English Chess Forum

Mea culpa

This is very embarrassing. A minutes silence was observed at the Herts and District league end of season Blitz last week. It may well be marking the passing of another individual with the same name was being observed. My humble apologies to David for any distress this may have caused.

Uxbridge run two teams in division one of the Bucks League, designated Uxbridge 1 and 2. The teams are captained by the Knight brothers (David and Danny). They are very competitive and run two squads of players of comparable ratings. So the second team fielded has been higher graded than the first o...

David White of Hounslow and Greenford clubs sadly passed recently. He was a regular player for the Midddlesex county side and chaired the Thames League Valley for many years. We had a few lively games over the years, dating back to the 1980s. He was always prepared to analyse the game afterwards and...

I have been playing competitive chess for over five decades and have to confess that I don't know the formal procedure. I usually find my opponent only too willing to accept the draw on the third repetition. I am an average club player. I like to believe that a professional player in a FIDE rated to...

Is there an award for the best chess joke? Can I be entered into the ECF Forum Hall of Fame or some similar accolade?

I heard a couple of chess players boasting in a hotel lounge about how well they had done in a local chess tournament. They were chess nuts boasting in front of an open fire.

This is an interesting topic. The attraction for titled players to play club chess is not an overly strong one because they are more concerned with maintaining a high FIDE Rating. My local club offers free membership to an IM in return for a free annual club Simul. I won't name the player concerned....

I have a record of all my rated games going back to my very first rated club match in 1970. I transfer my games from score sheets to score books. In the process I analyse each game. Over the years I have accumulated over 3000 recorded games. I wonder if thus qualifies me as a sad chess nurd. Or if t...

It seems bizarre to celebrate chess on a July date. Surely chess is predominantly a winter activity? Many English chess clubs are inactive over the summer. The English club season runs from September through to May. June to August are traditionally fallow months. This could be an indication of how d...

I hadn't appreciated until recently how few English GMs there are. Tony Mlles was the first in 1976. He claimed Jim Slater's prize of £5000, currently worth around £42000 today. Over the last 49 years there have been fewer that one new English GM per year. Congratulations to the latest recipient. He...

There's no substitute to running your games through a chess engine. I routinely find that I have missed a tactic winning material. Finding the best positional move via an engine is a bit more elusive. This is where a human coach can add value. This might sound obvious but I have found that the stron...

À major culprit for blunders is time pressure. I have found that leaving myself ahead on the clock in a tricky ending adds pressure to my opponent. Against a higher rated opponent, avoiding time pressure is not always possible but it should always be an aim to avoid getting too far behind on the clo...

I have played in five World Senior Team Championships. I seem to recall Stewart Reuben explaining that the inaugural WSTC was held in London, with a handful of overseas teams competing alongside several English teams. Does anyone recall this event?

Prior to the advent of the Internet there was little possibility of the average club player getting access to any advanced chess coaching. I was born in 1955 and like many of my contemporaries, I am self-taught. Reading books and playing over the board were the only sure ways to improve. There was j...

I have participated in the Chiltern league matches regularly since 2013, representing Buckinghamshire. I like the twenty board format of the matches. The fact that forty players are prepared to travel and support the weekend competition is surely a recommendation of its value. The County has investe...