English Chess Forum

That's interesting - in 1978 the Greeks were still in the final days of the demotic v katharevousa issue (basically whether to use the ordinary everyday modern Greek or to try and "clean" it back to the proper Greek of old). The attempt was officially abandonned in 1976, but still lingered in place...

My (not very comprehensive) Modern Greek dictionary gives σφυρα as both a feminine word for hammer and neuter plural for ankles (distinguishable by a difference in where the stress is). Rather puzzlingly it does not list the singular form for ankle, that would be σφυρο(ν) [the final ν (n) is now fr...

That's an interesting article you linked to, John. I must admit that I doubt that I would have got the answer however much time I had. The same newspaper article that contained the quote mentions McDonnell playing 1...Nf6 as Black (perhaps I should say "the second player") and continuing with 1.e4 N...

I'll try the eponymous player of the other Bishop's pawn then - Henry Bird?

I would guess Howard Staunton, on the grounds that he often began with the Queen's Bishop pawn.

It's slightly weird. As has already been pointed out the piece images are giving 403 errors but if you access them directly in then address bar with https then they work fine (eg https://www.saund.co.uk/pgn4web-3.03/images/merida/36/bk.png ). The first complaint on the https page is about the twitte...

For the record, my copy of the OED (published 1979, copyright 1971) has this statement regarding the derivation of the chess sense of rook: "The ultimate source is the Pers. rukh , the original sense of which is doubtful". I don't have access to the 1752 edition, for the good reasons already mention...

Did he order Falk beer over the counter?

The bookmark function on the ECF grading website doesn't seem to work correctly. It is quite annoying not being able to directly copy the url of the page being viewed. For some obscure reason the function was deliberately decommissioned a few years ago. It is indeed annoying. I believe that the boo...

I too was bemused by the photo and when I saw your post I thought I'd dig a bit deeper (by which I mean I Googled the photo). Apparently the photo contains a Star Wars reference (I assume the big thing that looks vaguely like a knight's head, though I could be wrong). This link has more details: htt...

This is very sad news. Rudiger was always very friendly and he will be greatly missed by all the Guernsey regulars. RIP Rudi.

These memorials are observed by some Christian communities, as I know from Orthodox friends. I have only heard them described by the time period, for example "40 day service (or memorial)". If there is a technical word in English, l haven't heard it .

Thank you for the information, Chris. That must have been a real headache for Mike, I hope the events go well.

The 4NCL web site gives Harben House as the venue for this event - I assume that the venue has changed since the original announcement?

I know that as the Vaganian Gambit