English Chess Forum

I do about one Sudoku a day (generally out of the Times Fiendish or Super Fiendish books). Professionally (my work continues although retired) I write software to solve engineering problems and I enjoy debugging code. Neither of these activities has improved my chess, I think.

Peter has been doing similar things in evening league games too. This year the Surrey League introduced G75 + 10 second increments as the default time limit but with the proviso that there is also (by default) a 3 hour session and unfinished games would be sent for adjudication (thus upholding Surre...

Isn't the obvious solution not to play any games for a season ... then your existing rating will be cancelled?

I agree it was most interesting when it was 4 top English players against 4 of the top players in the rest of the world. After that it became one of a small number of elite international events from which the top player (in all those events) would earn a place in the Candidates tournament.

There was thread on here 3 years ago (during the Covid Chess Closedown) proposing hybrid club matches (each club plays at their own venue). During this discussion the problems with BCF National Club telephone matches were recounted, particularly the infamous Maidstone vs Dundee encounter of 1994. Se...

Paul emailed me asking where the historical records on the website were taken from. The bulk of my reply is below (omitting the bit which speculates about the identity of the person who mis-read the name off the Challenge Cup). "If you look at the historical records section of the website you will n...

I buy my watches (they last a year or two) for less than £10 on Amazon. It's obviously an electronic device but doesn't act as a device for communication. Should I continue to wear it in tournaments?

IM Jack Rudd wrote: ↑

Fri Oct 06, 2023 3:10 pm

No, 180. Rotation by 90 degrees would be needed to correct a board set up with a1 as a white square.

Jack, the OP says my white rook was on h8 rather than a1 so 180 degrees in this case. The board was set up correctly, just the marked on notation (a-h, and 1-8) was wrong.

The position of the square a1 is defined by where the player with the white pieces is sitting, not any notation marked on the board. There was no need to rotate the board by 180 degrees and reset the pieces. However, it would be a friendly/ sporting thing to do if the other player was relying on the...

Paul, what is your recipe for solving the democratic deficit, then? Alongside most other voluntary organisations with 1,000s of members the democratic participation rate by members of the ECF is very low (instanced for example by the numbers voting to elect Member Representatives on Council). The ba...

The ECF rating policy is that either the whole event is submitted for rating or that no results are submitted. Thanks, Brian. That is what I had always assumed and I was disturbed to see people ( I think ) suggesting otherwise. I welcome the unequivocal statement of ECF rating policy on submitting ...

I believe the system that the ECF used to use was the age of a junior during a season was the age as at September 1st whereas FIDE used the age on January 1st during the year. The ECF approach was based on keeping the same age for a grading year. Of course this may have changed now (assuming I am ri...

Various changes from the normal format: 1. 6 rounds in 4 days replaces the normal separate morning and afternoon Christmas tournaments. All rounds are shown as starting at 14.15 (an obvious error) so we can't yet tell how many morning rounds there will be. To be fair they sometimes adjust the number...

I got the free yearbook last year but noticed when I rejoined a couple of days ago that it is no longer mentioned as a benefit. As far as I know there has been no announcement about its being discontinued so I continue to live in hope that it will pop through my letterbox one day.

Roger was the most vociferous opponent of the ECF membership scheme (on here) 10 years ago. I was on the ECF board at the time and there was a worry that club members wouldn't take up membership and the ECF could be in financial trouble. There was some support on the board (from those who ran congre...