Month: February 2020

At the recent Leyland Rapid junior Jack Yang managed a great performance in the minor section. He was second on 5/6, losing only to the unrated (and presumably soon to be highly rated) 6/6 winner. Here he is pictured collecting his prize.

Congratulations Jack!

Tired of getting beaten up or flagged at blitz by anonymous online players? That can all change now. Join the Chester club and you’ll know at the very least that the person beating you or flagging you is from the club. Their username may still be bizarre and their identity unknown but it’s a start…

Joking apart, we just launched our online club on Lichess. It’s free and straightforward to sign up. Once you’ve done that you can click to join the online club here, noting your real name in the accompanying note so we can keep it to genuine members: https://lichess.org/team/chester-chess-club

We plan to experiment with matches against other clubs and the occasional internal tournament. And of course you should be able to see which other club members are online and challenge them to a game.

Our first match was an hour blitz battle against our German twin town Lörrach. With players including Dissonant Harmony, Rokelis, Tritium, Bateman and a confusingly German Schadenfreude we built an early lead but ultimately lost narrowly. We have tentatively planned a rematch for the first Thursday in June.

So if you’re ready for some online games, please sign up now…

Going into the final round both Colm Buckley and Chris Doran were on the top two boards of the open. Colm unfortunately lost and finished on 3/5. However, Chris took a quick draw to guarantee first with 4/5. On the way he beat both FM Oliver Jackson and top junior Tom Carroll to cement a fine result.

In the major Chester were also represented by Ray Williams and Steve Lloyd who both finished on 50%.