5/4/2019 – Australian Grandmaster and Ph.D. in Economics DAVID SMERDON recently published a thorough analysis regarding how female participation rates differ across the world. The results are surprising: countries that rank higher in gender equality do not have a higher rate of female participation — quite the opposite, actually! The author suggests some hypotheses to explain this phenomenon. A must read. | Pictured: Judit and Sofia Polgar in 2017. | Photo: Alina l'Ami

8/21/2018 – Australian Grandmaster DAVID SMERDON is semi-retired from chess after getting married, returning to his hometown of Brisbane to take up a professorship in the School of Economics at the University of Queensland. He still blogs occasionally and recently published a fascinating two-part story about a trip to Kenya, which we bring you with kind permission of the author. | Pictured: Chess players from Alliance Girls’ High School, Nairobi, who sometimes play against their brother school, and they enjoy playing — and beating — the boys. | Photos: DavidSmerdon.com

12/22/2017 – Other chess reviewers have been at best dismissal and at worst harshly critical of The Secret of Chess, by Lyudmil Tsvetkov. However, according to GM David Smerdon, this book is a one of a kind work that legitimately has the potential to revolutionise how we think about chess. | Photo: Smerdon at the Tromsø Chess Olympiad, by Andreas Kontokanis CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons