English Chess Forum

I’m going to give it a look - they all seem to be pretty decent players and very enthusiastic about their chess.

If it takes off I’m also looking forward to fielding the “x on Chess Masters was pretty good - could you beat them?” from friends and colleagues!

From a previous thread on Rachel Reeves - an example of her play (against me, many years ago!) Rachel was in my age group as a junior and we played in a number of the same tournaments - I have a couple of games against her in my old scorebooks. This is the better of them, from almost 20 years ago: [...

John Upham wrote: ↑

Mon Nov 20, 2023 11:09 am

Matt Fletcher wrote: ↑

Sun Nov 19, 2023 10:48 pm

It doesn’t exactly tear it down but I find 4. dxc5 followed by 5.a3 usually works OK for me.

Do many of these games go

4...Sc6 5.a3 Se5: 6.b4 g6 7.Lb5+ Ld7 by any chance?

Yes, that sort of thing.

Recently I've been having some sightly better games against black with the advance variation (I say "better" because it's such an anti chess position that a negative opponent will often find ways to squeeze any life out of the game) but the one scummy system I've not found an answer to and has rest...

It’s been posted on the chess in media thread, but I think this chess sudoku by Christian König is special enough for its own thread. The sudoku is pretty trivial, it’s really more of a chess construction puzzle which might appeal to some here. The idea is that you’re part way through a game of ches...

Definitely thought yesterday’s interview with Niemann was worth watching (and it was good that they gave him time and space to speak). I found the cheating bit slightly hard to follow but I think it was: OTB: never Online for money: one Titled Tuesday aged 12 Online casual: when aged 16 to increase ...

Although it doesn't affect the players named, the seeding order given on the ECF website is wrong. The tournament rules say the seeding order is higher of ECF/FIDE rating which significantly changes the seeding below the top few players in each event. The tournaments start tomorrow. Seemingly the s...

Wow, that’s even more special!

Played a rapid game last night where my opponent got one set of isolated tripled, one set of isolated doubled, and two other isolated pawns by move 16.
Wondering if anyone’s ever seen a worse pawn ‘structure’?

Nice puzzle!

A Google search using the FEN suggests it’s by Boris Sidorov - see here (towards the bottom of the page)

Matt Mackenzie wrote: ↑

Sat May 22, 2021 11:48 pm

Nikolai Krogius is AFAIK still alive, also 90-ish.

Krogius is number 3 on the list, a couple of months younger than Matanović.

JustinHorton wrote: ↑

Sat May 22, 2021 8:48 pm

Out of interest, who's in second place?

You can order the list of GMs on Wikipedia by date of birth, then check there’s no entry in the date of death column. Looks like the answer is Matanović who turns 91 tomorrow. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandar_Matanović

Although... I then did the same for my last blitz opponents and got average blitz of 2336 vs average rapid of 2333 (with a range of +/-200). More detailed analysis needed I feel...

2) I’m not sure about blitz vs rapid conversions on lichess - I’m playing more 10+0 rapid recently, my opponents are typically 2200-2300 in rapid and rarely much over 2000 blitz. I think there’s a bigger gap at that level than the table suggests between the two (at least 100 points, possibly more)....

John Upham wrote: ↑

Mon May 17, 2021 2:54 pm

I do not have this book but maybe someone can look :

I refer you to my previous answer...