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Hi, I'm Stuart Johnson, author of this site.

I'm sure there are lots of chess players out there in Yorkshire who would probably join a local club if they knew where they were. Well these pages are designed primarily for you, to tell you who we are, where we are and when we are (to quote from John Cleese). Unless you live at the North Pole, there's a club near you!

Most clubs provide both league and non-league chess at all levels from novice to expert, so there's something for everyone.

In addition I'm including pages for local events, league tables, junior chess, games, comments and links to other useful sites. So for all Secretaries and Controllers, send me anything you want to publicise.

Ring 01943 466847 for my postal / e-mail addresses

To kick off the Comments Page I'd like to show you yet another boring table of statistics (sad, yes, even deeply tragic, but there's a point to it):

Well some people might find these comparisons interesting, but the point I want to make is you're looking at a total of 9,136 board games throughout the county. Add to that all Knock-outs, internal club games, Junior competitions, local congresses, County and National leagues and you have a lot of chess!

Given that 9,136 games = 18,272 individual results for grading plus all the other stuff, we are talking over 30,000 entries per year into the YCA grading data base.

This requires a monumental effort on the part of the Yorkshire Grader, who receives no payment for this and very little praise. Perhaps those who are quick to criticise should look at these figures and compare the YCA grades with those of the BCF.

It was only a matter of time which surrendered to the strain first, the Grader or his computer. We had the answer when the computer gave out earlier this year. Fortunately, Peter is made of sterner stuff, but how much longer can we expect him to carry on playing this thankless task? Not surprisingly, people are not exactly falling over themselves to volunteer for the job.

So what is the long-term solution when Peter has finally had enough?

1  Pay the BCF to do it? Not a popular expense for most of the local leagues, which is why a much lower proportion of matches are graded by the BCF than by the YCA.

2  Operate without a grading system? Impractical since any worthwhile league needs gradings for structuring of teams, board order, etc.

3  Operate local leagues independently using local graders? Some leagues may already have this facility, but as many people play in more than one league (eg. I play in four) not to mention County matches, Congresses etc. a single unified system like the present is essential.

4  Live in hope that a saviour will come forth and carry on as we are?

FAT CHANCE.

5  Enter the twenty-first century using a coordinated computer system in which Controllers enter results directly into their own computers using a unified data system.The YCA Grader has then only to download data from each league (on floppy disk) into a Central Data Base which automatically produces the grades.

This avoids the problem of typing in over 30,000 results a year, a job which is largely repetitive as most results have already been entered once already into each Controller's own records.

I see two main drawbacks with this:

1  Not all Controllers have their own computers and those who do like to use their own home-grown systems. As Controller of two leagues myself I can well sympathise with a reluctance to use someone else's data system.