English Chess Forum

I just accessed this. The 2.5 hours is devoted to the Hungarian GP. The chess sets are being offered as prizes. 1st prize is worth $25,000. Now, if it were £25,000, I might have been interested,
Some years ago I did try to interest Red Bull in sponsoring chess. They had an amusing chess ad. There was no response - unless that gave them the idea of working with Hikaru Nakamura.

Athletics using chess to decide an Olympic title? It would appear that the offer of a draw from Mutaz Essa Barshim (Qatar) to Gianmarco Tamberi (Italy) in the High Jump so that they could share the Olympic title will be one of the sporting highlights of the Tokyo Olympics. However, it did occur to me that if you're thinking of offering a daw in an OTB chess and you suspect that your opponent will react like Tamberi you might think twice about offering it in the first place. Seriously, though that was a really great moment in the Olympics.

I only just spotted this in the 1 August Sunday Times. Page 13 of the News Section.
Chess boffins' bid to balance the board: let black move twice. Written by Tony Allen-Miles
White holds a small advantage by making the first move. Proposed solution:
White starts with one move. Then black has two. Then white has two; then reverting to alternate moves.
Luke McShane was consulted (Why not their chess correspondent David Howell?). He poured scorn on the idea; it would demolish centuries of opening strategy. It would lead to a narrower advantage for white, but at a great cost.
The Fairer Chess study will be presented to a conference on games in Copenhagen on August 17.

My own idea, that white only be allowed to castle on one side of the board, would balance the game. But I never bothered to suggest it as it would never get through FIDE.
Remember what happened to allowing games to be scored 3 for a win, 1 for a draw and 0 for a loss? Just like in the football league.There were a few RR played like that, but the variation ended up in the dustbin of history.

Stewart Reuben wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 03, 2021 1:31 am

Chess boffins' bid to balance the board: let black move twice.

Discussed under the heading "Fairer Chess"
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=11965

Stewart Reuben wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 03, 2021 1:31 am

Written by Tony Allen-Miles

Uh huh

Chris Rice wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 03, 2021 12:14 am

Seriously, though that was a really great moment in the Olympics.

I thought it was dreadful, particularly if, as is likely, it was a harbinger of things to come. A gold medal means that you were better than all the others.

I might not have minded so much if the IOC had minted special combo gold / silver medals, but both athletes got normal gold medals.

"A gold medal means that you were better than all the others."

Citius, altius, fortius, especially altius. In some ways the agreed draw (or draw by repetition of not doing 2.39 m three times) seemed a fair result, and the athletes were clearly happy, but it's not quite the same as a dead heat. The rules do allow what they did (at present) and Buchholz would not have worked. A quick search says the tie-break procedure is to reduce the height of the bar and then if one succeeds and the other fails, they stop, which is a bit odd as we already know the guy who lost can jump higher a few minutes ago.
Sharing the gold looks preferable to an armageddon jump off, where one jumper gets 5 attempts and the other gets 4...

Kevin Thurlow wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 03, 2021 10:22 am

Sharing the gold looks preferable

But they didn't share the gold medal, did they? They got one each.

Clumsy wording by me, I meant shared first place, which is not the same thing of course.

Kevin Thurlow wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 03, 2021 12:06 pm

Clumsy wording by me, I meant shared first place, which is not the same thing of course.

That's my point. If they shared first place, then they should have shared the gold medal ( and the silver medal too ).

All tie break systems are flawed, but some are more flawed than others.

It is different for a spectator sport, where a climax is usually desirable. Most chess events don't have that advantage, so sharing first prize is OK. In chess, both Bucholz and Sonneborn-Berger are nonsense, but widely accepted. FIDE don't seem to care about games won by forfeit. Ra seems to me most logical.
A play-off is fine - except if it is again tied. Armageddon is not chess, it is a variant, just as penalty shot outs is not football.

JustinHorton wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 03, 2021 9:05 am

Stewart Reuben wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 03, 2021 1:31 am

Written by Tony Allen-Miles

Uh huh

What should we know about said person?

Apparently the first time a gold was shared was in 1912.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1912_Summer_Olympics

It was in 'Art Competitions.' a couple of architects shared the gold medal. (I'm not making this up.)

Matt Mackenzie wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 03, 2021 1:38 pm

JustinHorton wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 03, 2021 9:05 am

Stewart Reuben wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 03, 2021 1:31 am

Written by Tony Allen-Miles

Uh huh

What should we know about said person?

That he didn't write the article in question and probably doesn't exist. The author of the article was Tony Allen-Mills.

Ian Thompson wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 03, 2021 1:58 pm

The author of the article was Tony Allen-Mills.

... whom I knew quite well at one time. Michael Farthing may also remember him.

"TAM" (or more formally "ABAM") was President of the Cambridge Students Union in 1974 - 1975.