Richard’s final round win from Bournemouth

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Many thanks to Richard for providing an annotated game from his recent success at the Dorset Centenary Congress in Bournemouth. This is his final round game.


Richard equalised comfortably out of the opening and was slightly better around move 15. Then White made the mistake of exchanging off his best minor pieces (his knights). This resulted in a slight initiative to Richard, which he made use of by attacking two pawns, and winning one of White’s queen’s pawns (and the other one will drop off shortly). White’s resignation may seem a little early at first sight, but his position was quite lost and lacked active counterplay.
An instructive game.

Richard Webb jointly wins Dorset Centenary Open!

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Several Crowthorne Chess Club members played in the Dorset Congress in Bournemouth last weekend (19-21 April) and Richard Webb came equal first in the open!

Here is a position from his Round 2 win. Richard’s opponent has unwisely just played 18 …Bd7, 18 …Rg8 was a better try, but his position would already be very difficult after 19 Ne5.

What did Richard play to force a quick win?

Online 4NCL Summary

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After 5 rounds of the current Online 4NCL season Crowthorne has won 3 matches, drawn 1 and lost 1. We are in eighth place (out of 33) in Division 5, with two rounds to go.

Crowthorne won the latest match 3-1

Success for Crowthorne Players at Swindon Rapidplay

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Two Crowthorne players were successful at the Swindon 2024 Rapidplay, held on Saturday 2nd March.

In the U1900s, Ashton Grimmett scored 4.5 out of 6, and won the section on tiebreak. An excellent result, especially given his current rapidplay rating of 1729.
Richard Webb won the Open outright, scoring 5/6.

Richard receiving his prize from tournament organiser Ben Ogunshola
Ashton receiving his prize

Win or otherwise, the events at Swindon are always pleasant to play in, and are highly recommended.

Full results for the U1900 can be found here and for the Open here.

Junior Online 4NCL

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4nclresults.co.uk/2023-24/media/kids/9th/prog-div4.html(opens in a new tab)

Crowthorne Chess Club has a team in Division 4 of the Junior Online 4NCL competition.

In this format, teams play in a seven round Swiss, with each player playing two games against the same opponent. The time rate is 10 minutes for the game, plus 5 seconds increment each move.

Crowthorne Juniors won their latest match:

This means that Crowthorne has won two out of the first three matches and stand in 15th place out of 34 teams.

Full details at the 4NCL website.

UK Chess Challenge at Crowthorne Chess Club

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Once again, John Upham is organising a UK Chess Challenge (UKCC) competition for juniors at Crowthorne Chess Club.

In case you don’t know, the UKCC is a series of competitions for juniors, starting with qualifying tournaments and then going on to Megafinals, Gigafinals and Terafinals. More details can be found on the Delancey UKCC web site.

In the first week we already have 19 entrants signed up for the competition, more may well enter in later weeks. You can follow the progress of the competition on chess-results which has full details of entrants, results, individual performance etc.

Online 4NCL Round 1

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Round 1 of the 9th Season of the 4NCL took place on Tuesday, and Crowthorne started with a win against the Colchester JFF B team.

We outrated our opponents, but a good start to the season nonetheless. All results, tables etc can be found at the 4ncl website.

OTB 4NCL weekend 2 2023/2024

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Rounds 3-4 of the over-the-board 4NCL have completed, with Crowthorne Chess Club’s two teams competing over the last two weekends. The B team played over 6-7 January and the A team on Jan 13-14.

Both teams won their Saturday matches, but then followed with losses on Sunday. This was particularly unfortunate for the A Team who came close to winning a couple of their games, but without quite managing to press their advantage for a win. Crowthorne A lost the match 2.5 – 3.5. To be fair, their opponents (Sussex Martlets) also came close to winning one or two of their other games, and after four rounds they lead the division with 4 wins out of 4.

Richard had a tremendously complicated game, with an “unclear” assessment being reasonable for most of the game. Then his opponent decided that his king was safer out of the centre, and he castled (on move 29!) into a strong attack. Neither player could see a forcing line for Richard (playing White), and the game soon ended in a repetition. At that point, Richard was playing on increment and got down to 1-2 seconds on a couple of occasions.

In the cold light of day, and with access to a strong engine, we can see that White did have a win available, although this was also missed by players and kibitzers alike in the post-mortem. The lines are quite pretty, though, so you may like to play through them.

Christmas Handicap Results

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We held the annual Crowthorne Christmas Speed Handicap last Friday (15th December), in the Pinewood bar & café using the function room at the back, which proved to be a perfectly suitable room for us. We set a new record for attendance – 28 players, including seven juniors, two parents and two newcomers.

Given the number of players, we split into four for the group stage. The club’s strong established players did well, with Paul, Richard, Harvey and Robert winning their respective groups. This despite Paul, for example, having less than 5 minutes total playing time across all 6 games.

For the knockout stage we also introduced a novelty, a round of 16. The field was reduced to 3 juniors in the semi-finals, Matthew, David and Dylan, along with Hamid attending his first club competition. The final saw David and Dylan playing a fine and evenly balanced game, both playing with great maturity. David pushed for an attack, but Dylan gave no ground and after an even and well fought battle, it was Dylan who had the better time control and won the game, and with it the Harvey-Ironside Shield.

Congratulations to Dylan, and indeed to David too for doing so well.

We had two other “winners”, both earning themselves a bottle of wine: Scott for the most outrageous Christmas costume (the snowman onesie, slightly tighter fitting this year) and Michael for sportingly giving all the other players a chance.

Jonathan presents the Harvey-Ironside Shield to this year’s winner – Dylan
White stands well
The finalists – David and Dylan – in action
The prize for sartorial elegance

Reminder – Christmas Handicap on Friday and chess this week

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This (13th December) is the last Wednesday this term in the Monro Pavilion for juniors and matches. We resume again on Wednesday 10th January.

We thought three consecutive nights of chess would be a bit much, so there is no Pinewood social chess meeting this Thursday. We should be ok to meet again next Thursday, 21st Dec before taking a break over the Christmas/new year period.

Christmas Handicap is on Friday, doors open 7:00, rules read-out 7:30, play start about 7:45.

Jonathan sent an email yesterday to people who are down as playing. If you didn’t receive it, but you expect to be playing, please let Jonathan know ASAP.