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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.

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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).

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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

There seems among our younger citizens to be a growing disdain for capitalism with more and more embracing the socialism peddled by many university professors. I hope to shed some light on the two and differences therein

What is free market capitalism? I have seen it said that capitalism is the worst economic system available, except for all the others. In other words, capitalism is not a perfect system. If a perfect system of any kind exists I have yet to see it. Beyond that, free market capitalism is defined by Merriam-Webster as an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.

Notice that nowhere in this definition are the words with government approval or subject to any other restriction. Todays capitalism in the U.S. is more a system of crony capitalism whereby government laws, restrictions, and spending determine more of a companys success by currying favor rather than actually producing something competitive. A good example is the housing and mortgage market, where home prices are greatly influenced by mortgage rates, which are keyed off of 10-year U.S. Treasury rates, and by governments direct and indirect involvement in the mortgage industry. Is that good or bad. I dont know, except that it is not free market capitalism.

Some say capitalism has failed. I dont know why, because we still have one of the most robust economies in the world despite governments efforts to ruin it. Capitalism in and of itself is neither good nor bad, it just is. Capitalism cant get you a bigger house or a job. It does create an environment that allows you to more easily seek those things. It is only when government interferes, no matter how well intentioned, that things go awry. A good example are large national banks.

During the 2007 downturn, numerous banks were on the verge of collapse, as well as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Some of their difficulty was brought about by previous government meddling and the rest was all their own doing. Yet they got bailed out. Guess what? Since there is no consequence for bad behavior, as free market capitalism would inflict, they are doing the same things again.

Socialism is defined by Merriam-Webster as an ideology or system based on the collective, public ownership and control of the resources used to make and distribute goods or provide services. This involves ownership of such things not by private individuals but by the public (the community as a whole), often in the form of a centralized government. In other words, the government that brought you the Postal Service, Amtrak, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are better qualified to run your business than you are.

A novel way of thinking about the differences is to think of capitalism as a bundle of positives and socialism as a bundle of negatives. Capitalism gives you the chance but not the obligation to take action. Socialism restricts or restrains the chance to take action.

But what about democratic socialism, you ask? Democratic socialism is defined as having a socialist economy in which the means of production are socially and collectively owned or controlled, alongside a democratic political system of government. That is eerily similar to just plain socialism. And the U.S. is not a democracy, it is a republic. More on that at another time.

So when you are confronted with those who support socialism, here are five questions to ask them.

First, what is the difference between democratic socialism and socialism? The only real difference is that people choose democratic socialism while socialism is imposed on them. Democratic socialism will soon become socialism as human nature prevails.

Second, where has socialism ever worked? Nowhere. Even France, Demark and Sweden have rolled back their experiments in socialism.

Third, who pays for all the free stuff you get? Sooner or later, the money runs out. There will be no more rich or middle class.

Fourth, what stops democratic socialism from becoming socialism? Nothing.

Five, why would we want that here? If the democratic socialist utopia becomes plain old socialism, what is the benefit?

Steve Jobs once opined that in todays business and political environment (this was in the early 2000s) Apple could not have created. That is a sad commentary of todays government foot on the neck of business.

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Tom Riggins: On capitalism and socialism | Serving Carson City for over 150 years - Nevada Appeal