The women men don't see

I can't say I'm too impressed with this.

If you've not seen this, it may be that you're not a Gold Member of the English Chess Federation, and so you haven't had the letter from our two representatives about the Finance Council Meeting on 28 April. Yes, it sounds exciting, doesn't it?

Anyway, the excerpt above, which is taken from that letter, makes it plain that the proposal under discussion is a Bad Thing ("vague promises", "someone who is not an ECF member") and it should be opposed. Funnily enough, though, it doesn't tell the reader the one thing above all else that they need to know about Casual Chess and the one reason why it might be worth supporting: which is that it's

London's feminist, diverse, central chess cafe, run by female players.

How extraordinary, to leave that detail out.

Back in the USSR

We were talking history yesterday, and such is also the theme of today's post, which also arises out of a small complaint laid by Gata Kamsky against Garry Kasparov following Fabiano Caruana's Candidates victory: this particular one regarding whether or not the FIDE title matches, in the period when the title was was split, should be regarded as world championships.

Me, I'm ambivalent on the question, but (for example) Peter Svidler isn't, having been unambiguous on the matter during one of his Chess24 commentaries, and Gata Kamsky isn't too uncertain either.

I admit I too had forgotten about Kamsky's match, so I looked it up. I had a bit of an "excuse me?" moment when I did.

Excuse me? "Tiny Soviet republic?"

"In a Soviet satellite?" Excuse me?

The Soviet Union ceased to exist on 26 December 1991.

Taking us back

Just a little more on the self-serving and somewhat amnesiac nonsense from Garry we mentioned yesterday.

It happened to come to the attention of Gata Kamsky, who can remember what happened at Linares even if the perpetrator doesn't.

He could have also mentioned that there was a rather more recent occurrence of the same habit

which people might have made more of had it not been Nakamura on the receiving end.

Or, of course, if it hadn't been Kasparov doing the cheating.

Anyway, all this reminded me that when the Nakamura incident occurred, a commentor on here drew my attention to another incident involving Kasparov, one from thirty years ago that I couldn't remember hearing of before.