Chess

Every Friday night, a group of noisy youngsters shuffles through a side door at First Baptist Church of Glendale. They laugh, shove and talk over one another as they enter a large, brightly lighted room with three long tables. Inside, silver-haired Armen Ambartsoumian waits for them to settle down so the session can begin. Ambartsoumian, an international chess master who is determined to groom Glendale's next generation of elite players, demands their focus. This can be a chore when dealing with more than two dozen kids ages 5 to 18. Once the players unpack their black-and-white boards and chess pieces, Ambartsoumian instructs them to pair up and play.

The Cambodian men gather near a parking lot hunched over chessboards, some contemplating their next move, others squeezed in closely, offering strategy. Some tease opponents or cheer on players. The ages range wildly from 18 to 70, but all share an obsession with Cambodian chess, which varies subtly from the game commonly played in the U.S. They come together every day on a sidewalk on the eastern cusp of Long Beach's Cambodia Town. The smell of tobacco hangs heavy over the group, and a small heap of sunflower seeds sits within spitting distance.

Position No. 6129: Black to play and win. From the game Ahmad Fawzi Samhouri-Judit Polgar, 39th Olympiad, Khanty-Mansiysk 2010. Solution to Position No. 6128: White wins with 1 Rxg7!, as 1?Kxg7 permits 2 Qxh6+! Kxh6 3 Bxf6 mate. The World Chess Federation (FIDE) held its annual meeting during the recent 39th Olympiad in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia. The main item on the agenda was the election of officers. Kirsan Ilyumzhinov of Russia, FIDE president since 1995, won reelection to a four-year term by a vote of 95 to 55 over former world champion Anatoly Karpov.

Reporting from St. Louis — Like most everyone at Busch Stadium, Allen Craig spent the first five innings of the World Series opener huddling in an oversized jacket trying to stay warm. But when the Cardinals came to bat in the sixth inning of a tie game, he had a hunch his night was about to get a bit more interesting. "Throughout the year I've been the guy to come off the bench early," he said. Partly because he also has been the guy most likely to come through in the pinch.

In response to "Police Take Chess Move Back, Tear Up Gambling Tickets," Jan. 27: The tenacity! The courage! The devotion to duty! Members of the Los Angeles Police Department's vice squad have shown their mettle and exorcised the evil from dastardly Dad's Donuts. That's right, my friends. The D in donut rhymes with C which stands for chess and that means crook. CHUCK FERGUSON Garden Grove

Position No. 6126: White to play and win. From the game Craig Clawitter-Robert Xue, Southern California Open, Los Angeles 2010. Solution to Position No. 6125: White gains material by 1 Nb3! Qd6 2 Nxc5 Qxc5 3 Rxh6+! gxh6 4 Qxf6+ Kh7 5 Qxd8. If 5…e3, then 6 f6 e2 7 Qd7+ leads to mate. The 39th Chess Olympiad began Tuesday in Khanty-Mansiysk, a small Siberian city in Russia. The immense tournament has attracted 146 men's teams and 114 women's teams representing 142 nations.

Position No. 6134: White to play and win. From the game Ray Robson-Eugene Perelshteyn, Spice Cup, Lubbock 2010. Solution to Position No. 6133: Black wins with 1?Rh8! 2 Qe7 Bxh2! 3 Qe6+ (not 3 Rxh2 Qg2 mate) Qxe6 4 dxe6 Bf4+ 5 Kg1 Be3+ 6 Rcf2 g4 7 Re1 Bxf2+ or 7?Ba7 8 c4 g3. The Tal Memorial in Moscow ended in a three-way tie last Sunday among Levon Aronian of Armenia, Sergey Karjakin of Russia and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov of Azerbaijan. Each scored 51/2-31/2 in the round robin, a tribute to the late world champion Mikhail Tal. All 10 competitors are ranked among the world's top 18. U.S. champion Hikaru Nakamura tied for fourth place at 5-4 with Alexander Grischuk of Russia and Wang Hao of China.

Position No. 6128: White to play and win. From the game Shane Matthews-Pradeep Seegolam, 39th Olympiad, Khanty-Mansiysk 2010. Solution to Position No. 6127: White wins with 1 Bxf7!, as 1?Rxh1 allows 2 Bxe6! Qxe6 3 Qc7 mate. Ukraine, the second seed, won the 39th Olympiad in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia. The five-man team went undefeated, winning eight matches and drawing three in the 148-team competition. Ukraine was led by Vassily Ivanchuk, whose 8-2 score (a 2890 performance)

Position No. 6119: White to play and win. From the game Tigran Gharamian-B. Adhipan, Paris 2010. Solution to Position No. 6118: White wins with 1 Ng6+! hxg6 (the hopeless 1…Rxg6 2 fxg6 lasts longer) 2 Rh4+! (even quicker than 2 Qxg5 Rg7 3 Rh4+ Kg8 4 fxg6, which sets up 5 Qh5) Kg7 3 Qxg5 Kf8 4 Rh7 Qd8 5 f6 Ke8 6 f7+ Kd7 7 fxg8Q. Instead, 3…Qd8 would lose to 4 Qh6+ Kf7 5 e6+ Ke8 6 Qxg6+! or 5…Kf6 6 Rf4. Aleksandr Surenovich Dronov of Russia edged Jurgen Bucker of Germany on tiebreak to win the 22nd World Correspondence Championship.

Position No. 6118: White to play and win. From the game Tatev Abrahamyan-Sabina Foisor, U.S. Women's Championship, St. Louis 2010. Solution to Position No. 6117: White wins with 1 Nce4! dxe4 2 Nxe4 Rg6 3 Rd1 Qh4 4 Rxc6! bxc6 5 Nf6+. Or, if 2…Qg6, then 3 Nf6+ Kf8 4 Qd6+ Kg7 5 Nxg8 Kxg8 6 Rg3 gains plenty of material. Ukraine grandmaster Ruslan Ponomariov won the Sparkassen double round robin in Dortmund, Germany. He scored 61/2-31/2, finishing a point ahead of Vietnamese sensation Le Quang Liem.

Bridesmaids Universal, $29.98; Blu-ray, $34.98 One of the biggest comedy hits of the summer, "Bridesmaids" stars Kristen Wiig (who also co-wrote the film with Annie Mumolo) as a lifelong loser whose inability to do anything right threatens to ruin her best friend's wedding. Much of the talk surrounding "Bridesmaids" has been about the movie's raunchiness, and how it shows that women comedians can be as crude as their male counterparts. But what really makes the film so enjoyable is Wiig's fearlessly goofy performance, and the way Wiig, Mumolo and director Paul Feig convey the nuances of female friendships rather than reducing the characters to chick-flick stereotypes.

Issues of race and class in the early 1960s are playing out in the multiplex right now in the period literary drama "The Help. " But two new documentaries follow that cultural thread even further forward, using recently unearthed archival material to examine historical events in a current context. "The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975" is a loosely constructed time capsule composed entirely of film footage captured by Swedish news crews during the titular era. Director Göran Hugo Olsson uses voice-overs from African American artists, activists and scholars — including musicians Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, Talib Kweli and Erykah Badu — reacting to the archival material throughout the film, which is available on video on demand and opens in theaters in Los Angeles on Sept.

Not only have writers-directors-editors Katsuto and Kenji Kobayashi acknowledged that their inspiration for their first feature, "The Neighbor," is Akira Kurosawa's "Ikiru," a great classic of the world cinema, but they are also allowing their film to be released alongside a revival of the 1952 masterpiece. (Laemmle's Sunset 5 in West Hollywood will be showing the films in separate auditoriums.) "The Neighbor" shares with its predecessor the story of a marginalized office worker discovering the meaning of his life after a confrontation with mortality.

Writer-director Jeanne Labrune affords Isabelle Huppert, arguably the finest French screen actress of her generation, yet another splendid role in the complex, compassionate and endlessly illuminating "Special Treatment. " Huppert plays Alice, an art history major who years ago became a high-priced Paris prostitute specializing in kinky clients who require elaborate role-playing on her part. She is a coolly proud, fearless woman, confident of her looks and abilities even as she approaches 50, though she finds it increasingly difficult to deny that her soul is withering away.

Winds, rain and straying yak are only some of the hardships in the remote and harshly beautiful Sichuan province grasslands where Tibetan nomads toil for their livelihood, but as Lynn True and Nelson Walker's humanely observed documentary "Summer Pasture" hints, it's the pull of modernity that most threatens their traditions. The film is on the one hand a graceful record of a primitive calling — featured husband and wife Locho and Yama are in a near-constant state of tethering, milking, dung-drying for fire, cooking and rope-making, on top of caring for their infant daughter and wryly bickering in their crowded tent.

In 1987, two Midwestern punk rockers moved to San Francisco. Their new neighbors in a ramshackle apartment building were a pair of aging alcoholics who spent their days drinking and arguing, their rants branching into such wildly baroque duets that the punks started recording them. In something of a pre-Internet viral sensation, their cassette tapes circulated hand-to-hand and inspired a cult following. In making "Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure," a documentary that tells the story of not just the tapes but their strange and increasingly sad afterlife, Australian filmmaker Matthew Bate faces the challenge not only of visualizing the audio artifacts but also of finding a way to position their makers and explain all that has transpired since the tapes were initially recorded.

Position No. 6133: Black to play and win. From the game Ryan Porter-Takashi Kurosaki, LA Open, Los Angeles 2010. Solution to Position No. 6132: White wins plenty of material by 1 Bg5! hxg5 (or 1?Qxg5 2 Nxf7+) 2 Qh5+ Bh7 3 Nxf7+. If 1?Be4, either 2 Nxf7+ Kg8 3 Nxd8+ or 2 Qxf6 gxf6 3 Bxf6+ suffices. Magnus Carlsen, the 19-year-old Norwegian grandmaster ranked first in the world for most of 2010, has withdrawn from the candidates matches leading to the 2012 world championship.