'USCF' Out, 'USCHESS' In

Last summer, a little more than a year ago, the U.S. Chess Federation (known then as the 'USCF') changed its name and its logo. The group explained the name change in the August 2015 issue of Chess Life (p.12-13) and in A New Direction for US Chess (uschess.org),

One of the most important aspects of our new identity is the change from calling ourselves USCF to US Chess. Over the years, our organization has been known by many names including the United States Chess Federation, the USCF, US Chess, and the United States of America Chess Federation. Moving forward, while our corporate name, the United States Chess Federation, will remain the same, we will refer to ourselves as the US Chess Federation or US Chess for short.

The logo change is shown in the following image.

Following their lead, I changed my relevant blog label (aka tag) from 'USCF' to 'USCHESS'. Not only does it reflect the federation's choice, it also makes it easier to label general USA posts like the recent Strong American Chess Tournaments (August 2016). For more qbout the U.S. federation, see Happy Anniversary, Chess Federations! (January 2014).

Going Mobile : Responsive Ads

I have to interrupt the series on Korchnoi's TMER (Tournament, Match, and Exhibition Record; last seen in Korchnoi's Events 1977-1996) to deal with an administrative problem concerning ads on my pages. While on vacation I received the following message:-

Subject: Google AdSense: Action required to comply with AdSense program policies.
From: adsense-noreply@google.com
Date: 21-Jul-16 12:50

This is a warning message to alert you that there is action required to bring your AdSense account into compliance with our AdSense program policies. We’ve provided additional details below, along with the actions to be taken on your part. [...]

Our program policies do not permit any alteration to AdSense code which artificially inflates ad performance or harms advertiser conversions. Your publisher account offers a number of options when generating the ad code, which we hope will allow you to create an ad layout that fits in with your site. It is also not allowed to place ads on mobile optimized sites so that they cover any part of the site content or implementing parts of a webpage to cover any portion of the ads. Please be aware that if you have a responsive website design that ads may shift into non compliant positions as the format of the screen changes.

In order to remain fully compliant please ensure that your site and ad layout remain compliant across all devices.

The offending page was Tales of Two Fischers. The code for the two ads on the page was identical to my other pages for that site and I hadn't made any content changes to the page in years, nor any 'alteration to AdSense code' (I wouldn't dare!).

I decided the warning had to be related to a small change I made last year which I documented in Going Mobile : CFAA Site (June 2015). That change was also ordained by Google.

That 'Going Mobile' post reminded me to do a Mobile-Friendly Test (on 'Two Fischers'); the result is shown on the left.

Although the test also gave me the message 'Awesome! This page is mobile-friendly.', the Adsense ad isn't displayed. It should be between the blue navigation links and the red titles. The test results also flagged another problem:-

How Googlebot sees this page: This page uses one resource which is blocked by ROBOTS.TXT. The results and screenshot may be incorrect.

ROBOTS.TXT is the file that tells web spiders what pages shouldn't be included in search results. I don't care what the spiders do with my pages and have never used the file. As far as I knew, I don't have one, but it turned out I do. The Google page Blocked JavaScript, CSS, and Image Files (developers.google.com) pointed to m-w.com/robots.txt. I decided that it must be a file that my ISP builds and that it was probably not the cause of the Adsense warning. What now?

I started reading forum posts from Search results - AdSense Help (support.google.com) for the phrase starting 'Our program policies do not permit any alteration'. While there were many possible reasons for the Adsense warning, including several that might apply to my pages, I decided that the most likely reason was the fixed size banner ads I was using. I changed these to what Google calls 'responsive ads': About responsive ad units (support.google.com):-

Responsive web design allows you to dynamically control the presentation of your website according to the properties of the screen/device that it’s being viewed on. A responsive ad unit allows you to control the size of the ads on your page, in line with how you control the layout of the rest of your page across devices.

I had already tackled the subject last year in Going Mobile : Responsive Design (May 2015), and was able to make the new changes quickly. Will this be enough to eliminate the Google Adsense warning? Time will tell.

'Chess in Primary Schools' Studied

Ever since the first post on 'Chess in (the) School/Schools' (October 2013), I've been meandering through the topic with follow-up posts every two weeks (or so), making it the longest-running series on this blog. I was planning to wrap it up and move on to another topic when a pair of British news sources introduced a fresh angle in stories published on the same day.

• Playing chess doesn't make your children any smarter, study finds (telegraph.co.uk) • 'Pushy parents sending their children to chess classes are not improving their school grades, a major study has revealed.'
  
  
• Playing chess does not make children cleverer, study finds (independent.co.uk) • 'In a study of 3,000 school children, researchers were 'suprised' to find those who were given chess tuition failed to see an impact on their school grades.'

The study is introduced on a page from the Education Endowment Foundation, Chess in Primary Schools (e*e*f*.org.uk), which starts,

Chess in Primary Schools is a whole-school approach to teaching primary school children how to play chess. Children take 30 hours of chess lessons delivered by a tutor who is an experienced chess player, and the school is given the option to set up a chess club as a lunchtime or after-school activity. Chess classes are delivered during the school day and are expected to replace subjects such as music or PE.

Before I wrap-up my own CIS series, I'm going to take a closer look at the EEF study.

Chess and Filmmaking

Given that it's been five weeks since my previous Video Friday post, World Champion Blitz, you might think I had plenty to choose from, and you would be right. My short list had more than 30 videos, but the top pick turned out to be a no-brainer.

The Kubrick Files Ep. 2 – What Chess Taught Kubrick About Filmmaking (6:47) • 'Kubrick had been obsessed with chess ever since he was a child and he used what he learned about strategy, logic, and patience and applied it to the decision-making process.'

For previous posts on this blog about chess and Kubrick, see They Played Chess with Kubrick (December 2013) and Bombs Away (March 2016).

Strong American Chess Tournaments

My latest 'On the Cover' post, for August 1966, covered the Second Piatigorsky Cup and quoted Chess Life:-

This double round robin, eighteen games over a one-month period, will undoubtedly rank with the greatest chess competitions of all time.

While that is certainly true, how many other American tournaments can be considered among the 'greatest chess competitions of all time'? I turned to Wikipedia's List of strong chess tournaments to help answer the question. Although the list is inconsistent, it's a start. I extracted the 981 events listed on the page, loaded them into a database, and isolated the American events.

I found 56 American events including 23 venues. Of these, 26 were played in New York. The table on the left shows the 25 most recent events.

Many of these events I don't recognize (1940 Dallas?) and further research would undoubtedly increase my limited knowledge of American chess history. There are as many tournaments listed in the 10 years leading to the 1972 Fischer boom as there are in the 40+ years following it.

The 30 year gap between 1982 Chicago (won by Huebner) and the start of the Sinquefield series is particularly noteworthy. Where were the strongest American players playing during that time?

August 1966 'On the Cover'

In the July 1966 'On the Cover', we saw the 'The Poor Man's Piatigorsky'. This month, 50 years ago, we get the real deal. Before reading further, can you identify the player shown in the right photo? His name is much better known than his face.

Left: 'Piatigorsky Cup - Relaxing before the tournament: Najdorf, Fischer, Portisch, Larsen, Ivkov, Unzicker'
Right: 'Wins record Eastern Open'

Chess Life

The First Piatigorsky Cup, presented in Los Angeles in July 1963, saw the introduction of a momentous event in the world of chess. Five nations were represented by eight of the most outstanding Grandmasters of our time as World Champion Tigran Petrosian tied for first place with his fellow player from the U.S.S.R., Paul Keres.

The Second Piatigorsky Cup, which began on July 17 and continued through August 15, 1966, at the Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica, California, surpassed even the first event in this series with its drama, its grip on chess enthusiasts the world over, and the sometimes surprising results of its individual encounters between the titans of the 64 squares. This double round robin, eighteen games over a one-month period, will undoubtedly rank with the greatest chess competitions of all time.

Chess Review

Nick [Nicolas] Rossolimo emerged on top of the record-breaking field of 269 in the Eastern Open in Washington, D.C. He was undefeated in scoring 7-1 but triumphed by tie-break over fellow New Yorkers, Arthur B. Bisguier and Mike Valvo and 17-year-old Leroy Jackson of St. Louis. Pal Benko and Bernard Zuckerman were among those who finished "out of the money."

I predict that next month's 'On the Cover' will feature the Piatigorsky Cup for both magazines. As for GM Rossolimo, he deserves a post of his own.

Korchnoi's Events 1977-1996

Continuing with Viktor Korchnoi's Tournament, Match, and Exhibition Record (1946-1977), aka 'Korchnoi's TMER', after Korchnoi's Matches 1946-1977 I had to tackle the post-1977 period. How to start?

In my archive a found a few PGN collections of Korchnoi's games that I had saved in the 2001-2002 time frame. Unfortunately, I didn't document the origin of these files, but I should be able to work that out as I delve into their contents.

I chose one of the files, extracted all games from 1977 and afterwards (2130 games, including many duplicates), and loaded the PGN headers into a database. The file I chose had no information in the PGN '[Event]' tag, so I was forced to work with the '[Site]' tag. This tag had never been standardized and I found over 730 different combinations of year/site, covering the period 1977-1996.

I decided to continue with all games where the same year/site combination occurred at least four times. I found 160 such occurrences and added the results to my page on Korchnoi's TMER. The result is less clean than I hoped to have at this point, but it gives me an overview of Korchnoi's events in the 20 year period starting with the 1977-1978 World Championship cycle.