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Once upon a time when Chester Chess Club went on tour it was a very formal occasion. Members would take out their best suits and travel en masse. In truth though our club’s Grand Tour never got further than the Isle of Man in 1968.

It was with this historical context that Jeff Smith and I set off to conquer Europe for Chester. We were headed for the Dreiländereck, a corner of the continent where Germany, France and Switzerland all meet. An ideal opportunity to stake out British supremacy over players from all those other countries.

Just the two of us, but these days it’s been established that small teams in disciplines like mountaineering can achieve great things with a more fast-paced, lightweight approach. (For full disclosure we did pay for extra baggage on the plane over to Basel so we weren’t quite as lightweight and agile as we might have been, particularly when we needed to push our cases up the local village hill on Sunday morning.)

Anyway, Chester had been invited to send a delegation to play in the annual tournament of Chester’s twin German town Lörrach. It was all done in the spirit of international goodwill but maybe, just maybe the Germans had seen our recent performances in the Wrexham Rapid and were sounding us out to join their high-ranking Bundesliga squad?!

We were met at Basel airport by our very attentive host Andreas, VP of the Lörrach club Brombach. He took us to our guesthouse in the charming village of Inzlingen where the tournament was to be played in the historic Wasserschloss (water castle). At 10pm the local guesthouse had seemingly long given up on the prospect of either of us arriving, But with some very rusty German on my part and some slicker phrases from Jeff we gained access to our rooms.

On Friday morning, after a relaxing hotel breakfast we were picked up by Andreas for a morning and afternoon of sightseeing. Like in the UK the tournament had a standard format of a round on Friday evening followed by two games on Saturday and Sunday.

First stop was the internationally renowned Fondation Beyeler (Beyeler foundation). This art gallery had quite a few famous paintings  by the likes of Picasso, Munch to name a couple.  However, they hadn’t really anticipated the inquisitive nature of three chess players. As we leaned in to one particularly valuable one to check our working theory that it had been damaged and patched up, we managed to trigger some security alarms and were given a first warning.

Our second warning came just a few minutes later as we leaned in for a photo towards a sculpture by some bloke called Max Ernst who had done a nice chess-themed work.

Enough was enough so we headed into downtown Lörrach for some lunch. We were joined by Malcolm the section head for Chester partnering. He had moved to Lörrach in 1976, a very hot year there too. After sampling local delicacies and various beers Malcolm kindly gave us a tour of the centre including Chesterplatz and the old Rathaus (townhall) where in 1848 democracy was briefly declared and then taken back a day or so later.

Suitably energised we returned to Inzlingen to begin the chess campaign. The tournament began with free drinks and snacks during registration. There were rousing speeches from organisers Markus and Ali. These focused on themes like international harmony and, far more contentiously, imploring us to accept losses as a normal, acceptable part of the game. Well, Jeff and I hadn’t come to lose so I’m not sure what all that was about. As an aside, the computer pairing system wasn’t so pleasant, labeling Jeff as a Senior Wal. Honing in on age and size didn’t really seem to be in the same spirit.

No Swiss gambits for us. Wins all round, although Jeff needed to show some intricate technique in a knight ending. Not really something to get caught up in approaching midnight.

Round two saw Jeff on the Gipfelbrett (summit board). I’d like to say he gave a good account of himself, but that really wasn’t the case. Meanwhile I managed to bore an 11 year-old Wunderkind (wunderkind) into doing something silly and managed to win in time to climb the local mountain before round two.

Round three saw me on the Gipfelbrett facing Jeff’s previous opponent. But it wasn’t for too long as what I thought was ambitious play turned out to be simply poor and I also went down to the ultimate 5/5 winner. Jeff meanwhile implemented a positional squeeze in fine style.

Two points each wasn’t so bad. We just needed to win some games and avoid draws in the final two rounds. To clear our heads Andreas had arranged for us to join in his local Fasnachtsfeuer (a souped up bonfire night). Fasnacht is a local seasonal festival. The fire part of it involves a fire safety briefing, climbing a hill with torches, a bonfire, firefighters throwing petrol on a bonfire, Bratwurst (proper sausage) and throwing burning discs towards the houses at the bottom of the hill. A couple of hundred years ago one of the local castles was accidently burned down, perhaps because someone had skipped the fire safety briefing or maybe because throwing accelerants on a bonfire entails some risks.

If you’ve ever read those chess magazines with one-page player interviews you’ve likely seen the question What are chess players good at apart from chess? In short the general consensus seems to be not very much. And if we’re honest with ourselves most of us chess players aren’t even that accomplished at chess. Jeff, however is the exception that proves the rule. He proved a dab hand at throwing the burning discs off the hill. Leveraging some hidden golf technique he put the local experts to shame. Video available on request.

So what was important in round four was to avoid draws. We both drew.

Over a delicious lunch before the final round we met Malcolm’s boss Sebastian who manages all the partnering activities with Lörrach’s twin towns. We also met club member Nico who has plenty of innovative plans such as a chess tennis competition and organises an Instagram account for the club. Instagram? Chess?? Chess players on Instagram???

Onto the final round. It was vital we both won to get a chance of a main prize. That plan ended when we were paired against each other. Still it was vital we didn’t draw. That plan ended when we drew. A fighting draw to be sure with a gambit from Jeff, some nice neutralising opening play from me, a queen trapping (mine sadly) and a perpetual check. Stockfish 17 saw it less favourably with Jeff losing 0.4 pawns a move, a touch better than my 0.5 pawns a move. What do those computers understand though?

So we missed the main prizes. Still 5th and 6th place wasn’t too shabby a result for the Chester contingent.

Easyjet weren’t flying back to Manchester until Tuesday which gave us all of Monday to savour the world famous Basel Fasnacht recognised by UNESCO. It begins at 4am with all the lights being extinguished across the city followed by a carnival parade with lanterns, haunting music and some devilish costumes. We needed to get up for a 2.30am departure from Andreas house, picking up club president Markus en route. Markus had a surprise for Jeff who notwithstanding his youthful looks had won the best prize for a senior player. Having skipped the official prizegiving Markus awarded it in an underground carpark at 3am.

Andreas had very generously put us up in his house after the tournament and his wife prepared a very tasty goulash lunch. Later on we exchanged stories whilst polishing off some of Andreas’ schnaps cellar, the 1984 vintage being particularly nice.

Thanks to Andreas and family and Markus for hosting such an enjoyable trip. The tournament is held annually with details on their club website and the link below has a perhaps more objective report. It’s probably also on Instagram.

https://schachclub-brombach.de/verein-2/wasserschloss-open-inzlingen/13-wasserschloss-open-inzlingen-vom-07-07-03-2025/

Last Sunday the annual Wrexham rapid competition was held. This is a well-run tournament in a pleasant environment with entries capped at around 30. This year there were three Chester entrants and amazingly they all managed to win prizes.

Ethan Challoner (above) returning after a break from chess took the junior prize jointly with Denys from Colwyn Bay.

Jeff Smith (above) playing his first tournament for some time was hampered by being held to draws by the other Chester players Ethan and Phil Crocker. However, he managed to finish joint 3rd.

Phil drew with Mark Bastow (both pictured below) in the final round to secure joint first with Mark.

Once again, a well run tournament by Wrexham, highly recommended for players in future years.

Chester had a particularly successful season in the Chester & District league. Our first and second teams captained by John Carleton and Steve Lloyd  finished first and second in division one,. In division two Piotr Siwy captained us to first place.

In division one John Carleton and Phil Crocker were joint top-scorers whilst Piotr dominated proceedings in division two.

In the Wirral league John Carleton captained our knock-out team to victory with the trophy presented to Phil at the Wirral AGM by the outgoing president.

Dave Hulme was the individual top scorer in division two pictured below receiving his award.

Finally in our internal club tournaments Paul Bluck won the Townsend trophy and was presented this by John Carleton at our AGM.

Chester’s oldest surviving member passed away last week. He first joined the club in the 1960s.

The funeral is to take place at Blacon crematorium on Tuesday, July 30th at 3.20pm.

He’s pictured below in the middle of those seated as part of the team which won the Liverpool League in 1982.

Steve Lloyd was joint winner of the Wrexham Rapid together with Bob Clark, himself a former Chester member. They both scored 4.5/5, drawing against each other.

Your reporter had won the previous year with 5/5 with Colm joint second on 4/5. This year I continued the winning streak to reach 4/4, on the way recovering from a sticky opening against Chester speed demon Graham Dobson. In the final round Steve played an enterprising Greek gift sacrifice against me. Defence prevailed for just a few moves before Steve finished things off with a mating attack.

Once again an enjoyable tournament run by Wrexham which I’d encourage members to enter in future.

Club president Phil Crocker just published a chess book: Better Chess Faster. Aimed at the club player, it offers advice for speeding up your play and improving your move quality in both blitz and classical. It’s available on amazon Better Chess Faster: Strategies for online and live play: Amazon.co.uk: Crocker, Mr Phil: 9798829874704: Books

Alternatively you could get a copy from Phil at the club.

Ethan Challoner won the Wirral league junior of the year prize for the second year running. This year Ethan was promoted to play for Chester A but that didn’t stop him amassing the points! In August he’ll be representing Wales in the Glorney Cup junior international against Scotland.

Paul Bluck was also presented with a trophy for scoring the highest of any league player in division 3 of the Wirral league. He conceded just one draw over the entire season.

Finally Phil Crocker won bronze playing for England’s 2nd 50+ team in the European Senior Team Championships in Poland held in July behind England 1 and Slovakia. He’s pictured also winning the board 4 best score bronze behind England 1’s GM Glenn Flear and a Slovakian IM.

Congratulations to Ian Clayton on winning this year’s Townsend competition, presented by first team captain John Carleton at the club’s AGM.

In the club championship John Harvey won his first title with his six points matched only by Phil Crocker.

Keith sadly passed away in hospital yesterday. He will be sorely missed by Chester members.

An enthusiastic member of the club, he played for and captained Chester teams up to the pandemic. Notwithstanding his age he took part in online matches in the last couple of years, memorably beating IM Peter Large in a match against Epsom. As the picture shows he also represented England Seniors in the World Senior Championships.

For nine days in late October and early November Dresden hosted the European Senior Team Championships. England entered six teams across the 50+ and 65+ categories. Given my youthful looks I was only eligible for the former.

There is as such no chess competency test for playing for your country in such a competition, although I think you’d want to be at least a medium strength club player to have some prospect of winning the odd game. If more English players were interested, then more teams could be entered.

My strength fell somewhat in the middle of a pool of non-professional players allocated to England 2 and England 3. I ended up playing top board for England 3 in what the ratings suggested was not a team expected to do very well at all (seeded around 24th from 35 teams).

There is a change in organisation underway in English seniors’ chess. Increased sponsorship has enabled more competitive first teams to be entered. Perhaps more importantly, if a little less visible, a greater use of spreadsheet technology has enabled the smooth and accurate planning of teams, travel plans and t-shirt sizes across the England team. Such technology is readily scalable should playing interest increase as hopefully it will.

Choosing your t-shirt size is always a bit of a leap of faith. Perhaps naively I had selected small, and it soon became apparent that other more experienced players had made more prudent choices. My pre-tournament preparation therefore needed to focus on physical exercise with the hope of squeezing into the team kit. I also forensically studied “100 Endings you must know” although that didn’t prove in any way useful as it happens.

After a couple of days of venting freely about the usual rating gripes (especially under-rated juniors) and using loose language (like grades rather than ratings) I realised that the Brian Valentine who was our England 3 captain was also the Brian Valentine who was in charge of ratings for England. November 1st for him brought a raft of ratings emails. I decided not to tell him that my new grade (sorry rating) was wrong.

As a 65+ player he may have been made our 50+ captain to instil some discipline amongst us relative youngsters. He might also have thought he could take on a Mike Brearley role (a cricketer before you start looking up his grade) where captaining would be more important than playing. The rest of the team disavowed him of any such possible notion pretty early on and he was soon able to demonstrate that even ratings officers can threaten a back rank mate or two.

One of the nice features of playing in the England squad was the mixing across teams over breakfast. Ray in our team was able to ask GM John Emms to sign a copy of his book on the Sicilian. I was able to explain to IM Nigel Povah how much I’d enjoyed his first book on the English. He was perhaps less pleased when I pointed out that I’d given it away as a lockdown prize during the pandemic. GM Glenn Flear gave an entertaining account of his barely successful return to France after the March 2020 Prague world senior team tournament ended.

In round 1 our England 3 team was somewhat outclassed by Austria, well at least that was how it felt to me. Our next chance to beat another national team came the very next round when we faced the slightly smaller country of Liechtenstein. I was all set to play their top master, apparently also a Fide bigwig. He was less keen and didn’t actually arrive at the tournament until a few days after the start. Still, I have some devious opening preparation ready for him as and when he’s up for a game. That default win helped propel us to our first victory.

England 3 were never more dangerous than when attacking the king. My most enjoyable if less than completely accurate attempt was against the top Graz FM below.

Our team also demonstrated some tactical alertness which always comes in handy against senior opposition. Next up Peter seems to have tangled up his white pieces but has a way to win the day.

Our team results improved steadily towards the end of the tournament. One of the highlights was beating Ireland. Peter and I managed to hold draws on the top boards before Brian crashed through in his game starting below with establishing an “octopus” on d6.

The final round saw England 1 (already confirmed as tournament winners) play England 2 on table 1. We played on table 3 against second seeds Berlin. With a 1950 or so average rating we faced a GM and three IMs. It started relatively promisingly. My opponent GM Rabiega, the highest rated player in the 50+ section, somehow confused himself in the opening and ended up at best equal as white after 15 or so moves. I decided to simplify to a roughly level ending.

It’s one thing to reach a level ending and an entirely other thing to actually draw it. My opponent created the odd half-threat and eventually I managed to find a way to self-destruct. Such is the way the game goes.

Meanwhile on board 4 it looked like the Berlin IM was being crushed by Ray rated 1791. This seemed to fluster the Berlin team a touch, particularly when he quickly bashed out the following sacrifice. An auto sac for an English club player maybe, but perhaps German chess is a little more positional…

Unfortunately, Ray later failed to find a way to close out the game, but a draw was still a very fine result and helped avoid the team being whitewashed.

Despite losing in the final round England 3 still won the prize for the team performing best against expectations (12th against a seeding of 24th). That earned us each a certificate and a rose each. Oddly, given the violent chess some of us had played, they also threw in some DVDs on attacking the king.

With a single game a day there was time to explore the city a little and to have the odd beer or two. With the advantage of O level German and a few months long ago working in Germany, it largely fell on me to make the beer order for our team. Not a duty to be taken lightly given the keenness to give us pils rather than our preferred wheat beer. At one riverside bar we even had to negotiate whether we wanted to pay a couple of euros for outside heating. This was a small example of the energy crisis with another one being that all public fountains had been switched off.

A nine round tournament is also about physical and mental stamina. Top GMs like England 1 have their own routines to stay match fit. Some of the amateurs went for a morning walk to stay active.

Often what is most memorable about such a trip is the things that don’t quite go to plan. Flying home was one such experience for me and a few other players. My experience (somewhat abridged) went something like this: 1) 2.25 am email from Lufthansa asking me if I’d like to check my hand baggage in the hold because the return flight will be quite full; 2) 10.45 am travel by taxi to the airport along with Mark Hebden and Natasha Regan aiming to be there in good time to avoid mishaps in getting to Frankfurt and then on to our various English destinations of London, Birmingham and Manchester; 3) 11.15 am arrive at Dresden airport and begin a tour of its main attractions; 4) 11.17am complete the tour noting little of interest; 5) 11.24am text message from Lufthansa explaining the flight to Frankfurt is cancelled (no reason given); 6) 11.35am text message with rebooking details. A much later flight to Munich for Natasha and Mark arriving later in the day in the UK. An even later flight to Frankfurt for me with an onward flight to Manchester the next day. 7) 11.55am Fruitless attempts to negotiate a return to the UK on the same day for me with a generous offer to stay at Mark’s house if I could get onto his Birmingham flight. An even more generous offer of a cup of tea if I could persuade my wife to drive to Birmingham around midnight and drop him off at home on the way back to Chester; 8) 12.05pm tot up our collective free meal vouchers for the delay and fantasise on the sort of meals which might be available.

9) 12.20pm Realise that the meal vouchers can only be spent beyond the hand baggage security check but that this is shut because the flight is cancelled; 10) 1pm Somehow get the security checks opened up so that we can reach the range of restaurants expected on the other side; 11) 1.01pm Establish that the only thing on the other side is a duty free shop but that the meal vouchers can’t be spent on wine or beer and can only be spent on crisps, a rubbery sandwich or lettered Russian biscuits; 12) 1.15pm Invest our funds in Russian lettered biscuits which enables us to play a version of Scrabble; 13) 2pm – 7pm Free time to explore the tiny airport further. One plane and a racy collection of nude statues noted (photo withheld by censors); 14) 7pm Meet Irish IM Mark Orr (who lives in Scotland) on the next seat on the plane to Frankfurt; 15) 10pm dinner at Frankfurt airport with Mark, no doubt boring him with details of Scottish players I once played; 16) 4am breakfast at Frankfurt airport (sadly no automated butter dispenser there); 17) 8.30am arrive in Manchester etc.

It’s a little-known fact*** that Franz Kafka wrote his famous stories of bureaucratic absurdity after being trapped in Dresden airport for a few days after his flight to Prague was cancelled.

Notwithstanding the travel hiccup returning from Dresden, the trip was very enjoyable. I’d definitely recommend the experience to senior players considering playing. A big thanks to Nigel Povah for the efficient organisation. Also, thanks to my England 3 teammates who showed that ratings are just numbers and that apparent no-hopers like us can sometimes do really quite well.

*52 Bxf6! and the knight is trapped if it captures the rook on h5

**Bxh6!

***Not strictly in the sense of true. More in the sense of fake news.