Tuesday 30th December was supposed to be our final club night of 2025 but the dreaded lurgy struck with several key members feeling unwell and so Chairman Price jumped onto whatsapp to let everyone know we had to cancel at short notice. This may sound like a trivial matter, but when you have 80-odd members and not all being tech-savvy, plus a few more potential newbies, it becomes a major task to implement.
Part 1 of the news took a glance at the NSDCA league tables and this section concentrates on the Club Championship.
As regular readers will know the club continues to go (and grow) from strength to strength and this is highlighted by the Club’s internal tournaments. Up until Covid (March 2020) we had been running two divisions and as the membership increased on the resumption of OTB chess in late 2021 we extended to 3 divisions. In June 2023 we moved to our new modern home here at St Mary’s Caritas Centre and have benefitted from a surge in members. Having increased to four divisions for the 24/25 season we found it necessary to add a 5th division at the start of this season, and currently have 68 members taking part in battles for promotion and relegation.
Starting with division 5, this section is mainly for newcomers to competitive chess and includes 12 juniors amongst the 15 players. Of the 3 adults in this tourney Barrie Wood has been the standout performer racing into a big lead scoring 10/12 and only has two more games to play. There is a huge gap to 2nd place where juniors Noah Smith and Mayank Patil have 4 pts each having played half the number of games as the leader.
Division 4 (aimed at players rated 1000-1250) has 14 players, with 2 yet to start their campaigns. Two of our newer members are setting the pace here with Simon Humphries and Sam Ollier in the lead with 5 pts each from 7 and 6 games respectively. In 3rd place is Gerald Parton with 4.5/7. Sitting behind the leaders is 12 year old Jack Patullo who has dropped just one point from 4 games so far, and if he can win his games in hand would share the lead. With everyone still having at least 50% of their games to play it would be a fool who predicts the winner of this section (and who gains promotion to division 3.)
Division 3 (aimed at players rated 1250-1400) is another section brewing nicely with 1/3 of the games already played, but only has 12 players due to the withdrawal of two members unable to commit to the full schedule. Good friends Phil Grocott (5.5/6) and Steve Ballantyne (4/6) lead the field at the moment with Phil’s current performance rating 1685 some 350 pts above his ECF rating. Mal Green is likewise performing massively above his current ECF rating of 1198 by nearly 400 pts to sit in 3rd place with 3.5/4. It should be noted that Phil won division 3 back in 22/23, so is looking to boomerang back to division 2.
Division 2 has been the least active of the internal tournaments so far with just 17 games played. To be fair most of these players have had a heavy schedule of league fixtures. Despite all this senior member Neville Layhe shows great commitment by having already played 50% of the possible 12 games and leads the way with 3 pts. This division has been strengthened massively as four players were relegated from division 1 last term (three of them voluntarily). Julian Bulbeck has also managed to play 6 of his games, meaning Nev and Julian have played 11 of the 17 games to date ! Favourites to achieve promotion will be the highest rated players – Martin Frisher and Lukasz Michalek if they can get their games completed. Junior Tommy Cooke is improving rapidly and with 2.5/3 is likely to feature in the promotion race.
Finally, turning to division 1 – the winner of which is titled “Club Champion”. The defending champion Harry Gardiner has won the title 3 times in the last 4 years and appears to be as dominant as Man City have been with the Premier League over the last decade. Martin Burns has waxed lyrical previously about Harry’s staggering record and amazing performance ratings over the last two unbeaten seasons (scoring 21/23 !!) and it seems he is on course again already having built up a massive lead with 6.5/7 leaving the field in his wake. Can anyone stop Harry’s domination of the Club Championship ? Maybe Carmel Barwick could provide the challenge as the only other winner of the Club championship since Covid, but this seems unlikely as Carmel has only played one game so far due to league chess and work commitments, or maybe Kamil Zak (seeded 4th at the outset) could be the one to end Harry’s formidable unbeaten run – now extended to 32 games since losing to Julian Hawthorne in March 2023.
Good luck to everyone in the New Year