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When Radoslav Radovanovic walked through Hyde Park in Sydney's CBD nearly 30 years ago, he had an idea. He wanted a life-size chess set, just like the one in the park, to be installed in his local suburb of Liverpool.

With plans already in place to close Macquarie Street to traffic, a chess set was installed withinthe pavement of a newly renovated Macquarie Mall.

Liverpool City Library

"I told my son, who told the council, why don't we put a chess set here in the mall. So, the council made one for us,"Mr Radovanovic said.

"It was in the middle of the mall and we would gather there every day to play chess."

And while peak-hour at the chess table these days is 11am, those with other commitments are always welcome to turn up a little later.

"We come here every day, roughly 25 of us. Those with jobs, or more busy lives sometimes join us in the later afternoon."

Mr Radovanovic was born in Serbia and moved to Australia nearly 60 years ago.

Sharon Masige

He bought his first home in Cabramatta West but has visitedLiverpool nearly every day since his retirement.

Now in his 80s, he said spaces like the one on Macquarie Mall helped older members of the community socialise.

"We don't drink, we don't gamble, we're not troublemakers. We just need somewhere to pass the time. This way we can play some chess, go for a walk, talk to each other."

When Macquarie Mall was officially opened in the early `90s, not everyone was on board.

Alf Vella,a local councillor from1991 to1995,said some shop owners had been worried about the effectof removing traffic.

"A few shop owners complained in the beginning, but I think it's beaming now," said Mr Vella.

"And there will be more changes in the future to have it 'beautified' up even more."

Liverpool City Library

Liverpool Council Heritage OfficerThomas Wheelersaid Macquarie Mall had been part of a re-born trend sweeping Sydney's suburbs in the 1990s.

"It followed the same path as the birth of pedestrian malls in the 1970s," said Mr Wheeler.

"People wanted to reduce pollution, smoke, and bring back the old concept of a town centre, which harks back to medieval times."

Mr Wheeler said Parramatta and Penrith malls had receiveda similar renovation in the early 1990s.

"The pedestrian malls were transitory in the beginning, a place for business, shopping and walking through," he said.

"Now Macquarie Mall has become a place of congregation, where communities come together."

Mr Wheeler said the council was now focused on reviving Liverpool's nightlife to help make it a '23-hour city'.

"Currently most of the cafes help with daytime traffic and economy, so the next focal point is night activation," he said.

"An increase to hospitality offerings within the strip will come with new developments in the area."

Mr Radovanovic and his fellow chess club do not care so much aboutthe area's night-time economy.

Rather, they are hoping council brings back the youth tournaments from the 1990s.

"A long time ago, they used to organise tournaments here and we'd bring the kids," said Mr Radovanovic.

"And only the kids would play. We could only stand back and watch. I would like to see that happen again, for the younger generation to come back.

"Some of the children who played in those tournaments 20 years ago still stop by, but they're hardly children anymore."

See the article here:
Members of Liverpool's unofficial chess club still gathering in Macquarie Mall, 25 years on - ABC News

Almost five decades after becoming Asia's first grandmaster, the Philippines' Eugene Torre made history anew on April 20 after becoming the first Asian male to be inducted into in the World Chess Hall of Fame by the World Chess Federation (FIDE).

FIDE met virtually to induct Torre, along with Polish-Argentine GM Miguel Najdorf and Hungarian women's GM Judit Polgar, considered the best female woodpusher ever.

He became the second Asian ever to enter the Hall of Fame, two years after Chinese women's GM Xie Jun was conferred the honor.

"I am very proud as a Filipino. Since especially we became the first male Asian inductee. Being the first, this will stay forever with the Philippines," Torre told ESPN5.com in a phone interview.

"We are very proud that we started the popularity and the acceptance of chess not only in the country but the rest of Asia," he added.

A 22-year-old Torre made history in the 1974 Nice Olympiad in France by clinching the board 1 silver medal to become the continent's first grandmaster. He also holds the record for most Chess Olympiad appearances of 23 from 1970 to 2016.

In 1982 Torre and Lajos Portisch of Hungary topped the FIDE Inter-zonal Candidates Tournament held in Toluca, Mexico which qualified him for the World Chess Championship Candidates Matches. However, he lost to Portisch's compatriot Zoltan Ribli in the first round of a 10-match duel in Elicante, Spain.

He recalled during his first years in participating in international competitions, the Asians were not as good in the mental indoor sport compared to their American and European counterparts.

"Even India and China were not as good then. We used to beat India regularly, but eventually, they found an appreciation for chess. We are happy for them because we played a role in helping propagate the sport to Asia," mentioned Torre.

The 69-year-old was informed a few months ago by Toti Abundo, member of the FIDE Historical Committee. There was supposed to be a grand induction ceremony in the United States, but the COVID-19 pandemic forced to change plans.

At present, there are 37 inductees in the World Chess Hall of Fame, with the first entrants being Jose Raul Capablanca of Cuba, Bobby Fischer and Paul Morphy of the U.S., Emmanuel Lasker of Germany, and Wilhem Steinitz of Austria in 2001. The list has since expanded to accommodate the likes of Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov, Boris Spassky, and Mikhail Tal.

Torre, who had a peak FIDE rating of 2580 in 1983 and was once ranked as high as 17th in the world rankings, continues to display his skills in the recently-established Professional Chess Association of the Philippines, where he was drafted first overall by the Rizal Towers in December 2020.

Read this article:
Chess legend Eugene Torre 'very proud as a Filipino' after Hall of Fame induction - ESPN Philippines

Anish Giri was back into the title-race after a clinical victory over Wang Hao for a share of the second spot behind leader Ian Nepomniachtchi in the ninth round of Candidates chess tournament in Yekaterinburg in Russia, on Tuesday.

The victory for Giri, the only winner of the day, was described by World champion Magnus Carlsen as a very, very, very good game.

READ| Caruana's stunning win marks resumption of Candidates Tournament

Playing white, Giri used a great new idea in the opening phase and then tightened the noose around his Chinese rival who struggled with his time-management during this 38-move encounter.

Of the three drawn games, joint-second Maxime Vachier-Lagrave escaped with an 88-move draw against Ding Liren.

Nine-round results: Alexander Grischuk (Rus, 4) drew with Ian Nepomniachtchi (Rus, 5.5); Anish Giri (Ned, 5) bt Wang Hao (Chn, 4); Kirill Alekseenko (Rus, 4) drew with Fabiano Caruana (USA, 5); Ding Liren (Chn, 3.5) drew with Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (Fra, 5).

View original post here:
Candidates Chess Tournament: Victorious Anish Giri back in the hunt - Sportstar

Ratings Gap

For each year between 19722000, the average USCF rating of the overall U.S. Championship was always more than 300 points greater than the average rating of the U.S. Womens Championship.

Although the rating differences are already apparent, Ashley Yan conducted an independent samples t-test to compare the means. The results confirmed a statistically significant difference between the average ratings of overall U.S. Championship participants and U.S. Womens Championship participants. Since the resulting p-value was much less than 0.05, which is the standard threshold for statistical significance, its highly likely that the average rating differences are influenced by an external factor.

Given these results, one might conclude that there is a significant difference in skill between men and women. But other explanations are possible.

Participation Hypothesis

We hypothesize that the difference in ratings between the U.S. Womens Championship and the overall U.S. Championship is expected due to the small numbers of girls and women with USCF memberships. This conclusion remains valid under two assumptions: that women made up 5% of the total USCF membership, and the rating distribution for all female USCF members was relatively the same as the rating distribution for all male USCF members.

Due to the lack of data available to us, the exact percentage of female USCF members between 19722000 remains unknown, and the rating distributions based on gender are also unknown. Given that 5% of USCF players were girls or women in April 2000, as mentioned in part one, one might speculate that the percentage was even lower in the years before 2000. Indeed, for the datapoint of 1993, the percentage was lower (4.65%). Further data points may or may not be available from the US Chess. Requesting a data search would require staff hours and thus an outside funding source to pay for US Chess staff time.

If a funded study were conducted, and data points of girls/women in various years from 1972 to 1993 were uncovered (since we already have the 1993 and 2000 data points), these additional data points might demonstrate a substantial participation gap between men and women.

In addition, assuming the rating distributions for men and women were relatively equal, it is expected that the highest ratings for men would be higher than those for women. More specifically, when comparing two distributions with the same average value and variability, the distribution with the larger sample size will logically have greater representation on both ends of the distribution curve.

Extreme Values

When this logic is applied to the U.S. Championships rating differences, the difference between the average ratings of the overall and womens championships would be expected due to a smaller sample size of total female USCF members. The participants in both championships have ratings in the top percentile for their corresponding gender, so the championships ratings are the highest or most extreme values in the rating distributions of all USCF players. Since there are substantially more male USCF players than female, the male USCF player distribution would not only have a greater magnitude of players in the top percentile, but the highest ratings would also be greater than those for female USCF players. Extreme values explain why the participants in the overall U.S. Championships generally have much higher ratings than those in the U.S. Womens Championships.

Chess Life magazine, March 1996 (from theChess Life and Chess Review Archives)

Graphs and Conclusion

Based on the graph illustrating the average ratings of the U.S. Championships and U.S. Womens Championships, the rating difference has generally decreased over 19722000. Due to the proportion of female USCF members possibly increasing over this period, this trend is statistically expected: The extreme values of the two distributions become more similar as the distributions size difference decreases. That the proportion of female USCF members increased between 19722000, though, is another assumption we make as we do not currently have much gender-based data for those years.

We conclude that the gender participation gap influences the average rating differences between the U.S. Championship players and the U.S. Womens Championship players, and, therefore, the difference would be expected. However, our conclusions and the insight we can draw from the given data are limited. There may or may not be available rating distributions from 19722000, and overall USCF membership during those years perhaps did not include sufficiently accurate gender coding.

Future Research

In 2001, there was no womens tournament. In 2004, there was a seven-player U.S. Womens Championship but no corresponding U.S. Championship. That is, the 2004 U.S. Championship was named the 2005 championship for legal reasons and was a mixed-gender Swiss system. In 2002 (56 players), 2003 (58 players), 2005 (64 players), and 2006 (two 32-player Swiss systems), the women and men played in combined U.S. championships.

The comparison chart found in part one could resume in 2007, with the caution that, for several of those years, the U.S. championships averages would be depressed due to large numbers of players competing in the U.S. Championships.

Starting in 2014, both the U.S. Womens Championship and the U.S. Championship were round robins of smaller sizes. Comparisons would again be possible, as they were for 19722000, the focus of this two-part series. A future article could analyze those more recent years, 20142020, when the percentage of US Chess female members is above 10%, to see if the rating gap is closing between the U.S. Womens and the U.S. Championship fields. Also possible is a second historical article, about the years 1950 to 1972 and the average ratings for those years for the U.S. Womens and U.S. Championships.

The ratings gap and gender: Analyzing U.S. Chess Championships (Part I)

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The ratings gap and gender: Analyzing U.S. Chess Championships (Part II) - Chessbase News

Chess.com is proud to unveil Chess.com/events. We welcome you to test out the ultimate chess event viewing platformthe perfect place to follow all live tournaments, watch active games, see the results, easily follow your favorite player live, and much more. It has everything you need to experience a tournament in a fresh and novel way.

Chess.com's Event feature has all of the information you need to enjoy an event, including the current tournament standings, the ability to view previous rounds, a global search function to find specific players, a chat feature, live evaluation bars, analysis for every game, and the ability to download and share games all from one place. Check out the new events feature now and enjoy chess events like never before!

From the main events page, you can see all ongoing tournaments.

Scroll through the list of current tournaments to find an event that you are interested in. You can easily see the name of the event, the dates of the event, and the current round of the tournament. You can also navigate to upcoming events and past events from this page.

Once you've selected the tournament that you are interested in, you will see all of the active games with an evaluation bar with multiple viewing options. You can also easily see the participants and standings at a glance.

On this page, you can also select which round to view, check the schedule, find out results, and you can easily access all live and completed games by simply clicking on them. Another great feature is the search functionjust type a player's name and you'll see all of their games from the event that you are in!

When you select a game, you will have a lot of great options! You can instantly see the remaining time for each player, have access to the engine evaluation, get information about either player, and more...

From the game page you can also do a deep dive with analysis, connect to opening explorer, share the game, or download the game easily. All of these features are directly and seamlessly integrated with the existing Chess.com tools that you already use and love!

Events also integrate with the Chess.com/players project. You can also click on any player's avatar and get more information on them, including their ratings and their player profile.

Chess.com/events is also optimized for mobile browsers, providing a seamless experience on any web device. Watch for it on Android and iOS soon.

For tournament organizers who would like their events featured, please contact us via events@chess.com with the event title, description, schedule, PGN feed, and any media assets which should be included for the event.

See more here:
Chess.com's New Events Feature, The Perfect Platform To Follow The Candidates - Chess.com