English Chess Forum

EC Forum exclusive: I’ve just resigned. I’m going to be one square short of queening when I get mated I think.

Anybody got any suggestions as to what we should play next?

2B v N

I have to say 2N vs P was much easier than I'd anticipated - I had a quick look over this and the plan is pretty simple (though I'm not totally convinced I could replicate it in time-trouble - too much counting as to whether the pawn gets home or not).

Possibly could have chosen a trickier starting position where the King is much harder to trap.

IM Jack Rudd wrote:2B v N

Thanks Jack - wow, never even contemplated that ending before.

Wikipedia says this position from Kling & Horwitz

5B2/1n6/1k6/3K4/B7/8/8/8 w - - 0 0

"is a semi-fortress, but White wins in 45 moves". A nice easy one for you Jonathan?

[edited for spelng]

Time for bed, now!
I'm coming round to this ECF forum, though. It's quite fun chatting across two fora simultaneously!

Matt Fletcher wrote:I have to say 2N vs P was much easier than I'd anticipated

I had to try to defend this once in the 4NCL against a (young) Eddie Dearing. I think it's easy to win against a central pawn. I had a Kings Indian pawn on e5, doubly blockaded by Knights on e3 and e4. My King then had to walk the valley of death down the h file to h1 after which the win by "it's not stalemate" is quite easy.

At around the same time, there was a game between Sadler and Ree where the pawn (this time White I think) was on f6 or g6 and the draw could be held.

Carl Hibbard wrote: We thank you from Lanzarote and wherever Jack is.

There's already been a spat about straightforward facts. It's been alleged that the ecforum allows made up names. This is false and always has been so, notwithstanding assorted attempts at hacking and spoofing. "administrator" is a reserved name as is "Andrew" at the ECF site, being the ECF's webmaster and thus at a technical level arbiter as to what is allowed under www.englishchess.org.uk .

If what is written is to be believed one of the moderators seems to have been sold the job basically on the basis that preventing aliases was THE solution to have a nice functioning forum which would at a stroke wipe out all the nastiness on the evil ECForum*. And so effectively the job of moderator would require little to no work. I wonder if the amount of time and effort required to maintain the forum has been underestimated...

(*also that the new forum would provide a valuable conduit between the ECF and its members, even though membership is not a requirement to participation. But that is a more philosophical debate).

Matt Fletcher wrote: A nice easy one for you Jonathan?

Not sure I’ll have much of clue, but I’ll give it a go.

Richard Bates wrote:If what is written is to be believed one of the moderators seems to have been sold the job basically on the basis that preventing aliases was THE solution to have a nice functioning forum which would at a stroke wipe out all the nastiness on the evil ECForum*. And so effectively the job of moderator would require little to no work. I wonder if the amount of time and effort required to maintain the forum has been underestimated...

(*also that the new forum would provide a valuable conduit between the ECF and its members, even though membership is not a requirement to participation. But that is a more philosophical debate).

Not much work needed it seems dead over there?

Richard Bates wrote: I wonder if the amount of time and effort required to maintain the forum has been underestimated...

If the allegation is that posts on the ecforum hindered attempts at sponsorship, then those making the allegations need to identify what views in which posts caused these. The simple practical reason is that the offending posts represent the views of the poster and these are likely to be voiced regardless of the medium. If the ECF doesn't want to share these views with a potential sponsor, the posts have to be deleted and the poster silenced before Google archives them.

Historically the ECF's communication strategy was that the ECF Board were the only ones allowed to talk and the players at large just ignored them until they tried to do something really stupid. Boards change personnel frequently although they rapidly acquire a bunker mentality. It's probably not helped by longer standing members of Council acting as if they have a personal mandate and the organisations they purport to represent a private fiefdom, the local membership of which isn't allowed to express contrary views.

Roger de Coverly wrote: If the ECF doesn't want to share these views with a potential sponsor, the posts have to be deleted and the poster silenced before Google archives them.

The ECFF seems to be redirecting all identifiable robots such as google to a link to the forum so that nothing on the forum is archived.
This could have been done far more easily ( and openly ) by modifying the file http://www.englishchess.org.uk/robots.txt

Roger de Coverly wrote: If the allegation is that posts on the ecforum hindered attempts at sponsorship, then those making the allegations need to identify what views in which posts caused these.

During the time that these claims were first being made I was vociferously told that discusssions on this forum were directly responsible for loss of sponsorship in some shape or form.

It was the ECF Chief Arbiter providing this allegation to me directly at a 4NCL weekend at Sunninghill / Sunningdale.

When pressed for specifics I failed to obtain further detail.

I interpreted this as demonstrating intense dislike for the principle of a forum not controlled by the ECF: perhaps I was wrong? I still do not know.

John Upham wrote: I interpreted this as demonstrating intense dislike for the principle of a forum not controlled by the ECF: perhaps I was wrong? I still do not know.

It's dislike for the principle of a forum, regardless of the control. The new Commercial Director has broken through that, but is it only for the time being? The basic point is that events will cause people to react and comment. If how they reacted and commented on both the atticus forum and this one was thought to discourage sponsors, it should be possible to say which posts and posters should have been deleted or seriously toned down.

The FIDE, ECU elections and the ACC poposals have yet to cause controversy at the official forum and perhaps they won't. It could easily be something relatively trivial, such as an incident at the British that could spark a flame war. Experience of what has happened here on occasion is that heavy handed removal of posts just causes the storm to engulf the moderators.

I have dropped the alias argument over there as clearly the technical knowledge is not sufficient to continue.

The top search comment amused me however.

Richard Bates wrote:I wonder if the amount of time and effort required to maintain the forum has been underestimated

It will have been. There are better ways to spend a life too.

Roger de Coverly wrote:It's dislike for the principle of a forum, regardless of the control

Correct. But not regardless of the content.

Roger de Coverly wrote:It could easily be something relatively trivial that could spark a flame war. Experience of what has happened here on occasion is that heavy-handed removal of posts just causes the storm to engulf the moderators.

Correct. All forums set out to be apple pie & motherhood. All tend entropically towards rancorous insanity. The 1st Law applies: stupidity drives out intelligence. Culling posts (and, ahem, posters) preserves a veneer of civility and order. But even the stupid can be civil; and with order comes blandness. And no one sensibly wastes time reading the bland.

So forums thrive with controversy. Hard to see why ECF, with its recent track record, wants to enter that market