English Chess Forum

It would not be his first norm, as it happens - he got one at Hammersmith a few weeks ago.

Q: What does the "B" in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for?

A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot.

Cannot for the life of me work out why here (So-Hovhannisyan): 3K1k2/4rp2/6p1/8/2PR4/3p4/8/8 b - - 7 53 53...Re2 draws but 53...Re1 wins. It must be a line somewhere where the Black pawn threatens to queen on d1 and the rook is protecting that square. Shouldn't think so. The win looks pretty trivia...

What if a prior requirement for a tiebreaker is that it be easily comprehensible to the competitors and public How is "Head-to-head result → Buchholz Cut-1 → Buchholz (full) → Sonneborn-Berger → Most wins / Most games played with Black" easily comprehensible to the competitors and public? Well, foo...

If you want a single tie-breaker that's unlikely to need follow-ups, sum of opponents' ratings usually does the trick.

Sadly, your tiebreak does not help when someone swimming at the "deep end" (as you put it) is leapfrogged in the last round by someone who has played weaker opposition but ends up scoring more points. That's just inherent to the Swiss system, though. The only way around that is to have prizes based...

Arakhamia-Grant played in three Olympiads for the Scotland open team.

Oooh, 26.Qxe6+. Sweet.

Oooh, 26.Qxe6+. Sweet.

Something tells me black probably didn't actually play 44...Qe3+ in that game.

but today features an all-Caribbean clash, Dominica and Dominican Republic, which seems to be the nearest thing to a local derby. Although if your metric is "distance between the two capitals", Türkiye v Jordan is slightly closer. EDIT: Looking down the list, I think San Marino v Bosnia wins the di...

Could it be that a lot of youngsters taking up chess during the pandemic, then chewed up players like me OTB while they were lowly rated, before giving up or reaching their peak when they went to university, or started working just as their rating was reaching that bracket? That process is then rep...

Christopher Kreuzer wrote: ↑

Sun Sep 06, 2026 9:38 pm

It will happen one day and then there will be trouble!

There won't be any trouble at all. If it's unclear which one to exclude, it won't matter, because whichever you exclude will produce the same result.

Beating your rivals for first place is usually going to have a massive effect under Sonneborn-Berger, for obvious reasons: they're a high-scoring opponent, and you beat them.

Most of the bridge books I see in collections seem to be comedy titles - Bridge In The Menagerie and the like.