English Chess Forum

Very sad news. I first played against Julian in the 1971 British Ch, a round 1 draw. He was a tricky tactician who played awfully fast and always for fun. He was also great fun and, of course, awfully good at the law. True top GM class there, as I recall, having once had to read one of his extremely...

I feel sure that Jack Rudd and Tim Harding's instincts (plus detailed points) are right and that the 'English' popularity, especially propelled by Staunton's early and quite skilful interpretations of the opening in the match v St Amant eventually led someone to naming 1.c4 'English Opening' but as ...

For the historic record: the defensive technique (N v BB) used most clearly in the Arkell-Lagarde game was all known and published at least as far back as the 1960s. The key endgame bible then was Cheron's work. You place N on a fianchetto square, say g7; then if your K can safely reach f7/g6, the w...

Many happy returns, Leonard! You have done so much for chess over the years and the quality of your chess journalism in The Guardian continues to set the very highest standards to all chess writers, bar none.

1976 The National Bank of Dubai Evening Standard London Chess Congress had 250 players for 6 rounds. Bojan Kurajica was the lone winner with 5.5./6. Fake news!? Or simply some other tournament?! I can quite categorically confirm that I finished outright first in that 1976 Bank of Dubai / Evening St...

Intrigued, I contacted a German friend, whose origin is Czech and who knew Janata when they were both youngsters in Prague. He says that mutual friends told him that Michael Janata died of cancer and confirmed that he had studied Arabic and Swahili. A sad loss.

Isn't the FIDE response only likely to annoy the Argentine Federation? And perhaps quite rightly. Given the clarification of the actual (measured and not inappropriate) ECF interest in chess in the overseas dependencies (which are not FIDE members), by an earlier (1 June) post by Angus French to the...

Kuindzhi is sometimes spelled Kuyindzhi so check both on databases. He's played quite a few world senior and euro senior championships, certainly including 2016. I played against him in the 2011 world seniors where he had a 2400+ rating - a draw, he played a highly risky Schliemann Defence (or is it...

Titles and norms can certainly be made at senior and euro individual champs by top three finishes and, of course, if you score a regular IM or GM norm by rating it counts. Not sure of all details but certainly winning world seniors = GM title if you haven't already got it .... Vladimir Okhotnik and ...

Thanks, Tim, for the wider 'British' plug. Keti's result was especially good at her first 50+ entry. For the record, this wasn't my 'best' result in these events although I don't keep (close) track of these things. The vagaries of the pairings in such large Swiss events mean that I only gained a rel...

Eric's death saddens me, too, although I've been as aware as many others that his health had been very poor for quite a long while. He was indeed a very calm, intelligent, many-sided, creatively talented and simply likeable person, who I first met when he invited me to play at an International tourn...

Thanks, Michael: I did indeed rather miss the additional phrase in 3.8.2 re: castling - to the effect that castling is 'counted' as a move by the king (although I still find that a somewhat counter-intuitive notion, not least because most of us castle not just to play a desirable king move but also ...

As 3.8.2 (thanks, Michael) in fact already actually defines castling as a king and rook move (albeit 'requiring' the king to be moved before the rook), I guess that all I'd suggest is that 4.4 c (quoted very early in this thread) requires some further amplification. As 4.4 c makes clear (in the cont...

Stewart/Geoff Just to tie up my thoughts on this: I'm quite happy with the current rule that requires a king move (only) on illegal castling. I think the rules should, however, spell out that this is based on a convention that in effect considers castling to be a king move (and not a uniquely dual k...

Tim: very quickly, yes such a payment request has gone out to at least one other of the Scottish entrants but I haven't (yet) had one. It is irritating that the organisers apparently won't accept credit cards, as this has been pretty well 'standard' even in cases where the organisers 'required' all ...