English Chess Forum

"Rows between players and national federations are not uncommon."

True - it's not just England!

"I've probably lived a rather modest life, but this is the first time I have ever had a hotel room with its own sauna."

Wow!

Guernsey have a female player in the "Open" team, which is good.

Ben beat me to it on the Seychelles board order...

"And Wales play Spain, Scotland-Togo and Ireland- South Sudan."

and Guernsey play Algeria, Jersey play Venezuela.

"From what has been told to me, no. For a start, it isn't a case of "offering to host", you had to formally bid. The bid failed because before even thinking about trying to profit from the accommodation, the accommodation costs were too high." What Roger said. To be fair, Alex wasn't involved then! ...

Excessive charges have been a problem in many events in many countries. Didn't England offer to stage the European Team Championship some years ago, only to lose the event as many teams objected to the blatant profiteering relating to accommodation?

"For Sat 10 (R2), Mon 12 (R3), Thu 15 (R5), Fri 16 (R6), Sun 18 (R7) November, for general admission tickets, I got "Tickets not currently available from Ticketmaster"." Admittedly, it doesn't seem likely with this event, but that normally means someone has bought loads of tickets with the intention...

"I suspect it was someone taking iPad "photographs"."

Possibly. You will be as shocked as I was when a young friend told me his mobile phone took better photographs than my proper camera. To get back on topic, Neill has (as always) got an impressive event there.

Looking at the picture in the first post, is that someone in the bottom left clutching a (computer) tablet?

Every time a FIDE election comes along, it reminds me of Tom Lehrer's song about Wernher von Braun, in which he says, "A man whose allegiance is ruled by expedience."

I used to eagerly play the Lopez and score very well with it, but then when I returned to it later, even players graded 70 points lower than me knew enough theory to keep the game going. So David is right. One game in particular I only won as I forgot the theory and it so confused my opponent that n...

"He then used TuroChamp (Turing's chess programme) on a laptop against "seasoned club player Olivia", who as expected won the game." It's worth noting that Alan Turing wasn't being incredibly optimistic with the name there - his colleague was "David Champernowne", so he included both their names in ...

"The programme is being televised on Tuesday 4th September at 9.00 p.m on BBC 4. The programme is called “ The Joy of AI”." This also featured Demis Hassabis talking on AI. Amusingly, one of the AI experts said that the biggest threat to the future did not come from artificial intelligence, but real...

I suggest putting car parking details on the website somewhere. The one off Penrhyn road is a bit confusing to get to (as is the one near the station)and you don't want to circumnavigate the one-way system too much! The big car parks next to the shopping centres do get full at weekends sometimes. I'...

"I don't know how far back it's reasonable to look, but weren't similar incidents alleged to be common practice by the winning side in the campaigns of 2006, 2010 and 2014?" And even the losing side. I was told that one small federation accepted a bribe from one candidate, and in the same election, ...

"No on-site parking and £ 1 per hour elsewhere is something of a discouragement for players outside London. It's not even as unlike Olympia, Kingston is not Central London." And if you use a car, the local council is very eager to punish anybody who strays into a bus lane, or yellow hatched lines at...