Horsham Chess Club

Horsham Chess Club has an unofficial venue for post match analysis ... The Malt Shovel pub just across the road.

We were therefore heartened to see the well deserved award which was won recently. Congratulations to them , it certainly makes our chess year more fun!

Horsham 1 made a masterful second in the MSL Division 1 with Horsham 2 achieving a very creditable sixth position, ahead of Crowbough 1 and Haywards Heath 1.

In the second division Horsham 3 just missed out on promotion, coming third. Horsham 4 had a tough season and will be relegated for next season.

The third division saw Horsham 5 come fourth and Horsham 6 ended bottom of the league this season.

The club played a total of 253 games in the MSL scoring 130 points. Well done to all those involved,

A fine letter was spotted in this month's Chess magazine, online version at www.chess.co.uk , the most popular and authoritative Chess magazine in the UK ...

Congratulations to Woodpushers for beating Horsham resoundingly.

1. Ian Comley 169 lost to Roger Hutchings 164
2. Paul Richardson 148 drew with Andy Briggs 150
3. Nick Warren lost to Julian Clark 148
4. Mick Harris drew with Juju Samworth-Calvier 129

Woodpushers had white on odd boards having won the toss. Horsham had to substitute the intended John Marshall after being 45 minutes delayed due to train strikes...although he then arrived within a couple of minutes of the substitution.

A very strong turnout of 28 Horsham players contested the annual Lightning tournament last week, following the junior club's own Lightning earlier in the evening...

The McArthur Cup is on paper the strongest team competition in Sussex. After some reverses at Brighton's hands in the league this season, Horsham won the semi-final cleanly over five boards even without the default on board 6...

The first team travelled down to Crowborough for the last match of the Mid-Sussex League season, and came away 3-2 victors making us runners-up in the league overall...

This was a home match played with a full strength team against an under-strength Lewes side, who made a good fight of it but lost out in some highly tactical games...

Just catching up with some match scores, I didn't play in this one so no report but here are the board results for the record...

Thanks to so many people for confirming your attendance on Tuesday - this means we can minimise the admin and get straight on with the chess!

Please see the table which shows the three groups this year - A,B,C. The groups were seeded on grading and it is worth me mentioning how I arrived at your grading. I arrived at a player's grading by firstly looking for the rapid play grading from January, failing that the previous rapid play grading, failing that their current standard grading.

If you can get arrive near to 7.30pm then we can have a prompt start.