AndroidGate

Well we've already had "Dunnygate", What would we call this, then: AndroidGate?

A row started after the Dublin schoolboy, who was said to have gone to the toilet “at least 20 times” during a game, was allegedly caught using an Android device to check his next move on a chess engine.

The teenager’s opponent, Gabriel Mirza (47), who was expelled from the tournament because of his reaction, admits he pulled the schoolboy from a toilet cubicle at the Metropole Hotel in Cork, but insists he never assaulted him.

From the Irish Times.

RIP Malcolm Tredinnick

I am just utterly, utterly shocked. One of the first people I ever knew in Australian chess, Malcolm Tredinnick, has passed away. It was at the 1996 Australian Chess Championships in Sydney that I first ran into Malcolm. He had always worn a bearded face and I actually thought that he was GM Ian Rogers (before I had met Ian, of course).

Malcolm was on Twitter. His last tweet was on 16 March. He tweeted: "Woke up late, afternoon nap and I still want to go to bed early. So tired; wasted the day."

BBC iPlayer: A Profile of Magnus Carlsen

Magnus Carlsen is getting quite a bit of publicity lately.

About a week ago The Independent dubbed him the Justin Bieber of Chess. I don't know about that. Bieber is an over-rated prick who now thinks that he's a man who can take on big boofy papparazi in a fist fight. Of course, there is nothing over-rated about Magnus.

And now this: a profile of Carlsen, available via the BBC's iPlayer.

Film: "Computer Chess"

The Sundance Film Festival in the US ended this week, but there is one "oddball" film that's continuing to attract attention and is currently doing the rounds of reviews. It is the film by Andrew Bujalski, "Computer Chess". Instead of highlighting the usual review from some film buff, I thought it more interesting to point to this instead - an article by Gordon Kindlmann, assistant professor of comp sci. at the University of Chicago, and who worked on the movie as a technical consultant and actually acted in it.

There were also philosophical questions in the air, such as whether a program was capable of creative or insightful play, and to what extent we could learn from the computer when it played a strong game. Brilliant and passionate people, with intellectual goals as well as complex emotional investments, populated all sides of these issues. Bujalski's characters live in this moment, working through the ideas and ambitions of that optimistic and fertile time.

By the way, here is Bujalski's fund raising page for the movie.

Learn Chess, Learn Some Grit

Here's another plus to encouraging chess. The game teaches life skills, grit, character. This interesting discussion isn't specifically about chess but about the broader subject of teaching "grit" to children. Hat tip to The Economist.

Anton: The "Supernova"

Blimey. I remember when his dad, international master and Sydney Uni academic Vladimir Smirnov, used to take him to Hyde Park to spar with the locals over a few rounds of lightning. He was fairly easy back then. But now, I think, not so. With a rating of 2161 (ACF), Anton Smirnov has significantly improved since the last time I saw him. And now he's a local superstar. At least to North Sydney local, Paul Glissan: "He's a Wolfgang Mozart. He's exceptional."

Chess Is Just Too Hard

It's official. The scientists have delivered their verdict. Chess is just too hard. The game is impossible to master. And if you thought of switching to poker, you can forget that, too.

Shut Up Patzer, Make A Move

Hat tip to the Nairobi Chess Club Facebook page for sharing this. A chess scene by director Stanley Kubrick from his film "The Killing". It is also a scene quite familiar to us all, I think, although less so for me in the last couple of years.

Brooklyn Castle

A doco. Looks like one to look out for.

Max Gives Up Uni for GM

It turns out that Australia's latest international master is a sort of local celeb in Manly. Here he is, again, appearing in the pages of The Manly Daily.

Dee Why's Max Illingworth aims for chess grandmaster title.