Pulling No Punches

HOW many people still buy a chess magazine?

It is many years since I saw a copy in WH Smith, and the opportunity to buy one at a congress diminished as quickly as the presence of bookstalls.

The main culprit is the rise of the internet, which put paid to one of my favourite publications, Inside Chess.

This afternoon the April edition of Chess dropped through my letterbox.

Pride of place goes to former world champion Boris Spassky

So far I have only read Michael Pein's editorial, but for entertainment value it is alone worth the price of admission.

His two bugbears this month are Fide's Fair Play Commission - compared unfavourably with the KGB - and cheating at correspondence chess.

You might think the latter is impossible, bearing in mind all serious governing bodies allow the use of engines. 

Indeed, one of the first questions asked of newly crowned world champions at the Fide-recognised International Correspondence Chess Federation is which engines they have, and how they use them (answers are normally somewhat uninformative).

However, it seems I am rather naive ...