No news is bad news

[Carl Hibbard]

Actually, I have been a complete fool and I must apologise again.

The girl is obviously a spectator,viewing the board from the side. How silly of me.

I have a spare copy of 'Man vs Machine' by Ray Keene lying around and offer it as a prize for the first person to reconstruct the moves of the game that the children are playing.


Andrew

I can copy some moves off someone else if that wins

[Paul Stimpson]

Andrew,

This is the very well known Mirror Gambit!

[fergus christie]

Hi The Forum.

Disappointingly Holloid are going through a difficult period and this has affected the Chess for Schools project. There have been some fundamental problems with the board injection mould tools but the tools that produce the pieces have been production capable since June...

Unfortunately the issues at the company, not least of which include the resignation of technical, sales and production directors in the first week of August...have (as far as I'm aware (my last day of employment was 12th September tho' I'd been out of the business since early August) resulted in the company making only a few hundred sets of pieces.

I'm now a director of PDC limited and also Protomould Plastics and can categorically state that the industry sponsors I was working with @ Holloid (free material and equipment subsidies) still want to be associated with the project...though not with Holloid.

Holloid have invested heavily of their time and money in this project (about £25k hard cash and at least the same again in personnel terms) to get this far and it would seem heart-breaking for the project to fold - we'd gladly take on the manufacture of the sets at my new company if the tooling ever became available...

Anyway if anyone wants to talk to me directly I'm available on [email protected] or [email protected] - I don't visit the forum much (which judging by a lot of the commentary (and please forgive an ECF outsider's view!!) gives an image of the english chess organisation racked by in-fighting, politicking and general bitchiness!?!) so if you want any speedy response to queries concerning this post I'd come to me directly...

Best wishes to all @ ECF and here's to hoping Chess for Schools can get a re-launch

regards

Fergus Christie
Business Development Director, Protomould Limited
Director, PDC Limited

[Sean Hewitt]

Well, thanks must go to Fergus - firstly for giving us the situation straight and secondly for his kind offer to pick up the gauntlet at his new company.

Lets hope that something can be worked out between Fergus's new company, Holloid and the ECF.

[John Upham]

The girl is obviously a spectator,viewing the board from the side. How silly of me.

Andrew

OK, if anyone can account for the pawns on e2 & e1 (assuming the board is 90 degrees out) I'll but them a pint at the next 4NCL weekend.
Underpromotion to a pawn has never been an option!

John

[Matthew Turner]

I too am grateful to Fergus for posting on the forum, but I would countenance against hoping that a deal can be resurrecting with his new companies. Please check up the websites of protomould and PDC Limited. PDC is a consultancy which was formed in 2008 and it appears to me that it is a one man operation. Times are obviously very tough in industry at the moment and I wish Fergus all the very best.

[John Upham]

The girl is obviously a spectator,viewing the board from the side. How silly of me.

Andrew

If anyone can account for the pawns on e2 & e1 (assuming the board is 90 degrees out) I'll buy them a pint at the next 4NCL weekend.
Underpromotion to a pawn has never been an option!

John

[Paul McKeown]

This is probably a totally off the wall suggestion, but here goes anyway...
If the problem turns out to be the ECF, could we go to Chess Scotland and use them as a vehicle for this? For our mutual benefit?

[Brent Smith]

The girl is obviously a spectator,viewing the board from the side. How silly of me.

Andrew

If anyone can account for the pawns on e2 & e1 (assuming the board is 90 degrees out) I'll but them a pint at the next 4NCL weekend.
Underpromotion to a pawn has never been an option!

John

The last move was dxe1, and the player is simply reaching over to her opponent's set of captured pieces to select the one required. Now to account for the other pieces ...

[John Upham]

The last move was dxe1, and the player is simply reaching over to her opponent's set of captured pieces to select the one required. Now to account for the other pieces ...

Actually, it was f2 x e1...or they could be playing cylindrical chess in which case e8 - e1 was a possible move...

[Claire Summerscale]

It was my photo.

At the set presentation, all the boards were set up correctly, the girls arrived, played a couple of games and for some reason turned one of the boards around when I wasn't looking.

I continued to snap away with my camera, and this photo was the result, although when I published it, the mirror image had been applied, so it appeared the right way around.

Why the ECF have chosen and altered this image, I don't know.

Claire

[Carl Hibbard]

I too am grateful to Fergus for posting on the forum, but I would countenance against hoping that a deal can be resurrecting with his new companies. Please check up the websites of protomould and PDC Limited. PDC is a consultancy which was formed in 2008 and it appears to me that it is a one man operation. Times are obviously very tough in industry at the moment and I wish Fergus all the very best.

What is Fergus suggesting and what "costs" are involved - it's generous of course but more details are needed

[Carl Hibbard]

It was my photo.

At the set presentation, all the boards were set up correctly, the girls arrived, played a couple of games and for some reason turned one of the boards around when I wasn't looking.

I continued to snap away with my camera, and this photo was the result, although when I published it, the mirror image had been applied, so it appeared the right way around.

Why the ECF have chosen and altered this image, I don't know.

Claire

The change of photo sort of gives the impression that new sets have been provided, yes I know the actual date is mentioned but again this is the wrong attack approach...

[fergus christie]

Hi again (twice in one day...and not to be repeated)

Re: my new companies... PDC is a loose confederation of designers and engineers that I'm representing as an alleged business development maestro - although a start-up it sadly has a significantly higher credit score and rating with D&B, CreditSafe etc than Holloid - and is working with companies like Airbus on product development.

Protomould has been going for over 40 years, is a £4 million company and (god forgive us in the present commercial environment!?!) is just opening a NEW 20k square foot factory in Tunbridge to compliment our current operation in Northfleet. If you care to look up our financials we have excellent ratings, with all plant and, more importantly, all buildings 100% owned by the firm.

We're offering to make the sets... packing and distribution would be the ECF's bag... and if you see my previous posts I've made no secret of highlighting it needs to be a BIG bag...

This is a feel-good project that has the support of the plastics industry - it was to be a marketing tool for Holloid (you couldn't pay for the level of publicity that would've been associated with a fully-implemented CfS program) and I'd be delighted to have it in my portfolio as a feather for our new factory... and realistically can think of a number of companies who would be interested in picking up the project in its current state (most of the hard work in terms of production readiness being completed!?)

That's it for now -

Fergus

[Nick Thomas]

I attended the Extraordinary ECF meeting in July. During that meeting the board seemed unanimous in their support for borrowing £100K from the ECF (BCF) ((John Robinson Trust)) to roll out the Chess For Schools project in conjunction with the production and distribution of the "free" chess sets. This was to begin in Sep 08 and be completed by Dec 09. During the meeting one of the board (I think it might have been David Welsh but am open to correction on this) said something like "If we get this wrong we will never be trusted again". This was not the only occasion when emotive language like this was used to coax votes their way. The time has come for Gerry (at least) to either;

1) Give us a full explanation of the events leading up to this (disa)point
2) Contact all the MPs, LEAs, professional chess coaches etc who have been hoodwinked by the inappropriate hysteria whipped up by him (and others) and apologise
3) Resign

My LEA has very recently spoken to someone from the ECF who assured them that everything was on course and that they would be one of the first LEAs to receive their sets!!

Im embarrassed (and not just by my poor grammar).....