7/21/2022 – In what can be only described as a wonderfully inspiring 'comeback' story, the 2022 Fields Medal was awarded, among others, to June Huh for his work in chromatic polynomials, stemming from a chess puzzle involving four knights. The Fields Medal is one of the most prestigious awards in Mathematics, given out only once every four years, to the brightest minds in the field. | Photo: Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

4/12/2020 – Leonhard Euler, the most prolific mathematician from the eighteenth century, made an enormous amount of contributions to a number of fields. Even after losing his sight, he continued to publish relevant and long-standing works. The man from Basel also explored a problem related to chess, as he presented the first comprehensive mathematical analysis of the Knight's Tour.

2/27/2019 – Which are the commonest words in the English language, which are the most common girls' and boys' names? Today it is possible to calculate these things fairly easily, but it becomes really useful if you are able to present the results in a comprehensible way. Like with dynamic graphs and bubbling. This was done very nicely for historical chess strength in 2016 by Abacaba, a site that makes videos about data and math. Now a YouTube channel called TheRanker has published a 10-minute video visualisation tracking official FIDE ratings from 2000 to the present. It is informative, interesting and even relaxing to watch.

11/3/2018 – In the USA, chess fans are eagerly awaiting the World Championship match to see how Caruana fares as the first American to challenge the undisputed World Champion since 1972. But what about that other eagerly awaited contest that never was: Fischer-Karpov, 1975. It was a match that the whole chess world would have loved to see. Who can say what beautiful ideas the players would have shown us in their games? And who would have won? With statistical modelling, we can at least talk about the likely outcome of the match. Dr. MATTHEW WILSON, economics professor at Truman State University, takes a crack at it. | Artwork: Unknown (via Quora)

4/15/2018 – ChessBase recently reported on the new artificial intelligence program “AlphaZero” and its astoundingly steep learning curve for chess skill. Given just the rules of chess, in 24 hours of playing games only against itself, it improved to a superhuman level. Along the way, AlphaZero discovered and ultimately abandoned standard openings such as the French and Caro-Kann Defences. | Pictured: The learning curve projection for World Champion Magnus Carlsen overlayed on the actual rating trend.

3/21/2018 – People are generally worried about draws, which are often considered “boring”, where games may last up to six hours. To the common viewer (non-chess player), this may seem dull, and many believe this has led to a decline in sponsorship. But what do the statistics tell us? Using data now available, Qiyu Zhou, a remarkably young scientist has undertaken a thorough study of the numbers and provides a paper on her findings.

2/11/2018 – Chess 4 Math is a kindergarten book that aims to bring chess into the educational curriculum. With the tagline "Play chess, learn math and train your mind", the program aims to develop both cognitive and non-cognitive skills among children. Teachers or students do not necessarily need to have chess knowledge to understand the activities, but of course it can provide an on-ramp to competitive chess as well.

9/4/2017 – It is an old puzzle, proposed in 1848: place eight queens on a chessboard so that none are attacking another one. The solution was published two years later, but the problem of n queens on an n x n chessboard (e.g. 100 queens on a 100 x 100 board) ramains illusive. Modern computers would take thousands of years to solve the puzzle for large numbers. If you can write a program that is much faster you can win a cool million dollars. Go for it!

3/6/2017 – While comparisons between chess and mathematics and chess and science are not new, with greats such as Feynman elaborating, the article here is more than yet another comparison, it is an actual lesson that will appear in high school physics classes in Crete. Enjoy this excellent article by physicist Ioannis Halkias.