The US Chess Federation have made the latest Chess Life magazine (November 2020) available as a free pdf download on their website. Anya Taylor-Joy is featured on the cover in her role as Beth Harmon in the incredibly popular Netflix tv miniseries, "The Queen's Gambit". In an extensive article inside the magazine, Bruce Pandolfini, a well known chess teacher in the US and a chess consultant on the project, provides an insiders view on the making of the series. Well worth downloading and reading (see link below).

https://new.uschess.org/sites/default/fi..._promo.pdf

As far as I can see, it looks like CS Player of the Year has ceased.  I think this is a great shame, because it was an opportunity to engage with the membership and consider the contribution made by a diverse group of contenders.
If it is not too late for 2020, I'd like to suggest CS try and it get it going again.  I'd also like to suggest Neil Berry and Andy Howie for their contribution to keeping online chess going during the pandemic (there may well be others who are equally deserving in the same category).

Keti Arakhamia-Grant on BBC Breakfast this morning as they discussed one of Netflix's more successful series "The Queen's Gambit."

Contributions also from Malcolm Pein and a random English junior. Chess.com also contributing with their upsurge in online accounts.

Now whilst all this focus on chess appearing in main stream media is pleasing, I find the suggestion of a surge in people learning chess rather amusing.

I am unaware of any surge locally in Ayrshire of clubs or individuals being contacted, either during the first lockdown or now, about how to learn to play chess. Now that could all be taking place online with YouTube and online chess platforms being used.

The question may be, hopefully, how to cope with a surge in interest after OTB gets going again, or do they all stay online?

we played in masks today

This weekend sees a number of online events taking place on the LiChess platform.

Events range from a blitz on Friday to a 5 round standard play over Saturday and Sunday and allegros for both Juniors and adults.

Enter through the links on the main page. Please refresh the entry page as some browsers are using the old entry page.

Hi Guys

Can I draw your attention to this training opportunity, both for adults and kids. Chess Scotland will fund two places

https://www.chessscotland.com/news-post/...s-academy/

Hi all
I've been asked by the CS President to clarify that the initiatives I having been setting up (e.g. The Scottish National Online Chess League ) are not under the auspices of Chess Scotland and consequently will be completely independent from Chess Scotland. Consequently we the committee will have to create a completely independent new organisation , called something along the lines of the Scottish Online Chess Organisation. The good news is that the services we provide will be free and cost neutral. Anyone wishing and willing to join will of course be welcome.

Fascinating article about Walter Tevis - author of Queen's Gambit - which is currently airing on Netflix - a surprisingly authentic account of chess life although I must say I have not come across anyone resembling this series heroine at any of the congresses I have attended   . I see he also wrote the Hustler and Man Who Fell to Earth and was a chess nut. I quote: "I think that most people take up the game of chess in a very serious way if they have personality problems ... I was afraid of girls, I was afraid of a lot of things, and chess was a way of … getting rid of some of that anxiety by displacing it in something that was relatively safe,”

Enjoy the article and don't miss this on Netflix

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/author...ter-tevis/

Article below. Link: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-10-c...peaks.html
Paper abstract underneath. Link: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33077581/
Link to full study: https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/...53117.long (yes it's long! But fairly readable)



Article: Study of chess player performance over many years suggests brain peaks at age 35

A trio of researchers from Institut Polytechnique Paris, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat München, and Erasmus University has found evidence suggesting that cognitive abilities in humans peak at age 35 and begin to decline after age 45. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Anthony Strittmatter, Uwe Sunde and Dainis Zegners describe their study of chess player skill over a span of 125 years and what they found.
Prior research has shown that cognitive skills for most people begin to decline sometime during mid-life and continue to deteriorate for the rest of a person's life. In this new effort, the researchers have found a novel way to show such decline—by measuring the skills of professional chess players.
The work involved analyzing player performance over approximately 24,000 professional chess matches from the years 1890 to 2014. In all, they studied the moves of 4,294 players, 20 of whom were world champions—the other 4,274 were their opponents. The researchers' goal was to follow the skill level of each player over many years of their life to gage their skill level over time. They did this by comparing chess moves made by each player against optimal moves suggested by a computerized chess engine over the course of their career.
They found that performance for most players increased rapidly until they reached the age of 20—after that, their performance improvements slowed until reaching a peak at approximately age 35. Most of the players were able to maintain their peak playing abilities for approximately 10 years—after age 45, skills began to deteriorate. The researchers describe the data for a given individual as representing a "hump-shaped curve."
The researchers also found that player performance across the board has increased over the past 125 years, particularly among young people. They noted that performance rose sharply in the 1990s as chess enthusiasts gained access to computerized chess games, providing them with more accomplished opponents. They found that experience levels for most players rose, as well—in the modern age, professional chess players play a lot more matches than did those a century ago.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paper abstract: Life cycle patterns of cognitive performance over the long run
Anthony Strittmatter  1 , Uwe Sunde  2 , Dainis Zegners  3
Affiliations

• PMID: 33077581
  
• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2006653117
  

An interesting article from the Sunday Post

Chess chiefs move to defeat rise in cheating as games move online in lockdown
by Craig McDonald
October 25, 2020, 12:00 pm

The usually hushed world of chess is in uproar after a contagion of cheating during lockdown.
With more games being forced online, computer programmes are increasingly being used to find the perfect move, swing games and boost players’ rankings.
 
Scots chess administrators said the number caught cheating has doubled since lockdown began, but added there are stringent measures in place to catch the cheats.

John McNicoll, a council member of Chess Scotland and a qualified arbiter in the game, said: “It’s harder to catch people cheating online than it is playing in the traditional way. People think no one will ever know if they use a computer to cheat but, we have various methods to catch them.

“We have caught people and have punished them by banning them. It has risen a lot since lockdown. Before, we considered about two accusations of cheating in three or four years. Since lockdown, we’ve had five or six.”
 
It’s estimated there are around 2,500 people in Scotland who play at a serious level. Cheats use computer programmes to work out optimum moves which only the very best players would know. But authorities have their own software which can analyse a player’s moves and detect suspicious patterns.
 
Mr McNicoll said: “We have seen low-graded players suddenly playing like the world champion. We have caught one adult, with an investigation into another adult ongoing, and the rest have been younger players.”
 
Andy Howie, executive director of Chess Scotland, who chairs its anti-cheating committee, said: “There has been quite an increase since lockdown and since we went online. However, it has not affected Scotland as much as elsewhere.
 
“We have made it clear we will have measures in place to catch cheats and we will be on the front foot on this issue.”
 
Experts agree there has been a surge in what’s been referred to as “computer-doping” since games went online following lockdown.
 
Chess.com, the world’s biggest site for online play, said it had 12 million new users this year, up from 6.5 million last year. The cheating rate had jumped from between 5,000 and 6,000 players banned per month last year to almost 17,000 in August.
 
Gerard Le-Marechal, head of the site’s fair play team, said: “It’s just so easy to do and it’s without doubt creating a crisis.”
 
International Chess Federation boss Arkady Dvorkovich described cheating as a “plague” within the game.
 
Professor Ken Regan, who has devised a computer programme to scan games and detect cheating, said: “The pandemic has brought me as much work in a single day as I had in a year previously.”