I am not sure why the organisers have decided to return to the honourable tradition of adjournments, but I welcome it wholeheartedly. Adjournments were abolished pretty universally some 20 years ago, at the behest of idiots and cultural vandals, who employed the absurd argument that the advent of computers meant that "the player with the best computer will win". Of course, the effect of computers on adjournments is exactly the opposite - in pre-computers days, the player with the stronger team of seconds had the advantage when games were adjourned, whereas once the computer came along, the odds were largely evened up. The main effect of abolishing adjournments has been to devastate the quality of endgame play, something I pointed out in the Preface to my recent book, The Greatest Ever Chess Endgames. Of the 50 endings presented in that volume, no more than a handful came from the post-adjournment era.
So, hats off to the ACP for this splendid return to traditional values. For maximum satisfaction, I look forward to hearing that the players will be required to wear evening dress, and to record their moves using original descriptive notation ("Pawn to King's Fourth", etc), written with a quill pen. Perhaps they could also emulate the playing conditions of London 1899, by providing a spitoon next to each board? We can but dream...
Perhaps there really is hope for the future, after all?
Chess, as it should be played!
In the meantime, I will be at the e2e4 Buxton tournament for the next four days, so this blog is unlikely to be updated again until next week.
