Well done to Andrew McCusker on wining the Rowson Award - you join a very select group!

What happened to Pat's post on censorship? :\

Andrew (McHarg), whilst i may agree with your sentiments, your actions smack of censorship. Not only do you deny everyone freedom of speech and right of reply on that thread; you also did not allow anyone to comment on your actions. I believe that you genuinely feel that you are doing the right thing but it is leaving you personally open to claims of abuse of power.

The death of the world's second oldest GM is reported today.

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.chess.co.uk/twic/chessnews/obituaries/svetozar-gligoric-1923-2012">http://www.chess.co.uk/twic/chessnews/o ... -1923-2012</a><!-- m -->

He did a simul tour of Scotland in Feb 1964 venues included Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh.

The World Seniors Championships for men (aged 60 and over in 2012) and women (50 and over) takes place at Kamena Vourla, Greece 12-25 November 2012. See full entry details at the official event website: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.worldseniors2012.org/">http://www.worldseniors2012.org/</a><!-- m -->.

In accordance with Section 2 at the event website, would any interested Scottish participants please (a) register directly with the organisers (at: <!-- e --><a href="mailto:worldseniors2012@gmail.com">worldseniors2012@gmail.com</a><!-- e -->) and (b) inform Chess Scotland of your intention to play (at <!-- e --><a href="mailto:International@ChessScotland.com">International@ChessScotland.com</a><!-- e -->) to ensure compliance with the FIDE requirement for oversight by national federations - all entrants must be members of their national federation. Entrants will have to finance their own costs in full.

Deadline for the registrations is Monday 1 October 2012.

[pgn][FEN "8/8/3N4/k2N1p2/3p4/8/8/2K5 w - - 0 1" ][/pgn]

This is an intereseting endgame I came across. Magnus "the great" shows how to win this one 8)

The link below takes you to the moves and some expert GM analysis

http://www.chessbase.com/cbm/cbm132e/cbm...y_line.htm

While watching the Tour De France I wonder whether we can award points (and prizes) based on certain aspects of players play during games. In the Tour you can gain points for for winning specified sprints or by doing the best climb; in chess (with live boards) would it be possible to allocate points for best performance in different areas of the game, with prizes (or just recognition) for the players who scores best say in the opening, the middle or end game?

Not sure on what basis you would allocate points: for example is it solely based on the advantage achieved after x moves in the opening or would it be for following the book furthest (not sure if that would encourage learning or just dis-courage players from thinking for themselves).

Could this be used as part of a training event to incentives players ?

Hello.

For anyone looking to improve on their chess library.

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://tinyurl.com/c7dm3qm">http://tinyurl.com/c7dm3qm</a><!-- m -->

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://tinyurl.com/cuz5feb">http://tinyurl.com/cuz5feb</a><!-- m -->

Sorry if anyone is offended for posting this here.

Ta.

All

We have now rolled out the first part of a new development on tournament stats. When you visit a player's page after searching for them you'll now notice four links, as follows (new in bold):

- View Games: Lists all the games played by the player for the selected season and grade type.

- View Stats: Shows the player's stats including best wins, %wdl etc

- View Tournaments (Regular/Allegro): Shows top 10 tournaments based on TPR and a graph of all the player's TPRs in chronological order. Note for statistical accuracy events with too few games have been excluded. This feature also includes leagues as if they were single tournaments. Some TPRs may be slightly different to those shown on the final standings pages of the tournaments because they are freshly calculated and use a slightly different way of doing it. Instead of always rounding in a particular way the new version rounds to the nearest expected score, and so creates a slightly more reliable figure. This can be changed if anyone thinks it necessary.

Please pass on any thoughts or issues you find with the above.

More coming soon...

Motion 5

If a player has an ELO-rating with a country other than SCO then they are not eligible
to be Scottish Champion.

Proposer Andrew Muir
Seconder Andrew Burnett

Am I the only one who is slightly uneasy about this motion?

I can understand why some people do not think Jacob should be eligible to be Scottish champion after his decision to switch back to being Danish registered but there may be other people in the future who will be hit by this who probably should be eligible to be Scottish champion e.g. was Keti registered as SCO when she won in 2003?

Also I am not sure it makes sense for Jacob not to be eligible living in Bearsden but Matthew Turner to be eligible living in Somerset. To my mind either both should be eligible or neither.

If the intention is just to stop Jacob being eligible then I think people need to be more exact about why they don't think he should be eligible and any motion should reflect this.

(To be pedantic I think the motion should also refer to FIDE rating rather than ELO rating. FIDE ratings are an example of ELO ratings but you can have ELO ratings which are not FIDe ratings. CS grades are arguably just adjusted ELO ratings.)