Ups and Downs. On and Off The Board

Article by Phil Morgan

Congratulations to Jonah Willow on his recent win in the North Wales Open with a perfect 5/5 score, a point clear of the field. This result moves Jonah into the top 100 FIDE rated English players. He enters the charts in 91st position with a rating of 2265. He is one of 4 players in the list who were born this century.

Nottinghamshire won Division 3 of the C+DCCC scoring 13/16, finishing 2 points clear of Worcestershire A and Essex D. Our reward for this will be promotion to Division 2 with hopefully most of the squad staying intact. It’s surprised me in correspondence chess how some players play on in hopelessly lost positions. I understand that in OTB chess players will do so in the hope of a chance to turn the tables , perhaps in time pressure. Some players seem unable to admit defeat by resignation, and chose to sit on the position until they lose by default.

In Correspondence Chess I will shortly be making my international debut in a Wales v Italy frienly. My boyhood dream might have been to play football for Wales like the great John Charles, but I’ll settle for this. It’s an honour to represent ones country in any sport. Wales is the hotbed of Correspondence Chess.

Playing for Wales will help make up for my recent experience of having my account on Chess.com closed for a Fair Play Violation- receiving engine assistance. If I admitted this, I could be pardoned and given another chance to play on the site. Knowing my innocence of the offence, I chose to appeal. Chess.com are among the world’s leading experts in detecting cheating. They have systems in place which evaluate what is statistically and humanly possible for people to do in their chess games. Data associated with my cheating statistics is convincing and I am stuffed - lies, damned lies and atatistics!*

I have just had the pleasure of looking through Stan Cranmer’s collection of books and magazines. Stan was a serious student of chess and his collection is seriously impressive. This includes :

I even found a paper file database of Games by Openings, in which Stan had faithfully hand written games by Grandmasters on to score sheets. Stan’s collection is up for sale and if there other Chess bibliophiles like Stan, I can put you in touch with Stan’s family , who will accept reasonable offers.

* Exiled from Chess.com, I’m playing on another well-known site, but I’ve used up my monthly ration of games