I am watching an annotated chess game, and the narration goes like this:

The game I am about to show you was played in the last round of an open tournament in Bad Weise, Germany. My score was 6 and 2 going.

What does the last sentence mean?

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    Just a comment to say that I don't think this should have been migrated. As a native (British) English speaker, it's not at all clear what is meant. However, I have an idea that it's to do with North American sport and game scoring terminology (wins and losses), not specifically chess-related. I think that EL&U is the correct place for the question. – JHCL Oct 13 '15 at 10:40
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    I would interpret the sentence as "my score was 6 (out of ??) with 2 games remaining". I'm neither a native English speaker, nor a professional tournament player, though. This is just a hunch. If you could post a link to the annotations of the game (if there is one), maybe it would be possible to deduce something concrete from the whole context. – Zvonimir Oct 13 '15 at 11:23
  • I'm not sure, but it could be a tournament with "adjourned games". So, "6" is his score for the finished games and "2" is the number of adjourned games. – Maxwell86 Oct 13 '15 at 11:38
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    That sentence is nonsense. – Pete Becker Oct 13 '15 at 13:21

"6 and 2 going" is not idiomatic English or chess-speak.

My first assumption is that there are words missing and the speaker actually said or meant "My score was 6 and 2 going into this round." This means that s/he earned 6 points out of the possible 8 in the previous 8 rounds (you get 1 point for a win, 1/2 point for a draw, and 0 points for a loss) before the game being annotated.

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  • So "six and two" would be idiomatic? – BlindKungFuMaster Oct 13 '15 at 12:27
  • Well the narrator was Josh Waitzkin and there were also subtitles. He definitely said (and the subtitles read): 6 and 2 going. – Armen Tsirunyan Oct 13 '15 at 13:02
  • @BlindKingFuMaster Yes, totally. – dfan Oct 13 '15 at 13:26

Bad Wiessee hosts a strong chess tournament every year. It generally has nine rounds. So although I'm not familiar with this exact expression, it is pretty clear that the speaker means that he scored 6 points out of 8 rounds before the final (and ninth) round. I have seen this kind of score being written as 6:2, possibly "six and two going" is the correct way to read this.

Edit: To clarify, the "2" is the number of points missing from a perfect score, not the number of games still to be played. In other sports it might be the number of losses. In chess it can also contain draws i.e. half points.

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It means that he has won 6 and lost two (or equivalent scores with draws included) going into the last round and the game being shown was the last round game.

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  • again some cowardly bully downvotes a CORRECT answer. The full statement was clearly that 'I was 6 wins and 2 losses going into the final round game which is being annotated here' – edwina oliver Feb 18 at 23:34

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