First Club night at the Morgan Centre
Crowthorne Chess Club kicked off the new season, and their first use of the Morgan Centre as a venue, with the Junior Club as usual, followed by an ad-hoc rapid mini-tournament for the club members present.
An interesting feature of the tournament was that the software used to generate the pairings was developed on the night by ChatGPT! Thanks to Mat for prompting ChatGPT to do this. The software prompted for the names of the participants and the scores round-by-round and produced the pairings accordingly. The pairings were good, although some colour choices weren’t ideal.
Congrats to Paul Cooksey on winning the tournament convincingly.
Chat GPT also produced a summary of the tournament, as below:
Venue for the 2025/26 Season and onwards
Crowthorne Chess Club has a new venue for matches and junior chess on Wednesdays. As from September 2025 we play in the Morgan Centre, which is located in Wellington Road just off Crowthorne High Street.
Full location details and directions are in the About Us page.
Social chess continues as normal in the Pinewood Cafe on Thursdays.
Khyber Cup 2025
The 2025 Khyber Cup was held on Sunday (20th July) in Harriet’s parents’ beautiful home and garden, filled with exotic plants. Despite the torrential downpour the previous day and the threat of more rain in the morning, the weather gods smiled on us. We had just a few light showers, but the games were unaffected, being played across the conservatory, covered garden table, and summer house. As the day progressed, we were treated to a positively sunny afternoon.
The early morning chess produced some upsets (congratulations Nick!), but after the full five rounds, the field was spread more or less as expected.
The winner, once again, was Paul Cooksey on 5/5, though not without a closely fought battle with Ewan Wilson, a strong Reading player and friend of Harriet’s parents. This puts Paul’s name on the trophy for a second consecutive year.
Runner-up was Colin on 4/5, with Harvey not far behind on 3.5.
Lunch was something different – a barbecue of Berkshire beef burgers, sausages, and skewers, with all the usual burger bun fillings, excellently cooked by Harriet’s father acting as grill-meister. For dessert, homemade cakes were provided by Harriet’s grandmother (and for the most part eaten by Ashton). Special mention also goes to Harriet’s mother, who organized the kitchen and made lunch run so smoothly.
After the friendly rivalry of chess came the serious rivalry of water volleyball in the swimming pool, with Dave Herring cajoling his team to mixed success. After which, Harriet demonstrated true home advantage by taking on a team of three single-handedly – and winning comfortably. All in all, a classic and memorable Khyber Cup. Many thanks to Harriet and her parents for being such excellent hosts.
Berkshire and Border League Web Sites are no longer accessible
As many of you will have noticed, the LMS (League Management System) web sites for the Berkshire Chess League and the Surrey Border Chess League are no longer available.
These have served us well for over 20(!) years but changes to their underlying software mean that they are no longer viable.
As a result, both leagues have been relocated to the ECF’s LMS, which provides similar functionality. Here you can find dates of future fixtures, match results, league tables and so on, as you used to be able to on the old sites.
The Surrey Border League cam be accessed here: https://lms.englishchess.org.uk/lms/organisation/1281
and the Berkshire League here: https://lms.englishchess.org.uk/lms/organisation/1261
For example, to see future fixtures and match cards for one of the organisations, click on one of the competitions (say “Division 2” for the Surrey Border League) and they will appear, along with a number of other options (eg “League Table”) above the list of fixtures. Play around and you will get the idea.
At the time of this post, team captains cannot update match results directly. Instead please send them to the respective League Controllers who will put them on the system.
The Useful Links page has shortcuts to the Border and Berkshire leagues and tables on the ECF LMS.
Crowthorne wins their Group in the Online 4NCL!
Congratulations to our Online 4NCL Team, who have won their group in the 11th season of the event (click the table below for a larger image):
We were in Division 3 of 5, which was split into two all play all groups. We won our group which earned us promotion to Division 2 next season. We then went into the semi finals to determine the 1st 4 places and lost this match. We ended up 3rd in our Division.
Our history in the 4 NCL Online tournaments since they started during Covid is:
Season 1 Didn’t enter this
Season 2 In division 5 of 6
Season 3 In division 4 of 7
Season 4 In division 3 of 5
Season 5 In division 2 of 5
Season 6 Didn’t enter this
Season 7 Didn’t enter this
Season 8 In division 5 of 5
Season 9 In division 5 of 5
Season 10 In division 4 of 5
Season 11 In division 3 of 5
So if we enter a team in Season 12 (tbc but likely to start in September), we’ll be back in division 2, as we were in season 5.
Congratulations and thanks are also due to George for running the team, and for providing the above report.
Moving to Whitecairn in Wellington College
Starting from April 23 2025, Crowthorne Chess Club has a new location within Wellington College.
Extensive works in the vicinity of the Shooting Hut mean that it is no longer available for use, and we are grateful to Wellington College for making Whitecairn available to us.
Full details on how to get there, and a map, are available in the About Us page. Whitecairn is an easier venue to get to than the Hut, but parking is rather limited there. Therefore, please use the Sports Club Car Park (as we did for the Monro Pavilion), details for this are also in the About Us page.
Delancey UK Chess Challenge at Crowthorne Chess Club – Completed!
Well done to all the juniors who competed in the Delancey UK Chess Challenge tournament. The tournament has been run over the last few weeks, with the final round taking place last Wednesday (2nd April). Many thanks to John Upham for organising and running the tournament.
The tournament was won by Vickie, who scored an impressive 7 wins out of 7. Henry was in clear second place. The final results are available here: Chess-results.com – Crowthorne Junior UKCC Qualifier
Congrats Vickie!
Delancey UK Chess Challenge
The next and final round of the Delancey UK Chess Challenge will take place next Wednesday (2nd April) at Wellington College. This is a junior rapidplay tournament, with opportunities to progress to the next stages of the UK Chess Challenge. All games are rated.
So far the tournament has brought six rounds of well-fought chess, all played in a good sporting sprit. The progress of the tournament can be seen here: Chess-Results Server – Crowthorne Junior UKCC Qualifier
Junior 4NCL Online Season 11 summary
Once again George Green captained Crowthorne Chess Club’s team in the Junior Online 4NCL, for the recently completed 11th Season. He has sent us this summary:
We played our final match of the season yesterday evening and won it 8-0 !!
We finished 7th in Division 3 (last season we were 6th), with 5 wins, 0 draws, 2 losses).
Table: 4nclresults.co.uk/2024-25/media/kids/11th/prog-div3.html
Thanks go to David’s Dad for captaining the team for the sixth match while I was away on my hols.
I expect there to be a season 12 starting in September, but that has not yet been confirmed.
In Season 11, I had a team of seven, plus one reserve only to play if absolutely necessary. My team selection process was to share the games around as evenly as possible, rather than to always pick the strongest team. This worked well, with three players being “rested” on two occasions each, and four “resting” on one occasion each.
Well done to everyone who played in it, and to George for organising it!
Delancey UK Chess Challenge tournament
We are kicking-off the Delancey UK Chess Challenge tournament this coming Wednesday (12th March) to run for the next four weeks.There will be seven rounds of ECF rated rapidplay with a 10’ + 5” time control.
Entry is FREE. There will be amazing prizes galore! Please let John Upham know if your child will be taking part by email or WhatsApp.
Details of the tournament, and all results when it is in progress can be found here: https://chess-results.com/tnr1079502.aspx?lan=1