May I take this opportunity to wish everyone a Good New Year from a windy Hastings.

I'm not one for New Year Resolutions - I once resolved not to make resolutions, but broke that one immediately! - but can I suggest that we all put petty differences aside and work together to make this a truly great year for Scottish chess.

Please help in any way you can. As simple examples, we will be holding the Commonwealth Championships. Volunteers will be needed to input games and perhaps even act as 'meeters and greeters' for our foreign visitors. (More on those nearer the time - watch the website.)

Sermon over.

Dated August 1979

Page 10 under the Cutty Sark Scotch Whisky Allegro Tournament, I found the following line

"The tournament was this year noted by Radio Scotland, who interviewed the Chief Controller for the Sports Sound Program"!!!

Quote:1.2 Motion to create a Working Party to explore the use of live boards and internet to allow players from remote Scottish communities to participate in Chess Scotland congress events.
The logistics and expense of travelling to Chess Scotland congress events precludes a proportion of chess players who live in remote locations of the country from participating at Chess Scotland supported events. Internet is now widely available in many of these remote locations which would allow chess players to transmit played moves to a congress event in real time. It would be possible for a player in a remote location to play a game over the internet and have those moves relayed onto a chess board by a volunteer sitting at a congress board or in time by an automated board as demonstrated in the following video clip <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX37LFv8jWY">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX37LFv8jWY</a><!-- m -->. To ensure fair play the remote player will be supervised by an independent observer such as an arbiter, fellow chess club member etc. Such conditions may also apply to participants within Scotland who cannot attend Congresses for other special reasons e.g. a disability. Although there are a number of potential logistic problems the Working Party will investigate these and make recommendations on overall feasibility.
Proposed : Sean Milton Seconded: Gerald Lobley, David Deary, David Congalton, Calum MacQueen

does anyone know where I could download games from the word chess championship including Carlsen's games and also Carlsen's games I gather he plays the Pirc on occasion

Seeing as we have been having fun with these...

At the Start of the Winter Chess Festival. What is the maximum number of norms possible for the event?

Think I have worked out and removed the source of "noise"


Round 2 Flash Multiboard Mobile
Round 3 Flash Multiboard Mobile
Round 4 Flash Multiboard Mobile
Round 5 Flash Multiboard Mobile
Round 6 Flash Multiboard Mobile
Round 7 Flash Multiboard Mobile
Round 8 Flash Multiboard Mobile
Round 9 Flash Multiboard Mobile

The topic regarding the location of the ChessScotland Girls Championships made me think about chess in schools, particularly secondary schools, over the time of my playing career.

In my third year at Greenwood Academy in Ayrshire (a state comprehensive), along game this maths teacher called Stephen Taylor who started the school chess club. Soon he was overrun by (mostly) guys and girls wanting to play chess at lunchtime and after school finished. He formed some teams, we entered the Ayrshire school league, then the national jamborees that were held throughout Scotland for teams of ten.

At that time there were four divisions of ten teams mostly made up as I recall by private schools. It was great fun to travel to host places like Madras and Robert Gordons staying in youth hostels and trekking everywhere in Scotland to play chess as a team. Our school didn't have much money but Stephen was creative using his youth hostel leader's badge and family railcard/vouchers off the back of cornflakes packets to get us all to events.

Stephen is still there at Greenwood running the school chess club and is as enthusiastic as ever. Many of his former chess students like Elliot Frew, David Deary, David Congalton, Crawford MacNab and myself are just as enthusiastic today, right through to guys like Daniel Deary and Jack Stewart who are the cream of the current Greenwood crop. I am sure all of us would consider Stephen as a good friend and always will.

What has changed nationally and above all why has it changed?

Has the Scottish school curriculum made it more difficult for enthusiastic teachers to commit their time to out of hours activities like chess?

Is money the reason? Are parents unable to afford to send their children to regional and national school events?

Have children got different interests in our modern technology driven society?

Would be good to hear the views of guys who played school chess in those "golden years" of the post Fischer era, both from a private and state school perspective.

I have merged the three topics and now have links to the draw and results

Premier
Championship
Plate






Round 1 Results

Nisbet, Charles Hedge, Stuthi 1-0
Watson, Jim Smith, Mark 1-0
Williams, Hutch McCullough, Andy 1/2
McGillivary, Calum Rutherford, Kathleen 1-0
O'Brien, Bob bye
Underwood, Jamie HPB

Hi,

I would like to highlight that the decision to host the "Official" Scottish Girls championship in a fairly remote part of Scotland (2.5 hrs from Glasgow & Edinburgh, and over 3.5 hrs from Ayrshire) shows poor judgement. Are we to subject our children to 5-7 hours travel that day, or is the ideal to implicitly restrict it to those that can afford the accommodation costs (and disruption) that will be incurred? That in conjunction with the choice of a private boarding school is not necessarily the message I would have hoped we were trying to send to Scotland's youth.

Clearly a national event should be held in a central location (near main population centres) to encourage as much attendance as possible - in a game based on reason and logic, I would have hoped that was self-evident.

This is a poor decision on many levels, only compounded by the fact that it has apparently been fixed for the next two years.

Merry Christmas to one and all.