English Chess Forum

No trouble James, thanks for clearing it up.

Thanks Carl

Jonathan Bryant and I have played a couple of training games in the Caro-Kann recently. After the first, I looked up top-level games that followed the same line and found this one - by move 14, McShane's opponent had played 7...Qa5, 8...Qa6, 13...Qb6 and finally 14...Qd8 [Event "43rd Olympiad 2018"]...

James - we've never met in person, though from memory we've had a couple of friendly interactions on Twitter relating to my handle (wmiltti) and the coincidence that Jon mentioned up-thread. On your latest post, I don't really gamble, I certainly don't recall ever having a £100 bet with anyone about...

A Twitter friend (Martin Justesen, otherwise known as @saychess1) has just released a book containing 50 endgame positions to solve blindfold. I’ve had a copy to review, he’s clearly spent a lot of time on it - the first few positions are very simple, others are much harder. It’s available on Kindle...

Herts are playing a formal-ish 45+15 league on lichess - round 2 was last Tuesday.

It’s been done - a couple of years ago - by the Sesse supercomputer

Article

Sesse analysis spreadsheet

An idea that's well worth considering against the Winawer is 4. exd5. A kind of delayed Exchange. I've never played it. Why, as I was recommending the Exchange upthread? Because, in playing 3.Nc3, I need to be prepared for ...Nf6 and indeed dxe4, as well as the Winawer. And that's too much work. I’...

Yes - me too. And this puzzle was more "approachable" than some of the others. Indeed - I find that if their video is 20 minutes or less I can usually solve the puzzle (thought not in 20 minutes!) - if it’s more than half an hour there’s usually no chance, though I have managed a couple of the hard...

Don’t know if anyone else has watched the “Cracking the Cryptic” videos during lockdown - it’s a couple of crossword and Sudoku experts solving puzzles, I find it (surprisingly?) watchable. Their latest is entitled “The puzzle that Carlsen and Nakamura haven’t solved (yet)” ( link ) and it’s a Sudok...

My club (Letchworth and Hitchin) have a member called Jon P Barnes. 20 miles away, playing in the same league, St Albans have Jon A Barnes - they have played each other at least once that I’m aware of, probably more. And they’re both currently graded 147!

With the event having just ended, I'd like to thank the organising team from Hull for all their hard work. Having organised one or two [smaller] events myself, I can testify to the considerable amount of time and effort involved. It has been really appreciated. Seconded, I really enjoyed the tourna...

Any chance of anybody explaining sigma to the non-scientists Don’t know if I’m going to help or not but I’ll give it a go. As Jack mentioned, sigma refers to the standard deviation - this is basically just a measure of how much a given quantity varies from the average. Taking male height as an exam...

There’s an article (in Swedish) here

Appreciate it’s not exactly the main story right now but a few people have asked me why I’ve still got Nepo as a warm favourite even though MVL beat him in their individual game so wins the first tiebreak. The main difference is that Nepo has 4 Whites to come where MVL has 4 Blacks - the model makes...