Sorry not to have stayed in touch with the board- it's been fairly hectic, as you can imagine. The weather here in Havana has been unseasonably cool, which is fine by me. The old city is stunning, but the stadium complex is located downtown, which looks like the downtown of any other prosperous Western nation. And my wife and I are staying in a University dormitory, at a modest cost of $200.00 a night (shared bath). Ah, well, it's once every four years, and I stand to break even for the trip if my luck continues.
So how about the "Main Event?" Twenty-two Olympiads- four generations- and the non-Russian world walks home with a total of 8 Bronze and one (one) silver. In '99, a Swede takes the gold, in '03, a Japanese, and this year Americans take the gold
and silver? The Russians are just going to have to wake up to the fact that computer-aided research and training is no longer optional, it's mandatory. And it's only going to become more and more so- I confidently predict that this is the last Intellectual Olympiad in which Chess's Gold Medalist will beat the world's most advanced AI in the charity exhibition match. My intellectual sport is actually much, much harder to subject to computer analysis than Chess, but I can't imagine living without it. Anyway, congratulations, Yanks.
The Snowe-Taylor thing is getting uglier, if such a thing were possible. They and their supporters really need to fly back to Australia and let the Contract Bridge tournament get on. Of how much further bluff posturing are they capable? It doesn't matter that the doping guidelines are vague, or that you were (allegedly) on your yacht outside the three-mile limit when you ingested it- you tried to improve your play at a qualifier with
cocaine! Intellectual athletes are role models- what kind of a signal does
that send? And pickets in front of the stadium while the tournament is underway? Simply not done, old boy. They are lucky the Committee didn't issue a lifetime ban, very frankly. The Cuban police were the model of restraint, by the way. My wife was on hand, and pretty heated, and a cop calmed her down with some good old-fashioned Latin flattery. Still- what is the world coming to? If you're going to use cocaine as a performance-enhancing drug, there are worse things to be named than Snowe, I suppose.
The Poker finals are tonight, and I've wrangled a ticket for my second-favorite intellectual sport. I justify the expense as a necessity: I really
hate the fact that the Committee has reversed itself and allowed concealed cards to be broadcast, and that no station will televise it from the players' perspective. So I have to watch it live, see. And what a final table. Except for Nguyen, it's wall-to-wall Texans and Jews, and each of them a crazy-ass old white man, just as God intended poker to be played. I kid, I kid (sort of

). But isn't Moon frankly sort of spooky? The man is
eighty-four! Can you imagine an Olympian of that age in any other sport? And he ripped through the qualifiers this year- just tore them up. Sometimes there's precious little difference between poker and magic.
Ah, and Saturday night, the real Main Event: the Backgammon tournament. Have I told you that in '99 I was two matches from qualifying? Oh, I have mentioned it a time or forty? My bad. Anyway, my money is on Arches, except where it's on me while I play against the ample number of pigeons here. And of course, they know they are getting plucked (I am not a hustler and make no secret of my rating) but they seem to enjoy it, for small sums at least. I have a standing wager where I take on Doublesix 6.0, the world's most advanced Backgammon program, and pay out at 1.25 to one if I lose. I somehow ended up in a cantina with live music, a good mix of tourists and locals and a bartender making book like a Vegas pro for almost ten hours. Dropped six hundred bucks, but more like thirty thousand was in action- good times.
Well, if anyone has any questions, I'll be happy to answer them. I think I've covered most of the heavy-hitters except for Go, of which I am ashamed to say I am not very knowlegeable. Best of luck from the XXVth Intellectual Olympiad in sunny Havana, Cuba.