Horsham Chess Club

Discussions are ongoing to see if the junior club can return in some form in October. I will email parents when more detail is known.

You will all have seen Anthony's email about the AGM on Tuesday 7 September, back in our normal hall at the church hall.

It will be good to be back properly - see you there...

Its official - we are returning to club chess on Mondays for August. So we will be meeting Monday 2, 9, 16 and 23... no chess on the Bank Holiday on the 30th.

Really looking forward to meeting up again in the club ... but remember that the car park behind the club is not available due to the temporary Covid test centre :)

Sadly the PM announcement tonight means that the club cant return just yet. We will keep our fingers crossed and see when we can get back to the club.

There remains lots of online chess - enjoy that for now :)

On 5th May the Mid-Sussex online league was decided with Horsham teams vying for the top spot in both divisions...

Great news that we are returning to chess club on Monday June 21 at 7.30pm at London Road Methodist Church Hall - and we welcome new members so just come along and join in!

We have all very much enjoyed the online chess we have been playing for the last year but we can finally return to over the board chess.

Even more importantly it will be great to see all our friends again after so long. It will be an exciting moment.

Of course this will all be linked to the scheduled national changes on June 21 - fingers crossed!

As referenced in my most recent posting, the final week of 4NCL season 3 saw Horsham 2 facing their closest rivals for the remaining promotion slot from their section of division 6. The opponents in this final round had substantially outperformed their ratings to get so close but the grading differences made for a largely comfortable evening for Horsham, running out winners by 3.5-0.5 and thereby securing promotion to division 5.

There were mixed fortunes for the 3 Horsham teams in the latest round of the 4NCL season.

Horsham 1 tied 2-2 although until very late on it could have gone either way. Mark’s Reti on board 1 always seemed under pressure but he found the correct defence and a truce was called with opposite-coloured bishops. In glancing at Dix’s Sicilian from time to time my superficial assessment was pessimistic but subsequent analysis suggested there was never much in it until he smoothly converted his advanced queenside pawns.

I played in the under 2000 section of this weekend's 4NCL congress. Whilst Stockfish was suitably scathing of my efforts in scoring 2.5 out of 5 and despite my general discomfort of playing 'on screen', the absence of normal pressure (no spectators, no grading impact and no team 'responsibility') added to my enjoyment and I may well try again at some future date.

On Tuesday 23rd February Horsham 1,2 and 3 played in 4NCL.