English Chess Forum

Here's what Chess Magazine has to say about this forum.

Definitely not be confused with the English Chess Federation. If you're looking for obscure, endless arguments by pedants about everything from the makeup of the England team to the ethics of when to resign, then this is the site for you.

Did the objections to removal of figurines and brightly coloured diagrams get under someone's skin?

Mind you, the obscure arguements bit is probably not a million miles from the truth.

Why is it not to be confused with the English Chess Federation?

Roger de Coverly wrote:Here's what Chess Magazine has to say about this forum.

Definitely not be confused with the English Chess Federation. If you're looking for obscure, endless arguments by pedants about everything from the makeup of the England team to the ethics of when to resign, then this is the site for you.

Did the objections to removal of figurines and brightly coloured diagrams get under someone's skin?

Where about and whose comment was that?

Carl Hibbard wrote:Where about and whose comment was that?

The review is in a piece by Steve Barrett, pages 48-50 of the November 2010 issue.

The comments about diagrams were on the forum somewhere in response to the August2010 edition of Chess. There were various contributors.

Ok thanks, that was nice of him...

Envy is a nasty trait

Is steve Barrett the guy who pretends to be around 190-200 when he is actually more like IM strength?

I suspect that Steve's comments are more likely to attract new Forumites than otherwise.

Hmm. I wonder how many forumites are CHESS subscribers?

Well, I am not although I pick up the odd copy from time to time. Maybe we should have a poll - Carl or Jack.

Sounds pretty accurate to me, but aren't "obscure, endless arguments by pedants" the central theme of most internet fora? At least those on here are (usually) conducted in a calm in civil manner, which is more than can be said for some other fora I know.

To be fair, the comment is buried in amongst reviews of lots of other websites. Some got equally scathing or dismissive comments. The website started by Michael Adams (for instance) got this one-sentence review: "OK, but only sporadically updated". About GingerGM, Barrett said some of the humour "is probably best left in the pub" and "A redesigned site has been promised but has yet to materialise at the time of writing". Barrett says good things about some websites and is critical of others. All-in-all, the function of a reviewer. I don't agree with some of what he said, but I'm glad the article appeared, as it will draw more people's attention to those websites (and Chess Drum is well-worth checking out).

For the record, I'm a long-time subscriber to CHESS and just renewed for three years! Try writing in with letters and see if they will get published! Or even write a summary of what has been discussed here and offer it for publication...

Can someone post the URL of the reviewers site / blog / whatever and we can review it here?

John Upham wrote:Can someone post the URL of the reviewers site / blog / whatever and we can review it here?

I think it was print-publication only. Not sure. It appeared in the November 2010 issue of CHESS. Pages 48-50. You can buy single issues of CHESS for £3.95 it says on the front cover.