By day an economist, by night…

I’ve neglected the website for a while now, and for that I apologise. I’m in thesis mode these days and I’ve barely had time to make my bed, much less keep up my writing. (Just kidding; I never make my bed.)

A lot of people have been asking me recently what exactly I’m researching for my thesis. A quick pop-quiz of my social network revealed quite a spread of subject matter that my friends for some reason assumed I was studying. Most have gotten the ‘economics’ part right (well done), but I’ve heard  specific thesis topics ranging from feminism to climate change, from helping the poor to ‘some psychology thing’, and from human experiments to my favourite (from a grandmaster who shall remain nameless): “Feeding the capitalist machine”.

I guess the only message that can be taken from this is that I probably talk too much. Fair point. In any case, for the record, my thesis is on the persistence of social norms, and particularly bad social norms or taboos. The basic question is: why do some customs and norms stubbornly persist for generations, despite being practically useless or, occasionally, even bad for society?

That probably needs some more explanation, which I’ll get to in a later post, complete with some juicy examples. For now, though, I’m only outlining it as part of my apology for being slack with the blog. While I’m making excuses, it turns out I’ve been recruited by ChessPublishing to write their anti-Sicilians column. (For the non-chess readers, this is a set of opening variations in chess. Just in case you think I’ve got anything against Italians.)

I figured I’m not going to have time for much chess in the coming thesismania, so at least this forces me to put aside a couple of days a month to studying something a little more fun than equations. You can check out the blurb to my first column here. I’ve also been swamped with chess commentary on ChessFM in my spare time, given the tsunami of top level chess events we’ve had recently. For some reason, chess commentary has really started taking off (I can hear the laughter from you non-chessites, but I’m ignoring you). In fact, these days it’s almost mandatory at the big tournaments to have video and on-location commentators, so ChessFM probably has to catch up and send people to the events to match the coverage we’re getting. (Yes, I’m writing this partly to advance my own frequent flyer points. Shh.)

One thing I’ve noticed from all the coverage is the cultural style differences among the US, continental European and British coverage of events. The commentators for the US championship – Jen Shahade, Yasser Seirawan and Maurice Ashley – were really great, but the whole production was styled like they were commenting on a baseball game. There was action, drama, crosses to special reporters, hyperbole, alliteration, exclamations and exaggerations. I felt like I was part of a Vegas showcase rather than a chess event. Is this bad? Probably not, especially given the US audience. They sensationalised the event, and by jove, they did it well.

On the other hand, the commentary from the Norway and Paris/Moscow events was far more subdued. The commentators – spearheaded by the charming yet monotonic Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam – spoke in dulcet, sometimes somnolent tones, with large pauses and conservative evaluations. I felt like I was at an economics lecture: the quality of the analysis was superb and I certainly learned more about the deeper points of the games, but the lessons were often more catatonic than constructive.

The commentary from the London Candidates tournament, however, has to be my favourite. We usually got to see my mates Laurence Trent and Nigel Short giving blunt and candid opinions about the games and the players, with gorgeously witty intermezzos when the action on the board was quiet. Their dry, abstract British humour, distinguished enthusiasm and erudite knowledge of chess history and strategy perfectly blended the best of both commentary worlds. It’s somewhat humbling to write such a flattering description seeing as I was a rival commentator during the event, but their coverage really was awesome.

I have to say, chess commentary is an amazing job. Now that I’ve finally accepted that my chess-watching procrastination is inevitable, I may as well make some pocket money while I’m wasting valuable thesis hours staring at the games. Combined with writing chess articles on ChessPub, I’ve probably found the two best side-jobs I could have while pretending to be an economist (excluding, of course, my number one dream job: song writer for Flight of the Conchords).

In fact, if this thesis thing doesn’t work out…

More posts to come soon. There’ll even be some without chess in them.