English Chess Forum

Then Jan needs a brit sitting beside him - it's painful when they know nothing about the players, history, etc...

There's some heavy-weight research on whether swiss or random pairings are more likely to result in the "strongest" participant winning an event and also on the "top k" players really being the k strongest players - it was from Wharton I think, while since Ilooked at it. You need better than A-level...

@Chris - while swiss systems are good at finding winners, they are not good at finding other rankings - there is a huge correlation between final position and result in the last round. Your score in a swiss is typically a less good indicator of relative performance than rating performance - but obvi...

website seems to have been hacked by random online pharmacy ...

If anyone wants to play in Iran drop me a line. I'm friends with the president of their federation, and he'll sort any visa/accommodation issues. They do seem keen to have foreigners play in events (preumeably to get over the #countries threshold) for norms, etc.

Paul

It's reminiscent of the "Raetsky's broken toy variation" - see his book "No Passion for Chess Fashion". Nf3 d5; g3 Nc6; d4 Bg4; Bg2 Qd7 - with 0-0-0, f6 and e5 or g5 to follow ... it's quite a fun system to play, if a little hairy. Though no worse than many an old-fashioned Albin.

Paul

I guess this will be available to readers of Chris W's column at chesspublishing in his update this month!

Paul

On the worldchess site today ... "While we work on resolving the issue with the moves broadcast, please follow the games live at chessbase.com, chessbomb.com, chess.com, lichess.org or your favorite app. Check back soon for official broadcast." https://worldchess.com/berlin normal service resumed! P...

@JustinHorton re:Merenzon - he did engage with me via email regarding the broadcasting rights model a few years back - so I don't doubt that he will respond to emails to that address. How many he expects I don't know - but another internet fallover is embarassing...

Just thought I'd plug the Gorm's guide to the runners and riders over on the Ginger GM website: https://www.gingergm.com/blog/candidates-2018-preview Just in case people are loooking for a form guide ... in short he says Karjakin is a stayer, outside punts Ding Liren, Kramnik ... all-in or terrible ...

I appreciate your vote of confidence in NEE chances too!

It looks like a combination of c4, e4 and Bh4 should pick-up an exchange?

Somewhat hard, as the early moves are somewhat anti-positional (giving away d4). There was a debate about how people miss anti-positional tactical moves during the Carlsen-Jones game (...f4 winning the bishop)

Paul

Regardless of the comments above - I think we should recognise and appreciate the efforts involved to get a new event off the ground and a have a significant number of titled players turn-up for an event in the North East. Let's hope it's not 20 years until the next one! Well done to Tim and his tea...

I have seen people claim against venues in the past when it is clear that the venue had the lost property in their custody and then somehow managed to re-lose it or give it to the wrong person ... so Paul is right to be cautious.

Anything prompted the question ... I have an ongoing saga trying to get back a pair of gloves that my home team captain gave ot the away captain - thinking they belonged ot someone from the away team. Student team involved with disappearing email addresses and my time overseas not helping ..

Paul D