Your biggest beef

[Roger Lancaster]

Even this forum is guilty of that. I was told I'd be thrown off the forum if I mentioned one case! I might still do it...

That is a serious accusation. I think you have to back it up now!

Am I misreading the situation or did Carl, or whoever it was, simply fear the consequences of publishing what might be defamatory material?

[Kevin Thurlow]

Even this forum is guilty of that. I was told I'd be thrown off the forum if I mentioned one case! I might still do it...

That is a serious accusation. I think you have to back it up now!

Am I misreading the situation or did Carl, or whoever it was, simply fear the consequences of publishing what might be defamatory material?

They may have feared legal action, or they may have wanted to protect the cheat or those doing the cover-up. Or they just made a mistake. Everybody makes mistakes.

I was (as always) careful to say that accusations had been made, without stating that "X cheated, Y covered it up then others covered it all up". I'll leave it there. One of the "others" recently told me he had no recollection of the case, so either that was true, in which case I sympathise with his medical condition, or he did not want to answer the obvious question of, "What benefit did you get?"

There is one amusing part (after a very depressing time) - I was driving along when some idiot stepped off the pavement in front of me. Luckily, I was awake and screeched to a halt. Idiot carried on oblivious and I then realized it was Y! I drove home thinking that if Y had been enjoying German radiator grill as a final meal, everyone would think I did it deliberately. Then I thought that as the enquiry cleared Y, I would have no motive for running him over, (they could hardly say they lied on the enquiry), and also the chess establishment would probably have been a bit more respectful in future.
I was still grateful not to have flattened him though.

[John Clarke]

They decided to make everyone stop playing and stop the clocks in the middle of the match for about half an hour, then brought out tea and biscuits. Who wanted a tea break -no one. All a bit embarrassing I thought

Breaks in the middle of county matches used to be traditional.

Traditional they might have been, but I always hated them. They invariably seemed to be called when it was my turn, with a particularly tricky move to be pondered over. My own club fortunately recognised it was an absurdity, and ended the practice.

[Jon Mahony]

My first ever match in the Yorkshire League and I was playing away. At the venue was another match taking place. Shortly after I left the opening a commotion happened in the other match and I went to see what it was. A player was on the floor and barely conscious. No-one seemed to bothered (games were still going on around this) and I asked if anyone had called an ambulance. They hadn't. So I called the ambulance and went back to my game. I was then called back as the ambulance could not find the venue. No-one seemed to interested in helping me direct the ambulance so all I could do was give them a rough description of the area. Having found the venue I went back to my game. Only to be asked by the ambulance crew if I was coming to hospital with the player as his own team, who had nothing to do with me whatsoever, told them I was taking responsibility for him.

It sounds from that story that one of two things was likely.

1. The player was a known malingerer who would 'play dead' repeatedly and his team were not prepared to humour the nonsense.

2. They are collectively the biggest bunch of assholes to ever soil the Yorkshire chess league

That does I have to say, sound slightly harsh

[Clive Wismayer]

Getting back to the beef thing. Have we dealt with defaulters yet? Only ruthless culling can deal with them. Default once & you're in the last chance saloon, twice & it’s adios. I know a London player who defaulted regularly & shamelessly (for another club, I should say). They tolerated him for years, Heaven knows why.

Another beef is Wood Green, or whoever the guy is who buys up & deploys GMs in the London league winning by a street every season, kinda like Manchester City. I haven’t checked to see whether this is still going on but I will return with an edit.

ETA well, the LCL no longer publishes league tables or lists of historical winners. The league tables are supposed to be accessible via a link to the ECF but, like everything else in Broken Britain, it doesn’t work.

[Ian Thompson]

ETA well, the LCL no longer publishes league tables or lists of historical winners. The league tables are supposed to be accessible via a link to the ECF but, like everything else in Broken Britain, it doesn’t work.

Most likely because some changes were made to the ECF's LMS recently which caused all the URLs to change. The Division 1 league table is here - https://lms.englishchess.org.uk/lms/event/5844/table.

[Joey Stewart]

It is a legitimate beef to have actually, a lot of knowledge about former league winners tends to only be known by one or two members of the management committee or is written on the trophy itself (assuming you are one of the lucky leagues where it has not been lost).

I guess this one could also be chalked up to general apathy among players, most of these guys I've met would happily share the knowledge if asked but people don't think to do so, assuming they will be around forever and once they are gone then it is also lost forever.

[Clive Wismayer]

ETA well, the LCL no longer publishes league tables or lists of historical winners. The league tables are supposed to be accessible via a link to the ECF but, like everything else in Broken Britain, it doesn’t work.

Most likely because some changes were made to the ECF's LMS recently which caused all the URLs to change. The Division 1 league table is here - https://lms.englishchess.org.uk/lms/event/5844/table.

Thanks. Historical info seems to be lacking though. I don’t know (& cannot now check) how many consecutive years Wood Green won the division but it was (& may still be) a very boring number.

[Clive Wismayer]

It is a legitimate beef to have actually, a lot of knowledge about former league winners tends to only be known by one or two members of the management committee or is written on the trophy itself (assuming you are one of the lucky leagues where it has not been lost).

I guess this one could also be chalked up to general apathy among players, most of these guys I've met would happily share the knowledge if asked but people don't think to do so, assuming they will be around forever and once they are gone then it is also lost forever.

Like something from the dark ages. Records should be comprehensive & accessible.

[Ian Thompson]

It is a legitimate beef to have actually, a lot of knowledge about former league winners tends to only be known by one or two members of the management committee or is written on the trophy itself (assuming you are one of the lucky leagues where it has not been lost).

I guess this one could also be chalked up to general apathy among players, most of these guys I've met would happily share the knowledge if asked but people don't think to do so, assuming they will be around forever and once they are gone then it is also lost forever.

The mistake the London Chess League probably made was to outsource the running of their website and results service to a third-party and not to ensure that they owned the domain names being used, and were able to obtain all the data contained within it if they stopped using the third-party service. The result is that historical results are no longer readily available and the links the LCL provide to those results on their old website now redirect to the British Chess News website.

[Paul Cooksey]

Everything I could think of seemed either too big or too trivial. But Nick has helped me in another thread

It is when there is plenty of space but the chairs are so close that you cannot stand up without disturbing someone else.

(yes, I understand there is a reason why this is more of a problem for me than normally sized people!)