Chess Olympiad 2010: Nice chessbase quiz with prizes

Chess News and Chess Trivia Blog (c) Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2010

Hi Everyone,

We found this nice chessbase quiz with interesting prizes so we had to share this with you. Were you following the 39th Chess Olympiad in Khanty Mansiysk real close? If you were then maybe you can identify these chess players:

There are several more photographs that you need to identify. Head over to chessbase and check out how many you can name. Some photographs are just too obvious while others are tricky. But there's a prize for correct answers and there's also a prize for a lucky winner from among all entries. That's cool. So, you could win even if you don't get all answers right.

Check out the photos.

From Alexandra Kosteniuk's

www.chessblog.com

Also see her personal blog at

www.chessqueen.com

Chess rating system Elo vs Rest of the World Contest

Alexandra Kosteniuk's Chess News & Trivia (C) 2010

First prize is a copy of Fritz signed by all-time greats Garry Kasparov,

Viswanathan Anand, Anatoly Karpov, and Vladimir Kramnik!

Hello Everyone,

There has been this debate for some time now about how good the Elo rating is. And, there has been a contest going on for that which ends on November 14th.

The contest is based upon the premise that a primary purpose of any chess rating system is to accurately assess the current strength of players, and we can measure the accuracy of a rating system by seeing how well the ratings do at predicting players' results in upcoming events. The winner of the contest will be the one whose rating system does the best job at predicting the results of a set of 7,800 games played recently among players rated 2200+.

So far there has been an unprecedented level of participation, with 162 different teams submitting entries to the contest! There is also a very active discussion forum to promote the free flow of ideas, although many teams are still hesitant to share too many details about their approach (especially considering that the winner will receive a copy of Fritz signed by Garry Kasparov, Viswanathan Anand, Anatoly Karpov, and Viktor Korchnoi) Both Chessbase and Kaggle have donated generous prizes, to be awarded to top-performing participants who are willing to share their methodology publicly.

You can read more about the contest in this chessbase report.

From Alexandra Kosteniuk's

www.chessblog.com

Also see her personal blog at

www.chessqueen.com