Chess in Newspapers

[Stewart Reuben]

Nick >Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today is the only local newspaper serving RBKC and Westminster.
A new monthly freebie. It has a chess column.<

Who writes it?

[John McKenna]

Nick >Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today is the only local newspaper serving RBKC and Westminster.
A new monthly freebie. It has a chess column.<

Who writes it?

I don't know, Nick may say, but here's someone who reads it -

https://www.filamentpublishing.com/shop ... ry-martin/

[Nick Grey]

Barry Martin.

[Stewart Reuben]

Sadly, although Barry Martin is a lovely man, he is not a model of accuracy. Thus he wrote in the Times that we had prizes for men and for women in chess. I corrected this. We have open prizes and also prizes for women in some tournaments. He then repeated the error.
As far as I know there are no prizes restricted to men anywhere in the world. When I tackled him on the subject, he just shrugged hi shoulders and said, 'Well'. He just wanted to make a political point however inaccurate.

[MJMcCready]

Is it true that The Sunday Sport is considering a chess column too?

[Chris Rice]

Nick >Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today is the only local newspaper serving RBKC and Westminster.
A new monthly freebie. It has a chess column.<

Who writes it?

I don't know, Nick may say, but here's someone who reads it -

https://www.filamentpublishing.com/shop ... ry-martin/

Here's the entire review from Ray Keene on Barry Martin's book from the digital edition of KCW today. You can use the search facility to find more chess articles from the newspaper but I'm not going to bother again. I failed to find any actual chess in any of the ones I looked at, just a load of waffle. Here's a report on the 2016 Tal Memorial for example.

[Stewart Reuben]

Ray's review of Barry's book included: The banner of the chess expert artist is now held aloft by the author of this anthology of columns from KCW, Barry Martin, who not only has the distinction of writing the world’s largest chess column each month, but has also gained a world chess ranking. In Duchamp’s time, such ratings had not been invented, so Barry is the only artist on the planet who has achieved this accolade.

This is then repeated in the very next paragraph. Not the highlight of Ray's career as a writer, nor a triumph of proof-reading.

I can't remember whether Barry had a FIDE Rating. His name does not appear in the current list and you have to go down to 1000 to be taken off.
There are a huge number of artists. To claim none of them has a FIDE Rating is absurd.

[David Sedgwick]

I can't remember whether Barry [Martin] had a FIDE Rating.

He did once have a rating which is higher than your and my current ratings.

http://www.olimpbase.org/Elo/player/Mar ... Barry.html

[Nick Grey]

I look forward to next months free copy. I like the arts and culture content and that is not normally from Barry.

[Roger de Coverly]

He did once have a rating which is higher than your and my current ratings.

Would he have disappeared because his rating dropped below 2000 in the days when that was the floor?

2005/2010 would have been a rating of his "best" performances.

The ECF/BCF history gives a lower assessment of his strength.

http://ecfgrading.org.uk/new/menu.php?f ... de=170465F

[Simon Rogers]

We get the The Times and Sunday Times at home.
Which had excellent columns by Raymond Keene and now by David Howell.

[Roger de Coverly]

Which had excellent columns by Raymond Keene

The problem with the Ray Keene column was that it was as bad as TV for repeats dressed up as new material.

[Simon Rogers]

That's true. It also had too many of his own games.
The David Howell column is a lot better.