English Chess Forum

Still a slight shame. I guess the project 12 team 3N would be something like 3 Manchester teams, 3 Bradford, Jorvik, Bolton, 3C's 2 and then relegation and venue dependent. Maybe 4 Manchester. I guess with it being an APA trying to avoid all the inter squad derbies wouldn't be a problem for the arbi...

When Div 3 North started, we merged with Div 3 South for the final bank holiday weekend at Hinckley Island (it was the final 2 weekends at least one year), so that the best teams got promoted; would it be possible to use that format for the top teams? You'd surely use it for all the teams? The chan...

Mostly very sensible (of course!). I'm slightly dubious if: 1) There's actually 12 genuinely 'Northern' teams and 2) If there are, whether ~90% of the players haven't already played against each other a huge amount in the Yorkshire league. (Which contains a reasonable proportion of Manchester Mantic...

Is it the case that if I let Stockfish NNUE analyse one of my games it will record something in its neural net in case the same positions, or themes, arise again? If it does, it's not obvious. Last weekend I analysed my most recent game with Stockfish with a small hash table that was often filling ...

I am a bit cautious about the autumn and winter. I don't share Nick Faulk's level of suspicion of government motives. But I can imagine things going wrong that would put pressure on the NHS. If anything is impacted, gatherings of vulnerable people in indoor venues seem to me likely to be disrupted....

4NCL is normally early November, then early January & February; it could be an idea to go October, November, then March, April, May, although Easter being a moveable feast is a difficulty Wouldn't that feel like a really weirdly long break? The other problem was moving dates is likely finding gaps ...

Am I really the only person who really doesn't like the idea of summer chess OTB?

Summer evening leagues always seem to have far fewer players than winter ones.

Ha ha how embarrassing. I guess it's a demonstration of how often I've changed my openings, or at least particularly when it comes to queenside openings which are what I've played as White since the early and mid-Nineties. I might be wrong but I don't know that I've even reached (restricting myself...

Isn't doing anything over summer/early Autumn going to run into major issues with everyone being on holiday at once?

Less so in Div 1 I suppose, but I could imagine Div 3 having huge absences. Not sure where 2 falls

Were it anyone else, that represent a very clear case of an overdose of internet blitz

Hard to think what he might have missed, but presumably its rather closer to working than it looks.

good to hear and people safety is more important (hope by then most of the public will be vaccine by then) One vaccine by this August maybe. You do need two to have it done properly, and that's 3 months on + likely a few weeks post that to reach full protection. So everyone who gets their first vac...

I think that sum is going to get frightening, because he only gets the 2840 performance by hurting some other people on the way....

Yes. iirc they might need a new email account but obviously no barrier at all.

IP Address isn't that hard to dodge, no. The gaming companies can at least insist on running stuff on your computer to get access. Gives them a few more options.

[*] Move time is the advantage online providers have versus OtB. You can clearly see that someone moving in 4-6 seconds each move (average of 5 with a standard deviation of 1) in a 5+0 gme is more likely to be a cheat. This is I do wonder about - aren't most cheats manually reading moves off engine...

I was thinking more about what it means for the roll-out of the vaccine rather than the specifics of the case itself. The comforting thing there is that, unlike everything else so far, a vaccine roll out is very hard to truly mess up. Yes it'll be a bit slower than the ideal for a bunch of reasons ...