English Chess Forum

It seems a slightly odd combination. Its quite right that you'd need to move a lot of cultural levers round venues, clubs etc to properly change anything but then it expects all the measurable results to occur within 4 years. Rather optimistic time scale to - eg double female participation - that is...

With some reason of course.

He is also really not that young anymore - and has been pro since he was 12(!) - so you can definitely see why he might react this way.

Well it all worked well in the end

Bradford A to go up if they keep that strength of team, you presume, no idea who'll go with them. Shropshire?

J'Adoube appear to be more of an effort to combine teams for numbers than to field strong ones.

I think that’s all the LNER trains - preplanned engineering works. The Leeds train is an hourly, 45 minute service so really is a silly journey and not precisely reliable. Pick ups from Sheffield station or something perhaps, but getting back on Sunday has to be a real worry. The river isn’t due to ...

I think they might be being optimistic about those Manchester to Doncaster services. The big thing is that Sheffield to Doncaster is out, with no estimate for a time to reopen. So it might be back tomorrow, maybe not. (That's the main Manchester service) Leeds/York to Doncaster have got some service...

Ah. The trains are fine over the Pennines by getting into Doncaster is very hard right now. I'm definitely not sure about trying it at the moment.

Looking at the online flood warnings, its just about clear. It hasn't peaked in Doncaster yet mind.

The trains are utterly wrecked at the moment, I'm not sure how many people that affects.

There's a typo of points for opponent (the second points). Then its really quite a clear way to describe it I think? Might need to emphasise that it is the match point each opponent achieves after the final round. I did briefly think it might mean match points in the round you played them - you coul...

Thanks for that paper. Maybe it was a real problem. I do wonder how on earth they expected the change to stick. If someone is playing at a grade X vs a roughly stable field and you differentially uprate all their weaker opponents, they'll inevitably directly benefit from that. That certainly seemed ...

Depends how active people are.

What isn't really arguable is that 95% of club players hit a level fairly fast and then stick on it for a very long time. Fluctuations to and fro as life intervenes of course.

It was meant to be something that wasn't sorting itself out 'naturally'. The threads I could see on here weren't super informative. Anyway. 2008 if you're really interested for some reason. Not really advised :) Purely curiosity - especially with the big changes already done/coming! - but I'd actual...

It was something like that yes. Basically trying to close a gap that had seemed to develop between weak(er) players & stronger ones. The immediate change obviously adjusted that. It does have to be said that there were then a few years where the immediate effects of the change quite obviously worked...

Something like that, yes

Obviously this is fundamentally a daft argument given we all agree that you're essentially guessing, but a priori I do think that opposition strength should be marginally useful information. I suppose possible to check in theory.

Let's apply your logic from the other direction. A player walks into your club and claims to be from a country you were sure was still part of Russia. You put him on board 5 in Division 3, and he easily beats a couple of children graded 38 and 49. Do you therefore let him enter the Under 100 sectio...

Hummm, I'm not sure you know. I think team captains tend to have a decent idea how strong players are, and that determines the strength of the field they play to a fair extent. Also people entering the 'right' part of Open tournaments. Seems like information to me. Weak, but information. Not got any...