Travels to Events at Conway Hall in London

Over the 11-12 November I travelled to Conway Hall in London for two very different meetings
On the Sunday I booked online on the National Express Coach to London (Victoria Coach Station), thinking I would try this route for a change. It meant getting up early to catch the coach ar 8:15 from the stand in Queen Street. There was only one other person there, but others were picked up on the way, at Battle, Frant, Tunbridge Wells and other places.

In London I walked down Victoria Street hoping to see something of the Cenotaph ceremonials and hear the band playing. The nearest I could get was by the statue of Abraham Lincoln at one side of Parliament Square, where the sound of the band was completely drowned out by the bells from Westminster Abbey. To get through to Conway Hall I had to go back to Queen Anne's Gate and slip through the barriers there.

At Conway Hall there were two meetings, an EGM followed by an AGM. At the first the decision was made to change the name of "South Place Ethical Society" to "Conway Hall Ethical Society". I voted to retain the old name (there were also choices of "The Ethical Society" or just "Conway Hall" but these were eliminated in a series of votes).

Despite leaving before the end of the AGM I only just made it back to Victoria with a minute to spare before the coach was due to leave at 6:0 pm. I sat near the front and was kept amused by a conversation between the driver, a Geordie from Sunderland, with a lady in the front seat. The journey was quicker since it didn;t have to go via Battle.

On Sunday I caught the train to go to a talk by Sir Roger Penrose on his new Cycles of Time theory of cosmology. I got there an hour early at which time he was signing books in the foyer, and I bought a copy of his book. My ticket was for the balcony area, and I sat at one side, where I could hardly see the speaker, but nevertheless enoyed the talk a great deal. He spoke very clearly.

More on the subject next post perhaps.

Chess and Rainbows in Bournemouth

I got back on Monday afternoon from a weekend away playing chess in Bournemouth, as I did last year. I managed to score 2.5/5 consisting of one loss, one win and three draws, which is about the best I've achieved. This photo of a rainbow was taken from the pier on the Friday before the first game. The rainbow was a complete semicircle but too large to capture in a single image. The sun was low in the sky, setting in the West, and the rain clouds were heading East. There are some photos of the Chess Congress here. A reasonable one including me is number 2754.

Grasshopper Chess

Thought it was about time I updated this diary. I seem to have been too busy with a variety of things to get round to writing about them.

I've spent a lot of time recently in putting the collection of Grasshopper Chess problems, that I made a good many years ago, onto my website. I've just completed all the problems with six or fewer pieces (unless some more turn up in other boxes). Also a group of helpstalemate problems, which tend to have more pieces. Several of these lacked solutions and I found I enjoyed solving them. Several of them, by C. M. Fox and P. C. Taylor in particular, were published in the Problemist Fairy Chess Supplement back in the thirties and show considerable ingenuity. Finding some of the unexpected solutions made me smile or even laugh.

There are still four folders and three boxes of problems to be processed, but if I will ever get round to doing them I don't know. I hoped they would inspire me to do some composing. I did add a line to one composition, and composed a variant of another. Perhaps that's a start.

Here's a link to the collection so far: http://www.mayhematics.com/q/g.htm
If anyone spots mistakes please let me know (george . jelliss @ virgin . net).

More chess playing experiences

I always seem to be a week or more behind with updates to my actvities here. Over the weekend of 28-29 July I took part in two chess matches for Hastings & St Leonards Chess Club. In each case I played Black on the bottom board and won my game, though not without making it difficult for myself.

The Saturday match was played in Hove. We travelled by train as a group, although our sixth player failed to turn up, apparently having gone to Warrior Square station instead of Hastings. It was a sunny day, so the walk from the station to the venue, the Bridge Club in Third Avenue, was pleasant. The return journey was not so good since most of us had to stand as far as Eastbourne. In my game I let my opponent have my king's pawn for free, but decided that having my knight on d4 against his backward d-pawn was sufficient compensation. In the end it came down to my having free pawns on each side of the board that I could push towards promotion.

The Sunday match, where I was on board 9, was played in Hastings against the Greater London Chess Club. After a poor start I managed to equalise the position, where the pawns were ranged right across the board in a fixed barrier, and offered a draw which was declined. The only way forward I could see was to execute a knight's tour of seven or so moves to get my knght across the barrier. Meanwhile my opponent tried a knight sacrifice to break through on the king's side. At one point he had two rooks and queen on the h-file while I had the same on the g-file. Fortunately I weathered the attack and, after exchange of queens, broke through  and he fell into a relatively easy checkmate.

I've been trying to understand the ECF grading system. It's a puzzle to me why two of my junior opponents are shown as having lower grades than I was given to believe they had when I played them. My grade has gone down from 85 to 79. To improve it seems I need to avoid losing in the third round of tournaments to lower graded players, when I'm tired after hard games against higher graded players.

Restyling the Hastings Chess Club Website

I've spent most of the last few days working at my computer on the website of Hastings and St Leonards Chess Club. This morning I replaced all the oldstyle pages with my newstyle more open and light design. The historical aspects now appear in a separate section, the home page emphasising the current activities of the club.

I've also improved the Gallery by actually showing the photos in smaller form (so-called thumbnails) as links to the larger images. There is also a separate History Gallery, where the photos of past Presidents and Champions link to their biographies.

Another innovation is a page with links to all the games (about 200) that appear in the biographies. At present they are just listed, but eventually they will be grouped according to opening. (Some of the older ones were handicap games.) This makes them much more easily accessed. I don't think many members realised they were there, to be played through.

Having finished this, and the sun shining at last, I thought it was time I had a bit of exercise. So took a brisk walk as far as the old bathing pool at West St Leonards and back via West Hill Road. Ended up with a shower and a rest before tea.

Acoustic Problems at BHA AGM

I went to the BHA AGM in London today. Overslept, so caught a late train and arrived at London Bridge station at 11:55. As usual the ticket I was issued with, which states "London Terminals" as the destination rather than London Bridge, would not allow me to pass through the barrier, but the inspectors there seem to allow one to pass through the gap at the side without bothering to check anything.

I walked over London Bridge, where lots of tourists were photographing Tower Bridge which has the Olympic Rings suspended from the walkway. Then past the Monument and up Gracechurch street to Bishopsgate. The BHA meeting was at the Bishopsgate Institute, in the Upper Hall whch I'd not seen before.

I sat down to listen to the Education and Promotion session which was already in progress, though the acoustic was very poor. There was a break at 13:15 for a tour round the Library downstairs, where some archives were on display. I wish I could find time to go there to do some historical research. Back in the Hall the BHA Choir was entertaining, but I couldn't make out many of the words they were singing.

Then there was the Report by the Chief Executive (Andrew Copson) who was as usual quite amusing. Then the AGM proper began, and I stayed as far as the end of the address by the Chair (Robert Ashby). However I was having increasing difficulty making out what he was saying.

This was due to the bad acoustics. I could hear a deep background noise, which may have been reverberation, or perhaps from some other source such as the air conditioning. Others didn't seem to be bothered, but I do have sensitive hearing, as you can maybe tell from the size of my ears.

By that time the strain was making me feel distinctly ill. I complained about the acoustic problem to the staff at the back of the Hall and decided to catch the early train back. So a bit of a wasted journey in many ways.

Cycling to Chess

Last Saturday (23 June) I got out on my bicycle which I haven't used for a long time, and cycled to Bexhill along the recently extended cycle path, to take part in a chess match. It was a rapidplay (30 minutes each) which I'm not really keen on but am trying to get used to. I was playing for the Hastings club against the Bexhill club. In my first game we reached a position where I forced exchange of queens and followed up with a knight fork of king and rook to win back the exchange and equalise forces. So I offered a draw and this was accepted. The second game against the same opponent however I lost fairly comprehensively. As a whole the team lost 4-6. I must find more excuses to get out on my bike, as I'm not getting much other exercise than walking lately. The problem is I like to have a definite destination to head for, and reason for travelling.