English Chess Forum

At the risk of prolonging this and moving the thread further from its core, I don't as a general rule quote from other posts when responding. But thank you for the lesson in using the forum.

Thank you for your measured reply.

And in the spirit of "measure for measure"...

I admit that my spelling is far from exemplary and that my "Shakespere" was, at best, a palpable near miss that I was correctly hauled up for by Justice Horton.

On Netflix it is clear that the orphanage is not segregated.
My partner has her jab next week.
Like Beth she will wear a sleeveless top, jumper and coat.
A mask which highlights her eye makeup.
She cannot have a Beth hair cut and may notice that both hair saloons she uses have been demolished.

As for Othello I would rather see a female actress.

A few sources, Chess.Com, NIC and now some newspapers are hinting that the inspiration for Beth Harmon
could be Diana Lanni, https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=134171

Bill Wall seems oi have been one of the first to spot the link between the two.

"Diana Lanni (1955- ) was once one of the top five female chess players in the United States in the early 1980s.
She left home after high school to escape her troubled, working-class American family. Her father was abusing her mother.

THe family lived in the Washington, DC.area. She was beautiful and worked as a topless dancer in Washington DC.
She then moved to Miami with a friend and got heavily involved with alcohol and cocaine. Running out of out of money,
she decided to drive to a women's chess tournament in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and won the event.
She felt "real self-esteem for the first time in my life." She then moved to New York.

Her problems continued due to her dependency on drugs and she became a prostitute to keep up with her cocaine habit.
She wound up at Bellevue Hospital in New York to work out her problems which had led her to the brink of suicide.

On New Year's Eve, 1980, she walked out of the hospital and ended up at the Chess Center in New York where she found a room and a job.
She played more chess, earned an expert's rating, qualified for the US women's chess team in the 1982 chess Olympiad in 1982, "

More here: https://billwallchess.blogspot.com/2020 ... vices.html

(Still not watched it, loads of my non-playing friends are saying they thought it was great!
When things get going again I hope clubs everywhere are smart enough to advertise their existence.)

Couple more historical questions arising from episode two.

Did they have Elo-type ratings back then? And did they play Swiss-type tournaments?

If we are talking about the US, the answers are yes and yes.

(USCF ratings, using much the same number system as Elo adopted, date back to at least the mid 1950s)

Cheers, that's interesting

JustinHorton wrote: ↑

Sat Feb 20, 2021 10:14 pm

And did they play Swiss-type tournaments?

The BCF moved to Swiss system tournaments from the 1949 Championship onwards. Other tournaments run over several days followed suit. Swiss system tournaments over a weekend were introduced to the UK by Stewart Reuben in the late 1960s copying a US format. In Stewart's version you would play six rounds at a move rate of 48 moves in 120 minutes and unfinished games would be adjudicated after four hours.

Roger de Coverly wrote: ↑

Sun Feb 21, 2021 1:35 pm

JustinHorton wrote: ↑

Sat Feb 20, 2021 10:14 pm

And did they play Swiss-type tournaments?

The BCF moved to Swiss system tournaments from the 1949 Championship onwards. Other tournaments run over several days followed suit. Swiss system tournaments over a weekend were introduced to the UK by Stewart Reuben in the late 1960s copying a US format. In Stewart's version you would play six rounds at a move rate of 48 moves in 120 minutes and unfinished games would be adjudicated after four hours.

To be more precise, mid-1960s. I believe Stewart organised the first Islington Open in 1966.
I played in the second one (1967) and it was indeed 6-rounds (Friday evening, 3 on Sat, 2 on Sun) with 48 in 2 hrs time limit but I don't recall any adjudication in that or the later ones I played in.
If my recollection is correct, in my game with Michael Basman we agreed a draw with both flags hanging. Maybe we weren't close to move 48.

(A few month earlier, at BUCA in York, we had had a similar finish but where I lost on time; maybe Michael thought it was his turn to lose if we continued. Unfortunately I don't have the score of either game.)

I don't think any of my other games in 1966 went the full four hours.

Maybe somebody else who played in one of the first two Islington Opens can recall more details.

Roger de Coverly wrote: ↑

Sun Feb 21, 2021 1:35 pm

JustinHorton wrote: ↑

Sat Feb 20, 2021 10:14 pm

And did they play Swiss-type tournaments?

The BCF moved to Swiss system tournaments from the 1949 Championship onwards.

I was aware of the format of the British: less aware that it was followed in the States.

Several of RJF's earliest domestic events in the mid 1950s were Swisses IIRC.

I'm guessing the world champion probably wouldn't have been playing in a Swiss in Mexico in 1966 though. (Is it a Swiss? I thought so because Beth tells her mother before the first round that if she wins, she'll meet a better player in the second round.)

I liked the fourth episode a lot, you get to see more of Beth and her mother as people.

Having now seen the whole thing, my opinion is very much that it's a lot better show when it centres on the characters rather than the chess.

And the series and its star won "Golden Globes" last night.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-55916768

(scroll down to the end)