English Chess Forum

Perhaps the Torries will stop blocking NHS pay rises after we get through this crisis. The footage of them chortling away on the Conservative benches last time was particularly galling. Would be very nice! I've not had a decent pay rise in years, when we get it, its something insulting like £20 a m...

Very sad indeed to hear this news - I played Adrian several times (I'm pretty sure he smashed me up in every game) and had some interesting conversations with him over a pint at various congresses in the Yorkshire area. I'm not a user of social media and so I had no idea about his illness (plus we h...

"the man wrote in an autobiography that he probably killed somebody" No he didn't - he said he defended himself when attacked. He said something along the lines that “I fully expect I killed him” I remember reading it at the time. You can actually read it at this time if you click on the link Roger...

"the man wrote in an autobiography that he probably killed somebody" No he didn't - he said he defended himself when attacked. He said something along the lines that “I fully expect I killed him” I remember reading it at the time. Suffice to say if I’d seen a go fund me to help bail him out of that...

Totally missed this news until I happened across this, I assume from his more recent twitter posts that CJ managed to keep his house? As for the big A diagnosis he has lived with for 30 years, that must be a horrendous to wake up to each morning - yes medical advances these days do not make it the i...

Yeah, I'm sure a lot of the clock problems were server related rather than people cheating. I do remember one specific time though when I was playing a Spanish guy and he had about 10 seconds on his clock to my 45, then out of nowhere another 1.30 got added onto his clock out of nowhere. I remember ...

It was a nice looking site, but to be honest I always thought it was crap for playing on. Blitz games don't even bother - I remember entering tournaments on a Sunday and I would be playing away with a time advantage and eventually my opponents' clock would hit zero but the game would not end and he ...

Very sorry to hear this, Dave acted as chief arbiter at all of the Leeds congresses we ran before it folded, I always found him extremely kindly, informative and patient with my lack of knowledge in all matters related to running a tournament.

RIP.

I also once had a kid who was playing on with a loan king and 2 pawns against my Q and about 5 pawns, repeatedly announce stalemate (it wasn’t he had pawn moves) at the top of his voice :roll: Did he return it to its owner after the game? :wink: Did the loaned King come from a pawn shop ? :lol: Che...

If its a kit kat with a cup of coffee, I don't particularly object - if its a burger and a pile of chips, well, its not like you didn't just have 3 hours to kill in the break between rounds

Come on folks, let's be a bit more charitable here. We were all young once, even if some of us need exceptionally good memories to recall this. No doubt we all had habits that infuriated our elders. My most annoying experiences have been with adult opponents - and at least they were old enough to k...

I have to say I have come across quite a lot of the aforementioned behaviour with juniors. I don’t know if it’s something coaches are telling them to do or it is something which comes naturally to em, but I’ve dealt with everything from knuckle cracking, annoying noises, clock bashing, piece screwin...

This happened to Leeds Chess Club in the final couple of years. After our base, the North Leeds WMC closed down (that was less than ideal to start with, it has since been knocked down and is now a giant Heron Foods) We bounced around to a multitude of crap pubs and clubs, sometimes several times in ...

Can't remember the moves, but in the 3rd round of the st albans congress a few years ago, I was on 2 points going into the third round (3 rounds on the Saturday, which as I'm sure some of you know is a long day!) After a long think in the middle game my opponent brought his queen next to my king and...

I had quite a bit of success with the Dutch in the minor and intermediate sections - I used to tweak the move order slightly by responding to 1.d4 with 1... e6 and hope for a transposition into a French with 2.e4 (something most QP players don’t usually oblige you with) and then if 2.c4 or 2.Nf3 ju...