English Chess Forum

How about this wild idea. If Carlsen and Karjakin draw all 12 games, they share the title and a rematch takes place in due course. Great. An even wickeder idea, to disincentivise 12 draws, is that in the event of all 12 games drawn, so first ( or last??) winner cannot be used, the title should reve...

Is the Queen right and if she is what does the seating plan look like? Yes: a simple greedy algorithm works. Q on g2 Rooks on f1 and h3 . This reduces possible squares for Black pieces to a 5x5 area. Knights on c7 and c6 to take as many squares as possible of that 5x5 area. Similarly bishops on c8 ...

Carl Hibbard wrote:Commentary wise Peter is better than Loek drinking his tea.

I agree.

I also feel that for his mix of concrete analysis and game specific chess wisdom, for ECF 150 -200, Peter is probably now the best chess commentator in the English speaking world. Other candidates?

"Chess24 died already here.
Cheers"

I guess USA mission control will solve the engineering problem not put it down to maladministration: Chess24 has merely notified Houston that there is a problem.

Fans of chess history might find this video of interest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BUZ2zyWRh0 :D I certainly did. Thinking of twentieth century UK, tactically creative players, is anyone really comparable, in chess terms?... I note Alexander has been suggested. Colloquially who is/was the ne...

Gerard Thanks very much for posting these Yprkshire, 1838 games with the comments from "Bells Life in London & Sporting Chronicle" on time controls. As a child of the twentieth century, much less deferential than the nineteenth, I hadn't appreciated that then civic pride might well have ,made a cons...

Googling Hilary Clinton Chess is interesting.

One of my favourites is " Clinton v Trump becomes chess v professional wrestling" ... October 10

Sorry for the lack of clarity. I will try to clarify my original questions about Representative Teams. I start from teams in the UK are picked by officers of chess organisations; clubs, counties, countries etc A Representative team is a little bit more and relates to the players attitudes to a match...

Thanks Roger I happily defer to your judgement. My main interest, is around Representative Team Strategies. The impetus for the post today was a drawn game yesterday, Metropolitan v Imperial College, against an opponent rated 26 points higher where I did play for a draw from move 1.b3 , where we won...

Thanks Mick. I see, IMHO, the opposite pole to Representative Team as a team of players who ALL see the activity as solely playing individual games. So, I hope reasonably, GUESS any (relatively rich) chess amateur travelling from Liverpool to Manchester (or vice versa) in 1855 is playing both an ind...

John Thanks very much for a reply : I guess I owe you a pint (or a Budweiser). Perhaps "worst student in chess camp" questions are: (1) Might it be of wider interest to know whether , in fact, the proportion of draws has increased over almost 150 years and by how much? (2) Do any explanatory events ...

What is the earliest recorded representative chess team match in English/ UK /European/World History? The modern(?) prevalence of draws and ubiquity of grading makes weaker individual player strategies of going for the draw, before a move is played, a plausible strategy for some members of a team wi...

Over many years, he always seemed to me both a good and a great man of English and Essex chess.

Gary D'oh ! I am a simple mathematician, and an admirer of Sierpinski's work ( some of his Fund Math papers I have read) and thought there might be a link to the Bletchley Polish mathematicians given WS awesome talent. His staggering Wikipedia entry also mentions very early work on Soviet codes! The...

Gary Kenworthy wrote:Most importantly, without the Poles the Enigma might not have been broken in WWII by the British.

Gary

Do you know if the great C20 Polish mathematician W. Sierpinski was involved in the early work, in Poland?