at the mercy of the arbiter

[Jonathan Bryant]

Erik Teichman went further. In an early Lloyds Bank Masters he used the Udeman (I think that is its name) Code. Thus 11 referred to a1. 1 e4 is written 25-45. that is useful with telex. So, what was the problem, even if not recognised by the Laws? Well, he translated the numbers to binary.

Am I right in thinking E.T.'s system requires up to 14 digits to record each move? That's a pretty impressive committment ... but ultimately a bit lightweight. If you're going to geek out why not go the whole hog and convert the letters/numbers into their ASCII equivalent and then convert that to binary?

[Kevin Thurlow]

International Correspondence chess has a digital code working the other way, (for those who still play by post) so 1.e4 is 5254. On the binary point, it would depend if he wrote it as 2545 or 25-45; calculating the former would leave little time for thinking about the game! I assume he had small writing as well....

[LozCooper]

I had the misfortune to be forced to use that notation years ago in postal in a England-Germany match and somehow managed (stupidly, i know) to send the move g5 instead of b5 in the opening which instead of attacking the a4 bishop in a lopez left my g pawn en-prise to both bishop and knight! My opponent (rightly or wrongly) refused to allow me to correct my notation. Fortunately, I had the last laugh when my opponent committed a bigger notation blunder which cost him the game.

[Keith Arkell]

Can my thread possibly come back to life after descending to ''how we notate in correspondence chess''?

Let's try: What would you rather play through - the near perfect computer type chess that we are now seeing at the very top of world chess,or the artistic,easy to understand but not so easy to emulate chess of eg Karpov and Smyslov? For me the latter,but I can admire the former in a cold kind of way.It reminds me of the following from the film 'Alien' :

Ash: You still don't know what you're dealing with do you? Perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility.
Lambert: You admire it.
Ash: I admire its purity, its sense of survival; unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.
Parker: I've heard enough and I'm asking you to pull the plug.

[JustinHorton]

The Birmingham player Nigel McSheehy(now also sadly deceased) often used to write his moves in Algebraic,but substituting R U Y L O P E Z for A B C etc.

That's absolutely fantastic. Why did they do this?

[Matt Mackenzie]

Can my thread possibly come back to life after descending to ''how we notate in correspondence chess''?

Let's try: What would you rather play through - the near perfect computer type chess that we are now seeing at the very top of world chess,or the artistic,easy to understand but not so easy to emulate chess of eg Karpov and Smyslov?

Well I prefer the latter too - in fact I think a surprising number of players do........

But is chess at the very top *really* "near perfect"?? It isn't that long since one of the best and most admired players around at the minute wasn't able to win an ending with just Q v R!! (no doubt you will recall that Keith )

[Alex Holowczak]

But is chess at the very top *really* "near perfect"?? It isn't that long since one of the best and most admired players around at the minute wasn't able to win an ending with just Q v R!! (no doubt you will recall that Keith )

I think it is nearing perfection. Historically, there have always been players that have dominated an era, until Kasparov retired. At the moment, I don't think you could say anyone is dominating the game. Draughts has already claimed to have proven that the game is a draw with perfect play, so much so that at professional levels, they have the first three moves of the game drawn by lots.

Also, I bet that there are GMs who couldn't do K, B & N v K. A friend once saw he was about to lose, so swapped his rook for a pawn on the 7th, leaving that situation, and his opponent didn't know how to mate him.

[Ian Thompson]

Also, I bet that there are GMs who couldn't do K, B & N v K.

I think this is unlikely. Its not difficult to mate with B+N once you've looked it up and understood the principle.

[John Upham]

B&N vs K has two common solutions of which the so-called "W manoeuvre" is the most common. There is another based on restricting diagonals.

Two knights versus a pawn is much more challenging. Anyone know of this ending in GM practise?

[Jonathan Rogers]

I agree that I like classical games from the earlier periods, but I think that Kasparov would say, with some justification, that the simplicity and elegance of Capablanca and Smyslov, etc is so beguiling because they had ineffective opposition who allowed them to carry out their plans. If one were able to imitate them, without learning modern opening theory and working on other aspects of the game, one could not achieve the same success today - and nor should one. It would be a sign that chess is failing to evolve. Today, strong players resist! and if they see that their opponents are about to develop a positional bind of the sort which Keith relishes, they won't simply allow it - they will complicate the game instead!

That, of course, is not to say that we are seeing such a high level of chess that there is no joy in following it. But it is true that the audience has to work harder to understand the top games, and I wonder whether that is what Keith does not like so much. Annotators too have to work much harder than they used to in order to make the top games comprehensible. Not all are able to do this.

Anyway, Matt is obviously right, in saying that we are still nowhere near to seeing near-perfection at the top. It is possible, in particular, to make the top 100 in the world with a relatively shallow opening repertoire, as shown by many top Chinese players, more than one of whom have had lost positions as Black in the Slav after 12 moves in recent years. And generally we are (I believe) seeing a higher rate of decisive games at the top than used to be the case in the 1970s.

[Alex Holowczak]

B&N vs K has two common solutions of which the so-called "W manoeuvre" is the most common. There is another based on restricting diagonals.

I learnt to do it the diagonal way, but I call it the triangle way.

I may have been over-exaggerating a little with GMs, but I still think there are going to be some very strong players who can't win K,B&N v K. Especially if they only have a couple of minutes on the clock.

[Jonathan Rogers]

All GMs should be able to mate with K + B + N v K in two minutes. Every now and again some body won't, in the same way that Morozevich once butchered Q + K v R + K, but of course that is not to say that he cannot do it - just that everyone has a bad day now and then.

One of my proudest moments was mating with B + N with about thirty seconds left, in an Essex U-18 competition in 1987 (when i was graded 168!). I wish that had been filmed, but of course you will have to take my word for it ... however my opponent did help by wandering his king from the middle of the board towards the "right" (for me) corner, with a grin on his face which soon turned to abject horror ...

[IM Jack Rudd]

B&N vs K has two common solutions of which the so-called "W manoeuvre" is the most common. There is another based on restricting diagonals.

Two knights versus a pawn is much more challenging. Anyone know of this ending in GM practise?

McNab v Karttunen

[John Upham]

Here we go :

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1428508

[JustinHorton]

All GMs should be able to mate with K + B + N v K in two minutes. Every now and again somebody won't, in the same way that Morozevich once butchered Q + K v R + K,

Also see Gelfand v Svidler