English Chess Forum

I think we should all run around waving our hands in the air.

I think Roger is right. And that's why 'or' is used in the definition, to indicate that the meaning of 'normal means' is different in different places in the body of the rules. Of course, any lawyer will tell you that this sins against various elementary rules of drafting. I seem to remember having ...

It seems to me that the teacup has yet to be invented which would be small enough to contain this particular storm. All that is necessary is for any organiser of leagues or congresses to state that this rule shall not apply, if that’s what they want. Or whatever it is that they do want.

WTF does it have to do with anything what John Littlewood was or wasn’t paid for playing in the Hastings Premier in 1963? Maybe it would be a good idea if the next ECF Council debated a motion along the lines of ‘this House deplores professional chess and mandates the Board to attempt to stamp i...

[quote="Nick Burrows The big money to be earnt is clearly via Fide and the world chess scene. [/quote] Maybe that's it. He reckons the Presidency of the ECF will open the way to becoming the satrap of some Siberian quasi-autonomous region, with all the opportunities for kleptocracy that will no doub...

Dammit, how did that happen. Can't one delete inadvertent posts somehow?

Oh, come on, Roger, you can do better than that. Where's your imagination? I see it more as a question of prestige, of the Presidency opening doors in other parts of the globe, enabling AP to hobnob with Putin and the like and, I don't know, be awarded multi-million pound deals to build power statio...

Would anyone care to post an exposition of how AP’s financial masterplan to make himself a millionnaire at the expense of ECF members might work, exactly? I have to say that's puzzling, but given how little he knows of English chess, he might assume there's bags of wealth ready for the stripping....

I’m fascinated by the tinfoil merchants who think that AP wants to get control of English chess in order somehow to benefit his own business interests. Personally I wouldn’t have thought that, say, the county championship was quite so monetisable as all that. Would anyone care to post an exposit...

OK, Jonathan, but Dagne at least withdrew for personal reasons, didn't she?

PeterFarr wrote:
Also as John is so keen on people not talking nonsense, he might acknowledge that our top women players are stronger than 2100's.

Yes, of course, one or two of them. But the majority of the team we would have sent, and a big majority of these fabled 17 refusals, would have been in that category.

It is not their fault that there is no-one stronger to play. If they are in the team, they should be entitled to the respect that that position deserves. It is their fault that there’s no-one stronger to play. It’s because they haven’t put the work in to get stronger themselves. (and why shou...

I still think its dreadful that we will have no women's team there, and that is my main point. Well, were we to say that women’s chess is patronising nonsense and we’re going to withdraw from it on principle, that would be one thing. But if we’re going to carry on with this idea that women ar...

Hell, didn't Germany win this last time, with a team consisting of Arkadij Naiditsch, Georg Meier, Daniel Fridman, Jan Gustafsson, and Rainer Buhmann? It's not even obvious that's a stronger team than ours this year. And the Dutch won a medal a few years ago with Timman winning the decisive game aga...

The open team has the same chance of medals as the women, i.e., zero. Be realistic. What nonsense some of you people talk. Zero is a pretty small probability, you know. If Armenia can three times finish ahead of Russia with people like Sargissian making a huge score on board three, and Tigran Petro...