English Chess Forum

I dislike, even to this day, doing puzzles from books and magazines with Black to play and have to solve them 'upside down.' In helpmate problems, it's conventional to have black move first, which means both sides make the same number of moves. It somehow seems more appropriate for a helpmate probl...

I've seen similar instances of this before, involving transpositions, but their occurring in this way makes it particularly easy to illustrate. If evidence of the Ken Regan and similar programs was ever to be subjected to a determined attempt in a court of law to discredit it, this inconsistency of...

My earlier post was to offer a puzzler and point out that the Black move preceding the checkmate does not have to be a Bishop move it could be a king move but not in Roger's position.

JustinHorton wrote: ↑

Tue Jan 05, 2021 9:13 am

The previous move must necessarily have been ....Bg8

not so generally but in Roger's position yes !

David Sedgwick wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 01, 2021 10:36 pm

arbiting duties

Are English Arbiters self employed suppliers of services and are they affected by any EU rules post Brexit when working in the EU?

My only dispute with this characterisation is that, in my experience, after years of bolting bits onto a program there comes a point when even its creator may lose track of exactly how it works. In one of Ken's papers he speaks of 28,000 lines of C++ code, which professionals in the field tell me i...

Whilst waiting for my cup of tea to cool, I looked at my database again and found several other James Sherwin opponents, born before 1900. The earliest born was - Lewis J I Isaacs, who was born in 1878. However we are unfortunate in that he was born on 21 Dec, meaning that the gap is more likely to ...

Well I checked out James Sherwin to see if in his long chess career he has played two players born more than 120 years apart and came up with these 2 games. Firstly in 1951 according to my database in an event in Syracuse he played against Marcel Duchamp, the French artist and chess player. Duchamp ...

I joined a club in South Manchester in about 1963. Some of the members were well into their eighties. At least 1 member said he fought in the second Boer war which was about 1900. He would have had to have been born 1882 or earlier. More recently I played a junior in a local Blitz, who was born in 2...

In connection with the original thread title only, it might be worth looking at Tony Kosten's record. I don't have any games of his before Manchester 1981 but next time I looked in about 1990, at age approx 32, he was a GM. Relying on memory here so will check and repost if incorrect unless someone ...

What should an arbiter do if a player, instead of completing his K-side casting, just moves his king to g8 and press the clock? Treat it in the same way as they would any other illegal move. Tell the player the move was illegal, put the king back on e1/e8 and tell the player he has to play a legal ...

MJMcCready wrote: ↑

Thu Sep 17, 2020 3:59 am

Use of "trouser" as a singular noun is not unknown.

As in trouser leg.

Surprisingly, given the strength of the line-up, that's the first game score from the 1964 Southend Premier that I've seen. Hello John. If you want to punt some time tracking a few game scores down you could try looking in the relevant range of Shakmatny Bulletin. I used to take that mag between ab...

pseudo collective words -

A variety of arbiters was/were queuing outside the local curry house for their dinners. Is variety singular or plural ?

I played Norman in about 1970. His writing was very unclear and the letters variable making it difficult to read, which we had to, to check on the number of moves made. Still it was way better than mine though ! Much more likely to be Bobs.