English Chess Forum

Are there 600 million people who can swim proficiently?

It's probably Hunt's speechwriter. JH was notorious as being the Health Secretary who believed in homoeopathy.

That is very sad news. Before Wimbledon, he was a stalwart for Mitcham (and I'm sure John Saunders will produce a much better tribute). I played him 7 times between 1978 (when he wiped me out) and 2002 when he sacrificed his queen to win. Happily for me the intervening games weren't all like that. H...

"There's a separate thread about the Rapidplay in the Congress Results section; now if you'd have commented there, and failed to mention that I had a won a prize, I would have been upset "

Absolutely!

"in 1950 by Leonard Barden (v. Weaver Adams, 1-0 quickly)" I seem to recall Leonard and Adams had a bit of a theoretical argument in that system, where the American was a bit full of himself, but Leonard rather proved his point! On the Petroff, I have seen a book advertised recently showcasing the a...

"In which case, given that Paul has now enlightened me on the various other league chess offerings in London, sensible people will migrate to the leagues that use increments leaving the London League to wither, won't they?" A fair point, but the London League is the strongest, which is probably an a...

Apart from the gardening clothes, (if they're as good as that) it's frequent rudeness to the unfortunate person doing the prizegiving. You manage to persuade the mayor to turn up then too many of those that actually attend the prizegiving, shamble up, grab the prize and disappear without a smile or ...

" I doubt if any of the 'top' players have played in many Open events (excepting national championships) in any of the last 5 years."

Isle of Man attracted a few...

Watching John Williams (the guitarist) on YouTube last night (a fairly old recording), the TV person introducing him said that JW was a keen and good chess player.

"Hopefully, it shouldn't be a problem, as Stockport is quite far away from Coventry!"

Over 100 miles - it's not like two events in the same town.

On http://www.philip-pullman.com/qas?searchtext=&page=3 Someone wonders why he called a male character "Kaisa", a Finnish female name. He replied that there was a writer on chess called Kaisa and he had no idea it was a Finnish female name as well. I'm not convinced by his spelling of it - the godde...

"Probably. I have heard of some transgender people specifically requesting to be referred to in the plural "they", to avoid masculine and feminine nouns (and of course the word "it" would dehumanise them altogether)."

And "ze", "zhe" and "zie" have also been suggested...

Yes - same from me.

" It's hard to get monthly updates when the tournament organizer doesn't know what month a game was played in." It seems that it might soon be a requirement to give the date the game was played. That is actually quite difficult for internal club championships etc. At the end of the two grading perio...

"I would see the current official process being modernised rather than something more sinister. Club internal events do present a challenge and I think both the grading system and clubs will each have to bend a bit to get monthly grading to work. " I have also received an outright denial from someon...