The Yahoos' Database Flags Cheating

Just like the last two months, most recently in The Yahoos' Database Flags PogChamps (February 2021), I asked Google News to tell me what it considered the top chess stories of the past month. Just like last month, it gave me exactly 100 stories for consideration.

The table on the left shows which sources had at least two stories. For the third month running, Chess.com headed the list, and it was followed by four other chess sites. (NB: Chesskid.com is a subsidiary of Chess.com.)

For the first time in the three months that I've been conducting this exercise, a non-chess site had three stories. There were two such sites: the Financial Times and WIRED.

The one story that received the most attention was about alleged cheating. It was a two-part story. The first part was about the alleged cheating incident; the second part was about a test put to the alleged cheater. Here are separate reports on the two parts:-

• 2021-03-12: A Bird-Feed Seller Beat a Chess Master Online. Then It Got Ugly (wired.com)
  
  
• 2021-03-25: Why over 1 million people watched a cheater play chess (zmescience.com); 'A bizarre story of cheating, chess, and popular uproar, became the most watched chess event in modern history.'

Since the alleged cheating incident happened on Chess.com, it's only fair to give that site's point of view:-

• 2021-03-23: Cheating Controversy Results In Most-Watched Chess Stream In History (chess.com; Peter Doggers)

In other news, it's hard to say if the 'Queen's Gambit' craze has run its course or not. One related story popped up on several sources. Here's one example:-

• 2021-03-01: Golden Globe winner 'Queen's Gambit' keeps fueling chess popularity and sales (adage.com); 'The show took home best limited series and best actress, giving chess another pop culture bounce.'

The story noted,

Netflix congratulated the star [Anya Taylor-Joy as Beth Harmon] on Twitter. The praise is well-founded. The show continues to be a winner for the chess industry, which is still riding a popularity wave more than four months after the show debuted.

As for last month's hot topic, PogChamps 3, it was nowhere to be found. Time for PogChamps 4? Maybe we'll see it next month.

TCEC 'Swiss 1', CCC 'Streamer Bots Battle' Both Underway

Two weeks ago, the subject of this blog's fortnightly post on the world's top engine vs. engine competitions was TCEC FRC3, CCC Rapid 2021 : Both Finals Underway (March 2021). To summarize that post:-

TCEC: In the TCEC Cup 8 final match, Stockfish beat LCZero +1-0=7. FRC3 has reached the final match, where Stockfish and KomodoDragon are tied with one win each. • CCC: Stockfish is crushing Lc0 in the final match of the Rapid 2021.

After the finals finished, the two sites switched to other events. So what are they doing today?

TCEC: For a report on TCEC FRC3, see the post TCEC C960 FRC3 (March 2021), on my chess960 blog. There I wrote,

In the 'FRC 3' final, KomodoDragon beat Stockfish by a score of +2-1=47.

Even more importantly, I quoted the TCEC Wiki:-

The TCEC Fischer Random Chess will as of now be a regular part of seasonal events [S21 is next].

After TCEC FRC3, the site started its first Swiss tournament, cleverly named 'Swiss 1'. We got a taste of the format last month in TCEC Side Events; CCC 'Rapid 2021' Nearing Semifinal (February 2021):-

The site is running a series of bonus events mingled with test events. [...] The test events included four 'Swiss Test' tournaments, each having 42 versions of Stockfish, with events and engines configured using varying conditions.

For the format of the current Swiss tournament, see TCEC Swiss 1 - TCEC wiki (wiki.chessdom.org). In brief:-

The TCEC Swiss 1 uses the TCEC Swiss Tournament System with the following configuration:
* 11 double rounds.
* Group seeding with 40 engines divided in 8 groups.

That referenced wiki page, TCEC Swiss Tournament System - TCEC wiki (ditto), explains the rules. Warning! : It's an explanation that only a mathematician could love. 'Swiss 1' has 38 engines in competition and is currently in the fourth of its 11 'double rounds'.

CCC: Stockfish won the Rapid 2021 final match, beating Lc0 by a score of 280.0-220.0. After a series of bonus / exhibition events, the site is now running something called 'Chess.com Bots: Streamers Battle' with 16 bots participating. I couldn't find any info about the event except the names of the 16 bots, starting with the strongest: Eric, Aman, etc.

Until now I've managed to avoid paying attention to the 'Chess.com Streamer Bots'. I'll make amends by featuring them in the next off-week engine post.

[For further information from the various stakeholders in the engine-to-engine events, see the tab 'TCEC/CCC Links' at the top of this page. • NB: Leela = LC0 = LCzero]

Is It Only About Money?

For this edition of The Sociology of Chess (November 2016), I wanted to use another Youtube video from the recent post, TCEC/CCC HTTP '!Command's (March 2021). The only problem was : of the 30 or so videos on the list for that post, most of them had nothing to do with chess. Although there were plenty of clips like Aiaaira - the National Anthem of Abkhazia (youtube.com; Wikipedia: 'a partially recognized state in the South Caucasus, recognised by most countries as part of Georgia, which views the region as an autonomous republic'), the handful of videos that had anything to do with chess were on un-sociable topics like chess programming.

Luckily I also had the short list from the most recent featured video Chess Can Be Heavy (also March 2021), which was 100% about chess and which had a few good clips for the series on sociology. The one I chose harks back to another video post in the series, The Dilemma of Women's Chess (July 2020).

Making $100K+ A Year Playing Chess On Twitch (8:21) • '[Published on] Feb 18, 2021'

The description of the CNBC 'Make It' video says,

Alexandra Botez, 25, is a professional Twitch streamer who makes six figures playing chess online. She and her sister Andrea Botez, 18, have over 650,000 followers and are signed with Team Envy, a global esports and entertainment company. 2020 was a big year for chess as the popular Netflix show ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ attracted millions of new users to Chess.com.

As usually is the case with popular videos -- this one is approaching 250.000 views -- the comments are half the entertainment. Example:-

Many people think these sisters only play chess, but they do more than play chess. They will play 'Among Us', chat with their Followers, talk about their ex-boyfriends, and even collaborate with Mr. Beast. Their content is really entertaining.

'Among Us', 'Mr. Beast'? I had to look them up. Or how about a little history:-

'Queen's Gambit has done a ton for bringing attention to the game!' • 'The streamer xQc blew up chess on Twitch by streaming it to his audience.' • 'I disagree. Pogchamps 1 and 2 really blew up chess.' • 'xQc made Pogchamps possible.' • 'Chess blew up on Twitch prior but for sure the Queen's Gambit brought it to a larger audience.' • 'It was Hikaru who really blew it up.' • 'xQc blew up Hikaru' • etc.

One name, Graham Stephan, was mentioned again and again:-

I can't wait for Graham Stephan to react to this.

Ditto, 'simps':-

There are enough simps out there for her to even get to 1M [followers?]. There are so many better players and actual GMs who make videos but people watch her just to look at her or chat with her.

Maybe chess isn't the story at all:-

'"Making $100K+ a year just chatting on Twitch" should be the title, right?' • 'Title could have read "Making $100K being a chick on Twitch".'

I could go on and on, but finally, when all is said and done:-

'This is just really a phenomenal story. Thank you, CNBC Make It, for this one and many others.' • 'Wow, thanks for sharing your story!'

Amen to that!

U.S. Chess Service Awards

In last week's post, The U.S. Chess Awards (March 2021), I did a small analysis of those awards:-

I started to wonder how many different awards have been made through the years. It turns out that there have been 25, shown in the following chart, of which 20 awards were made in 2020.

After writing the post, I started looking at past winners. One of the names I discovered was former USCF Executive Director Al Lawrence. He is also one of America's top chess journalists, last seen in 2019 CJA Awards - Part 2 (August 2019):-

'Chess Journalist of the Year' went to the incomparable Al Lawrence.

According to my database, Lawrence has received two different U.S. Chess awards:-

2002 Special Service Award: Dewain Barber, Ralph Bowman, Mark Glickman, Al Lawrence, Mike Nolan
2015 Distinguished Service Award: Al Lawrence, Pal Benko

Both of those awards were 'Service Awards', of which there are four different categories. The following table shows the first year of each service award and the number of times it was awarded. Not all awards were made every year:-

1979, x 40: Distinguished Service Award
1980, x 35: Meritorious Service Award
1983, x 35: Special Service Award
1994, x 27: Scholastic Service Award

Since it's not immediately obvious what differentiates the first three awards -- Distinguished, Meritorious, and Special -- I'll look at those in another post.

TCEC/CCC HTTP '!Command's

The tab 'TCEC/CCC Links' at the top of this page lists two different '!Command's, one for TCEC and one for CCC. Behind these small databases is a world of information about computer chess. The 'Search' command near the top the two pages is a keyword search on the content of the particular database. One of the most useful searches is 'http' (without the quotes), which brings up links to other resources on the web. Both databases yield hundreds of 'http' results:-

• TCEC: Showing 1 to 100 of 459 entries (2,155 total entries)
• CCC: Showing 1 to 100 of 248 entries (1,296 total entries)

Since those results represent too many directions to explore in a reasonable amount of time, better is to work with specific web domains. For example, the keyword 'youtube' yields dozens of videos (even better is 'youtu' to pick up youtu.be addresses). Many of the videos are unrelated to computer chess, but are still interesting in their own ways. I especially liked the following clip, perhaps because I lived and worked in Paris for five years.

A Trip Through Paris, France in late 1890s (6:06) • '[Published on] Mar 2, 2020'

The description starts...

Upscaled with neural networks footage from the dawn of film taken in Belle Époque era, Paris, France from 1896-1900.

...and continues with a brief explanation of techniques used to create the video. With more than 5.000.000 views and 16.000 comments, the video strikes the right chord in many viewers.

Another '!Command' keyword -- related to 'http' -- worth exploring is 'chess.com'. This returns links to talkchess.com, tcec-chess.com, and of course, chess.com. Other 'http'-related keywords I looked at were 'wiki', 'github', 'google', 'discord', 'twitch', 'lichess', 'chessprogramming', and 'patreon'.

I could spend hours exploring those directions. Maybe I'll come back to them another time.

Inside the Musée de Cluny

We've already seen chess ouside the Paris museum Musée de Cluny (March 2013; 'In courtyard at Musée de Cluny'); now let's go inside. That post quoted Wikipedia's description, 'The Musée National du Moyen Âge', which translates to 'National Museum of the Middle Ages'.

Vitrail : les joueurs d'échecs, 1450; Musée de Cluny © Flickr user Pierre under Creative Commons.

The photo had no description, so we're forced to rely on the title. In English it translates to

Stained glass window : the chess players, 1450

The museum's web site has a page on the exhibit titled, Chess Players : Musée de Cluny. It says,

This panel of civil stained glass, produced in the 15th century, comes from the Hôtel de la Bessée in Villefranche-sur-Saône. [...] Though very popular among the cultivated aristocratic elite, few examples of civil stained glass remain today. • Height: 54.2 cm; Width: 54 cm

By 'civil stained glass', I understand stained glass outside of a church setting. The exhibit is also mentioned in Paris in Spring (chess-museum.com), which is a report on 'The 17th CCI [Chess Collectors International] World Convention - Paris, 2-6 May [2016]'. The page says,

In Cluny we not only found some well known chess sets of medieval origin, but also the fabulous glass window showing a lady playing chess with a gentleman of the times. [...] Superb scene of an amorously tinged chess game, beautfiul details -- window background, headgear, the checkered floor tiles, the back tapestry.

This is the second time in less than a year that I've mentioned Chess-museum.com. The first was Georgian Player, Regency Set (May 2020). How does one go about exploring such a vast repository of chess history?

The U.S. Chess Awards

Last week in U.S. Chess Cities of the Year (March 2021), I explained,

The award for 'Chess City of the Year' is one of many awards made annually by the U.S. Chess Federation. I covered these a few years back in The USCF Awards (May 2015), where I collected the awards issued up to that time in a database. For this current post I dragged that database out of cold storage, then added the awards made since 2015.

I started to wonder how many different awards have been made through the years. It turns out that there have been 25, shown in the following chart, of which 20 awards were made in 2020.

That first line should read 'ACCESSIBILITY AND SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES PERSON OF THE YEAR', but I ran out of space. The second column shows the number of times an award has been made. The third and fourth columns show the first and last years each award was made, where my data stops at the year 2020. The 'ACCESSIBILITY' award, first made in 2018, is therefore the newest of the 25 awards.

Also worth noting: the U.S. federation used to give 'JOURNALIST' awards -- 'JOURNALIST OF THE YEAR AWARD' and 'THE GALLERY OF DISTINGUISHED CHESS JOURNALISTS' -- but these stopped several years ago, perhaps because they duplicated the CJA awards (last seen on this blog in 2020 CJA Awards - Part 2, October 2020). The list of 'U.S. CHESS HALL OF FAME INDUCTEES' stops in 2014, but these awards have continued up to the present. I imagine they are not made at the same time as the other awards and therefore not included in the annual group announcement.

The post mentioned above, USCF Awards (May 2015), listed the 'KOLTANOWSKI AWARDS' through 2015. If I have the time and the energy, I'll take a closer look at some of the other most prestigious awards. Their winners represent the 'Who's Who' of organized U.S. chess.