English Chess Forum

I think this is of great relevance to this thread and most of the others too. As well as being a way of having a disguised personal snipe at Horton? Do you think there are chess players who will deliberately seriously under-perform in order to gain the prestige of winning tournaments for which they...

Could we please not start threads just to publicise a new post on one's blog? Mark Howitt used to do it and it was really irritating. It's a topic which SHOULD be of interest, certainly more so than a lot of what's here. It's not about a single post. Of course you are entitled not to like the post ...

New post:

http://chessimprover.com/chess-mental-differences/

Hmm. A difficult business saying or not saying things in public. ECF members are raising concerns about ethical behaviour and are being told its character assasination. The LTA is being scrupulous not to do so and is being lampooned for brushing under the carpet... An ethics commission would be a t...

ask pertinent questions The pertinent question is this:- Why does the grade of someone who wins lots of Minor tournaments not go up? The 100% winner of a Minor tournament local to me was able to repeat the feat in two or three others and now has a grade in the 160s. It's not a new problem, there wa...

My general impression is that there's little concern for the victims, but with a few notable exceptions appearing on this thread. The last few days have seen a vicious attempt to tear someone's reputation apart in a kind of 'trial by blog' and for the most part chess people have joined in rather tha...

Carl Hibbard wrote:Anyone know what the plan is over there?

Assuming you mean a particular blog I can hazard a guess. Seeking attention without regard to the damage done to anything or anyone. As usual.

What the world struggles to understand is how these changes can take place within a long event such as the British Championship Congress, but always seem to coincide with the start and end of individual tournaments. I believe he has a new ambition of reaching 160. That's the type of grade ambition ...

What volatile results do not mean is that someone is manipulating their grade. The degree and extent of the volatility is suspicious, particularly in the minds of those who face this player in events that would prohibit his entry if the runs of poor results didn't take place. It's taken over five y...

Observation. Not every player who starts a tournament will finish it. That surely is an agreed fact. As to why, it's an observation that players withdraw when they are no longer able to win a prize or where they no longer feel motivated to play. That's conjecture, but I would have thought reasonabl...

You need a proper study to show that GMs and IMs withdraw more than other players. Actually I doubt that it's true and expect people just notice more when a GM or IM withdraws. You admit then that they withdraw, which was the point of my comment. Usually like many players it's in response to a defe...

[ Really? Where did you observe that? At tournaments over the last forty years. I was looking at the results for this year's Kings Head Rapidplay only a few minutes ago. http://ecfgrading.org.uk/new/menu.php?file=xtable&SubmissionId=1437061973&SectionNo=1 Look at the player finish 9th. St Albans Op...

It's an observed fact that if IMs or GMs enter weekend tournaments and do badly, that they withdraw to avoid further potential damage to their rating or grade. Why should lower rated or graded players be any different? Really? Where did you observe that? Please furnish proper evidence or we're back...

Players can be EXTREMELY vulnerable to losses and just not think straight afterwards; they are outliers. Not disagreeing with that, but if you score 0/5 in a rapidplay, why enter another and score the same result and then another? At the very least shouldn't you be conscious of your reputation and ...

You're not getting it Roger. Nigel, neither of you gets it! I gave the answer in a previous post. Get a mathematician or statistician to crunch the numbers. That will reveal whether or not the results are statistically significant. Note that the result is highly dependent on n, the number of games....