English Chess Forum

Strictly, the Free Silver memberships for the GigaFinalists shouldn't have been included in the 2016-17 season since the associated games won't be graded until the Jan 2018 ECF grading list. Notwithstanding the alleged row a few years ago between an ECF Director and an ECF Manager, I thought it was...

Michael Flatt wrote:The decline in those taking out Junior Bronze membership would seem to indicate that there is insufficient benefit to continue in that class. Should it be abolished?

Relatively few junior only events are structured as leagues, most get classified as tournaments.

that is good for English chess? The context is mass participation events for inexperienced juniors. These are more often than not organised as individual Swiss events even where participants are present representing their schools. By the nature of the event, for some players it may be their first a...

LawrenceCooper wrote:Matthew Webb "7. ... h5 is a novelty I believe.

It's a move recommended by engines, but it has been played before, but probably not in any British event.

The first recorded example is from the Bavarian Championship of 1986.

ECF Summary PLATINUM MEMBERSHIP PAPER Council confirmed that it would like Platinum membership to remain in its current form; the proposal in the paper was accordingly amended such that the Board would investigate tax-efficient ways of raising funds for the Chess Trust. It appears the proposal for ...

If anyone was to think of, say, giving free chess sets to every school in the country the market consequences seem to have been considered containable. Perhaps you were thinking of the ECF's fiasco a few years back, as documented in the archives of this site. That failed because the capacity to pro...

A woman is filling the form for me and say it Needs the address and phone number of the place of residence, what shall I do? If the "form" is the entry form for the tournament, your address in Iran. It's so the organisers can send stuff through the post, but they probably wouldn't bother ...

The critical position, it seems, is after 27.Rb5 Bd8?? which is a failure to rise to the occasion - 27... a6! would have put the question to both players. I certainly missed 27. .. a6 until an engine found it for me after the game. It goes on to suggest that I take the Knight on a5 and then give up...

[Event "Crewe Major"] [Site "Crewe"] [Date "2017.10.15"] The Open was using duplicate scoresheets. Are the games likely to be published? The chess-results server could be used, given its capacity to store pgns. Here's my first ever win against Mike Surtees. For once I ...

I really don't like time controls being determined by what the clock can handle. Fact of life though. The FIDE 90 30 standard was originally going to be something like 40 moves in 75 minutes with an extra 15 added and 30 second increments from move 41. The 1990s Mk1 DGT wasn't able to handle this. ...

Another significant difference is that the 3000 tells you which session you are in. I consider that a big plus. For playing hours of four hours or less, you should probably scrap intermediate time controls and only have one session. That way you avoid the grey area where the clock doesn't properly ...

What happened to Slough? Ben Purton took over the management of the squad and renamed it first to Slough Sharks and then Sambuca Sharks. A merger with Grantham followed to create today's Grantham Sharks. He also uses the name "Sons of Anarchy" for the rapidplay squad (this year's winners)

Which teams have been around the longest in the 4NCL? Barbican were there from the beginning, but took a break in the third season when the BCF tried to set up a rival league. The initial 6 from 1993-94 were Invicta Knights Maidstone Barbican Covent Garden Slough North West Eagles Bristol Bristol (...

Stewart Reuben wrote: 'Breaking the stalemate'?

Dictionaries give two meanings to this, one being where it is used as an alternative to "deadlock" and the other as the technical chess term.

http://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/stalemate

I have to agreed with Alan here, that we need to be looking at for the 4ncl and big british events to used the DGT 3000 They all went digital years ago. There's not a lot to choose between the DGT2010 and DGT3000 other than the display of seconds throughout the game. It's Congresses, Leagues and ot...