English Chess Forum

Magnus wasn't impressed with 31.b4 in McShane's game, thought he should have played for two results with 31.Red1. (via Chess24 on Twitter)
Turned out well for Luke in the end though!

I had a couple of goes previously at working out a best (linear) fit converting actual ECF grades to FIDE ratings. In 2014, FIDE = 7.5xECF + 675 was (close to) the best fit In 2017, it was FIDE = 7.5xECF + 640 As you can see from the graph I put together in 2014, you do get oddities both ways, acros...

And here's game 2: Here is the second game (following comments on Manx Liberty, possible new overlords): Their games are online, of course. Here is, perhaps, an important novelty from GM Mircea-Emilian Parligras, or so I thought, until I later discovered that it had recently been played elsewhere: R...

Nice games! Here's game 1 with the position alongside the text - all you need to do is put the FEN for the relevant position inside <pos> tags (and you can get the FEN from the PGN by clicking on the b8 square) I have allowed myself to become distracted of late, writing on the 4NCL for CHESS. So muc...

Soheil Hooshdaran wrote: What does it mean for Black to rip open the White King ? It is not a normal chess term, but it probably means Black attacks the White King. To 'rip open' is also suggestive of the pawns in front of the King being taken away (perhaps, though not necessarily, via a sacrifice?...

There's lots of noisy places in London to choose from :lol: maybe St Pancras, Kings Cross or Waterloo would do it Funny you should mention that - the year I played in it (and presumably other years), the Times Schools final was held in Charing Cross Hotel which backs directly onto the station. The ...

From the chessbase coverage https://en.chessbase.com/post/candidates-opening-and-round-1-live Once again citing the specious YouGov survey data from 2012, as a basis for setting expectations of viewership, Merenzon says the goal is to reach 20-30 million people who will follow the Candidates in Ber...

Also Karjarkin and Mamedyarov, to a question about the venue: Actually, I don't like almost anything in the organisation of the tournament. I don't like (the) hotel, I don't like (the) venue, and also it was a few times very noisy during the game I agree with Sergei half to half. I think the hotel i...

Exciting games, but not a good start for the organisers - when I looked there were only around 300 watching the (free) official stream - I guess it may have picked up later on - followed by this from Grischuk in the post-match interview, when asked what he thought about the start of the tournament: ...

soheil_hooshdaran wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 23, 2017 6:04 am

What would happen if Kg2?

Unlike the alternatives, Qh4 defends the d8 square. So I think you play 2...Re6 after 2.Kg2 - and there's no need to worry about Qd8+.

Users at the various sites try to equate ratings every so often. This is the latest one I'm aware of from chess.com There's not huge amounts of data behind it (clicking through, it's based on responses from around 100 users) but it looks like a rule of thumb of chess.com rating = FIDE rating isn't m...

Peter, I think it did start playing random moves, but I'm not convinced that this is drawish. Agree it would be interesting to see some early games if they're stored! I also think they do mention the number of games per step - the report says 'mini-batches of 4,096'. So if my maths is right, it self...

It was impressive that he was 11/11 on his "silly learning tasks" until he made the mistake of trying to learn chess! You wonder whether he practised against club players, That might have alerted him to a problem that if you lose a piece to a simple tactic just past the opening, your approach as to...

The World Chess Facebook page is indeed streaming the commentary today for free, so I'll stop giving them the benefit of the doubt. This is what World Chess had to say: @LennartOotes and everyone -- we will show first few days on Facebook live to promote the feature, and on Day 4 it will be a paid ...

An odd tale in the Wall Street Journal and some seriously silly reporting - wasn't sure if it deserved its own thread: "Obsessive learner" spends a month learning chess, develops an algorithm, takes on Magnus Carlsen. Can the novice beat the World Champion? After eight moves, using his own limited c...