Chess lovers dating site

[John Foley]

I've seen some mating gambits in my time .. but this is star-cross'd.

http://www.chesslover.co.uk

[IM Jack Rudd]

They rejected my profile text. Bah.

[Gareth Harley-Yeo]

Will somebody with too much time on their hands please sign up to see if it's legit? I'm amused.

We could start hosting chess speed dating at the 4NCL venues in the evenings.

[Ian Kingston]

Will somebody with too much time on their hands please sign up to see if it's legit? I'm amused.

We could start hosting chess speed dating at the 4NCL venues in the evenings.

I'd hardly say I have too much time on my hands, but I faked an identity and took a look.

It's legitimate in one sense - plenty of very real profiles. But the idea that everyone is a chess lover is revealed as false. The site is part of UK Dating Group, which runs several different themed dating sites. You can see some of them listed at the foot of the Chess Lover page - Art, Bowling, Cougar, Horse etc. However, once registered, you're thrown into the same pot as people from all the other themed sites. How else do you explain, for example, 504 chess-loving women aged 41-45 in Bedfordshire alone?

(Combining nominally separate sites appears to be common practice in the dating world. A friend of mine (honest!) signed up to a site for single parents. The site matched him with a woman living 150 miles away who had signed up via a 'no children/don't want children' site. That was six years ago. They married this year.)

Anyway: my conclusion is that men are no more likely to find a chess-playing partner on that site than on any other. Women, on the other hand (given the unbalanced sex ratio in chess), might have more luck, but I wouldn't bet on it.

[John Upham]

I see a business opportunity for the ECF here...

All the matching could be managed by the Office staff.

Maybe there should be a sub-site for ECF Arbiters?

[Sean Hewitt]

We could start hosting chess speed dating at the 4NCL venues in the evenings.

Doesn't that happen already?