English Chess Forum

Progress. This is easy, you send all the promising girls you can find and then select the same number of boys, leaving the rest of the talented boys at home. Job done! Many poorer Federations already do this, because free accommodation and food is only provided to one player in each division in wor...

It is in volume 156, out earlier this year. It may well be a rewrite of the above piece, yes. Yes, the Informant article is a rewrite of the Gardiner Chess articles. The anecdotes are the more or less same, but I was able to include extra information I had learned in recent years, and also improve ...

I don't think Nick would really want me to go into detail - he is the one who wants to maintain Browne's reputation, for which 'bad' is a very understated term.

Nick should probably talk to a few more of Walter's contemporaries.

Regardless of whether Niemann is victim or villain - and from my limited knowledge the former is much more likely - the paranoia of some top players is entirely justified. As far back as 2016, as the result of some accusations that were being made, I contacted the head of a nanotechnology department...

I have been told by a Dutch player who ran into him accidentally and recognised him (but didn't know his back story) that for many of those years he was living in an ashram in the south of the Netherlands, working as the ashram's computer expert.

No, just a statement.
There must be an earlier source, since Purdy was not in the habit of making things up (and published plenty of comments/interviews by the players after the 1937 match).

There is no source for the cow claim in 'Chess World' July 1954, which is part of an overview of the previous quarter century.
Also, Purdy does not mention the cow in his book 'The Return of Alekhine', published in 1938.

Just delving into history for no particular purpose, there were also tanks in the streets in Yerevan during the Olympiad in 1996. David will know the details, since he was international director at the time. We didn't know that would be the case when we went, and anyway that was a great Olympiad. T...

I think Nick means that it was great that no chessplayers were killed. Thanks, Ian, but I am quite capable of writing what I mean. or being taken back from the venue to (you hope) your hotel late in the evening in the back of a police car If you are referring to the usual story, it exemplifies my p...

Just delving into history for no particular purpose, there were also tanks in the streets in Yerevan during the Olympiad in 1996. We didn't know that would be the case when we went, and anyway that was a great Olympiad. The Armenians could not have been more welcoming and the military and protester...

"Some tournaments...[take] place only on paper" (attributed to Shohreh Bayat). If Shohreh really said that, I'm sure that FPL would like to learn more. A couple of decades ago, I reported some never-played norm tournaments (not Strumica) to someone (ethical) on the Qualifications Commission at the ...

Thanks to everyone for their help. Leonard Barden suggested I try the EC Forum as he wasn't completely sure about Mackay's first name. (He was sure about the nickname, given to him by Persitz at the Cheltenham 53 tournament.) However Alan McGowan, the Scottish chess historian, has provided very conv...

I am wondering if someone can help, please with the first name of DG Mackay, who came =5th in the first CHESS Festival in Cheltenham 1953, a tournament won by Donner? His nickname was apparently Sly Mackay due to his tactical tricks.

To correct Stewart, chess was not an exhibition, or demonstration, sport at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. There was only one exhibition sport at Sydney 2000, wheelchair racing. There was also a chess exhibition organised by FIDE at Athletes Village, but it had no connection to the Sydney Olympics. The c...