English Chess Forum

Geoff Chandler wrote: ↑

Fri Oct 23, 2020 5:15 pm

(wonder why Fischer left it out his M60MG's.)

I think some of Fischer's best or memorable earlier games had already been published, thus M60MG starts with the Sherwin game. I seem to recall something about that in the preface.

MJMcCready wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 22, 2020 11:24 am

But pieces and pawns never can and never could maintain a fixed value.

If you look at a position and want a very quick evaluation as to which side may be better, counting material is a way to do it.

Optimistically, re-scheduled for later in the year may be a possibility. The usual expectation is that the British takes place during the school holiday period. If this year is anything to go by and restrictions or even just "advice" continue to prevent large chess events from taking place, a likel...

MJMcCready wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 22, 2020 4:18 am

Should 'balding' be considered as a verb? Bald is a noun.

It's an adjective as in "a balding man". On the subject of hair, you might also write "a greying man".

Thanks, and so to ask again, wsa Spassky the first world champion to have a computer named after him? It didn't play chess, but there was a gadget called Tolinka which was a database and display system. https://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic.php?t=3243&start=15 Tolinka allegedly means "little Anatoly...

The idea of the ECF having its own online platform, where it could apply its own rules and not suffer infection from the various problems in the outside world, is quite appealing. I expect it would be expensive. Whatever happened to FIDE Arena? That seemed to just set itself up as a rival for indiv...

I suppose you could ask another question: "what chess do we think should be provided that isn't currently being provided by outside operators, and would it be a good idea for the ECF to provide it?". The issue has come up before in a manner of speaking. When it became apparent that the e2e4 organis...

In my opinion, the basic difference between the ECF and those other bodies is that the ECF doesn't organise the chess directly. We should bear in mind that having the ECF directly organise more things incurs a financial penalty of up to 20% and possibly higher in the future. The point being that th...

I think it is a bit problematic that the chess sites are toothless against free anonymous users, who can simply create a new account. If you know the handle, it's possible to find out whether the account has been banned. For sites charging a fee for use, they have a financial incentive to allow rep...

The problem being that the rules of the competition in which he was playing allowed the consultation of books during play.

What chess.com appear to have detected was that the analysis in the books had been created with engine assistance.

The providers have a pretty good idea of whether you are losing focus to see the football results, check E-mails or cheat. It isn't rocket science, nor is it infallible, but it is based on a vast level of experience and it is very good. Why isn't that a definition of spyware? In other words how doe...

Matthew Turner wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 19, 2020 5:29 pm

I was thinking more about legal action against the 4NCL, ECF or UKCC, rather than the service providers.

There seems empirical evidence that a ban or suspension issued or supported by one of the three doesn't apply to the other two.

I would say with high confidence that they hold these 2 additional parameters. (especially the second one, this catches most incompetent cheaters, but also once caught a dorm who were analysing their friend's game from the same IP) Providing real time analysis which can be seen by the players is su...

When I looked, I don't recall juniors being the main culprits. It's a second order effect. You have adults playing juniors whose ECF grades are broadly in line with the results they achieve, but whose FIDE ratings are well on the low side. The consequence is that the ECF grade can hold steady, but ...

Excluding the noise at the lower end, when I correlated the ECF and fide databases, the linear formula was more like 7.5x+600 rather than +700. The plus 700 formula is not that old and was based on a goodness of fit between grades and ratings. The discussion will be archived on the forum. The break...