English Chess Forum

Apart from its soon-to-be attacking intentions I see that 12 h4 also has the significant point of preventing Black from playing ...g5. Only Keith is allowed to play that move in his games. I'm not sure what he would have done had Black opted for 14...c6 15 Rh1 f6, preparing to meet h4-h5 with ...g5 ...

From a quick poke with SF, you could probably still claim that is. SF seems to fairly like the main line with g5/h5/h4 in for black. 4 d4 g5 5 h4 g4 6 Ng5 etc looks very dangerous indeed if white is a super computer - a few nasty ideas over your fine book - but must be essentially fine in practice ...

Jonathan Tait's A Disreputable Opening Repertoire (2022), which covers the Wagenbach Defence as one of its "fun" and offbeat lines. Yes, it's Chapter Five in my book, 48 pages, basically a summary of thirty years investigation and praxis. I think of it as a club players' version of Lev Polugaevsky'...

The Wagenbach System vs the King's Gambit, plus the man himself, was legendary when I first joined a chess club in Manchester in the late 70s. I can believe that János himself was legendary but not 3...h5. He invented that in 1991. I seem to remember there was an article about the Wagenbach System ...

Nice tribute, Peter, many thanks for that. Talking of 3...h5, here's a win against an eleven -year-old Jonah WIllow: [Event "Notts League"] [Date "2014"] [White "Willow, J"] [Black "Wagenbach, JJ"] [Result "0-1"] [ECO "C34"] [PlyCount "110"] 1. e4 e5 2. f4 exf4 3. Nf3 h5 4. Bc4 h4 5. Ne5 Nh6 6. Qh5 ...

Was this a tournament where the first few moves were pre-determined, and how many of those moves in this case? Do we have more moves, or do correspondence players stop at the point that the win becomes more obvious than in OTB chess? I think probably up to 5...b5 (Ulvestad), which then transposed i...

Very sorry to hear that Andrew has died. Someone asked for a game, so... [Event "BCCA Counter-Gambit Tournament"] [Date "2005.??.??"] [White "Dearnley, Andrew"] [Black "Tait, Jonathan"] [Result "1-0"] [ECO "C57"] [PlyCount "45"] [GameId "289008202868"] [EventDate "2005.??.??"] 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3....

I'm assuming "John" refers to John Swain in the above posts, since there's no "h" in "Jon".

As to Roger's question, the records secretary cannot ignore the rules. He has to apply them and then a club has 28 days to appeal. At to that, I applied the rule myself both with the opposing captain after the match and on the LMS website, before then asking whether it was applicable in this instan...

Roger de Coverly wrote: ↑

Sun Nov 16, 2025 12:37 pm

John Swain wrote: ↑

Sun Nov 16, 2025 12:09 pm

In the meantime, the Records Secretary was correct to apply the rule.

Had the rule been ignored would anyone have noticed or complained?

Quite possibly not, but I invoked the rule myself, so...

For clarification, this situation arose in the Nottinghamshire Chess League where Rule C6 states: A player may not be rated more than 150 points above anyone on a higher board at the agreed start of the match (i.e. excluding substitutes). If a substitute is used they may not be rated more than 150 p...

"To put it crudely, we men provide more idiots and more geniuses" is tired old nonsense that gets trotted out time and again. If that's his best bit I don't think I'll bother tracking down the rest.

Seventh was my best ever finish, but if I'd not swapped Pickford out for Raya in the final week, I'd have come fifth. Stupid manager

Neil Graham wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 19, 2024 10:51 am

So thanks to Jon for giving the Week 7 positions - will he be here or not next week as his post suggests?

after this week's results I'll probably have dropped 30 places

Week 7

1 v likely 3 in a row Ben Cullen 51 509
2 The Dispossessed Jonathan Tait 76 494
3 Second Calling Again Blair Connell 56 491
4 Chessticles Jonathan Blackburn 55 486
5 Azul Albatrosses Peter Finn 39 480

for posterity, since I don't expect to stay up there