London,England

Hi everyone I plan to visit London,England in the Spring and will be there 2 weeks on vacation-- I hope some of you here can give me tips on where i can get a good game of chess in while i amthere!!!!thanks.

go to internet cafe and log on RHP.

Originally posted by Jusuh
go to internet cafe and log on RHP.

Originally posted by richfeet
Hi everyone I plan to visit London,England in the Spring and will be there 2 weeks on vacation-- I hope some of you here can give me tips on where i can get a good game of chess in while i amthere!!!!thanks.

Originally posted by cmsMaster
I wish I could find a good game in Cleveland. 🙁

Jusuh's actually probably right if London is anything like Ohio. 😕

Originally posted by richfeet
Hi everyone I plan to visit London,England in the Spring and will be there 2 weeks on vacation-- I hope some of you here can give me tips on where i can get a good game of chess in while i amthere!!!!thanks.

sometimes, I wish I lived in New York... there's a total lack of chess in so many other states

Originally posted by richfeet
Hi everyone I plan to visit London,England in the Spring and will be there 2 weeks on vacation-- I hope some of you here can give me tips on where i can get a good game of chess in while i amthere!!!!thanks.

When exactly will you be here, and roughly where will you be staying?

Any ideas yet?

For historical interest you could visit Simpson's on the Strand, where the Immortal Game was played between Anderssen and Kieseritsky:
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1018910
Don't go there with the idea of actually playing any chess though, it's not that sort of place anymore.

I lived in London for many years, and most of the chess activity was in the evenings, usually in a pub. My favourite was Hackney Chess Club:
http://www.hackneychess.org.uk/
Some of used to play blitz in a local pub during the week as well. If you want to know whether that still goes on try dropping an e-mail to Terry 'Dazzling' Donnelly (details on their website).

The largest and most famous chess club in London is King's Head:
http://www.khcc.org.uk/start.shtml

There are loads of clubs in London, and on any particular night one of them is bound to be hosting matches and friendly games.

The London League is the largest and strongest league in the area:
http://www.londonchess.plus.com/
The standard is very high, for example the current leaders, Wood Green, field twelve players over 210 ECF! (about 2300 ELO).

The league is unusual in that many of the matches are played at the same place, the Community Centre on Golden Lane Estate. There are often two matches taking place in the same evening. If you want to see a dozen games between highly rated players (often a few GMs) then it's worth going along to watch.

I haven't lived in London for fifteen years now, but I'm sure the standard of the chess is still high. I remember the shock of going along to join Hackney Chess Club and discovering that my grade of 150 ECF (about 2000 ELO) wasn't good enough to get into their second London League team! (i.e. I wasn't in the top 24 of the club with that grade).

Originally posted by richfeet
Hi everyone I plan to visit London,England in the Spring and will be there 2 weeks on vacation-- I hope some of you here can give me tips on where i can get a good game of chess in while i amthere!!!!thanks.

Originally posted by EAPOE
Lived in the big Smoke for four years, there is not much street chess going on there. . . . Plenty of binge drinking but thats our culture. There must be some refs on the web.