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This will include better defining executive responsibilities and more regular meetings between regulators and the non-ASX directors of the separate clearing and settlement boards. The law firms report requested by the RBA in December also called for additional corporate governance changes, especially around the formal documentation of meetings and decisions.

The report acknowledges ASX has made many important changes to managing conflicts of interest in the past couple of years, including responses to an RBA review on standards in 2021. The ASX said that the majority of the 13 recommendations will be made in next three months.

The ASXs critics argue that the company prioritised its future revenue sources by seeking to control market data generated by CHESS, instead of finding the most reliable clearing and settlement system for the broader market. This has led to calls for ASX to be stripped of its clearing and settlement functions and for these to be placed into a new utility.

At a parliamentary inquiry in February, ASIC chairman Joe Longo said the ASX may have gone astray by putting the interests of its shareholders over the national interest, while Computershare said the market operator had used the project to encroach onto services provided by share registries, and suggested it may have breached its obligations by mismanaging conflicts.

But overall, Herbert Smith Freehills said, in a report published on Friday, that having regard to the enhancements which have been put in place [mostly in 2022], the existing framework for conflict identification and management within the ASX group is sophisticated and consistent with the framework we would expect from a listed group of the complexity and scope of potential conflicting operations of the ASX group.

However, it added it had identified a number of recommendations as to further improvements which could be made to identify and manage the conflicts between the commercial interests of the ASX group and the general licence obligations of ASX Clear and ASX Settlement, in relation to current CHESS and CHESS replacement.

These include updating the conflict management policy to include guidance on intra-group conflicts, and for the document, and charter for the separate clearing and settlement boards.

It called for ASX to improve staff training, including bolstering the group conflicts curriculum more specifically and in more detail to focus on identifying and managing intra-group conflicts.

Subject to the RBAs and ASICs views, it also wants to increase the frequency of separate meetings between the non-ASX group directors sitting on the clearing and settlement entities boards to meet with the regulators to twice a year rather than once.

On Friday, ASX chairman Damian Roche said the report demonstrates that improvements weve made to governance are making a difference. We need to be transparent about the work were doing, and Im hopeful this report gives further confidence to our stakeholders that we have appropriate conflict management arrangements in place.

The RBA is expected to release a new statement whether the ASX is meeting financial stability standards that seek to ensure it conducts its clearing and settlement functions in a way that promotes overall stability in the financial system at the end of September. The ASX reports full-year profits on August 17, where the costs of regulatory pressure after the CHESS debacle will remain an issue for investors.

ASIC and the ASX have proposed to create a new advisory group on clearing and settlement to boost stakeholder engagement for the new CHESS replacement project. The first roundtable of the new group will take place next week.

See the article here:
ASX told to bolster policies to avoid conflicts of interest over CHESS - The Australian Financial Review

The Bright Minds RVA Chess Classes and Tournament for Richmond area teens will take place Aug. 7 through 17 at the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia, 122 W. Leigh St.

The classes, Monday through Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., seek to teach students of all experience levels the fundamentals of chess as they participate in classes and a friendly competition tournament. The deadline to enroll is July 28.

Created in 2020 and officially launched in 2021, Bright Minds RVA was formed by Bernice Travers, president of the Bernice E. Travers Foundation, and Fleming E. Samuels, a former Richmond Public Schools administrator and creator of multiple chess clubs for local schools.

Mr. Samuels will be the instructor during the two-week training in which participants, ages 14 to 16, will be placed in beginner, intermediate and advanced sections based on their experience. Participants will be trained to compete in the RVA City-Wide Scholastic Chess Tournament in which cash prizes and trophies will be presented, according to the event organizers.

Classes will culminate in a tournament that will award first, second and third place finishers with monetary prizes and trophies for each section. At the end of the two-week period a ceremony and reception will celebrate the achievements of each student.

All classes are free and open to enrolled public school students. Lunch and snacks will be provided.

For more information, please call (804) 814-4434 or email brightmindschessclub@gmail.

Excerpt from:
Bright Minds RVA to enlighten teens with chess - Richmond Free Press

Challenger GM Lei Tingjie overpowered the defending champion Ju Wenjun in game five of the 2023 FIDE Women's World Championship to take a 3-2 lead with just one game to go before the match switches from Shanghai to her home city of Chongqing.

Game six, when Ju will have the white pieces, starts on Wednesday, July 12, at 3:00 a.m. ET / 09:00 CEST.

How to watch the 2023 FIDE Women's World Chess Championship

The 2023 FIDE Women's World Championship had seen intense battles where the shield was always the equal of the sword, but in game five, we finally got a breakthrough.

Ju entered the venue before game five with her second, 2708-rated Indian GM Pentala Harikrishna.

This time Lei decided to switch from the Ruy Lopez she played in her first two games with White to the Italian, with 3.Bc4, but it was Ju who seemed to spring the first small surprise by heading for a line that then world champion Magnus Carlsen played against his challenger GM Ian Nepomniachtchi in the final game of their 2021 match.

Soon, however, it was Lei who was taking control after Ju missed a chance for sharp counterplay in the center with 12...d5.

Her alternative 12...Bd7!? was passive, and when she did go for a bold pawn push, 14...c5!?, she had serious doubts about it herself.

"Its too risky, and after that maybe this structure is just very bad for Black," said Ju, who felt she could just have tried to "hold" the position.

It was another intense, strategic struggle, however, with the first clear mistake perhaps only coming when Ju responded to 21.b4! by capturing the pawn.

It was much safer to play 21...Bd6! and, if Lei pushed her pawn to b5, the closed position would have given Black excellent chances of holding on.

In the game, Lei soon did have a dream structure, with control of the d-file and especially the d5-square. Ju could do little but wait and hope that when the time came, she'd be able to parry the potential a4-a5 or f2-f4 pawn breaks.

Lei didn't feel she was clearly winning, commenting: "It was a long game and somehow I thought probably my opponent can defend this endgame, but after the opening I have no risk, so I just wanted to continue the game."

Ju did the job of waiting well, but meeting 40.h4 with 40...h5!? was a very double-edged decision on the time-control move.

This is where Lei seized the opportunity to play the flexibleand powerful41.Bd2!, with the bishop now ready to support either a5 or f4. Lei felt 41...Rb8!? was a mistake by her opponent since it boosted 42.f4!

This now came with the additional kick of 42...exf4 43.Bxf4, hitting the rook on b8. On the other hand, it's the computer's top move, since e.g. 41...Qf7 gets hit from the other side with 42.a5!

After 43...Rb7 44.Qe2! the weakness of the h5-pawn came back to haunt Black, with 44...g6!? being no better than giving up the pawn since it ran into 45.e5!

It felt as though it dawned on Ju only at this point that she was in very deep trouble since she spent 23 minutes on 45...Qa8, leaving herself just five minutes to try and pose some problems for her opponent. Lei suggested 45...Rd7! in the post-game press conference, and that does seem to put up much more resistance, though the position would remain miserableand likely lost against best playfor Black.

Lei quickly stopped any danger down the a8-h1 diagonal with 46.Qf3! and played the remainder of the game perfectly. There were some moves that got higher computer evaluations, but her strategy of exchanging off queens into a winning endgame worked perfectly, leaving Ju out of options.

The bishop on d8 can't be defended, since 56...Ke7 would run into 57.Bg5+, losing the bishop on the next move. Ju, therefore, gave it up with 56...Rxb6 57.Rxd8+ Ke7 58.Rc8 Rxe6+, at least picking up White's key pawns, but being a piece down left the world champion with no realistic hopes of saving the game.

Ju played on for a while, perhaps more so to come to terms with the loss, before finally conceding her opponent the win.

That result saw Lei take over as the number-two on the women's live rating list.

GM Rafael Leitao has annotated the game below.

Afterward, Lei talked about how being unable to play much chess during the pandemic had done her no harm.

"As a professional chess player, if you dont have tournaments to play, or you want to chase some goals, then just stay at home and train! There is nothing Im worried about in my life, so I can just focus on chess totally."

So after the mutual frustration of four draws, the ice has finally cracked. Ju now needs to hit back if she's going to retain her title, which should ensure excitement in the games ahead.

Ju has just one more game in her hometown of Shanghai when she has the white pieces in game six on Wednesday. Can she bounce back straight away, or can Lei use her momentum to go into the mid-match break with a two-point lead?

The 2023 FIDE Women's World Championship (FWWC) is the most important women's over-the-board event of the year. The defending women's world champion, GM Ju Wenjun, faces the challenger, GM Lei Tingjie, to see who will be crowned world champion. The championship started on July 5 and boasts a 500,000 prize fund.

Previous Coverage

Read the original:
Lei Tingjie beats Ju Wenjun in Game 5 to take the lead in the ... - Chess.com

If you've enjoyed our previous data visualizations of the most accurate chess players over time and the countries with the most grandmasters over time, then you'll want to check out our latest: The top women over time!

With the 2023 FIDE Women's World Championship ongoing, now is a good moment to take a walk through the history of the highest-rated women by FIDE since 1970. From GM Nona Gaprindashvili to GM Judit Polgar to GM Hou Yifan, watch below to see how the greatest women to ever play chess have compared for the last five-plus decades.

Jump to: Video| Methodology| Trends & Observations

The basis of the list is the active top 10 FIDE rating list, which has been published at least once a year since 1970. At the time, not every active player had a rating, and Gaprindashvili was the only woman with one. She became world champion in 1962 and was way ahead of other women playing chess at this time. Between 1971 and 1972, the number of women with a FIDE rating increased from three to 129.

After periods of biannual, quarterly, and bimonthly releases, the list finally moved to monthly in 2012. Until 2012, players remain on the graph until permanently falling below top-10 status. Any player in the top 10 at any point after 2012 remains on the chart through to the end, except in the cases of GM Judit Polgar and GM Viktorija Cmilyte, both of whom have retired or gone inactive.

To create an uninterrupted monthly chart in the video, data between lists was interpolated. The lists used are sourced to OlimpBase through 1999 and FIDE from 2000 onward.

There were many great women players before 1970 who do not appear in the video solely for the lack of a rating list. Vera Menchik was the most notable player in this group. She won all eight women's world championships she played, often in sizeable tournament fields. Menchik died in a bombing raid on London in 1944.

Gaprindashvili is the first player whose dominance was tracked statistically. Her strength as a player only made the Netflix controversy even more bizarre: the megahit series The Queen's Gambit included an unnecessary and incorrect line about Gaprindashvili, stating that she didn't play in events with men. Gaprindashvili sued Netflix and they settled for an undisclosed sum.

Throughout the video, there is usually a clear #1 player, starting with Gaprindashvili. She was followed by GM Maia Chiburdanidze. The mid- to late-1980s and early 1990s buck this trend until Judit Polgar's dominance arises in the 1990s and 2000s. Since Polgar retired, Hou Yifan has been the top player.

The list of these number ones is quite exclusive, with only six players reaching the pinnacle. Judit Polgar was #1 for 25 years, just under half the period in review.

Every player in the video rises between July 1986 and January 1987, during which Chiburdanidze gains the top spot over GM Susan Polgar. That happened because FIDE awarded 100 extra rating points to every player besides Polgar, on the grounds that women's ratings were lower than they should have been due to playing in fields with each other, while Polgar was more regularly playing in open events with men. Polgar's exclusion from the gains was nonetheless questionable as she was not the only player with records against the men. Chiburdanidze herself, for instance, finished third out of 16 as the only woman playing the 1984 Rubinstein Memorial, played in similar events before and after that point.

In total, 80 women have ranked in the top 10 on at least one FIDE list. They all appear in the video.

Read the original:
The Top Women Chess Players Over Time - Chess.com

The Chief Teller has reported the following results for the 2023 US Chess Executive Board (EB) Election. The Chief Teller is calling the results provisional for reasons explained further below.

The top four are elected to four-year terms on the EB starting at the conclusion of the 2023 Delegates Meeting on August 5 or August 6 (whichever day the meeting concludes).

The difference between Vish Viswanath and Fun Fong is four votes, or 0.5%. Mike Nietman, the Election Committee Chair, has asked for a recount to verify the results due to this closeness. The Chief Teller is unable to conduct the recount for several days. He will secure the ballots in a sealed box until the time he has the ability to perform the recount. This is expected to be no longer than a week. This post will be updated with a final tally when it is available.

Follow this link:
2023 US Chess Executive Board Election Results | US Chess.org - uschess.org