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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

Its not often that a piece of junk mail makes me burst out in laughter, but thats what happened recently when I picked up a flimsy yellow leaflet from the doormat and read: Capitalism is the problem; socialism is the solution. It turned out that the leaflet is the British Communist Partys plea for our vote in the upcoming elections for the Greater London Assembly, in which the Party is bravely standing nine candidates. It was so laughable because it reminded me yet again how impossible it is to exaggerate the human beings capacity for self-delusion. And dressing up communism as socialism is such a tired old chestnut, one wonders why they bother.

Im just grateful that even in todays left-liberal-driven, woke-obsessed Britain, very few people are stupid enough to vote communist. Well, perhaps one or two Guardian readers. I say that because, after all, their former columnist (and Jeremy Corbyn sidekick) Seumas Milne is a self-avowed apologist for Stalin, and then there is the infamous case of Richard Gott, one-time editor on the lefty rag, whose murky dealings with the KGB were long ago exposed by authorities on Cold War espionage. Yes, the Guardians journalism has long had a dodgy smell about it; the IRA-loving Roy Greenslade is just the latest discredited hack.

Anyway, the only people who can still honestly believe that communism is the answer to any of lifes thorny issues are those who have never lived under the communist system. While the eastern half of Europe suffered under Stalins brutal cosh, the western half was home to the wilfully duped (e.g. silly old George Bernard Shaw) or, much worse, those who were fully aware of the terror and murderous purges but chose to brush them aside because you cant make an omelette without breaking eggs (e.g. Eric Hobsbawm here and Jean-Paul Sartre in France). Of course it took George Orwell to observe: But wheres the omelette?

China is the one exception in all this. It is quite true that millions have been lifted out of poverty and into a new middle class; the standard of living in China has never been higher. But isnt it interesting that this miracle happened only after the communist regime had wholeheartedly embraced capitalism? Chinas combination of an unashamedly capitalist economic system with an oppressive totalitarian political system has been rather clever, I have to admit. For China, it seems, capitalism has turned out to be the solution to the problems created by socialism. But which of us would choose to be a subject of Xi Jinpings ruthless surveillance state? Not many people from the West have emigrated to live under socialism with Chinese characteristics.

So where exactly has a more undiluted Marxism oh excuse me, socialism worked? North Korea? In Cambodia under Pol Pot? In poor starving Venezuela, the sad legacy of Hugo Chavez? In the Castro brothers Cuba, such a delightful paradise that the flight of Cuban refugees to nearby Florida has not abated in the past six decades, so that there are now 1.5 million Cuban-Americans living in that state alone?

No, dear readers, the only problem to which socialism is the solution is: how can we destroy as many lives, societies and economies as possible, while pretending to care about humanity?

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Whatever the problem may be, socialism is not the solution - TheArticle

Emissions also fell under Mr Trump, contrary to the assumption that a deregulatory agenda is bad for the environment, and Mr Biden inherits a market in which green innovations, such as electric cars, are rapidly emerging. Consumer attitudes have adjusted; crucially, the technology has moved on (Lithium-ion battery pack prices, for example, fell 89 per cent over the past decade).

Capitalism, in other words, can be good for the environment, and it would be a huge error to conflate addressing climate change with socialism when, as with any other period of industrial change, it is the market that will be the engine of innovation. Smashing the windows of HSBC, as Extinction Rebellion activists did yesterday, pathetically misreads the situation, along with corporate attitudes towards ecology. Banks will be at the heart of financing the technology needed to address climate change without destroying our living standards.

It is easy for politicians to set targets. More useful would be to explain how we are going to create the economic conditions that encourage technologicaldevelopment. Britain, and the rest of the world, already faces an uphill struggle to recover from the pandemic: the threat of an even higher burden in the form of, say, higher green taxes is a terrible mistake. They should be green tax credits instead. To succeed, this revolution must be powered by the private sector, not the dead hand of the state, which has failed to achieve so many of its social goals before.

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Science and the market, not socialism, will fix climate change - Telegraph.co.uk