(Chess) Life Returning To Normal

[Matt Bridgeman]

Simon asked me to post a couple of links where counties have recently made some Covid related announcements.

Shropshire Chess has suspended all over the board chess;
https://www.shropshirechess.org/announc ... suspended/

Dorset Chess have stated all adults and children over the age of 11 have to wear a baseball cap …I mean face covering.
https://www.dorsetchess.co.uk/

[JustinHorton]

Ha ha yes

[Simon Rogers]

On a lighter note, I believe one of the biggest chess clubs in the North West of England, Atticus Chess Club Liverpool, is still going ahead with their Christmas Party tonight:
"Atticus Christmas Party, Monday December 20th at Zorba's 7pm."
"The Atticus Xmas Party will be held at Zorba's Greek Restaurant on Monday December 20th at 7pm."
https://www.atticus.merseysidechess.org.uk

[Simon Rogers]

I forgot to mention also it says on the Atticus Chess website:
"Please note you can bring your own bottle of wine and pay a small corkage fee if you wish."

[Roger de Coverly]

Dorset Chess have stated all adults and children over the age of 11 have to wear a baseball cap …I mean face covering.

I thought the legal rule of thumb was that masks had to be worn inside Community Centres except in the bar area.

The rules that would apply to conference centre hotel venues as used by the 4NCL remain to be seen.

Either way I don't think local or even national chess bodies should be inventing rules for the sake of it. That's rules not required either as a condition of using a venue or as a consequence of government emergency decrees.

[Tim Spanton]

Not sure volunteer organisers owe anything to the wider chess community. I think the wider community has a debt to the organisers that it is reluctant to properly acknowledge.

Why do you keep wittering on about volunteer organisers as if these people were unpaid and as if there were organisers in other activities who are made to put on events? Conscription ended a long time ago.
Organisers very much owe to the wider chess community not to cancel events on a whim when entrants have forked out for accommodation and transport costs that will not always be recoverable, especially when the cancellations come too late for easily making alternative arrangements.

[Simon Rogers]

A bit of a quiet one tonight at Poulton-le-Fylde Chess Club. Just seven of us here playing friendlies and exchanging Christmas cards.

[J T Melsom]

Tim
I've seen your latest wittering. I won't be responding to you on this occasion.

[LawrenceCooper]

Not sure volunteer organisers owe anything to the wider chess community. I think the wider community has a debt to the organisers that it is reluctant to properly acknowledge.

Why do you keep wittering on about volunteer organisers as if these people were unpaid and as if there were organisers in other activities who are made to put on events?

Maybe he thinks that organisers are doing their best in very difficult circumstances.

[Tim Spanton]

Not sure volunteer organisers owe anything to the wider chess community. I think the wider community has a debt to the organisers that it is reluctant to properly acknowledge.

Why do you keep wittering on about volunteer organisers as if these people were unpaid and as if there were organisers in other activities who are made to put on events?

Maybe he thinks that organisers are doing their best in very difficult circumstances.

Some do rather better than others

[JustinHorton]

Organisers very much owe to the wider chess community not to cancel events on a whim

"On a whim"

[Stephen Westmoreland]

A bit of a quiet one tonight at Poulton-le-Fylde Chess Club. Just seven of us here playing friendlies and exchanging Christmas cards.

We had small numbers in but more expected Wednesday. From a news trawl this morning, there is hope for the New Year with the restriction data called into question.

[Chris Goodall]

"What do you mean, we never said you should cancel your event? We just happened to mention that it would inevitably cause hundreds of unnecessary deaths and they would be your fault".

I would read between the lines and cancel the event, because liability. But I think I'm in a small minority among chess organisers. Taking people's chess events away over legal niceties? What is this cowardice? Have you no morals?

Organisers very much owe to the wider chess community not to cancel events on a whim

And this is why, pace Roger, it can help for the national body to invent some rules. It means the local organisers don't get it in the neck, either for deciding to go ahead or deciding to cancel.

[NickFaulks]

I would read between the lines and cancel the event

Of course you would, my point was that the Government would say that was entirely your own decision and the subsequent bankruptcy of your business was nothing to do with them.

[Roger Lancaster]

Re the doubling periods:

The doubling thing fails to consider that regardless of governement diktat, that if the public were convinced that regardless of vaccination status they were liable to catch a deadly desease if they ventured out and met other people, that they would stay at home. That might be particularly true of the immediate post Christmas period when a shutdown of offices and businesses is almost normal.

Incidently does anyone still believe that COVID infections are transmitted by contaminated chess pieces?

Is it part of this doubling assumption that, if 50% of the population have the virus on the Nth day, the other 50% will inevitably catch it on day N+1 ?