2023-24 Season

Last Tuesday (16th July) the club held a double round robin exchange tournament. Exchange chess is played in pairs and when your partner takes a piece you can put it on as a move. Needless to say matches get quite wild with many tactical thunderbolts and tense teamwork.
Team No, James McGrath and Nick Warren, stormed to victory with 11/12. Neither had played the variant before and lost the first game as they got used to it. After that there was no looking back with 11 games in a row to take the tournament with ease.

This Tuesday we had a 10 game Blitz tournament at the club.
There were 5 double rounds across the night with a guillotine time of 5 minutes and no increment with plenty of moments of chaos along the way.
After being held to 1/2 in the first round Anthony Higgs went on to claim the tournament with a brilliant 8.5/10 overall.
In joint second place James Ratcliffe was the only player to win a game against Anthony and scored an impressive 7/10.

Horsham Chess Club is staying open until the 23rd July and we are going to be running more summer competitions this year. If you wish to take part in one of these competitions you just need to turn up on the night. Please arrive at 7:30pm for registration and the competitions will start at 7:45pm. There will also be space for those finishing Knock-Out matches or wanting to play casual chess instead. These events are:

Alex, Julie and Anthony represented Horsham at the Sussex League AGM last night and received the Mowatt Cup for league Division 1 winners Horsham 1. Team captain James is pictured with the cup after it was delivered to him in the pub the same evening!

Horsham's annual 10-second per move buzzer chess competition took place last night, with the usual frenetic chaos and the occasional good move thrown in...

Last Tuesday, Horsham 1 scored a memorable victory in an exciting match against a strong Brighton 1 team.

Since my last report, on the excellent away win against Worthing 1, Horsham 1 had accumulated enough points, given the results in other matches, that they needed a win by any margin to definitely take the league title.

Horsham 2 had another successful evening on Friday with a good draw against Bexhill maintaining our 4th position in Division 1.

I have been very lax in not posting on the progress of the 4th team as the season progresses. Our 4 - 0 thrashing of our luckless Eastbourne opponents last night has spurred me into action.
The season opener intra-club match had Roger's 5th team hold us to a draw. We then had a long break till past mid-November when we hosted East Grinstead Bookshop 2 (but following problems fielding teams, now their only team in the League) and we notched up our first win, by the margin of 3 - 1.

Horsham 1 scored a fine away win over Worthing 1 last night.

First to finish was Mark Broom, who was up against Russell Granat with Black on board two. His position look passive to start with, but he managed to launch a counter-attack to exploit his opponent's over-extension, winning material and forcing resignation.

The score was now 1-0 in Horsham 1's favour.

Horsham 1's progress in Sussex League Division 1 was halted by Eastbourne 1, as they crashed to a narrow away defeat.

The match looked to be going well for Horsham 1 as Gavin Lock secured a good win against the dangerous Maks Rozman on top board. However, progress was not so serene on the other boards.

Anthony Higgs ran into difficulties against Laurence Butt on board 4. He came under pressure from his opponent's Stonewall Attack and blundered, resulting in a loss.