Camberley and Crowthorne Chess Clubs Christmas meal is tomorrow (Friday 13th). The timings are:
Meet first at the Dog & Partridge Public House from 7pm onwards
At 8.30pm cross over the road for our club Christmas Meal at La Galleria Italian Restaurant in Yateley Industries, Mill Lane, Yateley GU46 7TF
The menus are at http://www.lagalleria-restaurant.co.uk/menu.html
Christmas Events
It’s that time of year again, and there are two social events for Crowthorne Chess Club members to put in their calendar!
A message from Jonathan, our club secretary:
The time has come for you to let me know if you’re planning to attend the Crowthorne Christmas Handicap tournament, also known as our Christmas party. I need to know how many are attending, so as to order the right amount of food. Also, it helps me organise the structure of the event (how many first stage groups there need to be, etc). If you’ve already let me know your intentions, there’s no need to do so again.
As a reminder: it’s in the Wellington College social club, Friday 20th December, start time 7:30.
As well, there is a Camberley/Crowthorne Christmas meal on Friday 13th December, not very long away at all, in La Galleria in Yateley. Would interested people let myself or Christine know?
4NCL First Weekend Report (Nov 2019)
Once again Crowthorne has two teams competing in the 4NCL (Four Nations Chess League), the UK’s national team championship. We have one team in Division 4, and one team in Division 3, having gained promotion last year.
The first 2 rounds have just taken place this weekend (9-10 November).
The B team narrowly lost 2½ – 3½ on Saturday but a 5-1 win on the Sunday puts the B team comfortably mid table.
The A team won 4-2 on the Saturday and 5-1 on the Sunday so a strong start in division 3.
Berkshire League Fixtures are out too!
Fixtures are now available on the Berkshire Chess League website. Crowthorne Chess Club’s fixture can be found here (these links are also available in the Useful Links page).
Please remember that fixtures are occasionally subject to rearrangement, and that the Surrey Border and Berkshire League’s websites should be checked just in case fixture dates have changed.
SBL Fixtures are out!
The Surrey Border League’s fixtures for the 2019/2020 season are now available on the SBL website. The Berkshire League’s fixtures will become available some time in September.
Crowthorne Chess Club’s SBL fixtures can be found here.
Back to Permanent Location
From next Wednesday (21 Aug), we will be meeting at our usual location in the Maths Dept, and no longer at our summer lodgings in PE1. Please click the image below for a detailed map, or go to the About Us page for detailed directions.
Summer event: Random Opening Rapidplay Tournament
To complement the fixed opening rapidplay held earlier in the summer, Crowthorne Chess Club held a random opening rapidplay, with a different opening in each round. The results of the tournament, held yesterday evening with eight members playing were:
1st Harvey Duckers with 6 points (out of 7)
2nd Mark Taylor with 5
3rd Jonathan Welton with 4.5
The openings for each round were as follows:
1 Queen’s Gambit Accepted
2 Najdorf with 6 Be3
3 Fajarowicz variation of the Budapest
4 King’s Bishop Gambit
5 Open Ruy Lopez
6 French Winawer poisoned pawn
7 Grob
Summer event: Mini Rapid Trompowsky Tournament
Yesterday the club held a themed blitz tournament where all the games started with the position arising after the moves
1. d4 Nf6
2. Bg5 Ne4
This took most players off the beaten track and into very varied and unknown territory, and as a result many interesting games ensued.
Twelve members participated, and the event was held as an all-play-all blitz. Richard Webb won with an impressive 10/11, with Derek Johnson in second place with 8.5 and Ken Coates and Harrvey Duckers sharing third with 8.
New ECF Grades are out!
The ECF has just published its July 2019 list, as usual timed to be just before the start of the British Championships.
Grades of Crowthorne Chess Club players can be found here
Summer talk: Chess Puzzles
Yesterday Richard Webb gave a very entertaining talk, going through a number of endgame puzzles. The puzzles were all spectacular, often humorous and, of course, difficult to solve.
As a taster, here is one of the puzzles that Richard presented, a 1922 composition by Kubbel. White to play and win. Expand the “Spoiler” below to see the solution:
Spoiler
The main line of the solution is:
1 Nc6 in order to meet 1…a2 with 2 Nb4+
1 ….Kxc6
2 Bf6 threatening Bxd4, controlling the queening square a1
2 …. Kd5 if 2 …Kc5 3 Be7+ wins the a3 pawn
3 d3!! a2
4 c4+ Kc5
5 Kb7 a1=Q
6 Be7 amazingly, this is checkmate!
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Richard at the demo board 