Musings on chess, and lesser things
Posts on chess
SUMMARY: Short’s article was not as controversial as it has been made out to be Short based his claims on two recent academic contributions – one statistical comment and one study on FIDE data – that suggested that gender gaps cannot be explained away by participation rates There are several technical issues with these papers …
(See also the second, more technical follow-up: Men, Women and Nigel Short 2: An academic response) Much to my amazement, chess has hit the front pages of the mainstream media for the third time in a fortnight. This time, however, it’s more a case of old wine in a new bottle. The always controversial English GM …
For the past week, the chess world has been abuzz with reports of GM Wesley So’s involuntary forfeit at the recent US Chess Championships. For the non-chess readers of my blog, the short version of the story basically goes like this: So, the number 8 player in the world, was essentially disqualified during his game …
A while ago, I wrote a post about tie-breaks in chess. It was inspired by a research proposal I submitted on social network formation as applied to round-robin chess, which basically consisted of a lot of mathematics. One point to come out of it was that no matter which tie-break system one chooses in chess, …
After a long hiatus, the blog is back. I decided to trial a Christmas/New Year period offline, coinciding with a much-needed trip back to Australia. I was fortunate to be invited to play in the Australian Open chess championships in Sydney, which provided the perfect escape from my annual European Winter chills. The tournament, my …
It’s this time of the year in Amsterdam – when the temperature hovers around zero during both day and night, when the wind slices your face as you cycle through the horizontal, unforgiving rain – that I start my annual pine for Australia. Fortunately, I’ve only got two weeks to wait until I head back for the …
Check out this new YouTube channel by a mate of mine, “The Best Chess Puzzles”. Each one is quick and pretty, and uses subtitled commentary instead of audio so that you can sneakily watch them at work. Recently, he posted a vid of one of my favourite chess puzzles ever: Worth a cheeky look!
I’ve had a reasonable start to my German chess league (“Schachbundesliga”), although not as impressive as my team as a whole. Werder Bremen (the mighty Green-and-White) currently sits equal first on the ladder with the behemoth Baden-Baden on 100%. For some reason, perhaps because of the novelty of being Australian, I got a small write-up in the …
The build-up for the world championship rematch is reaching fever point. Magnus Carlsen, the undisputed world number one, and reigning classical (as well as blitz and rapid, by the way) world champion. Vishy Anand, the three-times champion, coming off the back of his best six months of tournament chess in several years. Magnus, the young, hip, …
When you’re a kid playing chess in Australia, you hear these stories about this magical, mystical place called ‘Europe’. A place where some people’s houses are older than the first Australian colonies, where soccer is actually considered a real sport, and where chess players can frolic freely from country to country, from tournament to tournament, …