This post is by Phil Price, not Andrew. Some of you have surely heard about the cheating scandal that has recently rocked the chess world (or perhaps it’s more correct to say the ‘cheating-accusation scandal.’) The whole kerfuffle started when … Continue reading
This post is by Phil Price, not Andrew. The World Chess Championship is going on right now. There have been some really good games and some really lousy ones — the challenger, Ian Nepomniachtchi (universally known as ‘Nepo’) has played … Continue reading
– When played optimally, is pawn race a win for white, black, or a draw? – Could I beat a grandmaster if he was down a queen? I tried playing Stockfish with it down a Q and a R, and … Continue reading
Justin Horton writes: Of course Chess.com are a private company. They have the right, within the law, to have who they want on their site and to ban who they want from their site. What they don’t have the right … Continue reading
The above image, from T. J. Mahr, is a cleaned-up version of this graph: which in turn is a slight improvement on a graph posted by Dan Goldstein (with R code!) which came from Ashton Anderson. The original, looks like … Continue reading
[cat picture] We haven’t run any Ray Keene material for awhile but this is just too good to pass up: Yup, those communists have real trouble pushing to the top when it comes to chess, huh? P.S. to Chrissy: If … Continue reading
Chess records page (no, not on the first page, or the second page, or the third page, of a google search of *chess records*). There’s lots of good stuff here, enough to fill much of a book if you so … Continue reading
Brian Nosek pointed me to this 2013 paper by Theodora Zarkadi and Simone Schnall, “‘Black and White’ thinking: Visual contrast polarizes moral judgment,” which begins: Recent research has emphasized the role of intuitive processes in morality by documenting the link … Continue reading
Paul Alper points us to this in-depth article by Steven Brill on the topic of Alex Gorsky, the pharma executive who notoriously marketed a dangerous drug and hid the evidence of its dangers. The headline was a bit of a … Continue reading
You all know about Linda, that now-retired bank teller who back in the 1970s was active in the feminist movement. Even if she never had any formal political experience before this activity, Linda might well have had a talent for … Continue reading
In response to this post (in which I noted that the Elo chess rating system is a static model which, paradoxically, is used to for the purposes of studying changes), Keith Knight writes: It’s notable that Glickman’s work is related … Continue reading
Chess ratings are all about change. Did your rating go up, did it go down, have you reached 2000, who’s hot, who’s not, and so on. If nobody’s abilities were changing, chess ratings would be boring, they’d be nothing but … Continue reading
Matt Gaffney gives these “three essential characteristics” for writing “a relevant, interesting weekly chess column” in 2014: 1. It must be written by someone who is deeply involved in the chess world. Summaries of information that is already available online … Continue reading
Is it really “often easier to win a rematch than to defend a championship”? The quoted bit above comes from Tyler Cowen, writing about the Anand/Carlsen world championship rematch. I’m still not used to the idea of a new world … Continue reading
Daniel Murrell is organizing a run-around-the-house chess tournament in Cambridge, England, on 23 Jun 2013. Maybe Niall Ferguson will show up, given his interest in the history of mid-twentieth-century gay English heroes.
Gary Marcus writes, An algorithm that is good at chess won’t help parsing sentences, and one that parses sentences likely won’t be much help playing chess. That is soooo true. I’m excellent at parsing sentences but I’m not so great … Continue reading
Daniel Murell has more thoughts on Turing chess (last discussed here): When I played with my brother, we had it that if you managed to lap someone while running around the house, then you got an additional move. This means … Continue reading
Three different people have pointed me to this post by Ken Regan on statistical evaluation of claims of cheating in chess. So I figured I have to satisfy demand and post something on this. But I have nothing to say. … Continue reading
Knowing of my interest in Turing run-around-the-house chess, David Lockhart points me to this: Diving Chess is a chess variant, which is played in a swimming pool. Instead of using chess clocks, each player must submerge themselves underwater during their … Continue reading
In honor of the Olympics, I got my butt over to the park and played run-around-the-house chess for the first time ever. As was discussed in the comments thread awhile ago, there seem to be three possible ways to play … Continue reading