Well known Liverpool chessplayer jailed

[MikeTasker]

Saw this on the 'Spirit of Atticus' website (now theres a story,seems there was
a very major bust up in my ex club Liverpools Atticus).
http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpoo ... ss-player-
joe-siddall-bled-my-mum-dry-elderly-victim-s-daughter-condemns-wicked-thief-100252-27338845/
Hes a strong player around 180, very unpleasant what he did. Anyone know more about
either of the stories.

[Jon D'Souza-Eva]

Try this link http://tinyurl.com/thieving-chess-player

In my experience most chess players graded below 180 are dishonest.

I like this bit:

Siddall, once said to be ranked 162 on the British Chess list

Compare with http://grading.bcfservices.org.uk/getre ... ef=118971C
I think I can see the mistake the reporter made...

[MikeTasker]

Thanks for the link Jon, I was about to repost it.
I noticed the grade bit too . btw the MP involved Maria
Eagle is an ex chess player, who I think I,ve played but
might of been her sister...

[MikeTasker]

Actually the original article is
http://tinyurl.com/2uwstw8
tricky business these links.

[Jon D'Souza-Eva]

That's much better than the one I found. Nasty looking bugger, isn't he? You can just tell he plays the Caro Kann.

[Alex Holowczak]

One of the comments: "felix thanks for the up on the murky world of chess i was going to let my son join the local club in the library to steer him away from street gangs ..but now after your eye opener i've told him to cut out the middle man and go straight on the smack...what next ..guns and ludo..knives an kerplunk...thanks felix no more board games for my lot"

[Warren Kingston]

Is it possible to ban him from the ECF?

[Jonathan Bryant]

One of the comments: "felix thanks for the up on the murky world of chess...."

Yes but Felix's comment is clearly a joke.

As for banning the convict from the ECF ... we'll he's not going to be playing many graded games over the next year or so is he? Kind of banned himself.

[John Saunders]

Is it possible to ban him from the ECF?

The ECF recently appointed a new 'Manager of Prisons Chess', presumably with the aim of encouraging the playing of the game in prison.

http://www.englishchess.org.uk/?p=6229

It is one thing to deprive someone of their liberty but why would we also want to deprive them of the right to play chess?

The juxtaposition of "thieving" and "chessplayer" in the Liverpool Echo's headline is irritating but unfortunately we are never going to be able to stop journalists and sub-editors producing this kind of drivel. They pick out some aspect of a person which sets them slightly apart from what they, in their infinite stupidity, consider "normal" and, hey presto, that activity finds itself demonised or set up for ridicule. I recall there were husband and wife fraudsters a couple of years back and all I can now remember about them is they were canoeists, as a result of this blameless hobby being mentioned in every headline about them. C'est la vie...

[Roger de Coverly]

The juxtaposition of "thieving" and "chessplayer" in the Liverpool Echo's headline is irritating.

There seems reason to believe that the husband of the offended party had also been a member of one of the chess clubs. The grading archive contains a player with the right name and club.

[Jon D'Souza-Eva]

I recall there were husband and wife fraudsters a couple of years back and all I can now remember about them is they were canoeists, as a result of this blameless hobby being mentioned in every headline about them.

But the hobby was important in this case because the husband (John Darwin) faked his own death by paddling off on his canoe and making people think he'd been lost at sea.

This would have been very unlikely to work if his hobby had been chess, as cases of chess players disappearing mid-game are very rare.

[John Saunders]

Yes, fair point, Jon (BTW I enjoyed your earlier one-liners - v good!).

[Michael Jones]

In my experience most chess players graded below 180 are dishonest.

"Amberley excelled at chess - one sign, Watson, of a scheming mind." - Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case of the Retired Colourman

[Jonathan Bryant]

The juxtaposition of "thieving" and "chessplayer" in the Liverpool Echo's headline is irritating but unfortunately we are never going to be able to stop journalists and sub-editors producing this kind of drivel.

Journos eh?

Actually, in this case chess gets off lightly. Normally it's murder and a spurious association with our game.

E.g.

http://streathambrixtonchess.blogspot.c ... chess.html

and

http://streathambrixtonchess.blogspot.c ... aniac.html


and of course the grand-daddy of all such nonsense

http://streathambrixtonchess.blogspot.c ... woman.html


The upside of this is that the appearance of chess in crime fiction is pretty frequent. Both of the BBC's major (as they like to say) new crime dramas of 2010 - Luther and Sherlock - referenced chess in their first episodes.


ps: thanks to the original poster for bringing this to our attention.

[John Saunders]

One of Doyle's last, and least satisfying, stories. By then he was away with the fairies - literally. A pity that his one mention of chess in the entire Holmes canon (I think) should have been so lame.