Missing Yahoos

Another month ending means another post about top stories in the chess world, aka Yahoos (see the footnote for details). You might notice something unusual about the chart showing the top sources, so I'll come back to that after giving the usual statistics.

For November, Google News returned exactly 100 stories. Eight sources accounted for two or more stories, as shown in the chart on the left. Taken together, those eight sources accounted for a total of 47 stories, leaving 53 sources with a single story.

Once more Chess.com@ [sic] accounted for more stories than the other top sources taken together. ChessBase regained its no.2 position after dropping to no.3 last month, only the second time this year that it has failed at achieve no.2.

Back to the *unusual* 'Chess.com@ [sic]', what's that '@' at the end of the name? The same '@' appears at the end of the names of three other sources listed in the chart and there were 20 '@' sources out of the 61 total.

For the first time in the Yahoo series, Google News stopped including the names of all sources in its list of top stories, identifying those sources only with an icon, often unreadable. I had to add the names of many sources manually and appended a '@' to those sources I added myself.

If this continues -- which it probably will -- I'll have to abandon the monthly Yahoo post. The extra time to add the names is manageable, but I'm not comfortable with the possibility of introducing errors into the process of preparing the post.

Google News also started adding the names of some journalists to its link for the story. Of the seven journalists who were identified, the only name I recognized was Sagar Shah of ChessBase. I fully expect that we will see more journalists named next month.

Because of the extra effort needed for the '@' sources, I've run out of time for this post. I'll come back later for a discussion of the 100 stories.

[Yahoos (mainstream news stories about chess) are derived from Google News top-100 (or so) stories from the past month.]

***

Later: Earlier I wrote, 'Google News also started adding the names of some journalists to its link for the story'. Two of the stories were about the same subject:-

• 2023-12-04: The generational chess battle between grandmasters playing out on YouTube (independent.co.uk; Bevan Hurley) • 'U.S. grandmaster and social media star Hikaru Nakamura was accused by a rival of cheating after a hot winning streak. The outcry exposed a generational rift between top chess players.'
• 2023-11-29: Did GM Hikaru cheat? Chess.com reveals verdict on Hikaru cheating allegations (dexerto.com; Michael Gwilliam) • 'Accusations that chess grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura cheated to obtain the highest-ever blitz rating have officially been shut down.'

In the time between my original post and this update, that first story changed both its headline ('The cheat's gambit: Grandmaster Nakamura accused of cheating by Kramnik regarding 46-game blitz chess streak on Chess.com') and its dateline (2023-11-28). The next story hasn't changed in over 50 years and was prompted by the death of Henry Kissinger the day before my post.

• 2023-12-01: When Henry Kissinger called chess legend Bobby Fischer to coax him to play Boris Spassky in Match of the Century (indianexpress.com; Amit Kamath) • 'The World Championship match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky in 1972 -- called the Match of the Century -- almost didn't happen. A timely intervention from Henry Kissinger, who passed away on Thursday, is said to have done the trick.'

A post from last year, According to Darrach, Day by Day (July 2022), placed the call in the overall chronology of the match. The following news story is more recent.

• 2023-11-27: Fremd student recognized for applying machine learning techniques to chess (dailyherald.com ['suburban Chicago']; Madhu Krishnamurthy) • 'Aditya Gupta, a senior at Fremd High School in Palatine, recently received the Chessable Research Award for applying machine learning techniques to chess. Earlier this year, he was among five high school students in the nation to receive the 2023 Scholar-Chessplayer Award from the U.S. Chess Federation.'

For the 2023 Chessable announcement, see:-

• 2023-09-01: Announcing the Winners of the Fall 2023 Chessable Research Awards (chessable.com; Alexey Root)

For last year's announcement, see:-

• 2022-12-01: Chessable Announces Winners of the Chessable Research Awards (ditto)

In Journal of Chess Research (May 2014), I documented a similar effort from ten years ago. It's great to see that Chessable made it happen.