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The fun part of these streams is important for drawing in young fans who could fall in love with a game that develops analytical thinking skills, concentration, and creativity. Part of the magic of the most popular internet streams is watching a genius on the level of Magnus Carlsen playing with and teaching amateurs who themselves already know how to entertain an internet audience.

The internet chess carnival will continue as the official chess organization, FIDE, announced in October it was postponing the in-person Candidates Tournament until next year while COVID-19 continues to surge around the world. The tournament, which determines the challenger to the world champion, started in Russia this March before organizers hurriedly called it off as Russia began shutting down international flights. Now that partially played tournament is delayed at least until spring.

When FIDE first called off the tournament in March, Carlsen created his own online chess tour built around rapid games instead of the usual hourslong classical games of traditional elite chess tournaments. It was a big hit, going so well he decided to do a sequel tour that will start this month. On top of winning all these tournaments during the pandemic, Carlsen is winning in the business of chess: His chess company that centers on online chess, Play Magnus Group, had a $42 million debut on the Oslo Stock Exchange in October.

The online format brought new drama. Chinese player Ding Liren, ranked third globally, had to find technical workarounds to participate in the tournaments because China blocks gaming sites like Chess24, which hosted the Magnus Tour. Ding struggled through regular disconnections and had to play in the wee hours because of time zone differences.

A new online rivalry developed through that tour between Carlsen and one of the top American players, Hikaru Nakamura. Theyve had exciting showdowns during the online tournaments, and Nakamura seemed to be one of the few who could rattle Carlsen. Nakamura is one of the biggest internet chess celebrities, with millions tuning in to his Twitch streams during the pandemic. In September Nakamura became one of the first chess players to sign with an e-sports agency.

He stoked chess interest by training other Twitch stars in chess and then hosting competitions. Like Rainas channel, Nakamuras is fun to watch because it mixes genius brains like his with regular people trying to learn chess. But Nakamura also thinks the quick games online make for better viewing.

Because you have winners and losers, more people will follow it even if they cant necessarily understand what exactly is going on, Nakamura told the gaming news site Kotaku. (By contrast, most high-level classical chess games end in ties.)

Kotaku, the gaming site, worried moving chess online would open the game up to the internets toxicity. But from my hours of watching chess online, I would say that toxicity isnt immediately evident.

From the professional commentary to the banter among players, chess seems to be one of the purer corners of the internet in many ways (if you dont read the comments!). Some moments in online tournaments were almost a mockery of the toxicity of the internet: During one tournament, a blind musician, Oleg Akkuratov, sang and played jazz while the players were thinking between moves.

But one element of toxicity has come up as the game has moved online: cheating. In October, Chess.com issued a lifetime ban on Armenian grandmaster Tigran Petrosian after its fair play team determined he had cheated in an online tournament. His team, the Armenia Eagles, was disqualified after initially beating out the Americans, the Saint Louis Arch Bishops, for a $20,000 prize. Cheating in chess usually means using a computer chess engine to determine best moves.

And speaking of internet toxicity, after the cheating accusation first appeared from American player Wesley So, Petrosian published a long, insulting rant against So. Maybe the culture of streaming platforms will drag chess into this kind of drama, but the current top players are all very likable and not given to brashness.

For example: The top American player and No. 2 in the world, Fabiano Caruana, is soft-spoken and universally acknowledged as a nice guy. He has played in the major online tournaments but said at the first in-person tournament in Norway in October that he wanted to see a balance between online and classical. Right now unfortunately we can only really play online chess.

Whatever the drawbacks of internet culture and rapid chess, the pandemic has brought in a new generation of chess fans. Sometimes that fandom comes at the expense of homework.

In a comment beneath the 1-hour YouTube video featuring Raina and Carlsen, Suryam Agarwal wrote, I dont know anything about chess, I have many assignments left to do, still I watched the whole video.

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The 2020 internet chess carnival | WORLD News Group - WORLD News Group

11/5/2020 A team of scientists from Germany, the Netherlands and the USA studied the development of cognitive abilities in humans and evaluated them using chess games. The result: cognitive skills only increase up to a certain age and today's chess players play better than those of previous generations. | Picture: Pixabay

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A team of scientists from Germany, the Netherlands and the USA researched the development of intelligence by evaluating the results of a total of 24,000 chess games played between 1890 and 2014 with a total of 1.6 million moves.

The scientists wanted to find out whether and how the cognitive abilities developed over the course of the lives of the players in question and how the skills of players from previous generations compare with the skills of today's players.

With the help of computers the scientists evaluated nd compared the quality of the moves and looked for patterns and developments.

The scientists reached the following conclusions:

1. Human cognitive abilities are age-dependent. At first, they continue to increase, but from a certain age, around 35 years, they stagnate.

2. Today, people perform better in chess than people of the same age in earlier generations. The level of play has risen continuously over the course of the study period of almost 125 years.

The results were recently published in the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America" (PNAS).

However, Professor Sunde, one of the scientists who conducted the study, indicated a weakness of the study, which is that a lot of top players stop playing tournament chess around the age of 50.

Another arguable weakness of the study is the fact that the ability to play good chess is a very special talent. Good chess skills are not necessarily transferable to cognitive performance in other areas. Moreover, at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century chess theory was hardly developed. And the computer has dramatically increased the knowledge of chess and improved the level of play in the last 30 years.

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Chess and scientific research - Chessbase News

How competitive is Robert Saleh? Ill let you be the judge of that.

The 49ers defensive coordinator meets with a familiar foe Thursday night in Packers head coach Matt LaFleur. Saleh and LaFleur struck up a friendship while working together on Central Michigans staff in 2004 before crossing paths again in Houston, where Saleh held the title of defensive quality control coach. LaFleur, meanwhile, served as an offensive assistant under veteran coach Gary Kubiak.

The two eventually branched out with LaFleur ascending to head coach status in Green Bay via Tennessee and Los Angeles (where he rubbed shoulders with offensive prodigy Sean McVay) and Saleh joining forces with Kyle Shanahan (also a Texans alum) in San Francisco. Despite their shared past, the 41-year-old Saleh has no plans to go easy on LaFleur Thursday night. Its difficult to compartmentalize when your opponent is a close friend, unless youre Saleh, who claims hed go full throttle against his own mother if he ever got the chance.

Yikes. Saleh is not the sentimental type, it would seem. Jason Pierre-Paul of the Buccaneers made headlines last week when he expressed wanting to destroy his former team, the New York Giants, on Monday Night Football. Thats one thing, but dunking on your own mother? Thats cold.

The Saleh/LaFleur narrative is certainly a thread worth pulling on, but the bigger narrative surrounding Thursday night's game is the lack of available bodies with both teams weathering mass absences brought on by the continuing spread of COVID-19. Its a marvel the game is even being played with Green Bay trotting out spare parts at the running back position (forgotten sixth-round pick Dexter Williams will be tasked with backing up Aaron Jones in this one) and San Francisco down to its millionth-string wide receiver (who, apparently, is Richie James). To quote the great Jerry Seinfeld, good luck with all that.

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Niners DC Robert Saleh would gladly beat his mother in chess - CBS Sports Radio 910

GM Jeffery Xiong won the November 3 Titled Tuesday tournament, only his second Titled Tuesday victory so far. The American grandmaster finished on a fantastic 10/11 and remained undefeated.

Xiong had won once before, on April 18, 2017, which was also a qualifier for the Speed Chess Championship of that year. Like then, Xiong finished in clear first place in this week's tournament, an 11-round Swiss at a 3+1 time control with a total of 702 participants.

The live broadcast of the tournament.

There was a very surprising leader after seven rounds: IM Loic Travadon (@lolo9292), who was the only player left with a 100 percent score.

The French IM won his seventh game against the Indian talent GM Raunak Sadhwani (@RaunakSadhwani2005) in a game that can only be called The Dance of the Knights.

That was where the fun ended for Travadon, who lost three games in a row. In round eight, he was nicely outplayed by GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov (@ChessWarrior7197).

Xiong started with five wins before drawing with GMs Hikaru Nakamura (@Hikaru) and Vladimir Fedoseev (@Bigfish1995). The young American GM then won four games in a row to clinch the title, also profiting from the move-less draw between the other two players who were on 9/10, Sadhwani and the Dutch GM Jorden van Foreest (@joppie2).

Xiong's last-round win was against none other than GM Alireza Firouzja (@Firouzja2003). The American player surely knew his way in the Closed Sicilian, but it was only in the endgame that Firouzja blundered:

November 3 Titled Tuesday | Final Standings (Top 20)

Xiong won the $750 first prize, GM Daniil Dubov (@Duhless) won $400, Sadhwani $150, and Van Foreest $100. The$100 prize for the best female player went to GM Valentina Gunina (@Vanina1989) who scored 7.5/11.

Titled Tuesday isChess.com's weekly tournament for titled players. It starts each Tuesday at 10 a.m. Pacific Time (19:00 Central Europe) with a weekly prize fund of $1,600.

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Jeffery Xiong Wins Nov. 3 Titled Tuesday - Chess.com

When No. 8 Florida faces fifth-ranked Georgia Saturday in the Worlds Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party, all eyes will be on the Gators offensive attack against the UGA defense.

These are two of the best units in the country on their side of the ball, and they will meet as top-10 teams for the third consecutive year a first in the rivalrys history.

I think it's a chess match going back and forth, UF offensive coordinator Brian Johnson said. Trying to find what the best matchup is, how you can exploit certain looks that they provide. They have an excellent system and they recruit great players to go play in that system.

Three of those great players are unavailable for this game, with Georgia missing a trio of starters in safety Richard LeCounte (motorcycle accident) and defensive linemen Julian Rochester (ACL) and Jordan Davis (elbow). Nonetheless, this defense will still be Floridas toughest test yet.

The Bulldogs rank first in the SEC in six categories: opponent first downs, sacks, scoring defense, total defense, rushing defense and passing efficiency defense. They also boast the leagues third-best passing defense.

They play hard, and they have talent at every level of the defense, Florida coach Dan Mullen said. I dont want to say its just players. Kirby [Smart] has a great defensive scheme. They have answers to the questions. He knows it inside and out. They do a good job of putting their guys in great position to make plays, and theyre not afraid to tweak.

They can put big guys in the game to stop the run; they can put pass rushers in the game to get pressure; they can cover and play man coverage; they can try to confuse you with looks and a lot of different zones; they mix it up a lot. Theyre a very, very good defensive football team and its not one thing that makes them a great football team. Its every layer of it.

As good as Georgia is defensively, the Gators have been even more elite on offense. Theyre the best in the country at red-zone conversions and rank No. 2 in the SEC and top-10 nationally in five categories: yards per play, scoring offense, passing offense and passing offense efficiency.

UFs total offense also ranks 15th in the FBS behind quarterback Kyle Trask, who leads the league with 18 touchdown passes and is the only player in school history to throw four-plus TDs in four consecutive games. His offensive line, which also ranks second in the SEC in sacks allowed, must hold its own against Georgias front seven.

Every time you play against a Coach Mullen offense there's different strengths, whether it's Dak Prescott or it's an elite back or elite receivers. It's always something different, Smart said. You try to play to your strengths and not always to his. This year, it'll be different obviously because we have different players on defense in terms of our injuries, and they're not exactly the same as they were last year.

What hasnt changed is the Kyle-to-Kyle connection between Trask and tight end Kyle Pitts, who ranks in the top five nationally in receiving touchdowns (7) and tight end receiving yards per game (88.8). Pitts didnt score against the Bulldogs in 2019, but caught four passes for 78 yards.

He demands double coverages, and Smart is unable to assign one player to Pitts because of how much Mullen lines him up at different spots.

You gotta know where he's at, certainly, Smart said of Pitts. He's extremely talented. I mean, he was extremely talented last year. He's only gotten better. Seems like he's gotten a little bigger, a little more physical. Dan finds ways to use him in both the run game and pass game.

But, he's elite. He's first-round talent, there's no question about that. In a lot of my history in the SEC, I don't know that there's been a guy like that. He's a receiver/tight end in one.

In the 24-17 loss last season, Floridas offense only gained 278 total yards, converted just 2-of-9 third-down attempts and lost the time of possession battle (35:48 to 24:12) with only seven possessions. Johnson said first downs will be critical Saturday and his unit has to score touchdowns not field goals in the red zone.

We have some great players on offense, and they have great players on defense, Johnson said. We gotta do a great job of putting our guys at positions so they can go and make plays on a consistent basis.

I think the biggest thing is us going out there and playing at an extremely high level and doing what we do to go win the game.

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Florida-Georgia game will be 'chess match' between Mullen, Smart - GatorBait.net