English Chess Forum

Some years ago, my then club's president celebrated his eightieth birthday less than six months before suffering a fatal heart attack. At his memorial gathering someone (I forget who) commented how it was good that he got to hear everything that might have been said at his funeral said to his face.

One memory that sticks out for me is playing on the opposition team to Robin and/or Charlie two nights in a row, playing Drunken Knights in the London League and then Hayes in the Thames Valley League.

Didn't Hayes becomes Uxbridge!? They seemed to have most of the same people running them.

Since I returned to chess post pandemic late last year, I have observed it is much more common for sets to have two queens of each colour, although the one occasion I needed one there wasn't one to hand, but the arbiter was nearby (probably because my game was going on so long it had delayed the sta...

In more than four decades of living I had never previously heard of paths specifically for transporting females to and/or from their nuptials. My biggest gripe is people who interpret "name" as "first initial and surname" or similar when filling in match sheets. A close second is those who set up bo...

John Saunders wrote: ↑

Sat Sep 28, 2024 12:45 pm

Nick Ivell wrote: ↑

Sat Sep 28, 2024 12:27 pm

Is it now deemed illegal to write straight into a scorebook?

Yes, it's illegal and it is one rule change that didn't come too soon.

Can you point me to when the rule changed? I haven't played OTB since pre-pandemic.

I have scorebooks going back to 1995, when the books became hardback. The two softback books previously were the victim of an ancestor who had (and probably still has) a propensity to throw out things that aren't his! For a short while I transcribed games to Chessbase but stopped when I obtained a n...

This site now has a 301 Moved Permanently redirect to the British Chess News website. Google appears a bit confused at the moment. I am unable to find a new website other than the page on ECF LMS https://lms.englishchess.org.uk/lms/node/82697/home

I might be showing my age, but it's almost impossible think of such an event without reference to a song by a certain fabulous British musical quartet.

I once played an opponent who went by "Victor Castelada" and subsequently played the same person under the name "Raul Portugal". Later there was at least another different name as well, although I didn't play him under that. When he won a prize at one of Adam Raoof's tournaments, Adam made some quip...

I would have thought that there would be 301 status code redirects from both https://www.rating.englishchess.org.uk/ and https://www.ecfrating.org.uk/ to https://rating.englishchess.org.uk/ simply to keep the company that sounds like 10^100 happy, rather than the meta tag method employed from https:...

John Upham wrote: ↑

Tue Jun 11, 2024 9:57 am

It would appear that the SSL certificate expired on Sat, 20 Apr 2024 22:09:17 GMT

Not sure where you're seeing that, in Firefox looking at the certificate states

Validity
Not Before Sat, 20 Apr 2024 22:09:17 GMT
Not After Fri, 19 Jul 2024 22:09:16 GMT

The certificate is TLS 1.3.

See https://www.indiatvnews.com/amp/sports/other/the-fide-rated-chess-player-yuvika-chaudhary-is-the-youngest-author-to-write-a-book-on-chess-2022-04-30-773261 and https://indiabookofrecords.in/youngest-author-to-write-a-book-on-chess/ regarding https://notionpress.com/read/move-n-mate 13 year old (...

John Cannon must run Gillian Moore quite close /viewtopic.php?f=46&t=11415 My own contribution to his 515 county matches was a rather nondescript draw where I spent more time travelling there and back than playing chess.

Feel free to peruse the numbers here https://www.englishchess.org.uk/event-calendar/ but a quick straw poll, London(ish)-centric. £30 easily. £40 as a ballpark/starting point, assuming you have the required ECF membership category. Last year the most expensive British Championship fee was £300 (or £...

Oh the joys of the days when "name" was interpreted as "first initial and surname", and of unintelligible writing and a lack of validation when reporting. Almost guaranteed to cause graders self-induced alopecia. I've been trying to write something for most of the past hour but others keep getting i...