English Chess Forum

One special condition seems unique to this event. Players must record their move before pressing the clock. Including players who continue to record moves despite being below the ‘five minute’ marker. This is to mitigate the risk of transgressing distancing rules when it is your opponents move. I h...

Sorry to hear it. He always struck me as a very kind and decent man.

RIP Bernard.

Ok, let me rephrase. It's possible that Lichess (and other sites) actually do a very good job of detecting outside assistance, it's possible that the vast majority of those banned are done so correctly. Is there evidence to contradict that? On the other-hand we have caution correctly urged when som...

First let me say I'm not clear on exactly why teams have withdrawn. It may be that reasons vary somewhat. Having said that, to withdraw a whole team rather than to field a different player... doesn't sit well with me at all. You can play on under protest but you play. Not doing so seems disrespectf...

Tan Zhongyi's appearance for Kings Head must be worth a mention. As a minor correction to the pgn I presume her 22nd move against Stoyanov was Bb5 and not the spectacular 22..Bb3.

Could you definitely convince a court of that, absent any demonstration of the alleged method? I would rather suspect it's the case that you couldn't, even on balance of probabilities. If on the other hand, you were a selector, either for a team or for a representative competition, would you want t...

I think there's an obsession with accuracy now though. A lot of it stems from computers and all these websites like chessbomb. I said in a video I just filmed that accuracy is a bit of fallacy in chess, because the game is so complex. Look at the london classic fide open lots of horrible blunders g...

I'm guessing, by the way, that with the use of computers we could come to some kind of conclusion about the comparative strengths of players today and x years ago, but it'd involve the input and analysis of a very large number of games. The site Chessdb does a weaker form of this, by taking a, pres...

I do think you need to err on the side of caution when it comes to accusations of cheating. False accusations are no small matter in my opinion and I imagine it's is best to report suspicions to arbiters and hope they are caught at some point. At some point though, when results exceed a certain (ext...

Publishing his losses for no particular reason seems rather bad form to me. I'm not a great admirer of the magazine and am yet to see the latest issue, but at least in principle I can see the point of publishing games of people currently in the public eye who we didn't previously know were players....

Lots of clever people like chess but will never dedicate enough time to it to become strong players. Publishing his losses for no particular reason seems rather bad form to me.

Might be a useful contact for the ECF if he retains an interest in the game, hope someone takes note.

I wish you applied this level of scrutiny to your own tournaments rules and regulations. I'm still waiting for the grounds on which you refused to refund my wife the difference in entry fee when she changed from the open to the lower section at Northumberland, since you did not inform her of any su...

I have received a reply from Non-Executive Chairman Julian Clissold today. It is breathtaking in its blatant misrepresentation of my complaint, and the way he ignores the Elephant in the Boardroom: That the directors who consider the complaint (or appoint a complaints panel) should not be the same ...

Anybody remember this? Well, now Chess.com have picked on me. Why? I have, literally, not the slightest idea, not least because they do not say. I am really very angry about it. Do read about it, here . (And here , here , here and here .) All questions are welcomed. A pgn file is available on reque...

Oh this actually starts tomorrow, not much rest for those who played IOM. Looking at the team lists there seem to be quite a few big names missing, could be as good a chance as England are going to get. Best of luck to those playing.