English Chess Forum

And I'm confident their member forum is better as well ;-) with fewer grumpy complainers. Really? My impression is that the French federation's infighting makes our debates here look quite mild. The comment about the forum is obviously a joke. Instead, the difference in strength between the ECF and...

So if I get Paolo correctly he is saying that a good federation has more players with FIDE grades, more members and more money. Boils down to saying that Barclays is a better bank than the Cumberland Building Society because it is bigger. I'm still glad I've moved from the former to the latter, how...

Well Paolo's told us one way of interpreting the question. No clue as to the answer, however! The clue is in the comparison... just match the ECF against the German and French federations in terms of financials, number of members, number of FIDE rated members and so on... you can't help wondering w...

Well Paolo's told us one way of interpreting the question. No clue as to the answer, however! The clue is in the comparison... just match the ECF against the German and French federations in terms of financials, number of members, number of FIDE rated members and so on... you can't help wondering w...

When you say ECF, do you mean Council, the board, the federation as a whole or another definition? and compared to what? For example, compared to other European countries like Germany and France: similar population, similar economy, but very different financials for the national federation and very...

Again, it doesn't matter what people say just look at the pairings; it doesn't surprise me a Russian thinks its a conspiracy, even Yifan has apologised in an official statement While showing her unhappiness with the pairing against women, I have not seen any explanation from Hou Yifan why it is so ...

soheil_hooshdaran wrote:What should I do to become a GM?

Not a guarantee, but wasting less time on internet forums and similar could be a good start.
Instead working on chess and practicing might be your best chance to improve.

I don't like the idea of direct members voting in Directors for the reasons given in the Consultation paper and, more generally, because I prefer representative democracy over direct democracy. I doubt Council could continue to exist if it didn't elect the Board. Direct members electing the Board w...

Further consultation might yet alter the structure of one or all of the proposals and I have certainly the intention of making a reasoned submission with suggestions for some alterations. There are attractions and problems with all three options though my own preference, perhaps surprisingly given ...

I bought and subscribed to a variety of chess magazines over the years. Here some notes about the top entries in my personal list: Europe Echecs provides very good quality content with a good mix of expert commentary and material for new chess enthusiasts. Of all chess magazines, it's probably one o...

I've always been slightly ambivalent about the council system but comments like this swing me around to defending it, in particular the congress bloc that consists of people who give up so much of their time to make chess happen for people like me. Why anybody should feel that these individuals sho...

What about asking also the ECF members themselves to express an opinion on the matter, before the ECF council is deciding their own future? An email will hopefully be going out to all ECF members next week drawing their attention to the report and asking for comments. That's a good initiative, but ...

For what my personal opinion is worth, both option 1 and option 2 would be an improvement. On second thought there might be a way to make option 3, or even the status quo, completely acceptable. The main issue with the current ECF governance model is that direct member have no direct representation...

So... the URS has in fact used all the results of all the games rated by FIDE in the last 6 years (and there are 246,022 players in the initial URS list - as I found after downloading a copy). And presumably this data has been willingly provided - for a fee? - by FIDE. The data is available for fre...

Reading their own website, their driver seems the ability to correctly predict the result of future games. The current FIDE approach tells us that even if A and B are equal at long time controls, that A may be somewhat better at Rapid and Blitz. If you discard this information how does this help pr...