English Chess Forum

To balance matters, given one Anglo-Scot chess player's glowing take on the 'Yes' side in the forthcoming Scottish Independence referendum (quoted a few posts above), here's one from another lifelong chess playing Anglo-Scot, an old Glasgow school-mate and fellow Glasgow University graduate. From to...

In a perhaps slightly sideways bid to bring back poor old 1946 British Champion R F Combe centre stage, and return to the original issue about the value of (trying to) emulate great players' playing styles, I think he'd firstly say, "Yes, essential for any step change in self-improvement." He'd stre...

Keen to hear about Houdini's take on "style". That style has some real meaning in chess is clear, at least in my view, but it's hard to define, pin down to any actual chess-player and is chimeric. In the introduction to my recent Everyman Chess book "Chess Secrets: Great Chess Romantics", I quote th...

I have been in touch with the ECU and the regs for the Euro senior individual champs incorporating new "Senior 50+" and "Senior 65+" groups for men in the "Open" sections (previously males, but not women had to be "over-60" to be "seniors"; women seniors were "over-50s") have now indeed just appeare...

Ken, I don't want to be too cautious (and I know that these regulations, drafted by the tournament organiser, "exist" ... and have been part of recent process that has helped sort out the application of the new "Senior 50+" age applicability for the event). BUT these regs have still not yet been bac...

I note the reference above to sundry international players, including passing Scots, in next weekend's 4ncl rapidplays. Sadly, as a Scot, however, I can indeed confirm that I'll be charged the £6 fee for "non-ECF members" for the privilege of crossing the border to take part. Actually I'm informed ...

http://www.chessscotland.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=260#p2094 I just posted the above at the ChessScotland Forum. And since I spent some time looking into this, I might as well open my request for any further information on Gilg's time in Scotland more widely. As you will see, the BCM website rec...

Hm! I see that Matthew, at least according to FIDE's transfer data, retains some non-existent thing called English (ENG) "citizenship". Maybe FIDE has already decided that the eventual Scottish Independence referendum can only go one way!? Scary, or maybe just one further example of FIDE's occasiona...

Re: Brendan Brown's post The Morphy marriage rebuff story has, I believe, little or no solid substance behind it - best we have on that is David Lawson's book on Morphy (now reprinted / edited by T Aiello 2010), which could establish no basis for it ... and he spent half of his life on the research....

In contrast to John Clarke, I'd suggest that it's at least as "dangerous" to speculate on the putative outcome of a Fischer-Karpov match that (to some extent with hindsight) it's evident was never going to come about (for a vast range of chess and especially non-chess reasons)! But I'd definitely do...

This is a fascinating thread ... it's surprising that so many people seem to think that the rating system is all that reliable an indicator of "strength". It's particularly skewed by "historical" performance. Say you start a given rating period on 2300 and you have a series of results in (FIDE) rate...

Hasn't the ECF got a formal Ethics Code in place, including defined standards and procedures to deal with complaints operated by respected parties acting independently from the board? If not, perhaps such a step might be considered for the future, as it might have offered advantages all round to hel...

When I posted at around 11am this morning (on page 3 of this thread), I did not anticipate that it would lead to a significant flurry of postings stretching to page 7 tonight. But much more importantly I would like to stress that my post should not be construed in any way as an attack on the ECF pre...

If, as Alex alleges in his open letter at the start of this thread, that "In early August the Sunday Times and Ray Keene via his Times_Chess ‘tweets’ published a series of allegations against a number of us involved in running the British Championship [in terms that called] various officials hom...

I wholeheartedly agree with Stewart. Chess players aren't an unusual bunch of crazies. In other sports you get plenty of folk who also go off the rails ... New York heavyweight boxers, George Best, Hurricane Higgins ... we're as "normal" as others .., well I'm sure I am! Also Steinitz wasn't someone...