Khyber Cup – in Real Life
The infamous Crowthorne Chess Club summer mini-tournament, the KHYBER CUP, will be next Sunday, the 29th August. This will be at the Bar & Café in the Pinewood Centre off New Wokingham Road/Peacock Lane in Crowthorne. Doors open at 10am and play will start not long after that, once we’ve set everything up. We aim to finish approaching 4pm, with a break for lunch.
For those not in the know: the Khyber Cup is a friendly rapid play chess event held since time immemorial (1984) with prizes (don’t get excited by this). Usually we meet in a member’s house or garden with lunch in a nearby pub, but this time, since we’re in the Pinewood Centre bar, we don’t need to move location for lunch. They do food there, burgers, scampi, that sort of thing. I’m sure it will be fine to bring sandwiches if you prefer. Tea and coffee (and beer and other drinks) are also available at the usual café rate.
We advise attendees to be mindful about covid; having a mask to hand would be a good idea. The weather forecast is looking favourable, and we should be able to play outside, plus the function room we’ve reserved has sufficient space that if we do play indoors the tables can be well separated.
To make the organisation slightly less chaotic than it would otherwise be, could you let Jonathan know whether you plan to attend or not. Some of you already have, so thanks for that.
Finally, playing in the Khyber Cup is not restricted to club members. It is also open to family and friends, as well as friends from other chess clubs, so please bring them along. Again, it would be useful for me to know approximate numbers and names in advance.
If you have any questions, just ask.
For more details about the venue, please see the Club Calendar entry for this event.
No Zoom call this Wednesday (7th July)
In view of a conflict with another sporting event, we will not be having our weekly Zoom call on Wednesday. We will be meeting on Thursday in our now regular meet up at the Pinewood Cafe.
A real meet up!
In addition to our regular Wednesday evening meeting on Zoom, we will meet in the real world on Thursday this week (June 10th). We will meet at the Pinewood Cafe and Bar at the Pinewood Centre in Crowthorne from 8pm. See the map below, and Jonathan’s email for more detailed directions.
Online 4NCL Season 3 Roundup
Our Online 4NCL Team Captain George Green has provided the following summary of Crowthorne’s season.
The 4NCL season 3 has now finished for Crowthorne.Â
Our 1st team didn’t gain automatic qualification to Division3, finishing 3rd in their group. Out 2nd team finished 59th out of 72 teams in Division 5.
We had a squad of 13 players, which comfortably supported 2 teams, with an average availability of 10.5 people for 8 boards. This meant that I had to “rest” one or more players each time, but I shared this around as fairly as I could.
It was good to see one or two of our junior members winning games against higher rated opponents. In fact Dylan won 3 such games with his entertaining play!!
The 45+15 time control is a bit quick for some our older, slower thinking players (me), but offers the juniors a chance to spend more time on their moves, which they’ll need to do as they improve. I’m not sure that they all made the most of this opportunity!
4NCL season 3 starts on August 24th. It is too early to say what the club’s position will be on OTB vs. Online chess, until we see how Covid goes.
Online 4NCL Round 7
Crowthorne’s last matches in Season 3 of the Online 4NCL took place yesterday, with the following results:
Other results in the round meant that if Crowthorne 1 had won their match, they would have achieved automatic promotion, but unfortunately we finished just short of this goal.
Online 4NCL Round 6
Crowthorne played in Round 6 on Tuesday 6h April (with apologies for the belated update). Despite substantially outgrading their opponents Crowthorne 1 drew their match against Rugeley Rangers. This is a bit of a slip (in more than one sense of the word as a mouse-slip played a crucial part in one of the games!) which means that our promotion prospects depend on results in the final round.
Crowthorne 2 lost 3-1 against their higher rated opponents, congratulations to Aarav for winning.
Online 4NCL Round 5
Crowthorne Chess Club had another good round in the online 4NCL yesterday, with the first team just winning their match against St Albans 2, and the second team drawing against RCSI Team 2:
(Derek’s opponent was actually C. Pines due to a late change)
This leaves the first team in second place (1st equal on match points, 2nd on game points) in their group in Division 4, and the second team mid-table in Division 7.
Full results and tables for all rounds are available on the 4NCL web site
Correction: As there was, unfortunately, a default by Crowthorne 2’s opponents, the match is scored 2-1.5 in Crowthorne’s favour, and counts as a win.
Online 4NCL Round 4
Good results for both Crowthorne teams yesterday (9th March), both winning 4-0. Well done everybody!
As can be seen Crowthorne 1 substantially out-rated their opponents. It’s obviously still a good result, which puts us equal first in our group in division 4.
Crowthorne 2’s match was much closer on rating, and the result was the first win of the season.
Full results and tables etc can be found on the 4NCL website (see divisions 4 and 7 for the Crowthorne teams).
Online 4NCL Round 3
A good result for our 1st team. Unfortunately Derek’s opponent didn’t turn up, so the match is actually scored -0.5 – 4.0 in Crowthorne’s favour.
After three rounds, this leaves Crowthorne 1 on 4 match points out of a possible 6 in their eight-team group in Division 4. This puts us in equal second but with four rounds to go it is obviously early days yet.
Our 2nd team lost, but Dylan won and Teah managed an amazing stalemate!!
Final position of J Leake – Teah de Silva. Black to move!
Full results and tables can be found on the 4NCL web site.
Online 4NCL Round 2
On Tuesday Crowthorne 1 won their 4NCL match against Harrow 3:
This leaves them in fifth place, out of eight, in their pool in division 4.
In Division 7, Crowthorne 2 narrowly lost their match against KJCS 2:
Full match results and tables can be found on the 4NCL web site.