Friday, May 25, 2012 at 9:10AM Who needs Battle Bots when you can watch robots playing chess in the park? Alexander Grischuk was on the undercard, Sergey Shipov provided live commentary, and Anna Sharevich went around interviewing people (but not, thankfully, singing "Piano Man"). Looks like fun!
Friday, May 18, 2012 at 10:08PM If you're curious to see the strong Russian GM and well-known commentator Sergey Shipov at work, here's your chance. All the videos are in Russian, but enough excerpts are translated to make it worth at least a glance.
(Two side notes. First, I've never seen anyone type so quickly with one finger in my life. It's a pretty awesome sight. Second, I recently read someone describe my analytical work as that of a cyborg. I don't deny that I use a computer to check and extend my work, but let's get real here. Practically all responsible commentators are cyborgs now, and Shipov is using three computers simultaneously! Of course, the person describing me as a cyborg didn't refer to Shipov in the same way. Grr. Of course Shipov is a terrific player, certainly stronger than I am, but we're all cyborgs now. I haven't checked all his match commentaries yet, but I've compared a number of other ones by GM/cyborgs with my own work, and I'm not embarrassed but what I've done. Very occasionally they've found a nice line that I missed, but the vast majority of the time I've found what they have and then some - and that "some" has been relevant, not padding or irrelevancies. The point isn't to blow my horn [especially compared to Shipov, who I'm happy to praise as a player, analyst and author!] but to suggest that a decent player who is experienced with using chess engines can do very good work if he puts his mind to it.)
Sergey Shipov, computers