English Chess Forum

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?

Well done Lancashire (a few times it seems.). Also Yorkshire U180 - that's down to our old U175 captain having a grade that qualified him for U180 this year!

The York evening league is apparently planning on ECF ratings for division 1 but letting division 2 go ungraded.

Amusingly brutal There has I think been a few 5 .. c6 games on Chesspublishing but clearly the warning about that sacrifice hasn't spread down yet. It does seem remarkably effective. Presumably computer generated originally.

Wouldn't be absolutely sure - the live nature of the calculations means that fixing a long standing mistake can be a relatively massive job.

Last I checked my brother still had one of my Woodhouse wins from last season

Good to hear about the league result service surviving. That is very useful.

Very impressed with the Yorkshire open team winning with some of our very top players out this year for various reasons.

I've a reliable report of Yorkshire winning their U180 semi by +3, so 9.5 - 6.5 I suppose.

And yes, the potential preemptive deterrent effect of this kind of fine was what worried me.

I can see why you'd do that of course, but is that really a good idea to encourage future participation in a declining event?

There'll presumably still be a quota of scarily underrated juniors out there

They belong of course. Standard people who are just <2050 is another matter.

Honestly, first and foremost being able to be hired at whatever cost is possible They do awfully well considering.

I know its not your problem, but 200,000 visitors in/around Llandudno? Wow. Really can't imagine where they're all going to stay.

Truro- Trowbridge= 3hrs+ each way, 350 mile round trip. I'm guessing there were similar length journeys from parts of Surrey. A 2pm start would've meant setting off 10.30/ 11am, getting home 9- 9.30pm at best. I can't imagine there were many people there that wanted the chess to last an extra hour....

Why would WR2 choose to play down in the Midlands rather than Doncaster? WR1 has people from a bunch of places, but WR2 is nearly all Yorkshire players. More interesting to wonder whether they split up into 1 or 2 teams, or if/how many of their players get poached by Bradford DCA. My random guesses ...

They did just fine with the pairings under very difficult circumstances.

I hope Bradford can make a better fist of division 2 than last time out!

Great result from Bradford that. Really scary number of teams that could go up from here.