English Chess Forum

3C's not all home grown for a change either mind - and a very solid looking line up as a result. That's definitely been a dangerous weekend for Manx, passed through nicely. The bigger question maybe whether they're going to reinforce even further when it gets really serious. The theoretical ability ...

Very sensible - I'll add one thing here. It definitely isn't me after perfect grades. I'd be very happy with the original letter style vague things. Trying to micro track local fluctuations worries me a bit more (a lot more conceptually except I don't care much!) than whatever we do to give new star...

Far better to have more current information influenced by recent play available to see, rather than an out of date version. The idea of out of date information is very dodgy for chess players. What loads of chess players do - and this is fairly trivial to verify - is improve for maybe 5(?) years th...

For people playing 30+ games a year, its absolutely fine :) If they only play say 10-15? Much trickier. You either allow games 2-3 years old, which is somewhat against the 'idea' of such frequent grading lists or accept very significant randomness. The Yorkshire grades for really active (50+ year) p...

I don't really care one way or the other. I do wonder who would use monthly grades. More or less no one in Yorkshire when we had continuous grades. They were either profoundly unstable - new people! - or fairly obviously noise (everyone else). All the leagues etc just used the grades achieved at th...

Magnus making a mess of the ending. Not on top form in this match. May still pull things round, but some decline or complacency seems apparent. I hardly think its complacency, he admitted before the match he wasn't as sharp as a few years ago. He is still getting good prospects in some games, but i...

Wow Deeply impressed.

Brilliant result for Bradford today Great to see them back at 8 players this time round, too.

Guildford keeping the highest 8 board average grade, although Manx clearly serious

Indeed no Manx for the final weekend and something resembling an APA adopted - with a print out explaining it at length Seeded to keep the top seeds apart until late on etc.

Impressive work from the arbiters, but they'll have to work to keep it together.

Well I guess if they want to get a second team promoted, they'll do it.......

I wonder who's behind that Bolton & Worsley team? Could easily be OK, probably not likely to be too strong. Id imagine it's Nigel Short, David Norwood, Jeff Horner, Mike Surtees, Harry Lamb and some Worsley player You forgot McPhillips :) I'm not daft enough to quibble their historical strength! Bo...

I wonder who's behind that Bolton & Worsley team? Could easily be OK, probably not likely to be too strong.

At least White Rose 2 coming down gives us one (very) credible promotion candidate Enough teams that would do OK as a second.

Sounds right to me

Many chess players seems to be creatures of stoic habit and (as you say) considerable residual loyalty, which I think is enough to explain why people do it. Otherwise how many would put up with evening league playing conditions?