2/4/2022 – Ashton Anderson, a computer scientist at the University of Toronto, wanted to know whether chess players have a unique playing style. To answer that question, he and his team gathered more than "50 million human games played on the Lichess website. They collected games by players who had played at least 1000 times and sampled sequences of up to 32 moves from those games. ... [Then] they gave the system 100 games from each of about 3000 known players, and 100 fresh games from a mystery player. The system ... identified the mystery player 86% of the time." An article in "Science" takes a closer look at the pros and cons of this experiment. | Photo: Xi Jian/stock.com | Source: "Science"

1/11/2018 – In the fourth and final part of the "Exercises in Style" readers were asked to identify games by Garry Kasparov, Vladimir Kramnik, Vishy Anand, and Magnus Carlsen. Not an easy task because three of these World Champions are still active and develop stylistically - only Kasparov withdrew from tournament chess. But though modern chess is becoming more and more universal each of these four World Champions has a unique style.

8/23/2017 – Modern top players are "universal players". They know and play a large variety of openings, they master brilliant attacks, difficult defenses and patient positional play equally well. However, the chess of Garry Kasparov, Vladimir Kramnik, Vishy Anand and Magnus Carlsen is still quite different. Can you recognize the style of these four World Champions?

8/10/2017 – Part three of the "Exercises in Style" showed games by Tigran Petrosian, Boris Spassky, Bobby Fischer and Anatoly Karpov, featuring patient maneuvering, tactical brilliance, impressive endgame technique and sophisticated positional play. However, it was not always easy to ascribe the games to the "right" World Champions. Here are the solutions.

7/27/2017 – The "Exercises in Style" are an invitation to playfully have a closer look at the style of the 16 World Champions. In each of the four parts of the series the reader is shown four games without data and is asked to guess which World Champion played which game. Part 2 showed games by Max Euwe, Mikhail Botvinnik, Vassily Smyslov and Mihail Tal. Here are the answers to which World Champion played which game.

7/18/2017 – What is style in chess? And how unique is it? Tal and Botvinnik played differently but how easy — or difficult — is it to spot these stylistic differences? Part 1 of the "Exercises in Style" presented games by Wilhelm Steinitz, Emanuel Lasker, José Raúl Capablanca and Alexander Alekhine, the first four World Champions in the history of chess. Now follow games by Max Euwe, Mikhail Botvinnik, Vassily Smyslov and Mihail Tal. Do you know which World Champion played which game?

7/14/2017 – The "Exercises in Style" invite readers to have a fresh look at the games of the World Champions. Part 1 presented four games, one each by Steinitz, Lasker, Capablanca and Alekhine. However, the information who played when and where against whom was hidden. Instead, you were asked to guess which World Champion played which game. A surprisingly difficult task though each game to a certain extent was typical for the World Champion who played it. Here are the solutions.