After 28 seasons of The Simpsons, we learned something new about Homer last week. He’s a pretty good Chess player!

One scene has him playing a simul in Moe’s Tavern. Another sees World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen encouraging Homer (via web conference) not to abandon the game.

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Professor Puzzle of the UK, known mostly for wood and metal brain teasers, also has a line of giant garden games. Several should be available in the United States next month.

Giant Chess ($50 retail) features a weatherproof mat and light plastic pieces with a 5½ inch king.

The Jenga-like Toppling Tower game ($50) starts out at 2 feet tall and is made of light beechwood, so it shouldn’t hurt when it does topple.

Also made of beechwood are the Giant Dominoes—set of 28 double-sixes for $30.

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World Chess Events Limited, which holds the broadcast rights to FIDE’s World Chess Championship cycle (including the Grand Prix series and Candidates Tournament), has issued an open call for a Chess commentator. World Chess is looking for someone to anchor live video coverage of the highest level Chess tournaments, as well as “to play a key role in shaping a new way for chess to be broadcast.”

We are looking to create a chess media superstar… He or she must have a deep understanding of the game. But we are also looking for someone who can engage with a wider audience who are perhaps not chess experts.

To be considered for the position (which includes a “competitive salary” and significant world travel), applicants will need to submit a resume and 5 minute test video.

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Chess tournaments have long been ridiculed for required drug testing. And in truth, those requirements have mostly been about satisfying International Olympic Committee standards so that Chess might be recognized as a “mind sport” and just possibly included in future Olympic games.

Scientists, though, have now confirmed the potential benefits of performance enhancing drugs for Chess players. As reported in the journal, European Neuropsychopharmacology, a study of 39 rated Chess players over several thousand games found their winning results significantly improved after taking modafinil (marketed as Provigil), methylphenidate (Ritalin, Concerta, and Daytrana), or caffeine.

In the study, players were paired against a computerized Chess engine and given 15 minute time limits. Surprisingly, compared to those who were administered a placebo, players on all three of the drugs took longer to make their moves and lost more games on time controls. When controlling for game duration and excluding games lost on time, however, modafinil improved performance 15 percent, methylphenidate 13 percent, and caffeine 9 percent.

The researchers concluded that stimulants may lead to “more reflective decision making processes.” As a result, performance under relaxed time constraints may be enhanced.

In rapid and blitz games, though, use of these drugs could be counterproductive.

[via World Chess]

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This week at the Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival, Hou Yifan of China, the reigning Women’s World Champion, stunned the Chess world by throwing her game in round 10 against her lower ranked male opponent, Babu Lalith of India. In an interview after the match, which she conceded after just five moves, Hou apologized to Chess fans but reiterated her complaint—previously lodged with tournament organizers—about being paired with women opponents in seven out of the previous nine rounds.

Many international Chess events run separate sections to promote the game among women, who are significantly underrepresented in Chess circles, particularly at the highest levels. Hou Yifan ranks 105th among all players and she was playing in an open tournament (that is, men and women) at Tradewise Gibraltar.

In response, one of the tournament organizers said, “I understand, if I was in her shoes and I was playing and suddenly I pulled a draw of six girls—one after the other—I would say also, ‘What’s going on here?’ But clearly nothing was going on. It comes out of a machine and sometimes the odds fall that way.”

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Webster University will soon be offering an interdisciplinary minor in Applied Chess. The St. Louis school is already home to one of the strongest collegiate Chess programs, the Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence (SPICE), as well as a number of student Chess grandmasters.

The new Chess minor is for “Webster University students who are looking to learn about Chess and how Chess lessons can be applied in other areas of life.” Among the courses to be offered are “SPICEing-up Business Strategy with Chess” in the Business School and “Topics in Education: Chess and Critical Thinking” in the College of Education.

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The Google-sponsored AlphaGo computer program, which had previously defeated world Go champion Lee Sedol, racked up 59 wins playing anonymously online against a variety of masters.

Sergey Karjakin, who had lost the recent World Chess Championship to Magnus Carlsen in tiebreak games, managed to best his rival on tiebreak criteria to claim the top position in the World Blitz Championship. At the same tournament, Vassily Ivanchuk won the World Rapid Championship, while Anna Muzychuk won both rapid and blitz titles in the women’s section.

Wesley So won the London Chess Classic, putting him at the top of the four-stop Grand Chess Tour. His total prize winnings on the Tour: $295,000.

University students in Wageningen, Netherlands created the world’s largest Monopoly board, along with dice and houses all to-scale. Made with the support of Hasbro and certified by Guiness World Records, the board measured 900.228 m² (9,689.97 ft²). The previous record, set in the United States earlier this year, was 744.867 m² (8,017.69 ft²).

It was two Dutchmen who faced off in the World Draughts Championship. Roel Boomstra came away the winner.

In December, Feliks Zemdegs solved a 6×6 Rubik’s Cube in a world record 1 minute, 32.47 seconds. Then in January, he beat his own record with a 1 minute, 27.85 second solve.

Here’s a machine solving a standard 3×3 Rubik’s Cube in 0.637 seconds:

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Today sees the first games of a new Pro Chess League with competitions online by some of the top-rated players in the world, including grandmasters Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana, Wesley So, Hikaru Nakamura, and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. Participating in the league are 48 teams from five continents, and divided in to four divisions for the convenience of scheduling games.

The inaugural season will feature 7 weeks of regular play with most games taking place on Wednesdays. Games are to be of the rapid format, meaning time controls of 15 minutes plus a 2 second increment per move. Matches will follow the Scheveningen system—each team will post four players and each player on one team will face each player on the other team—so that even the not-so-highly-ranked members will have an opportunity to play against the top grandmasters.

In fact, every week, teams are required to put up four players with an average FIDE Elo rating under 2500. Also three of the four must be from the team’s local area.

At the end of the regular season, half the teams will proceed on to a single-elimination playoff, the top-four of which will enter a championship match scheduled for March.

This first season of the Pro Chess League carries a prize fund of $50,000. Most of that is to be divided between the winner and runner-up of the championship.

All games will be broadcast live online with commentary at www.chess.com/tv.

Go Miami!

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In 2014, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) placed on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity the game of Mongolian Knuckle-Bone Shooting. The game is played by flicking sum (tiles made from deer horn) along khashlaga (wood guides) to knock down khasaa (dice targets made of sheep bones). The khasaa are stacked in a stage-like backdrop called aravch. Another common tool for the game is the havchaakhai, a crossbow-like device that elderly players can use instead of flicking. Instead of free-form cheers and jeers, a regular system of songs and chants exists, with players from all teams, even competitors, joining-in for specific tunes based on a shooter’s performance.

To help maintain cultural heritage in the Asia-Pacific region, UNESCO in Bangkok has collected a catalog of 90 traditional children’s games with advice on how to use them in an educational setting.

In Djibouti, a UNESCO project, “Safeguarding Traditional Games of the Afar and the Somali People in the Horn of Africa“, worked with local authorities in 2007-2008 to survey the games of regional nomadic societies. Kits were produced for three traditional board games—Bub, Riyo ka dhalis, and Shax—and distributed in three languages to all high schools and ministries in the country. A national tournament series was even held, with over 300 hundred participants.

More recently, UNESCO has begun working with Chinese IT company Tencent to create a digital library of traditional games.

UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage program has additionally recognized the Sportimonium, a museum in Belgium, for its cultivation of “ludodiversity”. Much of the institution is focused on the preservation and study of sports artifacts but it also pays significant attention to traditional tabletop and garden games, which are on display, as well as available for borrowing.

The German Commission for UNESCO maintains its own Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage, on which it lists the Chess traditions of Ströbeck village and the playing of Skat. Chess in Ströbeck goes back to the year 1011. The village for much of that time played its own variant with 96 squares called Courier Chess, has mandated Chess education in primary schools since 1823, has held games of living Chess since 1688, and requires grooms to play Chess against the mayor in order to win their bride. Skat is a trick-taking card game for three players (or four with one sitting out each round) originating from 1813 and now popular across Germany.

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The 2016 World Chess Championship in New York ended with Magnus Carlsen of Norway still at the top, though as I watched the match proceed, I was starting to wonder if he had it in him. After seven draw games, the first win went to challenger Sergey Karjakin of Russia. But two games later, Magnus scored a win of his own, and at the end of the 12 regulation games, all was tied. The tie-break rapid games were where Magnus showed his strength. The first two settled on draws but the next two went to the champion. Still, an impressive performance as well by Sergey and a very interesting series of games.

In the women’s Chess circuit, Ju Wenjun of China finished ahead of the Women’s Grand Prix, qualifying her to face Hou Yifan also of China in the 2017 Women’s World Championship.

Chris Cadman of Scotland took home the Silver Perudo Cup trophy of the World Perudo Championship (Liar’s Dice) in London.

The Top Chess Engine Championship was won by Stockfish. The score in the final 100 game match was Stockfish 54.5, Houdini 45.5. In third place was last year’s digital champion, Komodo.

Many Rubik’s Cube world records have fallen recently:

• The standard 3×3 was solved by Mats Valk in 4.74 seconds at the Jawa Timur Open in Indonesia. His record didn’t last long, though. Feliks Zemdegs beat it by one one-hundredths of a second (4.73 seconds total) at the POPS Open in Australia.
• At Melbourne Cube Days, Feliks Zemdegs also solved a 5×5 in 41.27 seconds.
• At the Shanghai Winter, Kaijun Lin broke three blindfold world records, solving a 3×3 in 18.50 seconds; a 4×4 in 2 minutes, 2.49 seconds; and a 5×5 in 4 minutes, 46.74 seconds. Two of those didn’t last long either. Roman Strakhov did a 5×5 blindfolded in 4 minutes, 42.06 seconds at the Finnish Championship. And Kijun Lin bested himself in the 4×4 blindfolded, solving it in 1 minutes, 41.90 seconds at the Bid ‘n Blind in Guangzhou, China.

The team from Greece won the World Magic: The Gathering Cup surpassing other top 8 finalist teams from Finland, Australia, Ukraine, Panama, Belarus, and Belgium.

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