English Chess Forum

Are people really going to want to play the winter 2018/19 remanent in Summer 2021 and then immediately into a winter season? Especially since the restrictions on a variety of types of holiday are likely to be in place through Spring then gradually lift as we go further into the year. I'd definitely...

Have people started thinking of planning for Autumn 2021/22 yet? With the vaccine (and likely others as same targets etc) coming through, it looks to be a pretty good bet that we'll finally be clear in time to start a putative 21/22 league season on a roughly normal time scale. That will leave a lot...

If a 1500 player is consistently performing at 2500 then either the initial rating is very very wrong or they are cheating. How do you tell the difference, particularly for Juniors with out of date rapid ratings? Actually why not forget about ratings determined by results at all? Produce ratings by...

That's sad.

I'm hopeless with names but Darlington was definitely a nice little club when I was there a few years back.

Yes, its just hard. I do find the idea of effectively setting out to catch only the casual cheats a bit 'off' somehow, but obvious practical reasons. As for Wifi? Most vs Ethernet on a landline I think. Some won't have good internet at all of course but they're already excluded by it being an online...

Potentially nearly impossible to have no electronics in its strictest sense I would think, especially if they're still living with their parents. (Not that I imagine many people would fully apply that.). I do wonder slightly how worthwhile it is. Even with all of this there's a variety of ways someo...

In SF's case its a purposeful choice to limit their search space to make them stronger in real games. There's probably some way to force it to do a more exhaustive search than usual which would let it solve the puzzle. (Really old engines definitely had this, no idea if it has survived.). Leela is f...

The geography of this stuff does get a bit amusing. Warrington has apparently declared independence from all counties?!

Maybe at some point they'll manage to admit that Liverpool & Manchester & friends aren't that far off one conurbation

Having heard of another friend (of 200+ strength) being banned by Lichess is it possible to document the criteria Lichess use to ban people? Are the following possible? I'll try at least. 1. Having someone follow the same game using the same IP address? 2. Having another lichess window open and wat...

I'd be very surprised if private testing did that - there's quite a large false negative rate on the current tests

It's the UKCC, so yes a junior event There's a question of how quickly, presumably with coaching, a player could improve from raw beginner to acceptable standard ( say 80-100 ECF). The allegations are that players appeared to go from raw beginner one week to playing like Carlsen the next. I don't t...

The presenter didn't mention which tournament. But 5 disqualified from the top 6 is quite scary. Not really very scary at all :) It mostly shows that the cheats weren't worried about being subtle/intelligent about it. Which we should broadly be happy about, I would think. Any entirely 'crude' compu...

Whilst I've never had the desire to try one out, I thought you could get browser plugins which will show you the computer's best move on the board you're playing on, so they're usable at any time limit. Is it plausible that lichess, chess.com and others have developed software that can detect the p...

The new curly one - 86% of people are asymptomatic. New research suggesting that for the majority of positive tests results, there aren't actually the accompanying classic symptoms of cough, fever and loss of taste/smell, based on a sample size of 36,000 people; https://news.sky.com/story/coronavir...

Talking of Lichess, I was under the impression they'd stopped ssying directly when they barred players that they thought they were cheating, but not so, apparently I don't see that screen, but maybe I'm not looking in the right place. If you look at his profile you see the "This account violated th...