English Chess Forum

The Kent in Kent's and Luton (Bedfordshire league) does I believe refer to a company, which may or may not be named after a person. Rolls Royce play in the Derby league, Littlewoods in the Merseyside league, Shepherd's in the York league and David Brown in the Huddersfield league. I do not know whic...

I've started to receive emails, from Adam Raoof, advertising his tournaments. Probably just a trial run for when he's director of Membership and Marketing when we can all expect to get them. Isn't that why we are asked for email addresses when signing up to the ECF? And why some have given old addr...

I'm not a strong player, so have no insight into what such players would regard as an acceptable format. The following would be possible, which is not the same as claiming it is desirable: Play as now, except that at the end of the first week the leading six players are hived off into a championship...

I don't like bland statements that aren't backed up with numbers when it comes to things like this... I fear that in this case all the numbers really tell you is that there is a wide variation in the playing resources available to counties so that your rules, which have to be one size fits all, wil...

Hi Alex, I assume that the two threads you are promoting about inter-counties chess are aimed at helping to discover what changes, if any, could usefully be made to the competitions so as to increase entries or at least make it easier to maintain current levels of participation. If on the other han...

The proposals have two plus points. <snip 1> On the ECF website it says they will no longer require adult members to give their dates of birth. . Good. However as the ECF go on about how useful dob is for helping to identify players my plan was simply to regard the dob as a password in date format ...

Clarification of the actual charges would be helpful as 3.95% + 50p for 10,000 members is considerably more than £5k. Will the system also charge 3.95% + 50p everytime someone upgrades from bronze to silver etc? Or has the ECF negotiated a deal wherebye the maximum charge will be £5k regardless o...

The North Staffs League switched from promotion and relegation to divisions grade limited on a whole team basis for the start of the 2006/7 season. To avoid a line by line rewrite of our rules the first rule for the new system was Except where they are inconsistent with the rules below, the previous...

I do make the assumption that, one way or another, the non-member will end up paying for the Game Fee due on their results. No thank you. If a neighbour, social member of the club or retired player is willing to play the odd game to save a default then the beneficiaries of their action are the club...

I understand that this concept is de rigeur throughout amateur cricket, and is deemed necessary. The underlying principle of all this seems to be that wasting other people's time is an act that gets you fined. So why not chess? Why don't we fine clubs in local leagues for not turning up to meetings...

Today's 99p Amazon Kindle deal of the day is Endgame by Frank Brady which claims to chart the rise and fall of Booby Fischer. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Endgame-ebook/dp/B004Y3ZFXQ/ref=kdd_page_image?pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=1FED6JKC2YG04FZN2S7R&pf_rd_t=1401&pf_rd_p=289367347&pf_...

According to the ECF Articles/Bye-Laws, an affiliated League or Congress is: A Congress is an event that primarily organises events on an individual basis. A League is an event that primarily organises events on a team basis. It seems natural to extend these definitions to the concept of membership...

Intuitively we all know the answer; besides the relevant events tend to say 'Congress' on the entry form. And, other than for the purposes of starting an argument in an empty room, do we care? Previously, no, but now, yes. We are reliably informed that one of the side effects of switching to a membe...

Similarly with the Counties Championships.The winter competitions at a regional stage are already run by the Unions. If the Unions also took on running the national stages, perhaps by appointing a co-ordination committee to agree and vote on contentious issues, then Council or Board would no longer...

People play chess for different reasons. Many play for the team, some don't. The club heirarchy should have a pretty good idea of which are which, and, unless your area is so flush with players that you can afford to drop those who do not conform to your ideals, the best you can do is allocate these...