Author: Tony Werten
Date: 02:22:16 03/24/01
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On March 22, 2001 at 19:55:55, Dann Corbit wrote: >I am wondering something. > >For instance, for Israel and Russia, there is a very large proportion of >excellent chess players. A cursory scan of the GM list will show that those of >Russian descent or Israeli descent have a very, very high proportion of GM's -- >way out of proportion to the general population. Now, I'm not going to ask >about that here, because it would only be topical on GCF. On the other hand... > >It seems to me that there is a huge proportion of excellent chess programmers >from Germany and the Netherlands. Considering the population of the countries >and the number of programmers writing excellent chess programs, the proportion >is as enormous as the previously mentioned GM proportions. > >Does anyone have any sort of explanation as to why this is so? Educational >system? Cultural focus on this topic? What? I think it's a combination of things. The ones that come in mind are: - A lot of people in Holland know the chessrules. They may not all be able to play a decent game, but they know the rules. If you go to a bar, they probably have a chessboard behind the bar ( and a 10x10 checkersboard, and some dice ) - A couple of years ago it was very easy to go to university ( and learn some programming skills, before you got kicked off ) Everybody who wanted to go to university got a scolarship. - Over 75% of all households have a computer (10% have 2 or more ) - Over 50% of all households are connected to the internet. None of these things are a guaranty for good chessprograms but they all help. ( Specially the first 2 ) For Germany it is/was about the same. cheers, Tony
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