I got robbed $2000 in Spain During Elllobregat Chess Tournament 2022 - Story

so sorry to hear this Nikhil..
money can still be earned, but the information on the Laptop (if no backup is created) can not be valued in monetary terms..

2000 $ is a lot of money in one bag. I never do. I normally take 2 bags to chess-tournaments : one for clothes and one for the laptop (handluggage). Each bag never goes beyond a few hundred $. So robbery won't hurt much.

@LampardFan08 said in #11:
> so sorry to hear this Nikhil..
> money can still be earned, but the information on the Laptop (if no backup is created) can not be valued in monetary terms..

It is a routine for me to always make a double backup (so 3x) of everything which I have on my laptop before I leave to a chess-tournament. A simple replacable drive is a very cheap and simple solution.

@LampardFan08 said in #11:
> so sorry to hear this Nikhil..
> Money can still be earned, but the information on the Laptop (if no backup is created) can not be valued in monetary terms..
@LampardFan08 Yeh, I lost some important data. Then I took a google drive storage. It syncs everything in real-time.

@mvhk said in #12:
> 2000 $ is a lot of money in one bag. I never do. I normally take 2 bags to chess-tournaments : one for clothes and one for the laptop (hand luggage). Each bag never goes beyond a few hundred $. So robbery won't hurt much.
The laptop was worth $1100, Tablet (which was unnecessary to carry) was around $300 and 300 euros to pay to the hotel. Also from then on, I don't carry unnecessary things while travelling.

@nikhildixit said in #15:
> The laptop was worth $1100, Tablet (which was unnecessary to carry) was around $300 and 300 euros to pay to the hotel. Also from then on, I don't carry unnecessary things while travelling.
A laptop of 1100$ ? Why do you need such expensive laptop for? Mine is only a few hundred $. I bought it just before the pandemie and it still does the job so after more than 4 years. If robbers steal my laptop then it will be hard to get 50$ for it on the black market.

Besides I know some masters having no laptop at all anymore. They do everything with their smartphone and have everything stored in the cloud. I guess they access chessify for stronger cloud computing if needed.

@mvhk said in #16:
> A laptop of 1100$ ? Why do you need such expensive laptop for? Mine is only a few hundred $. I bought it just before the pandemie and it still does the job so after more than 4 years. If robbers steal my laptop then it will be hard to get 50$ for it on the black market.
>
> Besides I know some masters having no laptop at all anymore. They do everything with their smartphone and have everything stored inn the cloud. I guess they access chessify for stronger cloud computing if needed.
Is laptop only for studying chess? I purchased good quality laptop to work on multiple other stuff and not for chess.
Also in India, laptops are expensive than Europe. $750-850 Laptop in Europe costs $1000-1200 in India.

I bought my first computer in 1995 which was a pentium 90 so before you were born. It costed a small fortune at that time. Every 3 years I had to buy a new computer or I got out-analyzed by the competition. Around 2004 I started to buy next to a desktop also a laptop. So every 3 years I had to renew now 2 computers. After some time I realized this is becoming expensive so I stopped buying the best without losing any edge to the competition. The last big computer-development were the graphical cards for the neural networks which was about 5 years ago. I don't see any need for newer or better things since. It won't make a significant difference for playing against IMs or GMs. Even Anish Giri said in a recent interview that a simple laptop does the job nowadays.

Sorry but how is it that the author travelled from India to Spain (no small journey) and didn't already know basic travel safety and security protocol? If they were an inexperienced and/or young traveler, they should have had a chaperone or companion, or done some basic reading on travel. If they did have a chaperone or companion, then the fault lies with that person for neglecting to educate or supervise the author. This isn't really a chess post if you ask me; you could find similar stories from persons travelling for any reason, not just chess, on any travel forum.

Furthermore, it's irresponsible of lichess to allow publication of an anecdote that contains the recommendation to avoid travel to a specific country. Perhaps this post has value to the chess community as an educational matter about travel for chess play (even though it applies to any sort of travel), but that sentence ought to have been struck as prejudicial. Given the grammatical errors as well, it seem lichess would benefit from stricter editorial oversight.

@nikhildixit said in #17:
> Is laptop only for studying chess? I purchased good quality laptop to work on multiple other stuff and not for chess.
> Also in India, laptops are expensive than Europe. $750-850 Laptop in Europe costs $1000-1200 in India.
Anyway I guess it would be better to have some cheap laptop for travelling to tournaments. During a tournament I focus fully on the chess.

Weird that it is so expensive in India. My own kids buy lots of stuff from China via the internet which often is much cheaper than what is available locally. Is that no option in India?