just realised that evan was talking about the series, presumably on Netflicks!
Mark.
----- Original Message -----
From: Mark R Hague(list) (Redacted sender "mark.hague.list" for DMARC)
To: usbca_chess@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Friday, November 20, 2020 12:07 PM
Subject: [usbca_chess] Queen's Gambit film - anyone got the audio?
has anyone got the mp3 recording which includes the audio description of this
film as I'd love to listen to this film?
Mark.
----- Original Message -----
From: Evan Reese
To: usbca_chess@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Friday, November 20, 2020 1:19 AM
Subject: [usbca_chess] Each Generation of Players Is Better Than the Previous
One
Hey Guys,
Thought some of you might enjoy this short article from the most recent issue
of The Economist magazine.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/11/13/the-queens-gambit-is-right-young-chess-stars-always-usurp-the-old?utm_campaign=the-economist-this-week&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_source=salesforce-marketing-cloud&utm_term=2020-11-19&utm_content=ed-picks-article-link-8&etear=nl_weekly_8
We watched The Queen's Gambit on Netflix, with audio description by the way,
and we enjoyed it very much.
* * *
“The Queen’s Gambit” is right: young chess stars always usurp the old
Champions decline with age and each generation is better than the last
FROM THE very first episode of “The Queen's Gambit”, a hit Netflix miniseries
about chess in the 1960s, it is clear what a precocious talent Beth Harmon is.
Before her tenth birthday, she has learned to beat the janitor at the orphanage
in Kentucky where she resides. Soon she takes on an entire college chess club
in simultaneous matches, winning each one easily. By her troubled teenage
years, she is vanquishing all comers, including stalwarts who are considerably
older. After Beth wins a gruelling two-day match against one silver-haired
champion, he gracefully concedes: “You are a marvel, my dear. I may have just
played the best chess player of my life.”
The seven-episode drama has received universal acclaim from critics: of the 58
reviews gathered by Rotten Tomatoes, an entertainment website, every one was
positive. But it has also been praised by chess aficionados for its accuracy
(doubtless helped by having Garry Kasparov, a former world champion, as a
consultant). And a
recent paper
by three economists confirms that the series’ portrayal of a young upstart
vanquishing her elders is exactly what happens in real chess, decade after
decade.
The study, published last month in Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, analysed 24,000 matches involving world champions between 1890 and
2014. To assess the performances of the champions and their opponents, the
academics compared their 1.6m moves against Stockfish 8, a chess-playing
program that computes the best possible move for a given configuration of
pieces on the board. The players were scored according to how often they picked
Stockfish 8’s optimal moves. (The researchers also estimated how each move
affected a player’s chance of winning and how often they made catastrophic
mistakes.)
These results produced two clear conclusions. First, players tend to reach
their peak early in their careers, with little improvement after their 30s.
(There are even signs of a decline after 50.) Second, each generation comes
closer than the last to Stockfish 8’s benchmark of optimal play. Professional
players born in the 1950s had already reached a higher average level of
performance by the age of 25 than those born in the 1920s ever did.
The authors reckon that the early-peak effect can be explained by the fact that
the human brain’s problem-solving ability (or “fluid intelligence”) reaches its
high point at around the age of 20. As for the long upward trend in performance
through the decades, the authors suggest that more rigorous training is
probably the cause. Indeed, modern chess masters can study the machines that
now tend to beat them. If Beth were playing a methodical young champion today,
she might surprise them with unorthodox play—but she would make enough mistakes
to lose most of her games.
Evan