Posted in Life beyond the chess board on May 29, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Parents who click on the following link may be able to steal a few minutes here and there whilst their children enjoy the printable, on-line chess colouring page. Without sounding too old-fashioned or a big kid, colouring on-line isn’t half as much fun as the real thing.
http://www.oncoloring.com/chess-coloring-pages.html
Posted in Life beyond the chess board on May 14, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Personal Interest & Experience, tagged Beds. league chess on May 9, 2015| Leave a Comment »
I recently went home for the first time in five years and participated in the Beds. league once more. My club, which has been struggling for many years now was at home against the mid-Bedfordshire giants Leighton Buzzard A, current champions of Bedfordshire. It was wonderful to see everyone again and be a part of something that I miss so much. My addition to the team, along with Damon D’Cruz meant that an unfancied and outgraded Luton team, pulled off a stunning victory and beat the very best in the league. After the match, our captain Michael Josephs could not stop smiling. There was a sense that when we are all back together again, this is what we can do. I left feeling proud that I had helped us win the match, it was a lovely evening. Kents Luton v Leighton Buzzard A
| Home Team: Kents Luton | Away Team: Leighton Buzzard A | ||||||
| Board | Name | Grade | Score | Score | Name | Grade | |
| 1 | Andrew Perkins | 183 | 1 | 0 | Stephen Law | 193 | |
| 2 | Damon D’Cruz | 159 | 0 | 1 | Kevin J Williamson | 174 | |
| 3 | Michael Joseph | 149 | 0.5 | 0.5 | Andy Tinker | 174 | |
| 4 | Mark McCready | 147e | 0.5 | 0.5 | Peter Hunt | 165 | |
| 5 | Samir Vora | 137 | 1 | 0 | Brian J Valentine | 169 | |
| Date Played: 30/03/2015 | 3 | 2 | |||||
Wonky camera angle.
Posted in Life beyond the chess board on May 6, 2015| 3 Comments »
The BBC Radio 4 production Across the Board, which is arguably the most thoughtful and interesting example of journalism to grace our beautiful game recently returned with a third season. Dominic Lawson, current head of the ECF brings us six more games with yet another interesting mix of opponents and questions for them. If you have time to play through the games on line, I suggest you do so whilst listening to the show. By doing that you might notice that Dominic’s questions are as strategic as his play and perform their role in helping him across the board adequately. I have linked Series 3 below. If I may say so, the radio is far more suitable as a medium to study chess than TV/YouTube, as it demands that you must set up a board and physically play through the game yourself. This will enhance the experience of the game you are playing through considerably. Note, however, for this particular program the games must be viewed on line as only a selection of moves are offered during conversation. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04njsks/episodes/guide
A side note on how to read old Tom Sweby's columns
Not perhaps, but quintessentially, Old Tom Sweby is best thought of as a passionate devotee to the newspapers he wrote for. He was well read and knowledgeable of the Bedfordshire chess scene and well beyond, given that he was the president of the S.C.C.U. once upon a time. He was generally well-respected and rubbed shoulders with many, if not all, of those eminent within British chess circles. It would, however, be a critical mistake to see his column is primary source material entirely. That it is not. You will also find secondary source material quoted too, and the reliability of that is not quite as Tom hoped. Given that he wrote for decades, this is to some degree inevitable, and after all we are all prone to error whether we realize it or not. Thankfully, with regards to old Tom Sweby, they are infrequent and for the most part old Tom continued to document events and developments in the Bedfordshire league from the get go as best he could but, of course, everything lies open to interpretation. Despite this, and generally speaking. this does indeed make him informative and thus worth reading. Dare I say his columns constitute a narrative describing the latest developments, match reports and changing nature of the Beds league...he knew his audience and wrote according. This manifested itself over decades but brevity was always in play courtesy of the restictions imposed by writing a column. Should you wish to read a in instrumental figure of the Beds' league post WW2, you are quite welcome to peruse what has been posted here... . :-) I should, however, point out that as the decades wore on he gradually moved on away from narratives concerning the Bedfordshire league towards affairs both historical and international. The reasons for this are multifarous, old age was a predominante factor presumably, however, the bottom line is with regards to how the Bedfordshire chess scene developed post WW2: old Tom Sweby is your go to guy. He wrote more about chess in Bedforshire than anyone else did but given he was a Lutonian and writing for a Luton newspaper there is both bias and greater coverage of his hometown than the rest of the county.
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