English Chess Forum

Congratulations Nick Pert for a well deserved victory. Overall I found the tournament very enjoyable - I'm glad we were able to have an in person tournament this year. Fingers crossed my performance this year will qualify me for next year's British, if not then oh well I will qualify via next year's...

IM Jack Rudd wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 09, 2021 3:56 pm

Looks like Hebden-Pert, Olson-Ledger, Harvey-Gormally at the top, provided the 4½-and-below scoregroups pair.

Harvey and Gormally have already played each other.

There are many interesting snippets from Freddy's interview, but for me the most interesting was the idea of him playing matches against Peter Finn each week. I got the impression that relationship went beyond somebody he plays chess with and Peter was a bigger brother/role model figure. Once the p...

The odds on board 2 are not as bad as the numbers would suggest - if the fide ratings were not a year behind AND completely broken Freddie would be more like a 2200 grade judging from his interview with Matthew saddler and Natasha Regan last night where he demonstrated some very good understanding ...

Massive congratulations Keith, from the games I looked at you definitely played the best chess of the tournament and were a well deserved winner.

The odds on board 2 are not as bad as the numbers would suggest - if the fide ratings were not a year behind AND completely broken Freddie would be more like a 2200 grade judging from his interview with Matthew saddler and Natasha Regan last night where he demonstrated some very good understanding ...

Does anyone know any more about this? https://twitter.com/OxfordUnion/status/1391790507534213125 Yes, my brother is studying at Oxford currently so I know a little more. At some point it was announced that Magnus was going to give a talk at the Oxford Union and that he would be playing a bullet gam...

Alekseenko v Ding was a normal Italian Game until White threw in 9 b3, what's that all about? This idea is recommended in Souleidis and Muller's Slow Italian book although slightly later after Be6 from black. Against the usual Bb5 from white black is doing well with the plan Qb8 to a7 so this is an...

So if you make an incorrect 50 move rule claim you don't get told how many moves it's been? If you're defending say rook against rook and bishop what's to stop the defender making several false claims (on moves 35, 38, 44, 46 and 48 say) in quick succession? The extra time really doesn't help the at...

Actually, having looked at his graph, this 'getting back to 1500' theory is simply wrong as an explanation as to what he's doing now. He has dropped back to around 1500 twice. May 2019 and August 2020. Over the last six months - despite all the deliberate losses - he's not been below 1850. I had no...

The second game you posted looks like Rd2 could well have just been a careless blunder followed by him chucking away all his remaining pieces out of annoyance. Maybe a fit of rage then saw him immediately resign his next game or maybe he decided he was no longer in the right headspace to be playing...

This may be true but it's certainly not all he's doing. E.g. when he chucked a game against me it was just after he resigned one in a winning position. But subsequently he has won many (and deliberately lost many) without getting anywhere near back to 1500. And the joy of winning those games? Mine ...

My suspicion is that this user has been deliberately losing games in order to get back to the 1500 starting rating in order to do a speedrun back up to his usual rating. He has got back down to 1500 twice only to quickly start winning again back up to his usual standard. The concept of a chess spee...

I don't really understand this, the player has zero tournament points, so why do we think he is choosing to lose so many games in a row? My suspicion is that this user has been deliberately losing games in order to get back to the 1500 starting rating in order to do a speedrun back up to his usual ...

Focusing on this 6-man position, as am using the the verdicts at shredderchess (I think the online one only does 6-man positions): The full 7-man tablebase is available on Lichess even without an account. In order to use it click on tools and then board editor where you can set up a position. Then ...