 13 games. Plaskett achieved the title of International Master in 1981, and became an International Grandmaster in 1985. At the Hastings tournament in 1986/87 he achieved 7 points out of 13 games, one point less than the winner Murray Chandler. He became British Chess Champion in 1990, with 9 points out of 11 games. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south. The country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain, which lies in the North Atlantic, and includes over 100 smaller islands, such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight. The area now called England was first inhabited by modern humans during the Upper Paleolithic period, but takes its name from the Angles, a Germanic tribe deriving its name from the Anglia peninsula, who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in the 10th century and has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century. The English language, the Anglican Church, and Engli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chess Tournament
A chess tournament is a series of chess games played competitively to determine a winning individual or team. Since the first international chess tournament in London, 1851, chess tournaments have become the standard form of chess competition among serious players. Today, the most recognized chess tournaments for individual competition include the Linares chess tournament (now defunct) and the Tata Steel chess tournament. The largest team chess tournament is the Chess Olympiad, in which players compete for their country's team in the same fashion as the Olympic Games. Since the 1960s, chess computers have occasionally entered human tournaments, but this is no longer common. Most chess tournaments are organized and ruled according to the World Chess Federation (FIDE) handbook, which offers guidelines and regulations for conducting tournaments. Chess tournaments are mainly held in either round-robin style, Swiss system style or elimination style to determine a winning party. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tecwen Whittock
Charles William Ingram (born 6 August 1963) is an English novelist and former British Army major who gained notoriety for his appearance on the ITV television game show ''Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?''. In episodes recorded in September 2001, Ingram correctly answered fifteen questions to win the show's maximum prize of £1 million, becoming the third recorded contestant to ever do so. However, he was denied the winnings due to suspicion of cheating. Following a lengthy trial at Southwark Crown Court, Ingram was convicted on a single count of procuring the execution of a valuable security by deception. He was subsequently convicted of an unrelated offence involving insurance fraud in 2003 and ordered to resign his commission as a major by the Army Board. Early life Charles Ingram was born on 6 August 1963 in Shardlow, Derbyshire, the son of retired RAF wing commander John Ingram and his wife, theatre set designer Susan Ingram. His father's Wellington bomber, operating wit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diana Ingram
Charles William Ingram (born 6 August 1963) is an English novelist and former British Army major who gained notoriety for his appearance on the ITV television game show ''Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?''. In episodes recorded in September 2001, Ingram correctly answered fifteen questions to win the show's maximum prize of £1 million, becoming the third recorded contestant to ever do so. However, he was denied the winnings due to suspicion of cheating. Following a lengthy trial at Southwark Crown Court, Ingram was convicted on a single count of procuring the execution of a valuable security by deception. He was subsequently convicted of an unrelated offence involving insurance fraud in 2003 and ordered to resign his commission as a major by the Army Board. Early life Charles Ingram was born on 6 August 1963 in Shardlow, Derbyshire, the son of retired RAF wing commander John Ingram and his wife, theatre set designer Susan Ingram. His father's Wellington bomber, operating wit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Ingram
Charles William Ingram (born 6 August 1963) is an English novelist and former British Army major who gained notoriety for his appearance on the ITV television game show ''Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?''. In episodes recorded in September 2001, Ingram correctly answered fifteen questions to win the show's maximum prize of £1 million, becoming the third recorded contestant to ever do so. However, he was denied the winnings due to suspicion of cheating. Following a lengthy trial at Southwark Crown Court, Ingram was convicted on a single count of procuring the execution of a valuable security by deception. He was subsequently convicted of an unrelated offence involving insurance fraud in 2003 and ordered to resign his commission as a major by the Army Board. Early life Charles Ingram was born on 6 August 1963 in Shardlow, Derbyshire, the son of retired RAF wing commander John Ingram and his wife, theatre set designer Susan Ingram. His father's Wellington bomber, operating ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stuart Conquest
Stuart C. Conquest (born 1 March 1967 in Ilford, England) is an English chess Grandmaster, commentator and tournament director. Chess career In 1981, at the age of 14, he won the World Youth Chess Championship in the under-16 category. Conquest was British Rapidplay Chess Champion in 1997. In 1995 and 2000 he shared first place at the Hastings Premier and in 2001, won the category 14 tournament in Clichy. Following a relatively lean period, he capped his return to form in 2008 with victory in the British Chess Championship, defeating Keith Arkell in a two-game rapidplay play-off match for the title, after they tied for first place. In May 2009 he came first at the Capo d'Orso Open. Since the mid-1990s, he has been a frequent member of the England team at the Olympiads and European Team Chess Championships. A prolific player at international tournaments for many years, Conquest has in recent times been a regular commentator and (since 2011) tournament director of the Gibralt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? (UK Game Show)
''Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?'' is a British television quiz show, created by David Briggs for ITV. The programme's format sees contestants taking on multiple-choice questions based upon general knowledge, winning a cash prize for each question they answer correctly, with the amount offered increasing as they take on more difficult questions. If an incorrect answer is given, the contestant will leave with whatever cash prize is guaranteed by the last safety net they have passed, unless they opt to walk away before answering the next question with the money the cash prize they had managed to reach. To assist in the quiz, contestants are given a series of "lifelines" to help answer questions. The series originally aired from 4 September 1998 to 11 February 2014 and was presented by Chris Tarrant, airing a total of 592 episodes across 30 series. The original format was tweaked in later years, which included changing the number of questions asked, altering the payout structure, i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Demon Internet
Demon Internet was a British Internet service provider, initially an independent business, later operating as a brand of Vodafone. It was List of UK ISPs by age, one of the UK's earliest ISPs, offering dial-up Internet access services from 1 June 1992. According to the ''Daily Telegraph'', it "sparked a revolution by becoming the first to provide genuinely affordable access to the internet in the UK". In 1997 Demon was bought by Scottish Telecom, a wholly owned subsidiary of the private utility company Scottish Power. Scottish Telecom rebranded as Thus (company), Thus plc in October 1999 and floated on the London Stock Exchange. Thus plc fully demerged from Scottish Power in 2002. Thus became part of Cable & Wireless plc, and then part of Cable & Wireless Worldwide following a split of its parent. The company was purchased as part of the acquisition of Cable & Wireless Worldwide by Vodafone Group on 27 July 2012. Demon then operated as a brand of Vodafone. From 1996 to 2006 Demon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cliff Stanford
Clifford Martin Stanford (born Spiegel; 12 October 1954 – 24 February 2022) was a British internet entrepreneur from Southend-on-Sea, and the co-founder of Demon Internet, the first Internet Service Provider in the United Kingdom for individual subscribers. Early life Stanford was born on 12 October 1954 and grew up in Southend-on-Sea, Essex. His father was a civil servant, but left the family when Stanford was 11; his mother was a book-keeper. By the time he was 14, Stanford was beginning to show a flair for business. He devised a marketing scheme to win a newspaper sales competition at his part-time job. He had learned book-keeping by helping his mother with her work and left school, aged 16, to join an accountancy firm. Career Demon Internet In the early 1990s Pipex began marketing leased line internet connections for £10,000 a year. After recruiting 200 subscribers willing to pay a "tenner a month" for dial-up internet access, in 1992 Stanford co-founded Demon Internet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gigantic Octopus
The kraken () is a legendary sea monster of enormous size said to appear off the coasts of Norway. Kraken, the subject of sailors' superstitions and mythos, was first described in the modern age at the turn of the 18th century, in a travelogue by Francesco Negri in 1700. This description was followed in 1734 by an account from Dano-Norwegian missionary and explorer Hans Egede, who described the kraken in detail and equated it with the ''hafgufa'' of medieval lore. However, the first description of the creature is usually credited to the Norwegian bishop, Pontoppidan (1753). Pontoppidan was the first to describe the kraken as an octopus (polypus) of tremendous size, and wrote that it had a reputation for pulling down ships. The French malacologist, Denys-Montfort, of the 19th century is also known for his pioneering inquiries into the existence of gigantic octopuses. The great man-killing octopus entered French fiction when novelist Victor Hugo (1866) introduced the ' octop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cryptid
Cryptids are animals that cryptozoologists believe may exist somewhere in the wild, but are not believed to exist by mainstream science. Cryptozoology is a pseudoscience, which primarily looks at anecdotal stories, and other claims rejected by the scientific community. While biologists regularly identify new species following established scientific methodology, cryptozoologists focus on entities mentioned in the folklore record and rumor. Entities that may be considered cryptids by cryptozoologists include Bigfoot, Yeti, the chupacabra, the Jersey Devil, the Loch Ness Monster, and the Mokele-mbembe. Scholars have noted that the cryptozoology subculture rejected mainstream approaches from an early date, and that adherents often express hostility to mainstream science. Scholars have studied cryptozoologists and their influence (including the pseudoscience's association with Young Earth creationism), noted parallels in cryptozoology and other pseudosciences such as ghost hunting ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plaskett's Puzzle
Plaskett's Puzzle is a chess endgame study created by the Dutch endgame composer Gijs van Breukelen (February 27, 1946 – December 21, 2022) around 1970, although not published at the time. Van Breukelen published the puzzle in 1997 in the Netherlands chess magazine '' Schakend Nederland''. It was presented by English grandmaster James Plaskett, at a top-flight chess tournament in Brussels in 1987, hence the name "Plaskett's Puzzle". According to contemporary accounts, of the several strong grandmasters who analyzed the position, only former World Champion Mikhail Tal was able to solve it. While the solution is striking, the study was found to be flawed in that White has no immediately decisive continuation if Black plays 4...Kg4 rather than the obvious 4...Nf7+. This issue may be fixed by instead placing Black's g5 knight on h8 or e5, or by adding a white pawn on h2, but the flawed version of the study demonstrated by Plaskett and published by van Breukelen remains the best kno ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
