Polls

The Nakamura touch-move incident at the Candidates is our poll topic this week. The facts are not in dispute, as the video is clear. Nakamura touched the king, so he had to move it, and he did. It’s the interpretation of his after-the-touch “j’adoube” that’s in question. A heat-of-the-moment slip or something dodgier? You can […]

Last week’s poll question was: What is your favourite phase of a chess game? Of The Big Three the narrow winner was ‘middlegame’, ahead of my favourite ‘endgame’, with ‘opening’ well beaten. Not so surprising. I suspect the time spent studying each phase would get a very different answer, but I will save that question

Last week’s poll question was: ‘What do you love most about chess?’ It was a close-run race, but ‘Studying’ edged out ‘Winning’ and ‘Beauty’. As I have said a few times, I think the voters on a Quality Chess poll may not be representative of all chess players, so an emphasis on studying and winning

Last week’s poll question was: ‘Do you follow a fixed repertoire or play game to game?’ The majority of the readership is very definitely in the former camp, with ‘One fixed repertoire’ a clear winner followed by ‘Vary sub-system within main defence’  followed by ‘Two complete repertoires’ in the top three places, scooping up 68%

Last week’s poll question was: ‘What was the best non-QC chess book of 2015?’ It was a three-way fight all week between the opening repertoire books of Houska, Sielecki and Bologan, and in the end IM Jovanka Houska’s Caro-Kann repertoire edged out Sielecki by 5 votes. As it happens, Jovanka is an occasional 4ncl teammate

Last week’s poll question was ‘What was the best Quality Chess book of 2015?’ The convincing winner was Chess Structures by Mauricio Flores Rios, ahead of Gelfand’s Positional Decision Making in Chess.  Between them, these two books scooped up the lion’s share of the votes.   As mentioned last week, the question this time is

Last week’s poll question was: “Who will win Wijk aan Zee?” It seems the readership’s faith in the World Champion has been restored, as Magnus Carlsen won the poll overwhelmingly, with almost two-thirds of the votes cast. Earlier this month a simultaneous display titled “Beauty versus the Beast” was held between GM Nigel Short and