English Chess Forum

If a 1900 players make 4 blunders every 20 moves, and then we have has a string of games without a blunder, you can be as certain as can be of engine assistance (or consultation with better players). I hope you don't seriously believe that, particularly in the context of over the board chess where ...

White plays e8 and his flag falls. What's the verdict? If White has time to physically promote to a rook or queen, it's mate and the precedent of an English junior game of sixty years ago applies, namely that mate ends the game. If not, there's scope for a debate about when a move is completed. The...

I am told the hotel reopens in a few days and the management is hopeful there should be no problem with holding a seniors chess event. They would have to feel confident that no one infectious would get anywhere near as otherwise a hotel full of seniors sitting together for several hours could be al...

Iceland is restarting. There was on piece on the late night BBC news to the effect that the Channel Isles had almost completely eliminated the virus. Their problem was that they had done this by isolating themselves from visitors and this was seriously damaging the parts of their economy that were ...

I presume that this Fair Play Policy is intended to cover events open to all ages, rather than being junior-specific. There's the Chess Challenge version. https://www.delanceyukschoolschesschallenge.com/fair-play-policy-2020/ I do not personally consider it acceptable to delegate decisions on to wh...

The online meeting on Tuesday 26th May entitled Can Online Chess Overcome Cheating? From the website In this webinar, experts discuss the issues around cheating. How is cheating detected? Aren't they missing a question? Start with "What is cheating" or "What behaviour is classified as cheating". So...

Amazing what Geoff finds in his old crop of curiosities. Stamma notation one might suspect. It's an old form of algebraic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algebraic_notation_(chess) Algebraic notation exists in various forms and languages and is based on a system developed by Philipp Stamma. Stamma u...

We collect more data about cases than is available to the public and therefore it could be difficult to understand why something was or wasn't cheating from an outside perspective. The attitude that the definition of cheating is "hard to understand" needs challenging. Over the Board chess is and al...

Interesting quote from back then, not much different now? As far as I recall, that quote is from the late 1960s or early 1970s, just before the Fischer inspired boom. One thing that changed was a small increase in leisure time and the growth in weekend tournaments. Thus generations that might have ...

- I believe our ECF rating system began in the 70s so perhaps there will be someone who still remembers those good old days and how it happened? 1950s, so Leonard probably remembers. With a bit of computational power, likely a challenge in the early 1950s it's not too difficult. You first collect s...

Not that using online ratings would have been that perfect either but you could easily have had an 1800 cut off or something. Given that OTB FIDE Rapid ratings are only as accurate as the frequency of events permits, it would have made sense to include the OTB standard play rating or title as part ...

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Nc3 f6 Don't coaches teach that whilst propping up a pawn on d5 with .. c6 is frequently a plausible idea, that doing the same to the e pawn with .. f6 usually isn't. To confuse matters it's a normal idea in the Exchange Spanish. The problem being, as Jack notes, the tactical...

Report of an experiment in Austria, showing that it's at least physically possible to play at a metre distance.But no leaning over the board.

https://en.chessbase.com/post/long-distance-chess

Chess Congresses and National Chess Leagues escaped the name check, but you can see the point. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8335835/Superspreader-events-choir-practices-responsible-coronavirus-cases.html There is a certain amount of natural distancing at a chess tournament, but it's only...

I’d have thought that getting a computer to play <2000 in remotely realistic manner was very hard, but maybe they’ve got that ‘better’.... An obvious solution for a determined cheat in a rating restricted tournament would be to power up a 1980s or early 1990s stand alone machine. Admittedly that wo...