English Chess Forum

Just wanted to say thanks; it's been enjoyable and thought-provoking to read this thread every day for the last couple of weeks. I'm not going to comment on the selections we made, but I certainly found the arguments and counter-arguments of my fellow selectors pretty useful. Of course, everyone nee...

I remain a little confused by the junior correction, and how best to proceed. When I was a junior, regional/county events were rarely graded. Undoubtedly junior events featuring juniors who are new to the game and/or have played few games against non adults are hard to grade. Could we thus move to n...

Indeed, another blog would be great! I'm pleased too to note some financial assistance for our best juniors. Unlike the Isle of Man event (now sadly no longer with us) or the Liverpool event last summer, both the British and the EU event coming up don't offer any conditions for non-IMs. Not a proble...

Popped into this event yesterday (briefly) about 2.30. Half an hour after the start of play and most seats (50-60 I guess) were already taken. The arbiters appeared to be maning the demo boards, which were easy to follow. That said, perhaps some Robinson money could be spent on getting some electron...

Feel free to post your further thoughts on here too Justin! An a-p-a begins to grow on me if teamed up with Roger's excellent suggestion. A strong international open alongside would keep a lot of people happy I'd have thought. How best, though, to decide who makes the a-p-a: the 12 players with the ...

AFAIK the current qualifying system is a shambles. I can remember people touring the country in the 90s to qualify; who does so now? If you want to play and are prepared to pay £175 it seems that you're in. I'm not sure one can directly 'buy' a place, but it's easy to be on a reserve list for weeke...

That's a good question! Did they both play the British in 1998, or was 1997 Adams' last appearance? I'm not sure that we need to make the British an a-p-a like it used to be (hard for a start to decide on an allocation for each eligible country), but certainly the event is currently a pale shadow of...

Very welcome to finally see a thread on this topic! I always suspect that far too many ECF officials, if not the average player, frankly care very little about our leading players.

Should be a pretty close event IMO. Some typically wild games from the usual suspects so far I see!

I'd certainly include the website as a must have and, if necessary, some money should be budgeted for it. In this modern era, there's surely no need for ChessMoves, although a weekly email could always be sent to members quickly listing and linking to the more important updates on the website. Where...

To answer Tim's point, I've seen a number of players in a game/90 reach move 30 with about 20 minutes left. Quite possibly they should have moved faster earlier, but when the position is then extremely complicated should they play quite quickly, thereby allowing time for a possible 60+ move game, or...

There appears to be an assumption here that the British will remain as it is, but why not split it? A twelve player all-play-all British Championship, a la the Dutch model, or even a 40-50 player swiss, as per Germany, could surely be held annually and usually in London. This surely must have some i...

Further to Peter Shaw's post, the York League is all in either 80 or 90 minutes, the Leeds League 35 in 75 + all in 15, and the Yorkshire League (played on Saturdays) 42 in 105 + all in 15. Both of York and Leeds also have rapidplay leagues. Personally I'm not so keen on all moves in x minutes, unle...

Excellent work by both our magazines! It's good to hear that even many clubplayers who have virtually zero interest in the ECF will at least now know about some of its current woes. I wonder if just a few might be stirred into action?! Actually, I rather think it will be the forthcoming grading corr...

Superb work, David. We're all very fortunate to have you and Stewart rescuing the event at such a time.

Do we need to go further down the line of 'focusing on young talent and coaching at the expense of the rest of the sport' as cycling clearly has? I'm not sure. It seems to me that there are more primary school children playing than ever and there's also a lot of coaching in schools, and not just in ...