Competitive chess is a sports category where players can freely participate in
most of the competitions around the world without restriction - as opposed of
other individual sports, where you must qualify in order to participate.
In this project we are interested on exploring the mobility patterns of the
players (e.g., how many play only national-level tournaments, what are the most
visited countries/cities) across time and compare those with other competition
factors (e.g., their own level, how strong is the national country of
destination) in order evaluate how these inequalities can affect the ranking.
Based on your own interests and previous knowledge, in this project you will
- collect your own data from the international chess federation about chess tournaments and players’ mobility,
- model the competitive chess arena and the mobility of players using a combination of inference methods, agent-based modeling and network analysis and,
- study what other non-competitive effects can explain the mobility patterns (e.g., players might prefer to travel to a specific city because their touristic attraction, not because the level of the players in such city/country)