Major League Chess

[jiggery_pokery]

I was thrilled to read that the US Chess League had its first week of matches last Wednesday night. If ever there were a first sentence to make 80% of you skip on to the next post, that might be it; the rest of you, who indulge my passion for vicarious chess geekery, may

Comments

[hedwig_snowy]

Cool idea.

Queen's Queens eh? What about Brooklyn's Bishops? Poughkeepsie's Pawns?

Are you a member of Britain's 4NCL?

Not sure that it will be as popular here as say, online poker sites, but it certainly has it's followers. Any numbers on the total number of chess players vs other online activities/puzzle players?

[jiggery_pokery]

I'm sure there are local leagues within NY with those teams you mention and many, many more. How many of those could provide flourising USCL teams is another matter, though

[hedwig_snowy]

Wow, thanks for the data. Don't go looking :) , but I wonder how these numbers have changed over the last two years (esp. in the US) with the advent of televised poker tournaments? Not to mention, the increase in illegal gambling around the country. It was always there, but now...instead of headin' for bars with fake IDs...college students gather in dorms and play poker on Sat night. Also, is this going to be a continuing enterprise with wide-spread appeal over time or is it a temporary fad that will play itself out when a new idea comes along???

Good luck on Sat!

[jiggery_pokery]

The increase in the number of players in the $10,000 main event at the World Series of Poker is probably as good an indicator as any. Going up to the current year, the numbers are something like (about 5 years of 250s) - 300ish - 400ish - 600ish - 800ish - 2500ish - 5800ish, roughly, off the top of my head. Hard to tell whether Internet poker or TV poker is the main driver, probably both encourage each other.

I missed one of the very big chess sites in my previous comment - playchess.com, which is advertised through major computer chess brands. Apparently they get something like 8,000 chess players there at once. Accordingly chess is doing a little better than I made it appear.

[ex_dumbgenius]

Request for vague English instructions for Bulgarian puzzles #8 and #17 from 2004, please? Thank ye!

[jiggery_pokery]

OK. Number 17: divide the box into rectangles with one number in each rectangle such that the number is the area of the rectangle. Unfortunately we don't see the borders thickened properly, so it's not clear, but I think the answer goes a little like "top-left 6 as middle-right of 2x3 rectangle, bottom-left 6 as top-middle of 3x2 rectangle, bottom-right 6 as middle-left of 2x3 rectangle, 3 as middle of 1x3 rectangle, 4 as top-right of 2x2 square". (Scroll into a zoom of 200% and this is correct.)

Number 8: again we can't see the thickened borders properly unless we zoom in to 200%, but it's a standard fences problem - draw a continuous loop along the edges so that each number represents the number of adjacent edges included in the loop.