English Chess Forum

Does anyone have a current list of British Correspondence GMs and IMs. Just interested to know how many have a current ECF grade. I appreciate that there may be many reasons why people only play correspondence - ill-health, location etc. Just I have acquired a very long run of a number of correspondence magazines - and there are loads of people with titles that I don't recognise.

I mean I know Keith Richardson, Adrian Hollis, the late lamented Simon Webb as GMs at corres - and I know John Carleton and John Anderson who are both IMs. There may be more - but there are lots I don't know and I have been playing OTB for over 40 years.

John Moore wrote:Does anyone have a current list of British Correspondence GMs and IMs.

You can get lists from http://www.iccf.com/content/index.php?o ... &Itemid=50.

Thanks for that, Ian

A list is also to be found in the ECF Yearbook.

That's good, I can tell people that I have drawn with a Grandmaster in a real game:
930162 Kangur, Alvar EST GM 2007

Up 'til now I was relying on my draw against Nick Pert in a simul where he was slightly distracted by the person on the board next to me sneaking his captured pieces back into the game whenever he felt he could get away with it.

Jon D'Souza-Eva wrote:That's good, I can tell people that I have drawn with a Grandmaster in a real game:
930162 Kangur, Alvar EST GM 2007

Up 'til now I was relying on my draw against Nick Pert in a simul where he was slightly distracted by the person on the board next to me sneaking his captured pieces back into the game whenever he felt he could get away with it.

I played a corr. IM on playchess last night and won 4-0 in 5min blitz games. His level of theory was suprisingly lacking. I guess a corr IM is nowhere near as strong as an OTB one?

Gareth Harley-Yeo wrote: I guess a corr IM is nowhere near as strong as an OTB one?

Depends how strong his engine is

Gareth Harley-Yeo wrote:

Jon D'Souza-Eva wrote:That's good, I can tell people that I have drawn with a Grandmaster in a real game:
930162 Kangur, Alvar EST GM 2007

Up 'til now I was relying on my draw against Nick Pert in a simul where he was slightly distracted by the person on the board next to me sneaking his captured pieces back into the game whenever he felt he could get away with it.

I played a corr. IM on playchess last night and won 4-0 in 5min blitz games. His level of theory was suprisingly lacking. I guess a corr IM is nowhere near as strong as an OTB one?

Depends who the OTB IM is

"I guess a corr IM is nowhere near as strong as an OTB one?"

It also depends whether you are playing CC or not!

CC GMs would probably still come out on top against AN Other using an engine, but maybe not for much longer. CC also has the title SIM (Senior International Master), as a further stage before you reach GM.

I am pretty sure Richard Hall is a correspondance GM from memory he is about 200 ecf grade He just finished runner up in the strongest correspondance tournament off all time

I had a look at the list and found that I played quite a few CC IM's in the 80's and 90's (when I was an active CC player).

Thanks to a friend who knows about CC -

"Richard V M Hall is indeed a correspondence GM who is currently rated 2628
(28th in the World) and the highest rated Englishman in the ICCF. His OTB
grade in July 2009 was D178.

He recently finished 3rd on tie-break in the Category XVI (average rating
2626-2650) Hermann Heemsoth Memorial in which several past cc World
Champions participated all of which finished lower than Richard. Players in
that tournament were rated between 2565 (who finished 11th out of 17) and
2712 (who finished 9th out of 17). The recently deceased Umansky finished
14th out of 17. This is probably the strongest event played for some time;
even the Simon Webb Memorial was only Category XV.

Richard is currently playing in World Championship 25 Final which is a
Category XIV (average rating 2576-2600) event. This shows the strength of
the Memorial event!"

Going back to this old thread, I was playing in a county match yesterday (Surrey vs Middlesex U180), and I was told after the game that my opponent (a Keith B. Richardson, playing for Surrey) was the same Keith Bevan Richardson mentioned here as the UK's first correspondence chess grandmaster. My opponent was, I think, this Keith B. Richardson:

http://www.ecfgrading.org.uk/?ref=117893D

I would check his FIDE rating card, but the FIDE rating site is down...

I did find a sort of mirror site here:

http://chess-db.com/public/pinfo.jsp?id=410152

That says Keith B. Richardson was born in 1942, but the picture there doesn't look anything like my opponent yesterday.

Can anyone shed some light on this?

I'm not sure whether the player concerned is still active in correspondence chess but he was one of the country's top players at one time - while having an OTB grade of less than 100.

Paul Cooksey wrote:You almost certainly did play the correspondence GM (assuming he got into massive time trouble by about move 20 )

He may now be wise to the attempts of his local league opponents to create as interesting or difficult an opening position as possible.