The first century

While I am sure that there were thousands upon thousands of chess games played in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, not that many were recorded for posterity. This is why a lot of the "first game to" records are probably not entirely accurate, and should instead be "the first recorded game to".
An example of this is the first *recorded* game to reach 100 moves. According to my database (which may not be 100% complete), this occurred during the De Labourdonnais - McDonnell match. In fact it was in the ninth game of the fifth match between them, although history tends to treat these matches as one giant match.
The game went for exactly 100 moves, with Black's 100th move being "resigns". As the game was played without a timer, I have no idea how long it actually lasted, but I am assuming it went for quite a while (and possibly over more than 1 day). I also suspect both players might have been quite tired at the end, as on move 93 both players missed a trick that might have ended the game a few moves short of the century, and with an entirely different result.


De Labourdonnais,Louis Charles Mahe - McDonnell,Alexander [C51]
London m5 London (9), 1834

Time management

Continuing the whole "Chess as life" theme, does chess help you manage your time better? Mark Scully, a regular reader and background contributor to this blog, send me an article titled "The secret to a calm life" The article makes references to using chess type strategies, including looking ahead and developing strategies. And like chess, the author suggests that time management skils can be improved through practice.
While this all makes sense, I am not convinced that chess players themselves would make the best example of time managers. Apart from getting into time trouble or wasting time analysing irrelevant lines, chess players often turn up late for rounds, forget to bring their own pen, or leave it until the last minute to enter an event.
The fact that chess players behave this way is somewhat curious to me, as all competitive chess is played with a time limit, unlike a lot of non chess activities. If anything playing chess should teach you how to efficiently use your time, how to make quick decisions under pressure, and to trade off accuracy for speed as the situation arises. And yet it does not seem to. Why?

Do chess players have Q scores?

For those unfamiliar with the concept (or familiar with the concept, but not the name) a "Q Score" measure both the familiarity of a personality and their overall appeal. The higher the score, the more "bankable" the personality.
For the entertainment and advertising industry, the Q score is an important metric, and it has me wondering about potential Q Scores of chess players. Within the chess community I assume that a number of players might have high Q scores, although this would drop (due to lesser recognition) among the wider non-chess community. Fischer and Kasparov would certainly have high recognition levels (as would Nigel Short in the UK) even among non chessplayers. I would even suggest that there Q score might even be higher in the general population, than in the chess population (although Short's might be on the slide!)
Among the chess community Carlsen, Anand and Aronian seem to be both recognised and popular, while Nakamura is an example of a more polarising figure. In the past, Euwe would no doubt be popular in The Netherlands, while Donner might be recognised, but not necessarily popular.
Related to this is an academic paper I have just looked at concerning the correlation between merit and fame. In the paper (which can be found here), the authors measure the historical ELO ratings of players, with their google rankings. At first I thought that this was an odd choice of topic to research, but it a follow up to studies done in other fields. At least the advantage of using chess as a starting point in merit can be measured reasonably accurately (and objectively), something they may not be possible in physics or economics (two other areas looked at),

OTB v CC

I've mentioned in the past that one of the advantages of playing Correspondence Chess (CC) is it is far easier to represent your country than in over the board (OTB) chess. One of the reasons for this is that international friendlies are a regular part of the CC scene. Such matches are often played over numerous boards, with 60 board matches not uncommon.
One opponent that has consistently posed problems for Australia in recent years is Germany. In a previous friendly we were comprehensively walloped, but Australia bravely fronted up again for the return match. We are still behind in the new match, but at least we aren't losing by quite as much.
To bolster our ranks we even brought in some help from the OTB world,  with GM David Smerdon joining the team. I'm not sure how much CC David has played in the past, but in the following game he showed he could hold his own against one of Germany's top players.
BTW, if you want to see the current standings from this event, and play through the games, just click on this link.


Fischer,Wolfgang (2495) - Smerdon,David
GER-AUS/NZ 2015 ICCF, 08.02.2015

Will chess make us smarter, better people?

Two interesting articles were published in the Australian media today, touting the educational benefits of chess, and calling for it to be taught as a core subject in Australian schools. John Adams, Government Relations Director for the Australian Chess Federation argues that chess may play an integral role in boosting the educational performance of Australian children. He plans to spend the next year producing a report that gathers empirical evidence to support this claim, with the intention of getting chess accepted as part of the standard curriculum.
Alongside this was an article by Peter Martin, economics editor for The Age, who described what he learnt from playing chess, lessons he believe he may not have learnt if he had not played the game. In conclusion he argues that not only will a generation of Australian chessplayers make us a smarter country, but possibly even better people.
The report on John Adam's work is here, while you can read Peter Martin's article here.

Off to the fair

Tomorrow I am taking a short journey south of Canberra, to the annual Michelago Mayfair. Apart from the usual delights of a village fair, I will be giving a chess display. The display will probably be just me taking on all comers, but to make it interesting, I will probably give myself a time handicap (eg all moves in 1 or 2 minutes).
I did this a few years ago as a replacement for Lee Forace (who has done it on and off for around 5 years), so this is my second attempt. If you are interested in enjoying a trip to the country (and read this early enough to get there), Michelago is 45 minutes south of Canberra, along the Monaro Highway. The fair runs from 10am to 3 pm, and apart from chess there will be plenty of other activities to do.

I for one am not yet ready to greet our poker overlords

While there is little doubt that the Computers v Humans chess race has been run and done (although I have yet to see an official announcement), this means that game developers have moved onto other challenges. Go is still yet to be cracked, although it is starting to get close, while Poker seems to be another area that is gaining in popularity.
There is currently an ongoing match between an poker bot from Carnegie-Mellon and a group of poker professionals, at the Rivers Casino in Pittsburg. The poker game of choice is No-Limit Holdem, which is a more difficult game for computers to master, as a lot of the game involves stack management, rather than just odds calculation.
At the halfway point the computer program, Claudico, is quite a way behind, down around $160,000 against the professional. Each pro will play 20,000 hands against Claudico, and at the end of the tournament will share $100,000 in appearance money. However these seems not to concern the program developers as this exercise is both a competition and a learning experience for the bot. As with a lot of AI bots these days it is designed to evolve its strategy as it plays, so even while it is getting beaten it should be getting stronger.