English Chess Forum

For some tributes to Bernard while he was still alive (80th birthday), see the link...

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6674#p140288

Some desperately sad news - I've just been informed that Bernard Cafferty died last night (4/5 November). He had been unwell and in hospital for some time, latterly in palliative care. Bernard Cafferty was a major figure in the game as a player (FIDE master), editor (British Chess Magazine) and writ...

This is the complete score of the game between Agnes Stevenson and Edith Price from the last round of the 1924 British Ladies' Champioship, taken from the Liverpool Daily Post (Saturday 23 August 1924). There were a couple of notation errors but these were easily resolved. Black had a substantial a...

Yes, the poet and the strong (2200+) chess player are one and the same. There's a photo of him at his website (https://www.johnredmond.co.uk/) and I recognise him from when he played for South Wales Dragons in the 4NCL. He played for Oxford in the 1992 Varsity match and he is still an active player ...

James, you too appear to be confused. The author of the 1950 book about Bird's Opening, R E Robinson, is not the same as Sir Robert Robinson, the Nobel prize-winning chemist who co-wrote the Batsford chess book with Ray Edwards in the 1970s, though they both happen to be called Robert and were born ...

Yeah, that was probably the late Bill Frost. His game-inputting wasn't up to much. Here's another astonishing input blunder from the same bulletin. Hard to believe that the inputter was even looking at the screen when entering this move... [Event "GBR-ch89 U12"] [Site "Torquay"] [Date "2002.08.08"]...

I've been doing further work digitising bulletins from the late 1990s and early 2000s and the results have been very positive. The latest one I'm working on is the 2002 British Junior Championships bulletin. ( Link to a PDF copy in the BritBase library .) As well as the games, the bulletin includes ...

Nick - speaking as someone who died several years ago (according to AI), I feel your pain! My first (egocentric) AI enquiry a while back was to ask it what it knew about me and, after a few reasonably accurate observations, it told me I had died (having mixed me up with a North American sports journ...

Graham - I enjoyed reading the commentary on your first steps with ChatGPT. For the sort of work you and I are both engaged in, it should prove to be a great boon. I too have come across some of the quirks of AI that you mentioned (e.g. apparently forgetting how to format 0½ as ½ when you've already...

Richard James wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 13, 2026 11:45 pm

I've found the missing game from the 1913 British Ladies play-off.

Many thanks, Richard. I've added it to the file at BritBase...

1913 British Championship

Bit of a Black Box! Overcomplicate the instructions and it probably tries to do too much. Hitting that sweet prompt spot sounds like the trick. Exactly my own conclusion, Chris. It depends to some extent on which items of data are immediately available for AI to process. Obviously the names of the ...

I've changed my mind again about the effectiveness of using AI for producing PGN files from published bulletins. I've just reused the original ChatGPT commands I had used to produce the 1998 British Junior Championships PGN file to do the same for the 1998 Major Open and this time it ran perfectly a...

If you'd consulted the first post in the thread, Alex, (yes, I'm channelling Stewart Reuben again) you'd have read this... Note that I'm only interested in using AI to process scanned images of printed material, not scoresheets or manuscript chess scores. That's a whole different area and perhaps de...

I don't see any good reason why AI shouldn't be able to interpret any form of chess notation as long as there are no ambiguities or mistakes. Even then, AI can iron these out via Q&A with the client or by consulting an analysis engine to choose between sensible and silly continuations. Indeed, I wou...

Thanks for all the helpful and informative responses. Some matters arising... Graeme's question: ChatGPT is not free after you have submitted three scans to interpret. Thereafter you would have to wait (until the next day?) before submitting more. The subscription is £20/month, though the first mont...