English Chess Forum

Hello Peter Yes, you are right. Stanley Grundy was instrumental in the development and expansion of what is now the UK Chess Challenge, a competition about which I have very mixed feelings. I was not involved in any meetings, though, and was only vaguely aware of what was happening. Stanley was a ve...

This is my understanding of the situation. I think Rotary have a number of national initiatives that they wish to pursue, but each local Rotary club is basically autonomous and can decide to what extent they pursue these objectives. Most Rotary Clubs will not choose to do anything about chess, unle...

The Rotary Chess Initiative was essentially a grandiose but poorly thought out scheme to promote mass participation in chess by providing free sets for every school in the country. Does this sound familiar? It worked up to a point here in Richmond because of the support of Richmond Junior Chess Club...

I am very well aware of the Rotary Chess Initiative, of which this is part. I'm on my way to school now but will reply in more detail later.

According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmaduke_Wyvill_(chess_player)), Wyvill was a Liberal MP but your book, Richard, says he was a Tory. Which is right? Congratulations, John. The Wikipedia entry seems convincing to me, especially when you look at the Richmond (Yorks) entry. You'r...

I doubt that Bonar Law was as strong a player as Julius Silverman (1905-96) who was a Midlands MP for nearly 40 years. I've seen a couple of game scores of his from the 1930s (wins against Eliskases and Znosko-Borovsky) and I think he was close to master strength. [Event "Birmingham"] [Site "?"] [D...

Another chess playing politician was Bonar Law, the "Unknown Prime Minister", PM from 1922-3, who was a strong player, and almost certainly the strongest chess-playing PM we have had (not that that says much!). There is a game of his as part of a consulting team that played a simul against Capablan...

Hmm! Interesting!

There seem to be at least four people who have, at some point, been led to believe that they were supposed to be writing/running a national chess course/certificate of merit/certificate of excellence scheme for the BCF/ECF.

Former Richmond Junior Chess Club member Rajeev Thacker is standing for the Green Party in Wimbledon. He hasn't been active for many years, though.

There are also at least two former RJCC members standing for Labour in the local elections here in Richmond.

Martin Regan first claims he cannot recall offering Matthew Turner a role, and when then faced with the evidence, suggests it was part of a standard memo to those involved in junior chess. If he was seriously offering a single post to multiple people to buy their support, then I'm on the side of th...

I would take control of the vast array of national junior organisations currently tripping over each other – create a ECF Chess Challenge and a national coaching framework including COM. I agree, in principle, although I can see it being very difficult to achieve in practice. I made the same poin...

Indeed, I think Richard James might confirm that he approached to adapt his Chess for Kids. Yes, I can confirm that I had two meetings with Robert Richmond about adapting chessKIDS academy for Chess for Schools. I was promised, I think, £10 for every school which joined the scheme. I was also aske...

It is in early teenage years that young people decide for themselves what they want to do. Quite so. Younger kids, to a large extent, do what their parents want them to do. Teenagers do what they want to do. Also, younger kids tend to get obsessed about something, dinosaurs, Pokémon, chess or what...

Are the top juniors benefiting from traipsing all over the country to play a series of events against other juniors? I'm not sure they are. I'm not sure they are either. I have issues with the junior selection procedures from U11 upwards, and this is one of them. In my experience ambitious juniors ...