English Chess Forum

Just grab your nearest scientific calculator, input -9 press the square root key, then the equals key, ergo you have crashed your calculator. You mean to say it won't find the modulus of the negative number and display it, followed by an "i" to represent the square root of minus 1?? Would have thou...

Mathematics is one tool and language is another. There are those, including me, who regard mathematics as a language - a highly compressed and symbolic one that describes complex relationships between numerical quantities. Having said which, I can still enjoy Nigel Molesworth's remarks on the subje...

633 Squadron and Great Escape are good. From TV, I suppose my favourites are Twin Peaks, Virginian and Rawhide. Yeah, I'd forgotten 633 Squadron - possibly because I think of it as a theme tune rather than a film score as such. But one of the greats, all right - thank you Ron Goodwin. The Dam Buste...

Here’s another adjournment story, a real one this time. I was still at school when it happened (but was also a member of the local adult club just across the road, with whom we had an informal arrangement to use their facilities when needed). It was the second round of an individual knockout event...

I remember there were two players called Century and Fox, both pretty active during the late 60s - but I don't think they'd have played even 20 games in all together, let alone 20 with Century as White ....

A fictional adjournment tale (from Anthony Glyn's 1966 novel The Dragon Variation ). A UK player seals in an apparently lost position. Later that evening, his USSR opponent's second approaches him and says: "XXXX says if your sealed move is YYYY then he offers a draw". The envelope is produced (I fo...

I'm picking him with the jacket and antique hairdo. As for when chess has turned up on the show, I can only speak for New Zealand. Two people (one of them myself) in the 1979 series, both doing the history and literature of chess. Me again in 1981, this time just the history from 1450 to 1972 (out h...

John Upham wrote: A claim was made by the victim but was rejected by the League committee!!

Which of course makes you want to know who was on that committee, and what kind of relations (good and/or bad) they had with the players concerned.

The position, with the P at c5, not e5, first appeared on p169 of Assiac's "Adventure in Chess", published 1951. His final comment there reads: " ... a win for Black. No doubt, from what we all know about the rules of Chess, we must agree with that ruling, but I am not very happy about it. Somehow I...

Got it in one, Matt.

Thanks for that post, Paul. Much of what you say there was new to me. And how I agree with that comment about how politico-economic policies that might work for one particular country can be (and often are) a total nonsense for another. For about ten years a generation ago, my own adopted country wa...

Peter Turner wrote:Brilliant, I wonder what the note would be know as?

A monkey? Nah, a monkey's five 'undred quid, innit? Anyway, it isn't green.

Another John Clarke - then my club captain won an early eries of Countdown, probably 24 years ago now. My recollection was that he was also 160-170 back then. Paul I remember that - and you're bang on with the date. I happened to be back in the UK in '87 when they were screening some kind of Countd...

Is D Fault the worst and most irritating player ever? Oh, I've played him often. Awful fellow. He never gets any less irritating, especially when he and his brother or cousin "just happen" to be the opposing boards 1 and 2. But I'd rather have him turn up than give in to their captain's suggestion ...

A list of people would be quite interesting on those who have been, or are, ECF graded or FIDE Rated, who have appeared on quiz shows. How far back do you want to go? And how far down the grading list?? I ask because my peak rating, way back in 1973/4, was no higher than 164. Which some might say i...