Horsham Chess Club

We started with an away match against the one Sussex Uni team and were wondering which of their previous two teams' worth of members would turn up. It was a mixed bag as it turned out. On board 1, Julie scored a fantastic draw against a player graded 70 points higher than her. Meanwhile, the next three of our team regulars all managed to shed material unnecessarily and lose against slightly weaker opposition. Our new member, Guy Turvey, played a solid game to achieve a deserved victory on board 5, giving the final result some respectability for our team (1.5 - 3.5).

On Friday the juniors played their first match of the season, and despite a brave showing the strength in depth of Crowborough shone through...

In its first 'external' match of the season, away against Worthing 2, Horsham 2 was modestly outgraded on all boards (average 15 points) and went down quite heavily 1.5-3.5.

First to finish after just 5 minutes and 5 moves (!) was Phil on board 1. His opponent was feeling particularly under the weather and in gentlemanly fashion, Phil agreed a 'grandmaster' draw.

Next up was Ian who, in a sharp position arising from his normal English, played his intended sequence of moves in the wrong order and as such finished the game in second place.

When a club has more than one team in a division in the Mid-Sussex League, it is normal for all the club's team to play each other, before playing the other teams. With Horsham 1 and 2 both in Division One, this meant that Horsham 1 vs Horsham 2 was the first match of the season.

Because of three first team players being unavailable, boards 3 to 5 of Horsham 1 were occupied by players one might normally expect to play for Horsham 2; admittedly two of them had played many games for the first team in previous seasons.

While Horsham 1 v Horsham 2 was taking place on the green felt there were plenty of other games going on. I was playing a particularly dynamic game so the details are a little sketchy this week!

The final first round of the Knockout was played between Andrew Burling and Richard Barrowclough. It seemed fairly level with a fairly stable position but Richard managed to work some magic to make it through to the second round.

A pretty busy turn out again last Tuesday with a number of games across several competitions all under way. Paul Richardson and Ian Comley had a return match in the knockout which resulted in typically sharp play with Ian finding a way to trap Paul's Queen. Meanwhile Julie Denning was victorious over David Gray.

Some good chess played last night as the all-play-all competitions started. Phil is the early leader in the Rook with victory over Chris, whilst Alex and I drew, as did James and John M. The Bishop was more bloodthirsty, with Guy fighting back after a tricky start to beat Peter H, Mick overcoming some stout resistance from Andrew, and Julie beating Harry.

Great to see the competitions underway once again.

Next week is a good week to begin the all play all competition - Rook or Bishop as appropriate. The full table is available on the right hand side of this website under club competitions (make sure you are signed in, if you need a password just click on new password). The table shows the colour of the player on the left column.

It is probably best to try and arrange games by email before Tuesday but as we agreed at the AGM if we all turn up then there should be opportunities for games.

See you Tuesday.

Sussex Chess news is an excellent publication brought together by the hard work of Mick Plumb . It brings together all the activities of chess in the county and includes this year club reports, county worries and Junior successes.

In amongst this I noticed a picture of Mike Forster shaking hands with quite a handy player named Gary Kasparov and thought you might be pleased to see it if you have missed it.

There is also coverage of the excellent game between John Marshall and Alex Taylor. Phil Stimpson' victory over myself is also there - feel free to enjoy!

The Knockout draw has been published on the website for a little while. I have copied it below for convenience.

Remember to sign into the website to get the full functions in the menu bar on the right. If you are new and need to get a sign in you can do so directly through the website. If you have any problems have a chat with James Mansson at the club.