Archive for June 28th, 2022

In due course I will post information about Luton Chess Club. Sadly, it has fallen into disarray since the lockdown, with it remaining closed for long periods and then unable to field a team in the Bedfordshire Chess League, due mainly, to a lack of interest.

There are plans afoot to revive matters and soon I shall spell out the details. For a town its size, and university backing, Luton Chess Club should be in much better shape than what it is. Let us hope for a move in the right direction before the summer is out.

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Clocking it up

In each of the last two years I have played over 1000 games on line. Naturally I played brilliantly throughout, except for when I was absolute rubbish or just downright diabolical. The moral of the story is ‘stay online, play online, lose online, go offline’.

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My meme 7

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Perhaps you have noticed that the FIDE Candidates Tournament is in full swing, having ten rounds been already played. The field is packed like squared wheat over fields on a long summer’s day -you could also say they are closely bunched. Whoever emerges victorious can look forwards to a healthy pay check, dazzling limelight, many questions, months of preparation but not much else.

Let’s be honest, no matter who wins through, they will lose when they face Magnus -agreed? So how are we meant to take an interest in proceedings exactly? You could argue that both Nepo and Fabi have scores to settle and that both Liren and Firouzja have both beaten Magnus in recent months…but all that aside, as if anyone has any real chance of becoming the world champion any time soon…and so clinching the right to challenge may well be seen in retrospect as a pyrrhic victory in itself one with the media presenting to us a crestfallen opponent.

On a personal note, I find GM Rapport to be both charismatic and enigmatic, so it is him whom I hope the challenger is but condemned to view the final in the context of the result, it matters not one iota. And it must not matter one iota because I do live for my chess fanatically, and in the last match whirring round in my brain each day ‘I hate myself and want to die’ all day because the match was predictably one-sided. I don’t want to be killed off by chess, and so ‘it matters not one iota’…it must not matter.

The imaginative Hungarian Richard Rapport

Mark. J. McCready

00.43, Wednesday June 29th

Laksi, Bangkok

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Sincerest of apologies in not posting for a year. In truth there are conditions the service provider insists upon, which leave me less than impressed at times…it wasn’t that I didn’t want to write or had nothing to say, it was just that…

…and now those conditions have been, begrudgingly, met I am back although I have had to change the website name oh-so-slightly, since some slippery Russian went and stole my own whilst I was away! (thieving b******d)

…in short I will post throughout the summer since the afforded break from work presently allows me to do so….

…that’s all for now. I have poured my heart and soul into this site. I do hope you read on, and so cheerio…I shall be seeing you!

Mark.J.McCready

June 28th 2022

Laksi, Bangkok

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