After postponements due to COVID, the 44th FIDE Olympiad takes place in Chennai, India from July 28 August 10, 2022. The event, originally scheduled to take place in Russia, was relocated by FIDE following Russias invasion of Ukraine.

Having earned the silver medal in 2018 after going gold in the Olympiad prior, the United States has assembled two teams of top talent, eager to leverage their massive skill to regain the top prize against more than 100 teams from around the world.

For the Open section team, IM John Donaldson reprises his role as captain with five of the strongest U.S. players:

GM Fabiano Caruana 2783 (FIDE)

1st in the U.S. / 4th in the world

GM Levon Aronian 2775

3rd in the U.S. / 5th in the world

GM Wesley So 2775

2nd in the U.S. / 6th in the world

GM Leinier Dominguez 2754

5th in the U.S. / 12th in the world

GM Sam Shankland 2718

6th in the U.S. / 25th in the world

Image Caption

IM John Donaldson, Captain of the 2022 Olympiad Open Team. Photo: STLCC/Ootes

For the Womens team, Armenian-American GM Melikset Khachiyan returns as captain, with GM Alejandro Ramirez serving as coach, to lead a roster of outstanding female competitors:

GM Irina Krush 2430 (FIDE)

1st in the U.S. / 33rd in the world

IM Carissa Yip 2418

2nd in the U.S. / 39th in the world

IM Anna Zatonskih 2387

3rd in the U.S. / 61st in the world

WGM Tatev Abrahamyan 2297

9th in the U.S.

WGM Gulrukhbegim Tokhirjonova 2332

6th in the U.S.

With an average FIDE rating of 2763, the Open team will be one of the favorites, with only host India and China able to approach such team strength. (The Russian team would be a serious competitor, but they have been suspended from international play by FIDE along with Belarus.)

The American women clock in at an average FIDE rating of 2373, which, if historical precedent holds, would put them within the top dozen teams in Chennai.

Opening ceremonies begin Thursday, July 28, with first moves being played on July 29 at 3 p.m. local time (5:30 a.m. Eastern).

US Chess gratefully acknowledges to the Saint Louis Chess Club and the Kasparov Chess Foundation for their generous, continued support of the United States Olympiad teams and their efforts.

Those wishing to contribute to the U.S. Olympiad teams may do so through our secure online donation form, and enter the amount in the box for Olympiad Teams.

Read more here:
2022 US Olympiad Teams Revealed | US Chess.org - uschess.org

We have gathered all of Fridays best Android app deals to head into the weekend with. Check out the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 5G and the Samsung Galaxy S21 FE 5G while they are on sale before you dive into this afternoons software offers as well. Our collection is highlighted by titles including Samorost 3, The Last Dream (Full), Shattered Plane, Chess Coach Pro, and much more. Head below for a complete look at all of todays Android app deals courtesy of Google Play.

This morning saw a new all-time low hit the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 5G with a bundled S Pen Folio Case and over $500 in savings. That offer joins ongoing deals on the Samsung Galaxy S21 FE 5G and its Snapdragon 8 Gen 1-powered Galaxy Tab S8+ as well as todays price drop on theSamsung Galaxy Buds Pro. As far as add-ons go, be sure to scope out todays discounts on the Bose Portable Smart Speaker, the metal and fabric 1TB Seagate portable SSD, and everything in our smartphone accessories roundup.

Samorost 3 follows a curious space gnome who uses the powers of a magic flute to travel across the cosmos in search of its mysterious origins. Visit nine unique and alien worlds teeming with colorful challenges, creatures and surprises to discover, brought to life with beautiful artwork, sound and music.

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Android app deals of the day: Samorost 3, The Last Dream, Chess Coach Pro, more - 9to5Toys

Two university professors explore the similarities between cheating during online classes and cheating in online chess communities during episode 004 of The Score Podcast on academic integrity

On episode four of The Score, host Kathryn Baron (@TchersPet) spoke with Dr. Alexander Matros, a professor in the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina, and Eren Bilen (@Ernbilen), Assistant Professor of Data Analytics at Dickinson College. Both Matros and Bilen are chess players. They discuss their September 2020 study on online cheating amid COVID-19 and explain how the International Chess Federation and the Internet Chess Club deal with cheating. Their suggestions offer insight about how universities might address cheating.

The full episode is available to listen on Apple, Spotify or at The Score. Excerpts from the episode follow.

Note: Removal of filler words and minor edits have been made for clarity.

Kathryn Baron (01:38): Why did you select online chess as a barometer for online cheating in colleges and universities?

Dr. Alexander Matros (01:44): If you look back, chess had this problem for over 20 years and chess was played online on different platforms, including this Internet Chess Club. And it was interesting to see how they deal with the problem of cheating. And we tried to use this experience for what we can see now in education.

Kathryn Baron (02:04): Now, what are the differences though? Because clearly a private chess club can do different things than a college or university. If you look at a private chess club, they have this problem that if somebodys trying to cheat, then if this information is public knowledge, then nobody wants to join the club because its very difficult to compete with this guy who might win everything. And cheating might take different forms, for example, somebody might help you, then you can use computer support. There are many different ways.

Dr. Alexander Matros (02:39): What we saw last year, for example, during the pandemic, this was a very similar situation because if you think about cheating on exams, for example, at colleges and university schools, you can also get outside help from somebody in your room. You can also try to use your computer and search for answers. From this point of view, these are very similar problems. And the difference is only that in chess, we saw that more than 20 years ago we can try to look at their previous experience. And in academia we just saw that last year.

Kathryn Baron (03:13): Why has it been going on in chess for so long? That just kind of surprised me.

Dr. Alexander Matros (03:19): Just again, this is the nature of the beast. In humans, they would like to win. They would like to get some money and in chess, if you are not the top player, you would like to prove that you can beat everybody else. And if you see that you have some problems, one possibility is to use some outside help. Plus a lot of money is at stake. For example, if you qualify for this event, then even if youre eliminated immediately in the first round, you can win like $5,000. And now we are talking about like more than 20 years ago. It was a lot of cheating. People tried to help, people tried to use computers, and so on. This was just one kind of extreme. But if you look at the research side, you can see that in different competitions, people try to show that theyre the best. Sometimes money is involved, but even if you remove money, [and use] pride, you can try to show that Im better than my opponent. And people did some experimental studies when they found that in a tournament without prices, people would still be ready to put some effort in order to win the competition.

Kathryn Baron (04:29): So its not just that the stakes are high,or theres money involved or winning a competition, but theres also something about human nature thats involved.

Dr. Alexander Matros (04:35): Yes. So even if the price is equal to zero, then people are ready to put in effort when you have to spend resources and then at the end you win nothing, but you win your pride. Okay. So I managed to beat these guys. Yeah.

Kathryn Baron (04:51): In academia, you specifically looked at advanced placement exams, which can earn high school students college credit. And what did you find there? And what was different? Was it online for the first time? Were there hybrids? What changed during COVID?

Eren Bilen (05:08): Yeah, the 2020 AP exams were the first time that these AP exams were given online basically because of COVID. And what happened was if you look at Google searches, and this is public information, you can just access this information, easily. What you see is the 2020 AP exam for the math subject was given on May 12. This was in the afternoon Eastern time. We had 2:00 PM on May 12. If you look at some of the keywords related to math concepts, such as derivative, integral, critical points, inflection point, things like that, youll see a spike, exactly at 2:00 PM, and then following 3:00 PM, and so on, the spike basically disappears.

The next day, on May 13, it was the English literature subject. If you do a similar study, you check, this time instead of checking math-related keywords, you check literature-related keywords. You can [search] imagery, literary techniques, diction, things like that. You get the spike, exactly at 2:00 PM on May 13. This is again the time of the test.

And then last, you can even check physics. For example, this was the next day on May 14, but this time was not 2:00 PM, it was 4:00 PM in the afternoon. And you get this spike on physics related keywords at exactly 4:00 PM on May 14. It looks like students basically do some Google searching in order to find the answers, was this helpful [to the student]? Yes. No. Were not sure, but at least students tried.

Kathryn Baron (06:57): At least they tried to cheat. Was this an unproctored online exam?

Eren Bilen (07:06): That is correct. It was unproctored.

Kathryn Baron (09:12): And you had posed several questions in your report including whether colleges or universities can expect a surge in cheating to continue. And you write that unlike the face to face examination, Cheating should be expected in online testing. And you add that, Cheating is a part of the student equilibrium strategy in the online examination. So what does this say about us? It just seems to be a sad commentary on who we are in our ethics.

Dr. Alexander Matros (09:42): In our paper, we looked at this problem from at least two directions. First was the theoretical approach and second, we looked at some data from a real life exam and had a simple model. In this simple model, we just assumed that a student can either cheat or not to cheat. So if nobody cheats, then professors would never monitor. And then it would be so simple to cheat. And then we also looked at data. Eren, maybe you can just talk a little bit about the data, what we found.

Eren Bilen (10:21): In the data, we were quote-on-quote, lucky in the sense that we had one special tool that enabled us to basically pinpoint whats going on. The issue was we looked at the time the students took to answer their questions. We gave them basically a test with 20 questions. And these questions were not multiple choice. The students had to enter numbers using their keyboards. And what we saw was that some of the students had very strange timings. For example, on a question that you expect a student to take on average, lets say five minutes, the student gave an answer in seven seconds. You can say, Okay, this is one occasion. The student just input a random number or something. That was not the case. [What they gave] was the correct answer. For example, the correct answer was, lets say, 347. A student was able to pick that number 347 in less than 10 seconds. And this kept going and going. Next question. Similar. Third question, again, similar. It kept on going for 20 questions. The overall time the student took to complete the exam was about 10 minutes.

Kathryn Baron (12:30): But Eren, in seven seconds, how did they cheat, could they actually look something up online that quickly?

Eren Bilen (12:36): You cannot do this in seven seconds. What we believe that students had was the answers from other students who volunteered to take the test before they did, and they gave them the correct answers. And then you basically had a list in front of you with question names and then the correct answers. They basically looked at this test, the answer sheet, and it probably took them on average, 10 seconds to be able to figure out that was the question that they were seeing on the screen. And basically, they inputted the correct number using their keyboards. It looks like this on average takes 10 seconds.

Kathryn Baron (15:51): You earlier had mentioned fairness. And it does seem that this issue raises some huge ethical issues around fairness, because a student who works very hard to get good grades could very likely do worse in a class because that student didnt cheat. And even though teachers and professors know from say homework assignments and classroom participation, which students are studying, what can they do when the test results dont reflect that because of cheating?

Dr. Alexander Matros (16:21): Yeah. I think in a sense, you ask very, very important questions. In a sense, during this pandemic during the whole year, we had some expectations, we had some, you can call this social norm, so what we expect. Lets say people would come to a class and they would take a test and then you can rank them based on these results. And everything is from this point of view, more or less fair. Now, if you take a test at home, especially if its not proctored, and nobody knows who took this test, then the situation now is such that we have another social norm. When you have these expectations or if you have these beliefs that everybody else is cheating, this immediately puts you in a situation where you might be the best student, but you feel that you have no chances to compete with this, as a student, unless you cheat as well.

When you have these expectations, these are self-fulfilling expectations. And now if everybody cheats, everybody expects that. And then they play according to these morals.

Dr. Alexander Matros (20:06): If you put a little bit of effort trying to check them, then maybe they would just abstain from this kind of behavior. And then even simple monitoring can remove a lot, a lot of cheating. It would definitely not remove all cheating, but it would remove simple ones. So, for students like you describe, who would actually prepare in their rooms, you cannot eliminate that, but they put in so much effort. If they would study instead, they would do so much better.

Dr. Alexander Matros (22:38): But online, you have some clues, its never direct evidence. Its only like indirect evidence. You can say, okay, so the student took a test and finished this test in 5 minutes with 20 questions. It was multiple choice. And their answer is perfect. But then is it possible? Yes, its possible. Because again, you can also win a lottery, you just put the number and then you just like won. So, the student had a good day, and answered everything correctly. Then its possible. You cannot say this was impossible. Students guess correctly, so perfect.

Kathryn Baron (24:39): But do your colleagues feel that there is a lot of cheating going on in their classes or do they feel that their students, Im just wondering is there a consensus that, Yeah its going on, or are they sort of in the dark about it?

Dr. Alexander Matros (24:54): No, I think this is clearly a consensus that there was cheating and what people will do. They would try to find some ways on how to deal with that.

Dr. Alexander Matros (26:14): In my first 10 years, I had zero cases. And during the pandemic yeah, I did report several cases.

Eren Bilen (32:33): Yeah. We have to move from a bad equilibrium to a better one, absolutely. I absolutely agree. In order to do that, we need to use some sort of proctoring. It could be in-person proctoring, it could be live proctoring, but with the use of proctoring, we can basically move from those bad equilibria to the better ones. Because in a bad equilibrium basically, you give an option to a student to cheat, but if youre using proctoring, then hopefully 99% of the time, a student wont be able to cheat. Thats the key takeaway that I want to point out.

Listen to the entire episode 004 of The Score with guests, Dr. Alexander Matros and Eren Bilen here.

Link:
Pandemic Cheating in College Compared with Cheating in Online Chess in Episode 004 of The Score FE News - FE News

Thirteen people will cycle more than 250 miles to Paris to mark a rugby clubs 25th anniversary.

The team at Chess Valley RFC will embark on the ride from their home ground at Croxley Guild of Sport on June 3, finishing at the Stade de France in Paris on Sunday.

On the way, the group ofplayers, coaches, support crew and the club chairman will stop off at 25 grassroots rugby clubs.

The 255-mile ride will be in aid of three charities:Cure Parkinsons, Whizz-Kids, and the Matt Ratana Rugby Foundation.

Team captain Andy Smith said: We have been training very hard for this ride, and we needed to. We are a few years away from our peaks, and most of us are built more for the Tower of Power than the Tour de France.

One hundred miles and 17 rugby clubs on day 1 will keep us busy, but the overnight ferry followed by another 155 miles will then challenge us a little more. But the support we have received has been superb, from the Chess Valley RFC community, from friends, and from dozens of other clubs on the route or local to us here in Hertfordshire.

Weve even had support from some English rugby stars. We are all cycling with huge pride as we raise money for three important charities.

Among the 25 clubs the team will visit along the away are Met Police RFC and East Grinstead RFC, in honour of police sergeant Matt Ratana, who was shot inside a police custody facility in London in 2020.

The Matt Ratana Rugby Foundation, which the squad will be raising money for alongside two other charities, exists to support rugby initiatives in schools and in the community.

Several of the Chess Valley RFC team are also Metropolitan Police officers.

Police sergeant Matt Ratana who was killed while on duty in 2020. Credit: Metropolitan Police

Andy added: Our aim is to raise as much money as possible for these causes, but also to celebrate the importance of grassroots rugby in the community. The perfect way to mark Chess Valleys 25th year.

To support the team and donate to their challenge visit https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/chessvalleyvelos

More here:
Chess Valley RFC to ride to Paris in aid of three charities - Watford Observer