English Chess Forum

Every now and again this forum goes very quiet for no obvious reason (but I expect that it will pick up when elections to the ECF board are on the horizon)... Anyway, it does seem that the English championships have been taking place this weekend and at 4pm, round six (of seven) will see Adams and Royal play on top board with 4.5/5. Below them, six players have 4/5, including Vitiugov, and the strength of the event can be gauged from Gawain and Ameet each being among the bunch with 3.5/5.

I forgot about this:
https://lichess.org/broadcast/ecf-engli ... htX#boards

Jonathan Rogers wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 20, 2025 3:20 pm

Every now and again this forum goes very quiet for no obvious reason (but I expect that it will pick up when elections to the ECF board are on the horizon)... Anyway, it does seem that the English championships have been taking place this weekend and at 4pm, round six (of seven) will see Adams and Royal play on top board with 4.5/5. Below them, six players have 4/5, including Vitiugov, and the strength of the event can be gauged from Gawain and Ameet each being among the bunch with 3.5/5.

Mickey has been very impressive.

Jonathan Rogers wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 20, 2025 3:20 pm

Every now and again this forum goes very quiet for no obvious reason (but I expect that it will pick up when elections to the ECF board are on the horizon)... Anyway, it does seem that the English championships have been taking place this weekend and at 4pm, round six (of seven) will see Adams and Royal play on top board with 4.5/5. Below them, six players have 4/5, including Vitiugov, and the strength of the event can be gauged from Gawain and Ameet each being among the bunch with 3.5/5.

That might be because a lot of people got blocked recently by Cloudfare, I certainly did.

LawrenceCooper wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 20, 2025 6:30 pm

Jonathan Rogers wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 20, 2025 3:20 pm

Every now and again this forum goes very quiet for no obvious reason (but I expect that it will pick up when elections to the ECF board are on the horizon)... Anyway, it does seem that the English championships have been taking place this weekend and at 4pm, round six (of seven) will see Adams and Royal play on top board with 4.5/5. Below them, six players have 4/5, including Vitiugov, and the strength of the event can be gauged from Gawain and Ameet each being among the bunch with 3.5/5.

Mickey has been very impressive.

Yes, it is not that obvious where Royal went wrong. It is also understandable that he might not have realised that 26 Ng6+ was not just good but virtually winning. It is interesting how the f7 pawn quite paralyses Black. One could see the difficulty with 28 ...g6 (allowing Rh7+, as did 29...g6 in the game) but it would have been difficult to see, far in advance, why 28...Rf8 would not do. The answer, I think, would be 29 Ne7 which creates two threats - Ng6+ as well as the same Rh7+. And after Royal's 28...Re4 29 Rae1 the situation is no better because 29...Rf8 is still met by 30 Ne7, with the above two threats.

Well - he still has it, hasn't he?

The engines say Nf8 was a mistake and when the same knight recaptures on g6, its assessed as +6.1.

Meanwhile, the women's event got 10 entries for a 7-round tournament, and the final-round pairings are going to be very interesting (there's a player on ½ whose possible opponents all have 4 or more).

MJMcCready wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 20, 2025 7:02 pm

Jonathan Rogers wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 20, 2025 3:20 pm

Every now and again this forum goes very quiet for no obvious reason (but I expect that it will pick up when elections to the ECF board are on the horizon)... Anyway, it does seem that the English championships have been taking place this weekend and at 4pm, round six (of seven) will see Adams and Royal play on top board with 4.5/5. Below them, six players have 4/5, including Vitiugov, and the strength of the event can be gauged from Gawain and Ameet each being among the bunch with 3.5/5.

That might be because a lot of people got blocked recently by Cloudfare, I certainly did.

I am trying!

Somebody is paying good money to attack us.

Carl Hibbard wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 20, 2025 8:41 pm

MJMcCready wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 20, 2025 7:02 pm

Jonathan Rogers wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 20, 2025 3:20 pm

Every now and again this forum goes very quiet for no obvious reason (but I expect that it will pick up when elections to the ECF board are on the horizon)... Anyway, it does seem that the English championships have been taking place this weekend and at 4pm, round six (of seven) will see Adams and Royal play on top board with 4.5/5. Below them, six players have 4/5, including Vitiugov, and the strength of the event can be gauged from Gawain and Ameet each being among the bunch with 3.5/5.

That might be because a lot of people got blocked recently by Cloudfare, I certainly did.

I am trying!
Somebody is paying good money to attack us.

Thanks for that, I assumed it was the case that something like that might be occuring because it kept saying to me 'too many connections'. But why would they want to do that to a forum? What is the benefit in that?

Jonathan Rogers wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 20, 2025 7:35 pm

LawrenceCooper wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 20, 2025 6:30 pm

Jonathan Rogers wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 20, 2025 3:20 pm

Every now and again this forum goes very quiet for no obvious reason (but I expect that it will pick up when elections to the ECF board are on the horizon)... Anyway, it does seem that the English championships have been taking place this weekend and at 4pm, round six (of seven) will see Adams and Royal play on top board with 4.5/5. Below them, six players have 4/5, including Vitiugov, and the strength of the event can be gauged from Gawain and Ameet each being among the bunch with 3.5/5.

Mickey has been very impressive.

Yes, it is not that obvious where Royal went wrong. It is also understandable that he might not have realised that 26 Ng6+ was not just good but virtually winning. It is interesting how the f7 pawn quite paralyses Black. One could see the difficulty with 28 ...g6 (allowing Rh7+, as did 29...g6 in the game) but it would have been difficult to see, far in advance, why 28...Rf8 would not do. The answer, I think, would be 29 Ne7 which creates two threats - Ng6+ as well as the same Rh7+. And after Royal's 28...Re4 29 Rae1 the situation is no better because 29...Rf8 is still met by 30 Ne7, with the above two threats.

Well - he still has it, hasn't he?

Last round pairings:

Round 7 on 2025/07/21 at 10:00
Bo. No. White Rtg Pts. Result Pts. Black Rtg No.
1 7 IM Wadsworth, Matthew J 2575 5 5½ GM Adams, Michael 2726 2
2 1 GM Vitiugov, Nikita 2746 5 4½ GM Ghasi, Ameet K 2577 6
3 3 GM Maroroa Jones, Gawain 2723 4½ 4½ IM Jackson, James P 2437 12
4 4 GM Royal, Shreyas 2617 4½ 4½ GM Emms, John M 2428 13
5 14 GM Hebden, Mark L 2427 4½ 4½ IM Roberson, Peter T 2499 8
6 11 FM Badacsonyi, Stanley 2455 4½ 4 IM Willow, Jonah B 2490 9

Round 7 on 2025/07/21 at 10:00
Bo. No. White Rtg Pts. Result Pts. Black Rtg No.
1 1 WGM Mirzoeva, Elmira 2368 4½ 3½ WFM Dicen, Elis Denele 2231 2
2 5 Maton, Emily 2067 3½ 4½ WCM Hariharan, Shambavi 2153 3
3 4 Zhu, Yaoyao 2104 4 3 WCM Sheikh, Anum 1926 7
4 6 WFM Longson, Sarah N 2019 4 ½ Saharkar, Sharvari 1707 9
5 10 Fernando, Manel 1677 2 bye
6 8 Roychowdhury, Aashita 1719 ½ 0 not paired

Round 7 on 2025/07/21 at 10:00
Bo. No. White Rtg Pts. Result Pts. Black Rtg No.
1 3 Ravi, Vaishnavi 1634 5 5 Burgess, Rose 1523 10
2 5 Prabhakaran, Anvikkashri 1624 4 5 Singha, Swati 1659 1
3 17 Van Neerven, Yvon 1370 4 3½ Boozorginia, Zoya 1267 19

IM Jack Rudd wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 20, 2025 8:35 pm

Meanwhile, the women's event got 10 entries for a 7-round tournament, and the final-round pairings are going to be very interesting (there's a player on ½ whose possible opponents all have 4 or more).

My thought as well when I saw the number of entries compared to the number of rounds.

Now Roychowdhury has withdrawn, why has Fernando (2 points) got the bye, not Saharkar (0.5 points)?

Because, once the 4½s had been given games against 3½s, Saharkar was the only available opponent for Longson.

MJMcCready wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 20, 2025 8:51 pm

But why would they want to do that to a forum? What is the benefit in that?

The forum's relationship with the ECF has been strained on occasions. It's more possibly malevolent AI looking for chess content to falsely regurgitate.

That might be possible yes.

MJMcCready wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 20, 2025 8:51 pm

Carl Hibbard wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 20, 2025 8:41 pm

MJMcCready wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 20, 2025 7:02 pm

That might be because a lot of people got blocked recently by Cloudfare, I certainly did.

I am trying!
Somebody is paying good money to attack us.

Thanks for that, I assumed it was the case that something like that might be occuring because it kept saying to me 'too many connections'. But why would they want to do that to a forum? What is the benefit in that?

A politics forum I used regularly was hacked beyond repair by a random Indonesian back in 2012.