English Chess Forum

Jonathan Parker has been active in the London league for Cavendish for more than 30 years and plays all comers he does not shy away from anyone as far as I know. https://rating.englishchess.org.uk/players/games?ECF_code=116701H&player_no=116701&domain=S You are quite right, Martin. I forgot to incl...

Back to normal 'Media comments on chess' service: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/nov/02/james-talarico-texas-senate-midterm-elections Five dimensional chess: inside James Talarico’s extraordinary bid to break Texas Democrats’ losing streak Talarico, Minutaglio contends, studied O’Rourke’s ...

Agreed about wire services. Interesting to see here some of the names for the correspondents. Did they get bylines or is this known from other sources? "Most likely with his son" for Tinsley is intriguing. https://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/tinsley.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Ti...

Watching it now and enjoying it very much. The confession that he was not a very good experimental physicist (during his undergraduate degree at UCL) and now on the Cambridge anecdotes (that his mother got his foot in the door for his doctoral studies is a bit shocking compared to how it is done tod...

Not seen that before, no. Thanks, Geoff! It has a run-time of 58 mins so that will be perfect for my next train journey.

Apologies for singling you and Chris Ward out. It does puzzle me how and why some GMs (as you say, often the active ones) decline to lower levels of rating, and some stay relatively high. To take two more examples: Danny King and Jonathan Parker (neither particularly active as far as I know). One ea...

In the beginning titles were actually awarded and didn't depend on norms at all, as I am sure you know. Yes, I did know that. The system of norms was introduced in 1957. Penrose was awarded his IM title under that system four years later, so I do not see how the period prior to 1957 is relevant. Ac...

Gawain did not lead after every round. It was Jonah Willow who led by half a point on 4.5/5 with four rounds to go. Then Jonah drew with Mickey in round 6 and the round 7 clash between Jonah and Gawain (both on 5/6) effectively decided the title because Gawain won and all the four others on 4.5/6 dr...

True. I was thinking more that Gawain manged to win by finding ways to beat Merry, Roberson, Willow and Ghasi. Should probably stop giving opinions before playing through the games... Some big rating gains further down (Cancedda-Dupuis and Khoury). The juniors keep coming (that is where all the rati...

It is a good result for Gormally, someone whose chess I enjoy watching. But too many draws in this event. He did gain a lot of rating points (19) but that may be in part due to starting from a low level. There are other GMs (such as Hebden and Wells and MacDonald) with similarly low ratings in the 2...

Presumably that he was an IM during his actual playing career. And that he became a correspondence GM before he was awarded the OTB title (that must be quite rare). What must be avoided is the term 'honorary' or 'emeritus', as this was the proper deal, the actual title properly awarded. Though as fa...

To be brief; Jonathan was clearly stronger by the spring of 1950, when he defeated all of Bogolyubov. Tartakover and Prins in the Southsea international tournament. To add context to this by quoting from Harry Golombek's report from the BritBase page on this tournament : Now I come to the sensation...

One of the games (from BritBase): [Event "London v Sydney radio"] [Site "London/Sydney radio"] [Date "1949.08.26"] [Round "1.10"] [White "Penrose, Oliver"] [Black "Walsh, Vincent A"] [Result "1-0"] [ECO "C13"] [PlyCount "49"] [EventDate "1949.08.26"] [EventType "team-match"] [EventRounds "1"] [Event...

Many thanks, Leonard. That is a clear demarcation point. I made an error above in saying that Oliver Penrose only took part in the 1950 main British Championships. He also took part in the 1949 event (as you have pointed out elsewhere, he appears in the photograph of participants for that event). I ...

This post was prompted by recently finding out more about Oliver Penrose's playing career in his youth - hence putting this in the chess history section. Firstly, an apology for writing in the history section about a possibly still-active (I think) chess player (Oliver Penrose is 97 this year), and ...