English Chess Forum

it can be intimidating to be asked after the game why you played x when y was known theory or have your errors or your opponent's errors pointed out. I'm not sure it is intimidating, but 'feedback' is not always appropriate. I would have comments from a spectator immediately after the conclusion of...

My original post was prompted less by the vagaries of league rules, but by the way clubs themselves choose to select teams. I'm very much with other posters in that there are clearly many good reasons why you would not wish to be bound by the player ratings for selection, but I'd not really been cha...

Jon
Were the relegated side still the highest rated players? If not then I think in those circumstances I'd have tried to mix things up a bit. A closed shop regardless of rating would niggle me as well.

One of my players asked me for clarification on our selection policy for the first team and whether it was based on rating. I replied that essentially it was, but you rarely get the top six to start a fixture. He was concerned that without using the data, there might be bias and favouritism. I think...

From

I was playing at Bourne End earlier this season and clearly better until the Open Mic started in the bar area.... I'm the Urban Spaceman is not an aid to concentration. It wasn't so much the volume as the loss of focus.

What would "harnessed" mean in practice? The biggest ones are likely to be the online servers, chess.com and lichess being the most popular. Whilst Covid forced the OTB community to pay some attention to the growth in online chess, I doubt the ECF has much influence. There is a likely duplication w...

As far as I can see this reference to harnessing is a minute of a largely informal discussion, so perhaps those most interested might offer their thoughts directly to the ECF officers involved. That would seem more positive than speculation. Mildly interesting that this has arisen from a discussion ...

It is a discourtesy to those still playing, and I try to discourage it at my own club. It always seems worst at a county match where having half the room cleared (including furniture) while the outcome is unknown grates a little. Nevertheless those doing this often have relatively few volunteers sta...

I assumed John Saunders was replacing the Lancashire cricketers Hornby and Barlow with the names of the local breweries. If John were to return to his own stomping grounds he might well enjoy Rebellion , the Winter Royal is based on the old Wethered's recipe. But Wiki suggests that the quote isn't C...

I wouldn't be too critical of a club proposing a rule change because they might have had a bad experience of the existing rules. Most debates around league rules tend to be decided by what it means for the club that an individual represents, rather than any desire to see the bigger picture. Earlier ...

Bucks League used to have Sonneborn-Berger as a tiebreak method, I wonder how many people (a) knew it was in the rules (b) knew what it meant?

Background information to Motion 2. Current position at the top of Div 5. It's up to the other clubs in Bristol as to whether they are content with the existing scoring. If the league has been running for many years on the current system, they probably are and might not want the AGM's time being wa...

I haven't checked the outstanding counties, but Bucks and Herts are six boards in the top division, and Berkshire is five.

Mike I'd agree with this, but this obviously also comes down not just to the volunteers but also the facilities - we are some way off the numbers needed to regularly book a second room. And of course more league teams, which I suspect is how many clubs would handle the growth, makes it harder to org...