Percy Yip began teaching his daughter Carissa to play chess in 2010. After just one year, she could beat him. Two years later, the Massachusetts schoolgirl has just become the youngest female on record to reach the US Chess Federation’s (USCF) “expert” level. Carissa is nine years old.

Most ‘children’s operas’ are not really that at all, but Holland Park Opera – as its general manager has explained in these columns – is aiming its “Alice” squarely at the youthful end of the market. The background of its composer Will Todd is suitably eclectic, ranging from a jazz Mass, to oratorios, to an anthem for last year’s royal diamond jubilee; its designer Leslie Travers’s most recent exploit was the inspired staging of the Aldeburgh “Grimes on the Beach”; conducting and direction are by Martin Duncan and Stuart Stratford, versatile operators both.

When the interval arrived during The Machine I realised I had been so engrossed by the play that I had forgotten to take a single note during the first half. A play about a chess match between a man and a computer, as its author Matt Charman, had conceded beforehand, sounded almost terrifyingly dull. But this was no ordinary man. It was Garry Kasparov, the youngest world chess champion ever, who reigned unchallenged for two decades. Nor was it an ordinary machine. It was Deep Blue, then the most sophisticated chess computer the world had ever seen, which could analyse more than 500 million positions every second.

On a night when Apple launched new MacPro, a new AirBook and no end of software bells and whistles, one subject is sure to dominate the post-keynote discussions: the bold and (most say) beautiful 'flat' design of the new iOS 7. 

He forced both Fischer and Spassky down by the shoulders and told them, 'Play chess now!'

Ricardo Woods, 35, was found guilty of fatally shooting David Chandler in Cincinnati in October 2010

A clever, if necessarily limited, mix of gameplay styles

Once famously described in the press as one of this country's hidden chess assets, Adrian Hollis spent a long and distinguished academic career as a Classics Tutor and Fellow of Keble College, Oxford. There, amid research focussed largely on Hellenistic and Roman poetry, he bestrode the often narrow confines of his art with consummate ease.

... but do the young Norwegian's performances match the pyrotechnics of the pop star's sell-out gigs? Tom Peck tiptoed into the arena to watch

Hugh Grant, a director of the Hacked Off campaign, says the pro-regulation pressure group is nowhere near as slick as it looks. The actor told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show that it actually consisted of "a few dandruffy professors sitting in a cheap office." Grant added that he was so certain that papers would not be hit with £1m fines by the new regulator, he would make a matching £1m donation to Comic Relief if any were levied.

In our jaded post-Lance Armstrong world, even the sleepiest sports are not immune to the vigilance of the United States Anti-Doping Agency. After a week spent crouched low, kneepads on, caught fish stuffed in their trouser pockets, the winners of last week’s World Ice Fishing Championship were led to a room in the Plaza Hotel, Wausau, Wisconsin, to be tested for steroids and growth hormones.

Politician kicked out of game after odd winning streak is linked to scam involving dark glasses

1. Antonio Lamp

There are not many artists who reignite their careers in their ninth decade, but the Pittsburgh-born pianist Ahmad Jamal, who comes to London's Barbican on 8 February, is really on a roll, at 82. The knockout title track from his latest album, Blue Moon, has been nominated for a Grammy and his London performance will be a showcase for the disc