English Chess Forum

Wonderfully evocative recollections from Leonard Barden, as always. A link for convenience to the earlier account from Leonard: see here (Re: Oxfordshire v Middlesex 1952). A bonus link to another of Leonard's reminiscences which I had not read before (or had forgotten): see here (Re: Gambit Chess R...

I wonder if anyone knows how good a player Ernest Jones really was. Does he feature in any chess histories of the area? Does Chichester Chess Club have any stories or records from that time? http://chichesterchessclub.co.uk/ Their list of club champions goes back to 1958, four years after the newspa...

That covers all bases, doesn't it? (The link in the second post is to the paper by Jones on Morphy.) Many thanks, Gerard!

There is a very brief mention here of Welsh psychoanalyst Ernest Jones and his psychoanalytical study of Paul Morphy. Does anyone here know more about this or Jones's "passion for chess"?

At move 37, Joe is better. He should win a pawn at some point, and hopefully in such a way as to take a big step towards winning the game! It is not easy though, and maybe objectively White should be able to draw. Re-reading what was said earlier in the thread, if Joe does win, this would be his thi...

Joe's won his last 2 games to reach 5.5/8 He is black in the final round against a 2260 rated IM; I'm not sure if a win would would be enough for a norm, but he's clearly playing well Interesting to read his comments from last year ECF elite junior players reports All those comments are fascinating...

Some of that got played out in public in the pages of ChessMoves (I have recently been sorting through a load of old papers and that was one of the things that caught my eye). Future researchers will probably use some of that material. (Hurst, Reuben, et al.)

Did the top three all lose in the last round? Looks like it!

Thanks, Matt. I had forgotten that clicking b8 gets the FEN for a position (I knew about the 'pos' tags). A reminder (now I've looked it up) is that it is possible to put annotations inside the play-through bit (the 'pgn' tags). Example at the bottom of this thread ('PGN and POS' in the 'News and Su...

Diagrams a bit harder, but pgns for now. Marcus Walsh (ADs) v Richard Lee (Cambridge), round 11 1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. Bg5 Be7 5. e5 Nfd7 6. h4 c5 7. Bxe7 Kxe7 8. f4 Nc6 9. dxc5 Qa5 10. Qd2 Qxc5 11. Nf3 Re8 12. O-O-O Kf8 13. Bd3 Kg8 14. g4 a6 15. h5 b5 16.Bxh7+ 16…Kxh7 17. Qd3 Kg8 18. Ng5 Q...

However, Kevin Spraggett asks whether Nigel has reason to be embarrassed about a connection with Aguinaldo Jaime. Apparently Nigel conveyed an offer to make Mr Jaime a FIDE Vice-President in return for support of Karpov's 2010 Presidential ticket. Heh. Spraggett not pulling any punches and not minc...

India chess player quits Iran tournament over headscarf rule (BBC News)

"Indian chess champion Soumya Swaminathan has pulled out of an Asian tournament in Iran over the country's compulsory headscarf rule."

India chess player quits Iran tournament over headscarf rule (BBC News)

Are you referring to Nigel or David, Justin? Maybe both?

(Oh, best chess players, OK, that makes it obvious...)

And for the classically challenged (most of us): Sutor, ne ultra crepidam.

Was bit shocked to realise that Carlsen is now 27. I had exactly the same reaction Heh. Speaking of which, I clicked on the link again and instead of skipping the advert that YouTube served up, I was transfixed by the sight of Kasparov talking about and explaining his Masterclasses. It is, um, inte...