Showing posts with label chess. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chess. Show all posts

January 31 - Happy Birthday, Sam Loyd

  Posted on January 31, 2022


This is an update of my post published on January 31, 2011:


Take a great game like chess and cross it with the fun of puzzles—and you might just get what is called a chess composer.

I didn't know such a job title existed, either, but apparently there are people who create chess problems for others to solve. Sam Loyd, who was born on this day in 1841, was a popular and witty chess composer. He can also be said to be a recreational mathematician.


Sam Loyd was obviously pretty good at chess. At one time he was one of the best chess players in the United States and #15 in the world. But he could never be truly great because he would go for complicated and fantastic layouts on the board rather than just going for the win.

Loyd was known for self-promotion—even to the point of lying about his accomplishments. For example, he claimed that he had created the 14-15 puzzle in which players slide number tiles within a frame in order to put them in numeric order—but he had nothing to do with the invention or popularization of the puzzle.
However, Loyd did create a number of popular chess problems, Tangram designs, and other sorts of puzzles or problems. One of the most famous chess problems ever is his Steinitz Gambit problem. Loyd's chess puzzles were so popular that he was inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame.


Learn chess online, for free, at Chess Kid.


Here is Kid Chess's Puzzle Jam. 


Try Tangrams and other math puzzles. (I love the puzzles in Simon Tatham's pack!)





(Last Monday in January)



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February 10 - Deep Blue for the Win!

Posted on February 10, 2019

Have you ever played chess? 
(My answer to this question would be "yes.")

If so, are you good at playing chess?
(My answer would be an emphatic "no!")
Do you like playing chess?
(My answer would again be "no.")
Chess is a marvelous game that takes intelligence and either a ton of chess know-how or a lot of creativity to play well. The reason I don't like playing it is because I am not interested enough to learn about openings and strategies and such... So the few times I've played, I  just tried to think: "Well, if I move this to that space, and then he moves his piece to this space, and then I move this other over here, then I will have checkmate! But if I move this to that space and he moves this other piece to this other space, or if he moves this entirely other piece to this completely different space, or or or or..."

I go around and around with a million different "if this and this and that"s spinning in my head, and I never get to a point when I feel like I know a "good" move.

Well, computers don't necessarily have that problem. In the 1990s, computer scientists built a super computer that could consider 200 million positions per second!!!

 Computers had been solving chess problems and playing chess against human players ever since the 1950s, when computer scientists began considering how to program a computer to do such a complex task. But early attempts could not beat good chess players, so computer scientists continued to enjoy the challenge of building a better chess playing machine.

In 1967, a computer + program named Mac Hack Six became the first to defeat a person in tournament play.

 A decade later, in 1977, Chess 4.6 became the first chess computer to win a match at a major chess tournament.

 In 1981, Cray Blitz became the first computer to beat a master in tournament play - thus becoming the first computer to achieve master rating.

 IBM built a massive computer called Deep Thought, and although (in 1988) it could beat human players - even grandmasters and a former world champion - it could not beat the reigning world champion, Garry Kasparov.

 So IBM built another chess computer, Deep Blue. And on this date in 1996, it became the first computer to beat the reigning world champ, Kasparov, in Game 1 of a six-game match.

 But Kasparov went on to defeat Deep Blue in three of the following games, with two draws, so Kasparov won the match.

A year later, an upgraded Deep Blue (sometimes called "Deeper Blue") became the first chess computer to defeat the reigning world champion (Kasparov).

 Since around 2005, computers have been able to regularly defeat even the strongest human players. And nowadays the more intelligent computer systems don't have to use "brute strength" methods such as analyzing 200 million (200,000,000) positions per second. Instead, they search fewer than 20,000 positions per second.

 Now human chess players think of computer systems as ways to analyze games rather than as opponents. Advanced Chess is a form of chess in which human players both have access to computers as they play.








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February 16 - Happy Birthday, Vera Menchik



Posted on February 16, 2018


Of course women can be chess champions!

For whatever reason, all the "world champions" have been men; but women chess champions have their own list of "Women's World Champions."
And of all the women on that list, today's famous birthday, Vera Menchik, had the longest reign. Menchik was women's world chess champion for 17 years, from the first Women's World Championship in 1927 to 1944.
Menchik was so far ahead of other women chess players of her time, she rarely lost or even had a draw with another female player. She also won many matches against men, including world champion Max Euwe - when he was NOT yet a world champion! She was routinely trounced by the top male chess players, losing every game to the champions when they were in their prime.

I wondered why Menchik was listed as a British-Chechoslovak-Russian chess player! It turns out that Menchik's dad was born in Bohemia (now in the Czech Republic, which is trying not-very-successfully to rebrand itself as Czechia), Menchik's mom was born in England, and Menchik herself was born in Russia!

When Menchik was still a child, the Russian Revolution caused her family to lose their business and their house; soon the marriage failed, and Menchik and her sister moved with their mom to England. 
As a chess champion, she represented Russia, Czechoslovakia, and England!
This is Shannon-Ogbani Abeda, whose
parents were refugees from Eritrea who
settled in Canada. Abeda was born in
Canada but is skiing for Eritrea.
I keep noticing that more and more Olympic athletes compete for the nation of their heritage, rather than the nation in which they were born and raised. A lot of them move from their homeland to get the best coaching. Some of them move around a lot in order to get good conditions for their sport (like skiers needing snow, etc.). Since the world is more mobile, it makes more and more sense that athletes would move often, live in a variety of places, and so forth - and it is perhaps getting to be a bit out of date that they represent nations at all?
But I have to say that Menchik, who was born on this date in 1906, was early in the trend of representing a series of different nations!
By the way, Menchik didn't lose the title of world champ by losing a chess tournament. Instead, tragically, she lost her life in World War II when a Nazi bomb destroyed her London home in 1944. She was 38 years old.
Girls and women are starting to have more
opportunities to enjoy - and compete in - chess.



Also on this date:









Chinese New Year -- Year of the Dog:
here and here and here and
here and here 


















(Third Friday in February)






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