English Chess Forum

If when you see him you could confirm whether he is indeed the F. Clough who played Sergeant in the 1959 Championship, that would be good. Thanks.

Yes, as you suggest, I think the rationale for the rule is "sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander." I reject that rationale because the players are not, in fact, similarly situated - only one is in time pressure (as the rule defines it). There is thus no good reason for allowing the non-time pre...

James Coleman wrote:The issue under debate though is whether the opponent should be allowed to stop recording as well...

My apologies - I really must learn to read . . . . OK, now that I understand the issue I don't really see why the opponent should be allowed to stop recording.

I will add that "under five minutes" is a pretty inexact measure of time pressure. Maybe the rule allowing cessation of keeping score should be based on the relationship between the number of moves to be played and the remaining time. Something like, "A player who has to play at the rate of more tha...

If I remember correctly this is the rule in the USA and has been for a number of years. Rules in the USA are often particularly daft and this is one of them. I believe it's the case that you cannot claim a win on time on the first time control if you don't have a mostly complete score-sheet. So muc...

And, I should add to my prior post, that some of the MN4s are actually MN3s.

I'm not sure who is editing this Wiki page but I'm not impressed. You are of course right that the current Wikipedia page is a mess. The reason for this is that Wikipedia's policies forbid original research and publication of material that hasn't been previously published in a "reliable source." Mo...

Great research, all. It seems that the number of living MN3s probably exceeds 30. There are obviously many thousands of MN4s, although a lot fewer than "half of the planet." For example, is Kramnik an MN4? I can't find any games of his against Larsen, Gligoric, or any of the other MN3s that he would...

Wikipedia's listing of Ribli as an MN5 is founded on Taylor Kingston's designation of him as such in his article. Wikipedia's listing of Gligoric as an MN3 comes from the more recent article by Frederick Rhine (i.e., me). There is no article that synthesizes the discovery of the Mortimer connection ...

I'm told that Mortimer's opponents in his last tournaments included Sir George Thomas, E.G. Sergeant, and J.H. Blake. Thomas played Leonard Barden at Southsea 1949, thereby making Mr. Barden an MN3 by yet another route. Sergeant played P.H. Clarke in the 1959 British Championship, making Clarke an M...

For a couple examples of wins from dead-lost positions, see http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1089372 and http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1586845. I was responsible for the latter atrocity.

I think that if you have essentially no chance of achieving anything other than a loss, you should resign. Of course, factors like the strength of your opponent and the clock situation are relevant in making that determination. But it's still hard to say exactly when that point is. After 1.d4 Nf6 2....

According to the study, "the most striking result is that male players, when playing against female opponents, choose about 1 percentage point more aggressive openings compared to when playing against male opponents even when the playing strength and degree of aggressiveness are the same for the mal...

There will be some people with undefined Morphy numbers, for example a group of kids who have only played among each other. But apart from those people, your surmise sounds about right. Similarly, about 12% of actors have undefined Bacon numbers, and 8 is the highest known Bacon number. http://en.wi...

There is an interesting article by chess historian Jeremy Spinrad about Mortimer at http://www.chesscafe.com/text/spinrad02.pdf. Apparently three of Mortimer's last four tournaments were the City of London Championships of 1907-08, 1909-10, and 1910-11. I don't know whether in any of those tournamen...