The effect of computers on top-level chess

The sixth game in the best-of-twelve World Chess Championship match between champion Magnus Carlsen and challenger Sergey Karjakin petered out in a draw yesterday, leaving the score tied at 3-3. According to the rules, the winner of a game gets one point while a draw nets each player half a point and the first player to reach 6.5 points wins the match. During each game many observers use a computer program called Stockfish to evaluate the moves of the players, and compare them compared with that of the best move by the computer and such programs seem to have become essential training tools for top players. The program app is available for free from the iTunes store and I have downloaded it and tried it out.
[Read more…]

Abusing service sector workers

I have railed in the past about the fact that some people take advantage of the fact that service workers are obliged to be nice to customers by abusing them. Via Rob Beschizza I came across this video of a woman who seems to have got offended by something one of the Subway employees said to her and started berating him using the most foul language (Be warned: it is really hateful), interspersed with calm requests for how she wanted her food prepared.
[Read more…]

Update on the world chess championship

The score between defending champion Magnus Carlsen and Sergey Karyakin currently stands at three draws out of the best-of- twelve game match but Oliver Roeder says that the third draw was unlike the boring first two in that it featured some unusual and exciting play in which Karyakin fought back after being taken by surprise by a Carlsen’s 10th move while playing white. But then Carlsen slipped up at move 71 and the game ended with the players agreeing to a draw after the 78th move.

It is interesting how computers are used by the spectators to analyze the best possible moves at each stage of the game. It appears that there are elaborate measures in place to prevent players from gaining access to computers when they take breaks.

And now for something completely different – almost

As a break from political news, I was going to write about the world chess championship title match that is just beginning in New York between the reigning champion Magnus Carlsen of Norway and Russian grandmaster Sergei Karyakin. The first game ended in a draw. Carlsen is favored but Karyakin is no pushover, currently ranked ninth in the world after becoming the youngest grandmaster ever at the age of 12.
[Read more…]

How the blind find braille signs

I have written before about how, for the blind, darkness is not the prison that sighted people imagine it to be. The sense of sight tends to overwhelm all the other senses but in its absence, they develop and use all their other senses in ways that enable them to navigate their way through the world incredibly well, usually without the need of assistance from sighted people.
[Read more…]