English Chess Forum

Thanks, Alex. I think that this provides a much fuller picture. For all the reasons I gave in my previous post, however, not least the fact that the existing qualification bars are set in a way that (quite rightly) encourages those 65+ players who meet them to play in the strongest possible competit...

Sorry, Kevin. Alex hasn't explained it, at least not fully. Why womens', u-21, u-18, 50+ and sundry other rating prizes, but no 65+ prize, although this is a major FIDE senior age classification, in which continental and world championships are held annually? Ian's point is interesting and maybe the...

While I don't wish to make a big point about this, can anyone explain why in addition to the separate 50+ and 65+ British Championships, there are (rather good) prizes for competition among 50+ players who prefer to enter the 'main' Championships yet no prizes for 65+ players who do the same? This h...

In above, it should, of course, read 'Russian' not as inadvertently written late at night 'Soviet' veterans association. If editor can change this and delete this post, as I'm now too late to do this, I'd be grateful!

For me, too, a very sad loss. I first played against Vasiukov in a simul he gave in Glasgow in the mid-1960s. Since then I've played against him and analysed with him many times in international senior events. He was not just a dangerous and enterprising opponent who retained considerable strength i...

interesting character and some excellent research but is there really any hard evidence that a teenaged Chambers, ether born c. 1845 or c.1842, actually played Morphy at Birmingham 1858? No game or mention of his name, eg in the Loewenthal book on Morphy.

Very quickly ... Reprintsev didn't remonstrate in the slightest. All the emotion came from his opponent. Reprintsev told me he just felt shocked by his opponent's vehement insistence and surprised that any strong titled player would have reacted that way, so he just appears to have more or less give...

Interesting this. I'm staying at the same small guest house as Reprintsev, who told me that he placed his queen a bit awkwardly (and I presume hardly intentionally) on the join between the two squares b5 and a5. It is, of course, ridiculous to even entertain the idea that he didn't mean anything oth...

Is there any car parking area for competitors nearby either on the Saturday or (perhaps more chance!?) on the Sunday?

I would like to echo Anthony's kind thoughts. I don't think I ever came across anyone so in love with absolutely everything about chess, its players of all strengths, its lore and considerable history, or someone as prepared as Nathan Goldberg to undertake the kind of considerable personal and purel...

Many thanks, Tim, for such a fulsome and interesting reply. I think I (continue to) draw the conclusion that while Pulling was certainly worth a mention in 'The Companion', along lines ... a strong London amateur, who seems to have been especially active in the 1830s; who had a reputation for brilli...

First, the 'Companion' was an excellent work, in my view, if extraordinarily ambitious, as Whyld/Hooper recognised themselves. They undoubtedly sought to be meticulous and any question I raise accords with their own words (Preface): '... our best efforts will not have not freed us from all error and...

* 26 May 1866 - "The most rapid, and at the same time the most brilliant, English player of the last thirty years was Mr. Wellington Pulling..." Many thanks due to very many hard-working contributors to this thread, not least Hans, for digging out those Staunton quotes from 'The Illustrated London N...

Even more interesting! Given Staunton's (surprisingly!?) effusive plug for the little-known (certainly to me) Wellington Pulling in 1866, perhaps he really was a much more important figure in chess history than the near silence that most chess historians accord him in the grand sweep of early 19th c...

Interestingly Staunton's 1861 Illustrated London News reference (see above) to Wellington Pulling and the initial 'discovery' of 4...Qh4 against the Scotch wasn't included in his earlier 'The Chess-Player's Handbook' (1847), though I've no doubt the claim is almost certainly correct and that it indi...