Author: pcrocker

Mike McDonagh came joint second at the Wrexham Rapidplay. He conceded just two draws in reaching 4/5 without getting a chance to play the winner. Jixin and Jack Yang shared the slow starter prize.

Mike nearly added the Chester and District League Championship the following weekend. Unleashing his inner Magnus Carlsen all he needed to do was beat reigning champion Colm Buckley in a microscopically better R+N ending in the final round. Meanwhile on the top board David Jameson and Phil Crocker had already unleashed their inner Carlsens by contriving a move repetition a few moves out of the opening, confident of their chances in the blitz playoff. Ultimately Mike only managed a draw and, perhaps tired from these exertions, blundered into a mate in the final blitz match against your reporter.

 

Nethuli Saram managed to jointly win the U110 and U95 grading prizes at the recent Bolton Rapid competition. She reached a score of 4/6 in the Knights section and is pictured at the prize giving. Well done to Nethuli!

 

As we approach our centenary, thanks to Dave Robertson for finding this article from the Liverpool Echo in August 1934. It seems not so much has changed…

This weekend saw a series of regional qualifiers to be UK Blitz Champion. Chester were well represented in the Manchester qualifier held in Bolton with 4 of the 34 players.

It would be a lie to say we seriously challenged for one of the two qualifying places. However, notwithstanding the pressures of being designated driver, Colm stormed to a perfect 3/3 start. Despite a slower start Mike overtook the rest of us in the middle of the tournament. Most impressive was Steve who, playing in a fairly tough open field, was well in contention for one of the grading prizes and played well ahead of his rating.

As for your reporter, I had the consolation (?) of a 6 point upfloat in the final 15th round to play runaway winner Joe McPhillips on 13.5/14. Things didn’t end quite so well for him, as trying to defend with rook against rook and pawn he was judged after a little controversy to have placed his rook en prise.

All in all quite a fun tournament, and a good way of getting 15 games in only one day

On August 14th rather than a regular club night we’ll be using the Town Crier to plan the teams for next season. Please let your captain(s) know any changed circumstances for next season before this meeting.

Keith Emerton recently returned from playing in the World Senior Team Championship in Germany. He was selected to play for England 4 in the Over 65 group.

Despite being out-rated in many of his games he nevertheless scored an impressive 50% including three wins!

Here are a few photos of him in action:

With such great results, and the last photo suggesting some serious last minute preparation, we’re sure Keith will be a force to reckon with when he returns to local league service in September…

For more details of the team results there is a report on the ECF website:

https://www.englishchess.org.uk/Seniors/wstcc-final-report/

 

I recently had the pleasure of meeting Markus Haag (president, right) and Andreas Kuglstatter (tournament organiser, left) from the Brombach chess club in Lörrach in Germany. Lörrach is Chester’s twin town and is situated in the bottom left hand corner of Germany very close to Basel. Their club is of a similar size to Chester’s and also has a significant junior component.

They were visiting Chester assisting a youth exchange programme and are pictured here outside their university accommodation. We discussed exchanging details of the tournaments we each run and maybe playing a match in future.

If you might in principle be interested in travelling to Germany to play a weekend tournament and/ or a match then please let me (Phil) know.

The votes are counted and logo C won with 11 votes against 9 for logo A and just 3 for logo B. Thanks to everyone for taking the time to vote and for leaving comments. And thanks to Graham for the original artworks!

At the AGM we reviewed the two frontrunners (A and B) and then commissioned Graham to design a third hybrid logo (C). Please vote for your favourite in the comments section or email Graham or Phil. We’ll finalise the selection around the end of June.

Logo A

Logo B

Logo C

 

 

At the recent AGM we recognised a number of members who had extraordinary results in the last season.

From the juniors we recognised the following winners:

Most Improved Player – George Turner

 

Chester Cup – Abdelrahman Mahmoud

 

Holdcroft Shield – Milan Kustos

 

Young Masters – Vignesh Seshadri

 

Club Championship – Efe Kitis

 

For the adult competitions John Carleton presented the trophies:

Townsend Trophy – Phil Skippon

 

Club Championship – Mike McDonagh

(Unfortunately no photo as he was photographer for the evening)

 

Hallard Cup – Ian Clayton

 

Coleby Cup – Ben Roberts and Phil Crocker

(Unfortunately Ben missed out on the photo opp.)

 

Well done also to John Carleton who was Chester and District League Division 1 Player of the Year, scoring 9 out of 10 on top board. And last but not least, Tony Rafferty scored an amazing 6/6 in division 4 of the Wirral League.

Congratulations to all the winners!