All posts tagged: Chess

Chess Legend Magnus Carlsen Lost to Upstart Hans Niemann—Then All Hell Broke Loose

Chess Legend Magnus Carlsen Lost to Upstart Hans Niemann—Then All Hell Broke Loose

Published by Sam Flores

Had Ootes been watching the pieces as the game had devolved? Had he understood what was happening on the board? Could he have inadvertently reacted to something he’d seen? Could he have given Hans information without meaning to, or even worse—could he have—could he have— It was a ridiculous thought. But still, it nagged at Magnus, and even before he’d thought it through he was suddenly walking toward Ootes. Magnus looked at the photographer, and then the camera. “If you take photos of a specific game, that is a massive tell.” It wasn’t an accusation, exactly, but Magnus’s frustration coming out in angry words. Information can be passed, even by accident. And Ootes—well, Ootes had a laptop, he had access to the internet—but even without the internet, he could have seen something, could have reacted, Hans could have noticed— Then Magnus turned and stormed back to his seat. He was still fuming, but there was nothing else to say. Staring at the swirling pieces, swallowing back the bitter taste rising in his chest—Magnus knew; it …

£900k scheme offers ‘equal access’ in schools

£900k scheme offers ‘equal access’ in schools

Published by skeptic

Between 350 and 450 schools across all nine regions of the UK will take part Between 350 and 450 schools across all nine regions of the UK will take part More from this theme Recent articles A scheme to make chess more accessible for disadvantaged groups will be launched in schools and colleges. But leaders fear the funding will fall short of what is needed. The Department for Education (DfE) has announced a £900,000 contract for a three-year programme called “building equal access to chess in schools”. It aims to support those “least likely to access enrichment opportunities, including those eligible for free school meals, girls and pupils with SEND”. Between 350 and 450 schools across all nine regions of the UK will take part. At least 8 per cent of these are special schools and 3 per cent alternative provision settings. The programme will run from June 2026 to June 2029, with the potential to extend to June 2030 subject to performance and funding levels. Under the programme, there will be chess sessions at …

Joanna ‘JoJo’ Levesque Will Replace Lea Michele in ‘Chess’ on Broadway

Joanna ‘JoJo’ Levesque Will Replace Lea Michele in ‘Chess’ on Broadway

Published by Daniella Wilson

Joanna “JoJo” Levesque will take over Lea Michele’s role in Chess on Broadway.  Levesque will play Florence Vassy starting June 23 through Sept. 13, opposite Aaron Tveit and Nicholas Christopher. This marks Levesque’s return to Broadway after she starred in Moulin Rouge as Satine for several months in 2023 and again in 2024.  Levesque rose to fame with the hits “Leave (Get Out)” and “Too Little Too Late” and became the youngest solo artist to top the Billboard Mainstream Top 40. She won a 2020 Grammy for “Say So” with PJ Morton and has sold more than 8 million albums worldwide across her career. In addition to her previous Broadway runs, Levesque originated the role of Tess in Working Girl at La Jolla Playhouse. The musical sees Vassy caught between American chess prodigy Freddie Trumper, played by Tveit, whom she coaches and once loved, and Russian grandmaster, Anatoly Sergievsky, played by Christopher, who begins to catch her eye. The cast also features Hannah Cruz, Bryce Pinkham, Bradley Dean and Sean Allan Krill. The revival features …

Medieval chess was more inclusive than the world around it

Medieval chess was more inclusive than the world around it

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Chess is widely seen as a great equalizer. Players from every social, racial, and economic class have squared off across the board for nearly 1,500 years, with victories determined solely by skill and strategy. Unfortunately, the egalitarian foundations of chess are rarely reflected beyond the game itself. During the Middle Ages, for example, many contemporary accounts from both Christian and Muslim societies depicted their opposing side as barbaric, blasphemous, and inferior. However, recent reexaminations of medieval artwork are complicating these assumptions. After reviewing a range of artwork from Europe and the Middle East, Cambridge University historian Krisztina Ilko believes that chess players on either side of the board were well aware of the game’s capacity to humanize and humble. As she explained in a study recently awarded the Medieval Academy of America’s Article Prize in Critical Race Studies, chess has bridged cultural divides and subverted stereotypes at least as far back as the 13th century. Abu’l Qasim Firdausi, ‘Buzurgmihr …

Homemade chess board moves its own pieces. And wins.

Homemade chess board moves its own pieces. And wins.

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. It’s been nearly 30 years since chess champion Garry Kasparov lost to IBM’s Deep Blue, marking the first time a reigning world champion was defeated by a computer in a match. Chess engines have since improved so dramatically that even a simple smartphone app can now make top grandmasters sweat. Yet for all this advancement, those silicon prodigies still need a human meat vessel to actually move the physical piece into check mate. That’s starting to change. Earlier this month, an online maker and YouTuber going by the handle Joshua Stanley Robotics showed off his own DIY approach to making a physical chessboard that can understand human moves and then move its own pieces. Stanley’s approach, like several other self playing chess boards before his, taps into the magic of magnets. Stanley custom 3D printed each chess piece and hollowed them out so that he could place a magnet in the bottom. He then made a chess board out …

Cheating just three times massively ups the chance of winning at chess

Cheating just three times massively ups the chance of winning at chess

Published by skeptic

It isn’t always easy to detect cheating in chess SimpleImages/Getty Just three judiciously deployed cheats can turn an otherwise equal chess game into a near-certain victory, a new analysis shows – and systems designed to crack down on cheating might not notice the foul play. Daniel Keren at the University of Haifa in Israel simulated 100,000 matches using the powerful Stockfish chess engine – a computer system that, at its maximum power, is better at playing chess than any human world champion. The matches were played between two computer engines competing at the level of an average chess player – 1500 on the Elo rating scale typically used to calculate skill level in chess. Half the games were logged without any further intervention, while the other half allowed occasional intervention by a stronger computer chess “player” with an Elo score of 3190 – a higher rating than any human player has ever achieved. Competitors usually have a slim advantage when playing white, with a 51 per cent chance of winning, on average, tied to the …

Trump Is Not Playing Five-Dimensional Chess in Venezuela

Trump Is Not Playing Five-Dimensional Chess in Venezuela

Published by Sam Flores

Venezuelans are celebrating—cautiously inside the country, wildly in safer places such as Madrid, Buenos Aires, and Miami, where hundreds of thousands made their homes as a brutal dictatorship impoverished their country, once the second-richest in the Western Hemisphere. The Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro has been removed from power—captured in the dead of night and arraigned before an American judge. That’s the good news. But as is so often the case with the actions of Donald Trump, it isn’t the only storyline. The United States president immediately threw cold water on the idea that the raid could pave the way for a rapid democratic transition under the leadership of last year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, María Corina Machado. At his first press conference, a few hours after Maduro’s surgical removal, Trump said that he ordered it to get control of Venezuela’s oil, and that Machado didn’t have the “respect” to lead Venezuela. If anyone expected more from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who had a long-standing personal passion for freedom in Cuba before he sold his …

Chess or video games—which actually makes you smarter? The answer may surprise you.

Chess or video games—which actually makes you smarter? The answer may surprise you.

Published by Jenni Sidey

Sign Up For Goods 🛍️ Product news, reviews, and must-have deals. Every Christmas, my family follows the same script: a stack of board games hits the table, and a spirited debate breaks out over what we should play. But as the holidays draw closer and my work brain powers down, I started wondering whether games could be more than a way to pass the time. Is it possible to find a game that’s genuinely fun and gives my sluggish brain a workout?  To find out, I asked experts which games do the most to sharpen your mind. “Sorry to disappoint you,” says Dr. Fernand Gobet, cognitive scientist and author of Moves in Mind: The Psychology of Board Games, “but the answer is none.”  “Not even chess?” I ask. “There is a moderate correlation between chess skill and different kinds of intelligence,” says Gobet, “but this seems to be explained by the fact that more intelligent individuals tend to be more attracted to activities such as chess.” That doesn’t mean games are useless for the brain. …

Chess isn’t fair—so rearrange the pieces

Chess isn’t fair—so rearrange the pieces

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. The arrangement of the 32 pieces on a standard chess board has remained the same for centuries, but a forthcoming study suggests an overhaul is in order. Based on recent statistical calculations, the fairest and most balanced setup for both players can be found among the 960 possible starting positions popularized by former world champion Bobby Fischer over 30 years ago. What is Chess960? The standard rules of chess grant most people a lifetime of dynamic and challenging matches, but that’s not always the case for the world’s best players. To reach the top, grandmasters memorize mountains of opening strategies, midgame variations, and tactical endgame attacks that often result in predictable—even boring—showdowns.  It’s also well-known that playing as white offers at least a slight (but sometimes decisive) advantage during any given match. Amid decades of discussion and chess theory into the subject, the principal reason is simple: white goes first, and the first move often offers an extra bit of momentum …

Chess can be made fairer by rearranging the pieces

Chess can be made fairer by rearranging the pieces

Published by skeptic

Changing the rules of chess can make the game more complex Richard Levine/Alamy Chess can be improved by rearranging the positions of the starting pieces to produce a more difficult or fairer game, a physicist has found. A standard game of chess always starts with the pieces at the back of the board arranged with an element of symmetry. Starting from the outside, for both white and black, are pairs of rooks, knights and bishops, with a king and queen in the middle. But because this arrangement is fixed, top chess players can memorise the best moves to open a game of chess, which can lead to predictable and boring matches. In the 1990s, the late chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer proposed a variant of the game that reduced this reliance on memory. Fischer suggested effectively randomising the starting positions of the pieces at the back of the board – apart from basic rules dictating where the bishops, rooks and kings must be relative to each other – with both white and black pieces taking on …