The Chess Circuit

This is a chat with Ben Graff for the podcast, where we talked about his new book Checkmate, and discussed why you should all buy a copy as a present for your chess-playing friends this Xmas!

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There are so many ways to get involved with chess.  Add me (@adamraoof) on Facebook and Twitter, for one thing.... and sign up for my newsletter The Chess Circuit at https://chesscircuit.substack.com/

If you are interested in getting involved with my chess tournaments do take a quick look at the calendar at www.chessengland.com - or search for "ECF Chess Calendar" for all the tournaments in England, including mine.

Thanks for listening to our podcast!  

There are so many ways to get involved with chess in England.  Add me (@adamraoof) on Facebook and Twitter, for one thing....  

If you are interested in getting involved with my chess tournaments do take a quick look at the calendar at www.chessengland.com - or search for "ECF Chess Calendar" for all the tournaments in England, including mine.

Episode 27: Adam and Ben meet Carl Portman, author of the award winning Chess Behind Bars, recently published Chess Crusader and purveyor of Tarantulas (if that is the right expression).

We talk about his writing, his work in prisons, other writing ( - his recent 100th chess column) and his thoughts about chess and life in general!

I love David leMoir's books, having read and been highly entertained by "How to Become a Deadly Tactician", "How to be Lucky in Chess" and other titles.  In this chat, Ben Graff and I get to talk through his amazing collection of articles written over a 50-year chess career, both for Chess Monthly and the award winning En Passant.

[email protected] / www.chessengland.com

Ben Graff reviews this excellent book here - https://chesscircuit.substack.com/p/a-history-of-chess-in-the-english

This book covers more than a hundred years of chess in the Civil Service, with information about the clubs, the individuals, the events they contested, the successes, and the arguments that sometimes resulted.

Clubs regularly featured leading players of the day and the Civil Service representative team frequently beat strong counties in 50-board matches, as well as participating in a mammoth 500-board match against the rest of England. Names of chess clubs bring a whiff of nostalgia, with India Office, War Office and Civil Service Rifles no longer in existence. Leading players served their country not only in their departments, but at establishments like Bletchley Park in the Second World War. Several civil servants represented their country in international matches. Over a thousand players participated in the league at one stage.

"The original plan was to include maybe 50 annotated games, as we had no idea how much material we would find. When it became clear that there was a lot of information, we (or maybe I) thought it better to concentrate on the history aspect. I have built a database of about 1400 games from CS league, matches and tournaments, and also CS players playing elsewhere, which I am adding to, and I thought I might offer John Saunders the games for Britbase at some stage. Once the book got over 500 pages, adding the games was difficult!" - Kevin Thurlow.

Jonathan Arnott and Rosie Irwin join Adam and Ben to discuss their book The Queen’s Gambit Accepted!  The exclamation mark is essential!

Grandmaster Simon Williams (GingerGM) does super video courses on gingergm.com, and books such as Arkell’s Endings. I have won many games with his ideas!

In this episode Ben Graff joins me for a chat with Andrew Wainwright and Matthew Webb of The Chess Centre.  No, not that one, this one - https://www.chesscentre.online in Ilkley in Yorkshire!

If you’d like to find out more about what’s going on in the chess world, search for The Chess Circuit and sign up for my free newsletter!

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In this episode Ben Graff joins me for a chat with Anthony Eskinazi who is the CEO of JustPark.com - and was also a very successful player who regularly references chess when he talks to audiences about his business strategy.

If you’d like to find out more about what’s going on in the chess world, search for The Chess Circuit and sign up for my free newsletter!

We talked about why Anthony has his chess achievements on his Linkedin profile, and why he is rightly very proud of those! We revisited fond memories of the chess scene, how he founded a very successful business, and we discuss whether chess skills helped him in that endeavour. We also looked at chess and business as problem solving. When Anthony encounters a problem, I can tell that he likes to solve it!  But how do you go about solving a problem?

https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonyeskinazi/

https://www.justpark.com/blog/exclusive-q-a-with-anthony-eskinazi

https://chesscircuit.substack.com/

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Listen to Ben and Adam discussing chess in the UK before, during and post-pandemic.  Will we get back to over the board chess, and if so - when?  Is there a future for talented players in the online world?

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In this episode Ben Graff (he’s a real journalist) and I talk to Sarah Longson of the UK Chess Challenge about what it’s been like running a chess business during lockdown, whether the Queen’s Gambit on Netflix has boosted participation in chess tournaments, and if there is an optimum way to teach chess. And most importantly what was it like appearing on Blue Peter with Gary Kasparov - at the age of 7!

https://www.delanceyukschoolschesschallenge.com/

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