A Great Visual Illusion: Radiating the Same Luminance

This is a great visual illusion.

The top and bottom chess pieces radiate the same luminance. (I did some sampling to check, and it seems to check out.)

(Tip of the cap to Luiz Pessoa.)

Microbiology Chess Set

This microbiology chess set is really cool!

ICYMI here are photos of my #microbiology #Chess set (composed with lots of help from the twitter community). The pic of 4 pawns shows samples of finishes I am considering. Would love to hear comments! https://t.co/LcU2TPeyER pic.twitter.com/kYXd266Ifr

— IAmSciArt: Chris Taylor (@IAmSciArt) December 25, 2017

(Tip of the cap to Paul Macklin.)

Quantum Chess

I am a bit late to the game in watching the video of Quantum Chess. Go and watch it!

(It is excellent! Not bogus.)

Singularity Chess

This blog post about a game called "Singularity Chess" makes me want to think about chess in all sorts of spaces. :)

(Tip of the cap to Carlos Castillo-Chavez.)

You Versus The World

This demotivational poster is brilliant (and exceptionally well-done). I approve!

Power Laws in Chess Openings

I haven't looked closely enough at the paper to judge whether or not these are actual power laws, but the blurb on the American Physical Society website caught my eye, so I browsed through the paper at lightning speed and want to mention it here. (Note that I don't think that Physical Review Letters is necessarily the appropriate journal for such research, but anyway the situation it what it is.) The paper is called Zipf’s Law in the Popularity Distribution of Chess Openings.

Authors: Bernd Blasius and Ralf T\"{o}njes

Abstract: We perform a quantitative analysis of extensive chess databases and show that the frequencies of opening moves are distributed according to a power law with an exponent that increases linearly with the game depth, whereas the pooled distribution of all opening weights follows Zipf’s law with universal exponent. We propose a simple stochastic process that is able to capture the observed playing statistics and show that the Zipf law arises from the self-similar nature of the game tree of chess. Thus, in the case of hierarchical fragmentation the scaling is truly universal and independent of a particular generating mechanism. Our findings are of relevance in general processes with composite decisions.


Naturally, I have taken the obvious step and nominated this paper for an Ig Nobel Prize.

Violent Chess Claymation

David Fang posted an awesome video of violent chess claymation on Facebook. I especially like the first fatality!

(Yes, it is fair to think of Battle Chess.)