Portal:Sports and games/Selected article
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This is an archive of selected articles that have appeared or will appear on the front page of Portal:Sports and games. To nominate an article, please see Portal:Sports and games/Selected content nominations.
The India national cricket team is an international cricket team representing India. It is governed by the Board of Control for Cricket in India, the cricket governing body in India. The Indian Cricket Team is currently the highest paid national sports team in the world (in terms of sponsorship).
Though the first match in India was recorded in 1721, when a group of sailors gathered to play in Western India, India's national cricket team didn't play their first Test match until 25 June 1932 at Lord's. They became the sixth team to play Test cricket. Traditionally much stronger at home than abroad, India proved weaker than Australia and England, winning only 35 of the 196 matches they played in their first fifty years. The team gained strength near the end of the 50-year period with the emergence of players such as Sunil Gavaskar and Kapil Dev and the Indian spin quartet. The Indian team has continued to be highly ranked since then in Test cricket and One Day Internationals. The team won the Cricket World Cup in 1983 and was runners-up in 2003. It also won the first World Twenty20 in 2007. The current team contains many of the world's leading players, including Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly and Anil Kumble, who hold numerous cricketing world records.
As of October 2007, the Indian team has played 408 Test matches, winning 22.30%, losing 32.10% and drawing 45.34% of its games. The team is also ranked fourth in both the ICC Test Championship and ICC ODI Championship.
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John Wooden is a retired American basketball coach. He is a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame as both a player (class of 1961) and a coach (class of 1973). He was the first person ever enshrined in both categories; only Lenny Wilkens and Bill Sharman have since been so honored. His 10 NCAA National Championships while at UCLA are unmatched.
Wooden coached two years at Dayton High School in Kentucky. His first year at Dayton would be the only time he would have a losing record (6-11). After Dayton he returned to Indiana, teaching English and coaching basketball at South Bend Central High School until entering the Armed Forces. His high school coaching record was 218-42.
After the war, Wooden coached at Indiana State University in Terre Haute, Indiana from 1946 to 1948, succeeding his high school coach, Glenn Curtis, who became head coach of the professional Detroit Falcons. Wooden also coached baseball and served as athletic director. In 1947, Wooden's basketball team won the conference title and received an invitation to the NAIB National Tournament in Kansas City. Wooden refused the invitation citing the NAIB's policy banning African American players. A member on the Indiana State Sycamores' team was Clarence Walker, an African-American athlete from East Chicago, Indiana. In 1948 the NAIB changed this policy and Wooden guided his team to the NAIB final, losing to Louisville. That year, Walker became the first African-American to play in any post-season intercollegiate basketball tournament. John Wooden was inducted into the Indiana State University Athletic Hall of Fame on February 3, 1984.
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The 2007 Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) Championship Game featured the Boston College Eagles and the Virginia Tech Hokies in a regular-season college football game that determined the conference's champion for the 2007 season. Virginia Tech defeated Boston College 30–16 to win the ACC football championship. The game, held at Jacksonville Municipal Stadium in Jacksonville, Florida, was a rematch of a regular-season game that took place on October 25, in Blacksburg, Virginia. In that game, Boston College, courtesy of a late-game comeback by quarterback Matt Ryan, won 14–10.
Following the loss, Virginia Tech won five straight games to win the Coastal Division of the ACC, while Boston College stumbled, losing two games before defeating the Clemson Tigers to win the Atlantic Division and representation in the Championship Game. Most pre-game media coverage of the event cast the game as an opportunity for Virginia Tech to avenge its earlier loss. In addition, the winner of the game would be awarded an automatic bid to the Bowl Championship Series 2008 Orange Bowl game in Miami, Florida on January 3, 2008. Despite Boston College's earlier win over Virginia Tech, spread bettors favored Virginia Tech by five points.
In the opening quarter of the game, the Eagles took a 7–0 lead on a 51-yard fumble return for a touchdown. The Eagles' offense dominated the first half of the game statistically, but failed to add to its early lead until the second quarter, when a field goal made it 10–0. Virginia Tech answered with a touchdown of their own, but Boston College responded with a seven-play, 74-yard touchdown drive of its own. Then came perhaps the most pivotal play of the game. During the extra point kick following the Boston College touchdown, Virginia Tech's Duane Brown blocked the kick, which was caught by the Hokies' cornerback Brandon Flowers, who returned it 75 yards for a defensive two-point conversion.
The play changed the momentum of the game. Virginia Tech added a tying touchdown before halftime, and after a scoreless third quarter, two Matt Ryan interceptions resulted in 14 points for Virginia Tech and a 30–16 Virginia Tech win. With the victory, the Hokies earned their second Atlantic Coast Conference football championship in four years and their first Orange Bowl bid since 1996.
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Wrigley Field is a baseball stadium in Chicago, Illinois, United States that has served as the home ballpark of the Chicago Cubs since 1916. It was built in 1914 as Weeghman Park for the Chicago Federal League baseball team, the Chicago Whales. It was also the home of the Chicago Bears of the National Football League from 1921-1970. It was also called Cubs Park from 1920 to 1926 before finally being renamed for then Cubs team owner and chewing gum industrialist William Wrigley Jr..
Located in the residential neighborhood of Lakeview, Wrigley Field sits on an irregular block bounded by Clark and Addison Streets and Waveland and Sheffield Avenues. The area surrounding the ballpark contains bars, restaurants and other establishments and is typically referred to as Wrigleyville. The ballpark's mailing address, as many fans of the movie The Blues Brothers know, is 1060 W. Addison Street. During Cubs games, fans will often stand outside the park on Waveland Avenue, waiting for home run balls hit over the wall and out of the park. (However, as a tradition, Cubs fans inside and sometimes even outside the park will promptly throw any home run ball hit by an opposing player back onto the field of play, a ritual depicted in the 1977 stage play, Bleacher Bums, and in the 1993 film, Rookie of the Year.)
Wrigley Field is nicknamed The Friendly Confines, a phrase popularized by "Mr. Cub", Hall of Famer Ernie Banks. Since 2006, its capacity has been 41,118, making Wrigley Field the fourth-smallest and most actively used ballpark in 2006. It is the second oldest active major league ballpark (behind Fenway Park), and the only remaining Federal League park. When opened in 1914, Wrigley Field had a seating capacity of 14,000 and cost $250,000 to build.
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Bughouse Chess is a popular chess variant played on two chessboards by four players in teams of two. Normal chess rules apply, except that captured pieces on one board are passed on to the players of the other board, who then have the option of putting these pieces on their board.
The game is usually played at a fast time control; this, together with the passing and dropping of pieces, can make the game look chaotic and random to the casual onlooker. Hence the name bughouse, which is slang for mental hospital. The game is traditionally played as a diversion from regular chess both over the board and online. Yearly, several dedicated bughouse tournaments are organized on a national and an international level.
Bughouse is a chess variant played on two chessboards by four players in teams of two. Each team member faces one opponent of the other team. Partners sit next to each other and one player has black, while the other has white. Each player plays the opponent as in a standard chess game, with the exception of the rules specified below.
A player capturing a piece passes that piece to the partner. The partner keeps these pieces in reserve and may, instead of playing a regular move, place one of these pieces on the board (as in shogi and crazyhouse). Pieces in reserve or on deck may be placed on a vacant square, the exception being pawns which may not be dropped on the first and last rank. Dropped pawns may promote, but convert back to pawns when captured. In play over the board, a promoted pawn can be put on its side to indicate promotion. A pawn placed on the second rank may move two squares on its first move. The reserve or stock should be kept in front of the board, always visible to all players of the game.
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Tic-tac-toe is a pencil-and-paper game for two players, O and X, who take turns marking the spaces in a 3×3 grid. The player who succeeds in placing three respective marks in a horizontal, vertical or diagonal row wins the game.
Players soon discover that best play from both parties leads to a draw. Hence, tic-tac-toe is most often played by very young children; when they have discovered an unbeatable strategy they move on to more sophisticated games such as dots and boxes.
The simplicity of tic-tac-toe makes it ideal as a pedagogical tool for teaching the concepts of combinatorial game theory and the branch of artificial intelligence that deals with the searching of game trees. It is straightforward to write a computer program to play tic-tac-toe perfectly, to enumerate the 765 essentially different positions (the state space complexity), or the 26,830 possible games up to rotations and reflections (the game tree complexity) on this space.
The first known video game, OXO (or Noughts and Crosses, 1952) for the EDSAC computer played perfect games of tic-tac-toe against a human opponent.
One example of a Tic-Tac-Toe playing computer is the Tinkertoy computer, developed by MIT students, and made out of Tinker Toys. It only plays Tic-Tac-Toe, and has never lost a game. It is currently on display at the Museum of Science, Boston.
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Portal:Sports and games/Selected article/July 2008
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