English Chess Forum

I have only been back playing for 7 years so interesting to see how strong the teams were previously. I was basing it on my experience since returning and was perhaps influenced by the strength of Ilkley. Also some of the other teams look much stronger than previous years. Going to be a tight seaso...

He moved his queen 3 tines in the opening and it ended up on e1. The first two of those were absolutely automatic though. Qd2 -> e3 is rather normal (sometimes f2 etc I guess) and the top computer move there. Qe3 -> e1 is as good a retreat as anything, it seems. Going in for Nc6, Qc5 etc as the com...

There's isn't. I'm not sure he even played that badly to be honest - it looked like a classical position somehow turned from normal to totally horrible without him even doing anything obviously wrong, let alone blundering. Some of the online computer ideas for white are very unnatural. He dropped t...

There's isn't.

I'm not sure he even played that badly to be honest - it looked like a classical position somehow turned from normal to totally horrible without him even doing anything obviously wrong, let alone blundering.

Some of the online computer ideas for white are very unnatural.

The league does seem to be getting stronger and stronger. Nearly all the teams on Saturday were clearly over 16000 combined. I wonder how it compares with other seasons. Ok, right I've found it. I was sure I'd done it - I scraped chessnuts back when Jon G was running it. Unlike the current (basical...

A fine effort from you it was too :) I've only very rarely lost in these big team matches but Julian just took me to pieces. I obviously prefer to remember our 7-1 win from the season after! For some reason we seemed to keep alternating alarmingly big wins and tight losses/draws vs Bradford, the She...

The league does seem to be getting stronger and stronger. Nearly all the teams on Saturday were clearly over 16000 combined. I wonder how it compares with other seasons. Well on a short term basis it's quite easy to track: firmly up :) Doncaster + 3 x ~2100's from Lincolnshire (?) were a considerab...

Yes for HDCA. Crystal was working and could not make it. Due to the trains been out at Huddersfield, we could not get Alan to Doncaster, so he played for our B team this round. With three teams, drivers are a god send! They are! One day they'll stop messing with Huddersfield station, it must be qui...

Off we went again last Saturday. York had two captains and various players on holiday but won very well vs Bradford who have - recruiting Phil Watson - continued to morph into Bradford central redux. (Still issues lower down though, are Ilkley et al basically eating their younger players?). Huddersf...

Veering even further slightly off topic: unless I'm mistaken, there's been much more fiction with a chess background than there has with bridge. In the latter category I can recall seeing only one novel ( Trick Thirteen , by Terence Reese and Jeremy Flint), although according to a review on Amazon,...

Come to think it might simply be that they had to stop running Bridge magazine - which of course says something in it's own right!
(In fact I think that even the American anologue has stopped.).

Excellent news

I hope they haven't dropped the bridge books entirely - those can be even harder to get hold of.
(For some reason, despite the maybe larger player base, I don't get the impression that Bridge books sell remotely as well as chess ones.).

Starting to plot this seasons efforts it seems - am I allowed to be gently terrified of the prospect on an entire team of Northumberland juniors in the U2050's?

Very impressive :) Down another level, I do wonder what sort of unbeaten runs some amateurs around 21-2200 might have managed. Pre 4NCL, or if not playing it/congresses, they were typically only really threatened in a handful of games a season. Probably we just don't have databases/electronic results.

What happens if you don't follow them and play lower rated players above higher rated ones? Automatic mass defaults in the 4NCL, so no one does it! (On purpose that is, I imagine a few accidents have slipped through over the years.). In other leagues the rules tend to be rather vaguer, and you don'...