[OFF] Essex Team Blitz and Lightning 2024

It was the 31st of June, 2024, the last day before the first half of the year is officially over. It was a Sunday and was remarkably sunny, in what is supposed to be the wettest summer in over a century in England.

For those of you who are aware of my shudderingly preposterous skills in chess, let me warn you that this post is about a chess tournament titled "Essex Team Blitz and Lightning 2024" which was hosted by the Ilford Chess Club which has unwittingly accepted me as a player over the past couple of years, during my stay, here in Essex, England.

This year the event had a with a time-control of 7 minutes per-player with no increments, I'm not sure about it's past but in 2023 it had the same time controls as well. It has been organised since 1993 and we are in the 28th edition (there we no events in 2020-2022) in 2024. The winners list (pre-COVID) can be found here: https://www.essexchess.org.uk/archive/team-blitz/ and the winners in 2023 were "Barking A", referenced from "https://www.essexchess.org.uk/activities-archive/activities-2022-23/essex-team-blitz-2023/".

Barking A won it this time around too, but it was a close fight between them and Wanstead Dynamos with tie-breaks deciding the championship. The team standings for this year follows.

Back to the past

This week has been a reminder of my past... I could remember the days I used to be a budding Grandmaster!

I officiated in an All Bengal Rapid Chess Event organised by Alekhine Chess Club at Gorky Sadan... and it was after such a long time I came face to face with the chess world I had not been in touch with for a long time...

I met Debayan after ages, Sandipan after a few months... some people in the chess world I had forgoten even exist... and it felt so nostalgic.

ACC was never my favourite hunting ground... I remember EtV Chess Championship where I would have become champion if not for the fateful mistake against Debayan. Man, I hate him for that! He won an all expences paid trip to Ramoji Film City and lived in a 5-star... gosh was he lucky.

I did the pairing part of the show .. that was entirely related to the computer. How I wish there was a Pairing manager for Linux-based Systems! Neverthelss, m$ excel and sp98 was corrupted by me as it was just another arbiter's job for three days. The food was great and the ambience was excellent! I would love to officiate at ACC again...

I also wondered if I should be playing again... I know form is no excuse... I can always come back... I can always be my best.

Application Compatibility on Windows

Recently, I've been thinking about the failure of Windows Vista and wondering what the state of native DOS applications would be on the newer Windows machines. Many people use old applications that are part of their daily work... and they simply can't let go. Tell them to upgrade their Software? Well, then they need to "buy" that upgrade. Which people have a right not to!

Applications won't or simply runs errornously on Windows Vista. An example of this are various popular Chess Softwares : CT Art (that plays chess), Fritz 2, SP-98 (A tournament manager used by West Bengal Chess Association ) etc.

So what is their solution?

Dunno. But perhaps they'll switch to open source alternatives. Like DOS-Box for instance. Or even try running Linux with Wine. Since some of these stuff actually runs better on Wine!