2019-20 Season

Back in April and shortly after lock down 14 members embarked on an online tournament on chess.com which completed yesterday with an inconclusive conclusion!

The format involved four blocks of three or four players playing a double round all play all with the winners going through to what was expected to be a final group with similar arrangement. Time control was 3 days per move (quasi correspondence chess) though in practice it rarely stretched that far and there were bursts of activity sometimes akin to live chess.

Congratulations to Horsham 1 who have won the Mid Sussex League . The MSL was suspended with a couple of games outstanding and Horsham 1 have won this competition for the first time since 2010.

The other results are also included in the picture - well played to all who represented the club last season.

Over the past weekend Horsham took part in the National Club Championships. The Championships was split into a Major, Intermediate, and Minor with Horsham being placed in the Intermediate with 11 other teams.

I happened to see "How to Win at Chess" on BBC 2 and I see it is available on iplayer.

It is definitely an interesting watch including a younger Danny King defeating Raymond Keene and even a very young David Howell wearing a Junior Sussex Chess sweatshirt! It is very much aimed at the outsider so I dont think it will revolutionise your play. At one point Ray Keene offered the unconventional advice to offer check whenever you can - "as it might be checkmate, you never know!"

On Tuesday evenings Horsham is playing classical games of 45minutes + 15seconds increment on chess.com starting at 7:30pm.
This week we had 4 games going with upsets and tactical shots galore.
First to finish was Alexander's game against Guy. Guy clearly knows the maxim "pin to win" as he used this to great effect to seize a piece and when Alexander created complication Guy kept his cool to make it two pieces forcing a resignation.

In the penultimate round Horsham were up against the Four Horseman, fortunately they were not bringing the apocalypse too.

The online 4NCL is a series of matches on Tuesday evenings between teams across the country. Its one of the biggest chess competitions ever.

Every Thursday evening Horsham has been meeting for some online blitz chess. For two weeks out of three we meet on chess.com at 8:10pm to play 5|5 in a frantic arena style. This includes this week, I look forward to the hectic pace and seeing lots of people there.

Last Thursday Horsham players took part in another MSL Team Battle with Brighton, Eastbourne, Bognor and Crowborough members.

Brighton came out top with 59 points, thanks to a top performance by Luke Rutherford conceding only one draw. His last game was a hard-fought victory over Horsham's Gavin Lock who produced the next best performance out of all the players and led us to 2nd place overall with 46 points.

This week we are back on chess.com for our Thursday Horsham Blitz, see you there!

A couple of weeks ago Horsham were pitted against MK Phoenix 2 in the Online 4NCL. MK Phoenix 2 were a team we aimed to beat with our team being noticeably higher graded and a win would put us comfortably into mid-table. The bottom two teams in each group get demoted so we are aiming to stay well above that.
Disaster struck straight away as one team member forgot about the game and defaulted their board. This meant that we not only lost the game but got a 1-point penalty on top for the default. This meant we were effectively 2-0 down with 3 games going.