English Chess Forum

According to Jimmy Wales august organ, the patron saint of chess is allegedly Saint Teresa of Avila However, the following letter to British Chess Magazine (Volume LXXIV, August, page 258) from W.G.Daish (Mr.) of Wateringbury, Kent (July 17th, 1954) reads as follows : "Sir, - "St," the suggestive ab...

Matt Mackenzie wrote: ↑

Thu Sep 17, 2020 2:17 pm

Which does at least inform us that (rather surprisingly) Paul Littlewood still doesn't have his own Wikipedia article.

Hopefully that lamentable situation will not continue for too long.

Several notable English players are missing from Wikipedia.

A fairly lengthy tribute including previously unpublished photographs of FM John Littlewood (25-i-1931 16-ix-2009)

may be be found here :

https://britishchessnews.com/2020/09/16 ... 6-ix-2009/

Thanks to the Littlewood family for their kind assistance.

Gerard Killoran wrote: ↑

Mon Sep 14, 2020 11:44 pm

I'm curious why his position as secretary of the Committee of West Indian Merchants was mentioned, but not that the job was that of a lobbyist on behalf of the slave owners.

Is it interesting that you mention this. James O'Fee has documented some of this background but not yet published it.

Matt Mackenzie wrote: ↑

Mon Sep 14, 2020 2:34 pm

There have, though, been a few times in chess publications when pictures of Rev G A MacDonnell have been claimed as his.

Indeed plus images of Dr. Alexander McDonnell who was not his father despite a number of publications asserting as such.

Keen (but not Keene) students of chess history may be interested in new information about the heritage of Alexander McDonnell. Unpublished research by James O'Fee is referenced below. https://britishchessnews.com/2020/09/14/remembering-alexander-mcdonnell-1798-15-ix-1835/ No reliable image of the ch...

Perhaps you can help ? I'm looking for the past NCCU Champions and have found http://www.nccu.org.uk/nccu/roh/individual_champions_1908.htm and http://www.nccu.org.uk/events/individual/nccu_individual_champions.htm curiously both coming from the same web site but showing different information. There...

Entries have now gone up to 14. The grades have been changed to ELO with the highest being 2118. You might mean Elo ratings (after Professor Arpad Emmerich Elo (1903-1992) The Electric Light Orchestra has had little input to chess ratings over the years. :) (Possibly posting to "Pedants United" was...

I tried ar*e (with an s instead of an *) as the search string and the query returned 8 players who matched that search term.

An easy enhancement would be to employ an Ajax mechanism after perhaps three chars had been typed (but return not pressed).

Some clues as to the reasoning behind the fuzzy logic used in the search query routine : "2020-03-22 Steve Bush commenced conversion to work on Chessnuts database 2020-04-30 SB commenced conversion to Cheshire Cat database (Chessnuts V2) removed 8859-1 code page and allow UTF-8 by default 2020-05-23...

Chris Rice > Cutty Sark provided a special prize of half a gallon of Scotch whisky in the prize fund.> Of course Cutty Sark also sponsored the GP from 1973. I didn't know about this particular convoluted prize. Leonard Barden wanted there to be Cutty Sark Grand Prix junior prizes. But I vetoed that...

Remembering IM Imre König (2-ix-1901 9-ix-1992)

https://britishchessnews.com/2020/09/09 ... 9-ix-1992/

Dr. Paul List played for England but originated from Lithuania :

https://britishchessnews.com/2020/09/09 ... 9-ix-1954/

Picture above sourced from https://www.kingpinchess.net/wp-content ... -heat1.jpg

Nick Grey wrote: ↑

Tue Sep 08, 2020 8:29 pm

Is Mike alive?

I can let you have Mike's mobile telephone number and then you can ask him yourself.

Elijah Williams (aka The Bristol Sloth) is perhaps, not such a well-known player but has an interesting past nonetheless : https://britishchessnews.com/2020/09/08/remembering-elijah-williams/ If you aware of any likeness of EW then I would be grateful. I suspect time spent consulting Bristol newspap...