6/15/2021 – Unlike other sports, chess allows for players to agree to a draw, be it explicitly or implicitly — for example, by entering a forced line that leads to a threefold repetition. Many workarounds have been proposed to prevent this from happening too often, but at the end of the day, it mostly has to do with how ‘fighting’ a player is. But how to measure the players’ combativeness? GM David Smerdon has developed a method to answer this question.

9/14/2019 – An ongoing topic of scientific inquire of interest to chess fans is whether and to what extent chess can delay or mitigate the effects of aging. An Australian study aimed to prove that chess champions have a higher life expectancy than the average population. Grandmasters from Eastern Europe should therefore have a life expectancy of up to 14 years. PETER MUENDER dealt critically with the study results.

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

12/15/2017 – Chess podcasting is still in its infancy, even as the medium as a whole gains mainstream adoption. In the past year, Ben Johnson's Perpetual Chess Pod has racked up and impressive guest list and a dedicated fan following. This week Ben released his 51st episode and the first episode dropped a year ago on December 15th, 2016.