Musings on chess, and lesser things
Surprisingly, the feedback from my Fighting Chess Index was almost universally positive. I say surprisingly because I thought the final rankings would be controversial, especially Anand’s position (despite the lengthy explanation in the post), and these sort of lists tend to set off angry debates in the chess community. But the debates that were sparked …
Introduction The Fighting Chess Index (FCI) is a composite, weighted measure of the combativeness of top chess players. It combines data about the frequency, length and colour of drawn games from 2015-2020 to provide a single score for each individual that can be used to compare the degree of ‘fighting chess’ among players. This article …
Australia’s annual music countdown, Triple J’s ‘Hottest 100’, has rolled around again. As always, I submitted my votes for the ten best songs of the past year. But I must confess I didn’t feel that familiar sense of satisfaction when I clicked “SUBMIT” this time. I’m not sure if it was because musical artists struggled …
The coronavirus has had large and unexpected effects on professional sports. Seasons have been cancelled, delayed or shortened; stars have played in empty stadiums; broadcasts have dubbed crowd noises for television audiences, while fans have been able to buy life-size cardboard cut-outs to fill the empty seats. (The fan response has been reasonably positive in …
My odds match with the chess engine Komodo is over, finishing in a 5-1 victory to me. It was a fun and very interesting match, which also generated a surprising amount of interest from the online chess community (whose numbers have swelled in recent weeks for obvious reasons). The viewing experience was heightened enormously by the two …
A quick update on the details for the match: I’ve managed to convince two great guys to stream commentary of the match. They are Evgenij Miroshnichenko, who you may already know as arguably the world’s best chess commentator, and Andras Toth, a Hungarian IM living in Australia. They are doing this for free, which is …
UPDATE: My match with Komodo will be played on chess.com on the evenings of April 10 and 11 at 8 p.m. New York time, which is Saturday and Sunday morning in Australia (check your local day/time here). You can watch live commentary by GM Evgenij Miroshnichenko and IM Andras Toth on Evgenij’s stream at www.twitch.tv/mironiusvulgaris. Further details here. In …
It’s a new year, a new decade. And my main resolution is to make more free time. I know that sounds quite ambiguous. “Make” free time? With what ingredients? Does that mean there’s an infinite potential? How much time does one have to spend to make time? The economist in me wants to bring up …
A curious incident occurred in round 8 of the Isle of Man Grand Swiss. Alexei Shirov played Yu Yangyi on board seven, and Sergey Karjakin faced Alexey Dreev on board eight. After 19 moves, the two games were exactly identical! Spot the difference… 😂 #iomchess pic.twitter.com/CO7GHV1vf8 — Fiona Steil-Antoni (@fionchetta) October 18, 2019 It was …
The FIDE chess.com Isle of Man Grand Prix Swiss – yes, that’s the full name! – is going on at the moment. It’s quite a remarkable event: a large Swiss tournament where the winner qualifies directly for the Candidates. Besides a horde of 2650+ grandmasters, there are also wildcards and qualifiers from online tournaments, meaning …