English Chess Forum

Thanks Alex. I assumed that this was the case.

I wonder whose bright idea it was to create such a stupid rule?

Whilst researching a piece on Stuart Milner-Barry I learnt that when he married Lady Thelma in 1947 she had to immediately resign her role at the Treasury.

Apparently this was due to "Civil Service rules of the day".

Could someone explain this please?

Your article mentions two post-war occasions when Bonham tied first for the British Correspondence Chess Championship. He had earlier been runner-up in the BCF's 1938 CC Championship and, most importantly, he won the 1942/43 Championship outright with 9/10, a point and a half ahead of David Hooper....

John Clarke wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 16, 2021 11:13 pm

John - if you can enable comments on the BCN piece, there's one or two things I could add.

Apologies, Now enabled.

I could explain why I forgot to enable them but no-one would be interested!

I'm pleased to take corrections, typos etc via a pm of course.

Remembering Reginald Bonham MBE MA (31-i-1906 16-iii-1984) Reg Bonham received the MBE for "services to the blind" in 1970 a large part of which was bringing chess to the sight-impaired community. Interestingly his sister Mary received a similar award in 1992. You might like to find other examples ...

Remembering Gerald Abrahams (15-iv-1907 15-iii-1980) Gerald Abrahams was one of the strongest British amateurs for many years and an excellent writer and wit. His Not Only Chess is well worth obtaining but not easy to find. He was involved in possibly the most famous chess legal case involving a mu...

JustinHorton wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 15, 2021 3:41 pm

Canterbury 1973

Mestel v Crouch 1976

Speelman v Durão 1978

Hebden v Wells 1980

Item 85 here offered (21 years ago!) around 90 scoresheets, which sounds a lot

Item 1584 here suggests that there was a bulletin for the 1976 event

Thanks Justin: much appreciated.

The daily Winning Move replaced Raymond Keene's column, but there is no indication of who chooses each position and writes the pithy commentary. Sometimes a newspaper will give a columnist's email address to encourage reaction from readers, but none is evident in this case. GM David Howell writes t...

Thanks. I do have all the BCMs and CHESSs from that era. It is the games I (and the databases) lack.

Any plans to bring out a Sixteenth Edition of Batsford Modern Chess Openings? When did the latest edition of Nunn's Chess Openings come out? I suspect that the Batsford imprint (part of Pavillion Books) is no longer in the market for this type of book and probably nor is any other publisher. Thankf...

Rob, This is an excellent initiative. May I suggest you add "Elite" as a label over and above for the very "best" coaches or at least those coaching much stronger pupils. Of course there are excellent coaches working with much lower rated and experienced students. I feel somewhat embarrassed to have...

Nick Burrows wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 14, 2021 9:09 am

Some amazing games!

I really was spoilt for choice.

A book of best games is very much merited.

Adam Raoof has been keen to mention his current sale of 2,000 chess books on various Facebook groups.

I've have added details of the infamous "Brenda O'Randall incident" at Portsmouth 1976 So Leonard Barden got his revenge in a later Guardian column by reporting that Jonathan was wasting his time at Cambridge doing 'research into anagrams'. This highly academic study should surely have produced the...

I've have added further studies kindly supplied by Brian Stephenson plus a few more photos.