English Chess Forum

It's good to see you are getting better, Alex. See you at Hastings, some year or other ...

Years ago when playing in a Richmond Rapidplay my junior opponents both played the London in the 1st 2 games I had as black. I approached Susan Lalic (who was controlling the event) and asked her for a good line against the London. She reeled off a dozen moves of theory (which I couldn't remember) a...

I'm captain of two Surrey teams. One is odds on favourite to win its division and the other has an outside chance of winning a cup. For me this is unfinished business and I would like to see it concluded!

"Surrey's interclub cup competition is called the Alexander Cup and is presumably named after either L or FFL Alexander." FFL, it's stated in "50 Years of Battersea Chess" (assuming I remembered the title correctly.) I did inform one of your Surrey colleagues a few years ago, but he never acknowled...

Surrey's interclub cup competition is called the Alexander Cup and is presumably named after either L or FFL Alexander.

"Years of research involving the strongest chess software and hardware in the world by GM Larry Kaufman and others suggests that the most correct (rounded) piece values 1 (pawn), 3.45 (knight), 3.55 (bishop), 5.25 (rook) and 10 for the queen." (Applying Logic in Chess by Erik Kislik, Gambit, 2018.) ...

No the elections are secret ballots.

Basman calls 1. a3 ... 2. h3 the "Creepy Crawly" opening and has published a pamphlet on it (which I have, somewhere).

I am not sure why the various Director's reports are split and combined in the way they are. Since the board adopted the recommendations of the Pearce Report there has been a combined board report rather than reports from the individual executive directors. The existence of a separate report on wom...

Actually the WHO (like everybody else) doesn't know how the infection is spread. If you want some informed comment from an expert then see the examples in the blog by Erin Bromage ( https://tinyurl.com/y83xeygm . The examples of the restaurant, workplace and choir seem to indicate that airborne tran...

The maths is quite straight forward. In an earlier post Alex McFarlane described how (in his experience) you could tell which round you were in at Hastings according to the amount of coughing he could hear. It is just common sense that by restricting contacts you restrict the spread of a virus.

If I play three games in a day, and don't speak to anyone except my opponents, am I undertaking an activity "with" the other 20 players in my section? If an infectious person plays in a 5 round Swiss he is potentially infecting up to another 31 people but if he plays in an all play all section of 6...

All play all sections of 6 players used to be a format used by many tournaments - maybe it's time to turn the clock back?

Lunch and supper are two different events. Perhaps if you locked everybody out at lunchtime at a chess tournament that could count as 2 different events but it looks too much like trying to get round the rules to me.

Yes, 3.19 of the government guidelines is the essential bit.

You could organise a chess tournament with Covid precautions based on APA sections of 6 but (e.g.) ordinary Swiss pairings would result in mingling between groups of 6 and would therefore be illegal.