English Chess Forum

Mark Hebden arrived late (by arrangement) and the organizers usually find a volunteer from Guernsey to have the late start, rather than potentially annoy a visitor! It looks as if they dealt with Mark's late arrival by just switching a couple of pairings. If you combine that with a pair of players ...

It appears the two games were separated by the Chief Arbiter under 11.3.1 so that they couldn't copy each other and the games immediately diverged. During play the players are forbidden to use any notes, sources of information or advice, or analyse any game on another chessboard. It's possible that...

If a player has no realistic practical choice on a policy imposed on them by their own government, it seems unreasonable to sanction an individual beyond a default in the individual game. FIDE seem now to be trying to take a much harder line, perhaps in the hope it will put pressure on governments ...

Alex Holowczak wrote: ↑

Fri Oct 18, 2019 11:35 am

We don't know what any of the intentions are/were, no.

It has that typical look of a site that has been reconfigured to look good on a phone and as a consequence looks worse on a PC.

Roger Lancaster wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 17, 2019 11:02 pm

LOL, presumably they had heard that Leeds Castle was in Kent. [There's a nearby village, also named Leeds].

On another thread, Bramley, which is somewhere near Guildford was misidentified as Bromley ( in Kent/Greater London)

Quillan Passing judgement at the Manchester High Court on September 18, District Judge Obodai found the directors had misled investors and deliberately caused the companies to obscure the relationship they had with each other, calling the scheme a “house of cards”. Kirkwood was handed a 10-year ban...

Gholami took nothing to chance and even produced a medical certificate to prove his ‘indisposition’." It's reported in the thread about the World Junior that the organisers took him at his word that he was ill and removed him for the rest of the tournament. https://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic.php?...

One thing that the new administration has got right is to follow other sports in outlawing such discrimatory behaviour. Presumably a Gelfand v Maghsoodloo pairing would not be forbidden in the Isle of Man. Currently they are half a point apart, but both have the same colour and are close on rating,...

From "In fact" in "Prospect" p8 "A chess player can burn up to 6,000 calories a day playing in a tournament, three times what an average person consumes in a day" - source given as ESPN 13th September, 2019. Dominic Lawson used it as the basis for one of his opinion pieces in the Mail https://www.d...

Can we have a straight answer as to whether this post is being funded by membership fees, or by charity? I suspect the answer is neither. Over time, the hundred year old British Chess Federation had built up a pool of invested assets, mostly presumably from legacies. The term "Permanent Fund" was u...

By coincidence this formula (or the equivalent ICU=ECF*10+180) is the same formula Chess Scotland use for converting ECF grades. It's probably not a coincidence as a few years ago, the ECF moved the centre of its grading list from around the 115-120 level to around the 140 level. So modestly graded...

Andrew Zigmond wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 15, 2019 11:55 am

it was a relatively quiet meeting

Did no-one raise a couple of apparent recent anomalies? These being the curious case of the late and reversing finishing order in the Grand Prix and the strangeness of the timing and language surrounding the appointment of the Development Officer?

Luke's got White again, hopefully that'll help. The chessgames site comes up with 5 previous encounters, but none since 2015 http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1598826 http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1669153 http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1670072 http://www.ches...

Massive upsets in Round 1 of the Minor! [FEN "r2qnr2/pb2npp1/1p2p1k1/4P1N1/8/P7/1P1BQPPP/R3R1K1 w - - 2 20"] I was going to suggest that the sacrifice on h7 was a bit suspect, but isn't h4 rather useful? (edit) maybe .. Rh8 is a defence. Instead of the h7 sacrifice perhaps Rad1 to threaten the Bxh7...

You're probably right but I think Sokolov's point is that this is supposed to be a World Championship qualifier and that a lot of the field are below 2500 which should be the minimum rating to be included in such an event. When FIDE next seek organisers and sponsors for a "Grand Swiss", presumably ...