English Chess Forum

stevencarr wrote: It was more surprising last month because they were absolutely dead level at 2545 each.

I wonder if the Pert brothers ever had identical gradings.

A quick look at the grading list suggests 221 (Richard) vs 222 (Nick) in the July 1997 list which is almost close enough.

Rachel Reeves is reported here as having had a grade of 128, though whether that's accurate and whether that would represent her best, I don't know. I've previously posted Reeves - Fletcher from Basingstoke U14, 1993. She was a decent junior player (one of the stronger female players in my age grou...

The inevitable comment about Germany-Italy being like a chess match as early as the 5th minute from Martin Keown. We've also had "tactical stalemate" and "a bit of a chess match" now as extra time gets underway. Paddy Power tweeted during the Germany-Italy game: Martin Keown reckons this is like a ...

How many moves back did you analyse that and did you see it all in the game? Did Black blunder in allowing you to play this line, or were you always better leading up to this finish? Sad to say, it was an adjournment, though it was a few moves on from the adjourned position. Black did blunder with ...

I haven't solved Matt's poser either (does it start with Qh6+?). Very nice puzzle! It does start with Qh6+, and I was stuck for a while on how to meet the Rg6 defence, but have got it now (EDIT: though some of the lines end in draws? Is it a win for White or a draw?). It does start with Qh6+, and i...

I had a recent game where underpromotion didn't appear on the board, but was a major threat.

Black has just played ...Rg8 threatening mate - White to play.

6r1/3P3p/5k2/1pbq1p1Q/5P2/8/6PP/4R2K

Jonathan Bryant wrote:No. This thread moved on to films that I'd seen and whatnot so I thought it appropriate to add this comment here.

But I wrote you such lovely stats, just one post above...

I’m trying to establish the relative frequency of THING X happening in two groups of unequal size. Let’s say, In Group One, THING X happens on 10 of 20 occasions. In Group Two, THING X happens on 5 of 30 occasions. Just seen this - as people have said, there's nowhere near enough to say that "THING...

In today's Sunday Times News Review virtually all of Page 4 is devoted the recent Go match. The company Deep-Mind is mentioned. It states: The genius behind it is Demis Hassabis, a state educated north Londoner who made headlines in 2014 when DeepMind was bought by Google for an estimated £400m. We...

It says "Data requests to Agon's servers"? But agreed it's not clear exactly what they mean, or what the scale is.

I don't really know much about how DDOS attacks work - but for anyone that does, given the chart does it seem odd that World Chess first tweeted about the attack at 1:49pm Moscow time? http://static1.squarespace.com/static/52cd2778e4b0b02edf9e4eed/t/56e4555c40261d39b90b9512/1457804643078/?format=750w

Ian Thompson wrote:You're not the only one to get confused about en passant captures.

I once (as White) had pawns on a2, b2. My opponent played b3 and I chose to play a4 instead of taking on b3, to which he replied bxa2 e.p. ..! Gave me quite a shock for a second or two!

... there's a problem in playing Rb8, that the a7 pawn would hang. Sure - but doesn't b2 hang as well? Black is marginally short of moves at move 11. There aren't any sensible pawn moves, minor piece moves or rook moves, so that just leaves the Queen. Yes, I was struggling to find many sensible mov...

Again not checking with an engine or spending a long time analysing, but the manoeuvre 11...Qa5 12...Qb4 13...Qb7 doesn't make a particularly strong impression. Maybe you can play something like 11...Rb8 or 11...Qc7 instead?

Tristan Clayton wrote:Wasn't there a rule introduced in the 60s or 70s to avoid 0-0-0-0 (castling with a promoted Rook on e8) being a legal - if highly implausible - move?

White to play and mate in 3 - Krabbé, 1972
8/8/4P3/3p4/2p3p1/1pP1kPPp/1P5P/R3K2R w KQ - 0 1