Media comments on chess

[Jonathan Bryant]

I have just seen a trailer for ITV's new Poirot story “The Big Four” which is to be broadcast on Wednesday October 23rd at 8pm.

The plot has a chess theme, involving the murder of Russian Grandmaster Dr Ivan Savaranoff (presumably fictional).

There is a strong cast, including Patricia Hodge (and David Suchet of course as Poirot) so it might well be worth watching.

http://www.itv.com/presscentre/press-pa ... mBPf9K-oQM

If they stick to Christie's original work, fans of unlikely murder methods will not be disappointed.

[Stewart Reuben]

No spoilers please - we're British

[Greg Breed]

Not so much a comment on Chess but whilst watching KC on his YouTube channel i saw an advert for Barbaric Genius made a couple of years ago. Its about someone called John Healy. Anyone seen or heard anything about it?

[Simon Brown]

There have been threads on here about John, who played for CentYMCA in the seventies. I knew him, as did Andrew Martin amongst others on the forum no doubt.

[Jonathan Bryant]

Guardian today.


http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2013/o ... randmaster




[Edit: oh, it's actually in the Observer tomorrow but it's on the Guardian website today. A much better read than you might expect from the 'pawn star' link and determined attempts to link strong chess players with mental health problems in the opening and closing paragraphs]

[Kevin Thurlow]

Henrik Carlsen (rated 2027) is a bit more than an "average player"!

[PeterTurland]

Henrik Carlsen (rated 2027) is a bit more than an "average player"!

Anyone know what the world's mean median and modal average ELOs are?

I would guess the mean average, is around 1600.

For those that have forgotten the math.

Go here

[MartinCarpenter]

For the world? The mode/median are 0 of course (Or n/a.). The mean will be rounding to zero.

Specifically ELO tricky because the population with ELO ratings isn't even the full 'keen' chess playing population. National grading systems would be rather more reasonable for judging where people stand in a relative sense.

[LawrenceCooper]

"A mistake I made is that I should have taught them to play chess, because their concentration levels are really important." Sir Alex Ferguson interview in the Telegraph magazine.

[Stewart Reuben]

Martin > National grading systems would be rather more reasonable for judging where people stand in a relative sense.<

China, India, Russia, Byeloruss etc. have no national ratings systems. I don't know about the Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Moldova, etc. but I guess not.
That question would have been better worded, 'What is the median rating of players with FIDE Ratings? I guess 1600 is about right.
'What is the median playing strength of all players who roughly know how to play chess?' I guess considerably below 800.

[Greg Breed]

Henrik Carlsen (rated 2027) is a bit more than an "average player"!

Anyone know what the world's mean median and modal average ELOs are?

I would guess the mean average, is around 1600.

For those that have forgotten the math.

Go here

A helpful website that Peter, but it does have some rather glaring mistakes:
(9 + 1) ÷ 2 = 10 ÷ 2 = 5th number
(1 + 2 + 4 + 7) ÷ 4 = 14 ÷ 4 = 3.5
(2 + 4) ÷ 2 = 6 ÷ 2 = 3

I'm sure these are just typos but they occur all the way down the page...
..and some of it is not explained particularly well...

[Stewart Reuben]

I saw the Hercule Poirot story on TV last night. There was very little chess. It was refreshing that the Russian GM was murdered very early on, and was not the villain.
I thought it was a bit hard that he was murdered for playing 3 B-N5 (English descriptive was used) in the Ruy Lopez.

On a news story about the closures at Grangemouth, a reporter on TV said, 'It's gone beyond stalemate'. Does that mean a new game?

[Brendan O'Gorman]

[[/quote]
A helpful website that Peter, but it does have some rather glaring mistakes:
(9 + 1) ÷ 2 = 10 ÷ 2 = 5th number
(1 + 2 + 4 + 7) ÷ 4 = 14 ÷ 4 = 3.5
(2 + 4) ÷ 2 = 6 ÷ 2 = 3

I'm sure these are just typos but they occur all the way down the page...
..and some of it is not explained particularly well...[/quote]

Greg, I think it's just resolving the part of the equation within brackets before applying the divisor, i.e (9+1) ÷ 2 is equivalent to 10 ÷ 2 which equals 5.

[Greg Breed]

A helpful website that Peter, but it does have some rather glaring mistakes:
(9 + 1) ÷ 2 = 10 ÷ 2 = 5th number
(1 + 2 + 4 + 7) ÷ 4 = 14 ÷ 4 = 3.5
(2 + 4) ÷ 2 = 6 ÷ 2 = 3

I'm sure these are just typos but they occur all the way down the page...
..and some of it is not explained particularly well...

Greg, I think it's just resolving the part of the equation within brackets before applying the divisor, i.e (9+1) ÷ 2 is equivalent to 10 ÷ 2 which equals 5.

Oh yeah, I wonder why I never looked at it that way. I just saw (9+1) ÷ 2 = 5.

[Stewart Reuben]

COMPUTER CHESS (90 minutes) premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2013 and is directed by Andrew Bojalski.

It is set in the 1980s and chronicles a weekend tournament for chess software programmers about 30 years ago.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2007360/ has material about the film including a trailer. 'Get to know the eccentric geniuses possessed of a vision to teach a metal box to defeat man, literally, at his own game.'
It opens 22 November in England. Showing at the Curzon House Cinemas. (They're mostly in London).