Meeting up to play will not be an option for at least three weeks, and quite possibly much longer. So it looks like online chess will provide us with opportunities to keep playing and not let our wonderful chess community become dormant.
Fortunately Oliver Brennan of Rotherham CC has been proactive and has organised an online tournament. Full instructions on what to do can be found at https://rotherham.cc/online-championship.html
I have had a few thoughts regarding online chess recently. How about posting more online games on the site to raise awareness of what and who is out there. Maybe we could have a virtual club night. Same time on a Tuesday evening but with games played from the comfort of our living rooms.
All thoughts around making online chess between Sheffield players a real thing are most welcome.
Best of luck to everyone and really looking forward to the day we can get back to our normal league games and club nights.
Oliver has done a fantastic job setting that tournament up. The ECF have been promoting their on line presence before all this corona stuff and you can join their clubs at both lichess and chess.com and you will get an official ECF on line rating too. So far it is mainly blitz tournaments but I am sure this will develop. I like the idea of a virtual chess club, it would nice to have one big one for Sheffield so there could be several club nights or even something on the weekend.
Chess24 is hosting a rapid game tournament with Magnus inviting some top players to compete. This should be great fun to watch!
I played my first game in the Rotherham CC Tournament. It was good fun and felt a lot more like over the board chess than online normally does.
https://lichess.org/b773kMGxBQNY
I will definitely have a look at the online ECF stuff.
I’ve been a spectator for this tournament but have already entered the next one that starts May 20th. It’s a lot of fun to just hang out in the chatroom suggesting variations and chewing the fat with the other spectators. The time control and format seems like a good leveller too – with a surprise winner for the first event.
You’re all more than welcome to join the Sheffield team on chess.com – we play daily games against teams from around the world in the world chess league. We also compete in the European chess league and domestically in the Yorkshire cup too. I myself have only joined recently and it’s nice to know you’re representing the top team in South Yorkshire and playing for the pride of Sheffield. It would be nice to see some OTB players like yourselves convert to the digital world and help us out. I would very much like to pop in and play some OTB at some point in the future once we’re allowed out again. However, in the mean time log on (or register) to chess.com search for Sheffield in the team search bar, join our club and get playing some chess again. My handle online is N0RTHERN_LIGHTS – give me a shout if you do join. Our club home page has a notes and chat section so this would be a great starting place to arrange any live games you want to play between yourselves. Thanks and hopefully I’ll see you soon – whether it’s online or in person at your club.
I remember a previous discussion on the same topic, while were in the Gardner’s Rest.
It was decided that if we ever agreed that going online was a good idea we would not use chess.com because it was too ‘sticky’, and performed poorly.
It seems it is still dire (https://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/chess.com). There is more along those lines on that site. Googol lists many others (chess.com reviews UK)
Just one negative comment on the first page of search is usually a bad sign, and chess.com has many such.
Therefore I oppose this suggestion.