Author: David Hulme

Last night saw our B team go to Cheddleton to take on the only 100% team in the NSDCA, without our top player. The Bees were huge underdogs with a team rating over 600 pts lower than Cheddleton A, and the top two boards making up 500 pts of the deficit. Early skirmishes showed Chedd had advantages on boards 1,2 and 4, with parity on 3. The players showed the value of staying in the games as firstly David Lambton steadily got a foothold on board 2, against Chedd’s captain and highest rated player, who was on amazing run of 17 wins and 2 draws in 20 games this year. David is developing a habit of killing 100% league records and for the second week in a row demolished one, taking his own tally to 5.5pts from 6 games for the Bees in the process, with a superb counter-attack after appearing to be on the ropes.

On board 4, recent re-recruit Carmel Barwick was playing as a last minute reserve and was slowly activating her minor pieces for a King side attack. When the oportunity arose she sliced open the defences in front of the opposing King, with a co-ordinated rook, bishop and queen attack to put the underdogs 2-0 in the lead.

On board 1, David Hulme had generated some King side attack with advanced pawns despite being outplayed early on. For the second week running he got lucky, as his opponent blundered in time pressure leaving a rook open to a queen check fork and allowing David to make it an unbelievable 3-0 to the underdogs. Shortly afterwards we suffered a loss on time in the remaining game. This result means the B team have overtaken our “A” team to top the league table, with 8 pts from 6 matches, while all teams have games in hand in a wide open title race.

Internal Swiss Rapidplay underway.

On Wednesday, we started our 8 round Swiss Rapidplay event. With 41 members entering the competition the Events Officer was hoping for a new club record attendance. However there were a number of late requests for byes leaving just 25 players at the start. As is often the case, a new face appeared and was quickly integrated into club competition. Our new arrival, Richard Fish was paired with the Events officer – David Hulme – and proceeded to destroy him in a few minutes to claim the first win of the night. The 1st round results mainly went as expected, although there were a couple of repairings due to absences.

At the end of Round 2, we have only five players on 2pts all of whom are from the top seeds. These are Bart Fajfer, Martin Burns, defending champion Jarek Czyz, Rick Renegade and newcomer Richard Fish. With 3 players on 1.5 pts just behind the leaders, we then have 26 on one point mainly through the byes awarded. Full results can be seen from our “Internal Comps” tab on the home page of our website.

The next Rounds of the Rapidplay are due to be held on 14th December, but will be postponed if England are still involved in the World Cup on that night.

Before the Rapidplay Event commenced, Nigel Gardner made the presentation of trophies to the highest placed club members from our recent Congress held at The Mornflake Stadium, and announced the dates of our next congresses as 30th June to 2nd July for the longplay and September 17th for the Rapidplay.

Below are pictures of the presentations to Jarek Czyz and Karl Lockett, while Julian Hawthorne was absent. (to be added)

Wednesday was another full house, as the chess games generated plenty of heat to take the chill out of the playing room. With four teams in action, there was the usual additional contingent of Club Championship games taking place alongside the two matches.

The NSDCA division 1, saw its first ever “Crewe derby” as we have grown so much that we can now field two teams in the top tier of our league. With the “A” team at full strength, they were overwhelming favourites to beat the B team, outrating them by approx. 500 points over the four boards. Early indications showed the A’s in the ascendancy on the top 3 boards, while board 4 looked double-edged. First blow came from the underdogs, as Dave Lambton on board 3 took advantage of an uncastled King to win a piece in the centre of the board after a pin and doubled rooks attacked a lonely bishop, having been completely outplayed in the opening. In the process he broke the 100% league record of his opponent. But it wasn’t long before the A’s levelled the score as Harry Gardiner conjured up a win from the complicated board 4 game. The top two boards seemed to be gaining traction for the A’s, as Bart Fajfer (on board 1) was a piece up for 2 or 3 pawns that could not get moving. A mistaken capture of another pawn led to a knight forking Queen and Rook, where there would be no exchange, causing immediate resignation to put the A’s 2-1 up, and leaving the two captains in play on the remaining board. Martin Burns was holding all the aces with active minor pieces dominating the board, while the Bees captain (David Hulme) was coming under more and more time pressure trying to hold the ship afloat. David found some excellent counter play to push Martin into time trouble (to a lesser extent), but Martin found a way to get to the end game with a Rook and 3 f-pawns against just a Rook. After a time scramble with a lot of poor play a blunder allowed David to pick up the Rook for free and escape to victory, and thereby save the match to finish 2-2 and put a dent in the A team’s title hopes.

The league table shows Crewe A on top with 7 pts from 5 games, and the B team just behind on 6ps, but Cheddleton A now have the advantage with 6 pts from just 3 matches. With Crewe B travelling to Cheddleton A next week, the A’s will be hoping the Bees can keep flying.

The division 2 league derby saw Crewe C take on the D team, and were hot favourites with a rating advantage of over 600 pts. However the D team just love the title of underdogs and took the challenge to the C team, with captain Nigel Gardner mixing up the playing order despite the last minute withdrawal of a key player due to illness. The C team was playing without captain Dave Lambton (on duty for the Bees) and another last minute absentee due to illness. This created an opportunity for Carmel Barwick to return to the club after a period of approx 6 years making her debut for the joint top of the table C team. She smoothly racked up the first point on board 4 before Dave Price made it 2-0 on board 3. On board 1 the D team’s dogged fighter – captain Nigel – was punching above his weight to hold a draw. On balance the C team were happy to secure the match, which proved to be a good decision as Lukasz Michalek completed a fine win on board 2 for the Ds. The final result of 2.5-1.5 for the C team takes them to 5 pts from 3 matches in a division where all teams have dropped points after just two matches, indicating it will be a cut and thrust title chase for all teams.

The Club Championship saw 3 more games played in division 2. There was a good win for George Jelliss, while points were shared between Steve Ballantyne and Jakub Grabowski, as well as Doug Barnett and James Marshall.

Unfortunately a division 3 game was abandoned when the Events officer discovered the game was not being recorded in accordance with FIDE rules.

A further rated rapidplay game saw Andrew Crosby yield a full point, where members need to leave the club by 9pm, so do not have time to play a full game.

Next week sees Rounds 1 and 2 of the Swiss Rapidplay Competition, played over 8 rounds in total. Rounds 3 and 4 are scheduled for 14th December, with later rounds to be played after 1st February on dates to be announced.

After the B team went top of the table on Monday, it was the As who overtook them on Tuesday ! An away match at Alsager would see the “A” team as expected favourites but a recipe for failure would be close at hand. The comments from captain Martin Burns explained Harry maintained his 100% record, while Bart had gained a pawn against the NSDCAs highest rated player Jonathan Blackburn on board 1. Martin assessed it was no trouble, but was proved wrong as the huge difference in rating was underlined. Karl maintained another 100% record grinding out a win on board 4 from what appeared to be a drawish position. Finally captain Mart brought home the bacon, although in his own words he was very lucky to win, after his opponent turned down the offer of a draw knowing he would need to win to give Alsager a chance to draw the match. The Division 1 table has an early season glow to it, with As on 6pts and Bs on 5 pts after 3 matches, with 3rd place Cheddleton having a game in hand on 4pts – with the next round of matches including Crewe A vs Cheddleton A.

On Wednesday it was Cheddleton’s B team who travelled to face our D team. Captain Nigel rang the changes with board order, as all four squad players are closely rated. This allowed Nigel to play on board 4, and chalk up the first win. Lukasz Michalek moved to the top of the batting order and earned a full point before we lost on board 2. This left George Bulbeck battling against the clock as usual, against the Chedd captain on board 3. Ultimately he held out for a hard fought draw to see the team narrowly over the winning line by 2.5-1.5. Captain Nigel reported on the scorecard ” Well that was a close one !!!!!!!! Each game could have gone either way and was tense right down to the death. Thanks to all for a good evenings chess. “

As usual club night saw a pack of club championship games. In division 1, defending champion Harry Gardiner added a win to his tally as did David Hulme. In division 2 there were wins for Andrew Crosby, Kobus Nienaber and Doug Barnett. Kobus has moved into the lead with 2.5/3. In div 3, Phil Grocott went to the head of the section with a win to take him also to 2.5/3, and Vicky Kelsall moved into 2nd place (2/4) after a draw with Peter Kanalos.

Our two leading juniors had a 30 minute Rapidplay rated game, that was played at 100 miles an hour, with Joe Hignett emerging successfully.

Simon Layhe secured a share of first prize at last weekend’s Scarborough Congress playing in the Intermediate (U1850) section. After a 5 hour trek to the coast on Friday Simon started with a win on Friday night (as did Dave Price). Saturday morning saw a repeat for both, and then in Round 3 Simon was held to a draw by the No.7 seed, with Simon seeded 9th out of 83 entries, as 14 players all shared the lead with 2.5pts. Round 4 saw 6 of these players winning, to all move on to 3.5pts, with Simon among these. Playing board 3 in the final round, Simon’s high seeding gave him the advantage of white pieces and he duly came out on top to guarantee 1st place. With the other top two boards also having positive results he ended in a 3-way tie for 1st place – congratulations to Si !!

Dave P ended with 3 pts to finish in joint 17th out of 74 in the Minor (U1700).

Today has seen the publication of November ratings, and thanks to Karl Lockett’s research, the club has 3 of the top 100 improvers in the country since the October ratings. Unsurprisingly Simon is in this list, together with Karl and our ever improving 10 year-old star – Oskar Jarzynski.

Meanwhile last night the B team had an unexpected win away at Macclesfield. Simon again setting the benchmark with another win on top board against a player rated over 1950. David Hulme defended doggedly to get a draw on board 2, before Dave Lambtom played with aplomb to convert a tricky endgame into a win. Despite being the second lowest rated team in the 1st division, the Bees currently sit at the top of the league tree, albeit very temporary.

Tonight sees the “A” team in action at Alsager in the 1st division, and tomorrow the “D” team host Cheddleton B in division 2.

Wednesday night saw the F team host Meir in division 3 of the NSDCA. Thanks to the visitors we were able to increase the numbers involved from 4 to 5 boards.

Reinhard Haack agreed an early draw on board 4 to get us on the scorecard. Jakub Grabowski was promoted to board 1 and played a superb game to add a full point. Shortly afterwards 1o year-old Oskar completed a mature game on board 2, giving up a pawn to free up a position and duly chalk up another point. Not to be outdone Pawel Stanny ensured team victory with success on baord 3. This left board 5 remaining and the visitor’s Bob Perry squeezed out the solitary win for Meir, to conclude the match with a 3.5-1.5 win for Crewe F.

This takes the F team to joint top of the league table alongside our E team and the two Cheddleton teams (C&D) who all sit on 3pts from 2 matches.

The club championship saw one of our busiest ever nights, despite having one team in action, there were 18 players involved with 8 players in divs 1 and 2, and one more game in div 3.

In div 1, leader Martin Burns (3/5) was held to a draw by Jim Grange (1.5/2), while Karl Lockett (2/3), Harry Gardiner (1.5/2) and Julian Hawthorne (1/1) all won.

In div 2, we have a pile up at the top of the table with 5 players on 1.5pts although Steve Ballantyne has played 5 games already, and all the other leaders have only played two games – Mike Keenan, Kobus Nienaber, George Bulbeck and Oskar. George Jelliss notched up a draw with the other George to gain his first score in the comp.

In division 3, there was only one game played with many of the players involved in the F team match, which saw Pete Kanalos earn a draw against joint leader Phil Grocott. Phil joins Joe Hignett and Vicky Kelsall at the top of the table with 1.5 pts each.

The Events officer has fixed two dates for our 8-Round Swiss Rapidplay, with Rounds 1 and 2 to be played on 30th November, followed by Rounds 3 & 4 on 14th December. With matches every Wednesday during January and February, the remaining two nights will be fixed after that.

Last night saw our E team play away at Fenton, against their C team in division three. Despite a late cry-off due to illness, we were still able to take a team of six thanks to Andrew Crosby filling in and making his debut for the club in the North Staffs League. Unfortunately the team got off to a poor start and were trailing 2-0 early on, even though we had a healthy rating advantage. Things started to recover as James Marshall pulled one back on board 3 and Jarek Czyz levelled the score on board 2, making his first appearance of the season and taking our tally of members playing league chess this season up to 37 already !!

With scores level Matthew Dean kept his composure as his clock ticked down to just 12 seconds remaining, and worked out how to promote his pass pawn succesfully to put us in the lead. This left skipper Dave Price in play on board 1, and having been on the back foot early on, was allowed the freedom of the board to infiltrate a weakened castled King-side and take another full point to ensure a 4-2 victory for the E team. The win takes the Es joint top of division 3, with 3 pts from 2 games, to sit alongside both Cheddleton teams (C&D) on the same score. After just two rounds of matches this division looks wide open as every team has dropped at least one point already.

Tomorrow night the F team have the chance to join the party at the top of the table as they face Meir in another 6 board encounter, thanks to our visitors agreeing to field extra boards. It’s great to see league chess returning to something near normal again although the league only has 21 teams now, compared to 36 teams before the Covid pandemic.

This weekend (14-16 October) has seen our club make up 22 of the 116 contingent at our 5th weekend congress. The new venue at the Mornflake Stadium has proved to be a resounding success, in the words of FIDE Arbiter Peter Purland, one of the best venues he has come accross in a very extensive Arbiting career !

The outstanding performers from our club were Karl Lockett and Julian Hawthorne. Karl finshed joint first in the Major section scoring 4/5, sharing 1st place with another local player Andrew Raeburn. With Martin Burns finishing on 3.5pts he collects a share of 3rd place in a four way tie.

Julian scored an even more impressive 4.5 pts to earn another joint first position, this time in the Intermediate section. Also on the podium in this section was congress administrator Neville Layhe, finishing in 3rd place on his own with 4 pts.

Jarek Czyz had a superb tournament scoring 2.5 pts in the Open section to win the grading prize, when he would have been eligible to play in the Inter section. His opponents included Seeds No 2, 5 and 6.

In addition to Jarek in the open section, our other 3 players all performed well with Bart scoring 2.5pts, with Simon and Dave Lambton scoring 1.5 pts.

In the Minor section we had 9 players, with best scores coming from Andrew and Julian Bulbeck (3.5pts each), young Oskar 3pts, and Nigel 2.5 pts.

Last night saw the final of the 2022 Summer K.O between two of our leading players – Harry Gardiner and Simon Layhe. Both came into this final in rich veins of form with Harry having won his previous 11 games in a row, and Simon the mere 4 in a row. In fact Harry’s last defeat was back in March (strangely enough against Simon). Simon’s progress over the last 12 months has seen his rating jump from 1700 to 1809. This competition started on 15th June with 30 competitors and so this was their 5th game each. Harry had drawn black in each of the earlier rounds and was delighted to win the toss for choice of colour so he could have the white pieces. As anticipated this was a high quality encounter where Simon created the initiative in the middle game with a central pawn capture that deflected support after a minor piece exchange to give him the pawn advantage. From here Simon exploited any weakness in white’s position to build pressure and ultimately add another pawn to his advantage. Harry did his best to complicate the picture and prevent black’s progress but Simon’s active position proved too much in the end. Congratulations to Simon on winning our inaugural KO competition, and commiserations to Harry who collected 3 trophies at our recent AGM. It is pleasing to see two of our younger members rising up the chess ladder and leading our club so positively into the future !

It was great to see Newcastle play their first competitive match since March 2020 due to Covid and make the short trip to The Mals to play a pre-season friendly which has been an annual event since 2015. This was a five board match with teams equally rated overall at 8203 vs 8209, and before battle commenced it was announced that the match series was level at 2-2. Early skirmishes finished in the host’s favour as George Bulbeck won on board 4 and his dad Julian drew on 5. When Martin Burns won on top board it was expected Crewe would take a 3-2 lead in the match series, but this did not take into consideration Newcastle’s fighting spirit. Gradually the visitors gained the upper hands on both remaining boards as Alberto Gissi and Peter Hornsby won on boards 3 and 2 respectively to draw the match and keep the series in the balance. It is hoped Crewe can take a team to Newcastle later this season for the 6th challenge to allow some more competitive chess to supplement Newcastle’s limited league fixture list of just 10 matches.

A number of games were played in our newly started 2022/23 club championship, where we have 3 divisions of 11 players so far in all-play-all sections. Results can be seen from the following link

https://ecflms.org.uk/lms/league/club/3005/57941/org

What a terrific night we had at The Mals yesterday, as our favourite annual event took place to compete for the “Les Hall Memorial Trophy”.

To give some background, this is a unique handicap event where all club members are invited to play in a 5 round swiss style blitz competition with a twist of handicap thown in. Firstly players are given a fixed amount of time to complete each game ranging from 5 minutes for the highest rated with up to 15 minutes for the lowest rated. Then handicaps are given where higher rated play off scratch, with handicaps from half a point to a max of two and a half for the lowest rated. These handicaps are added to the players scores over 5 rounds. Then in another twist, all previous winners have one minute deducted from their time allowance and a half point clipped off their handicap if they have one. Accordingly our 2019 winner Bart Fajfer, was seeded No 1 for the event with only 4 minutes for each game.

We had another record attendance at the club with 33 members present, and 30 taking part in the competition, with David Hulme and Steve Cross acting as the control team. 1st round pairings had been produced on the eve of the competition but then chaos ensued with 3 withdrawals and a no-show. Just to test the controllers nerve just before the start, we had some surprise arrivals with Amy Lovatt making a welcome one-off return to the club, and a potential new member turning up out of the blue – who happened to be quite a strong player – Lee Farrington. On top of this we had another late entry from one of our juniors which gave us an odd number, so then we managed to bribe one of the juniors parents to play as well – thank you to Oskar’s dad – Marek, we were able to get everyone playing a little behind schedule.

Having got under way, all of the top 15 seeds won their first round games, as expected, with the exception of Lukasz Michalek who fell to 12 year old Joe Hignett, thanks to a little skulduggery and innocence on Joe’s part (mobile phone distraction !?). Round 2 saw a couple of shocks as two of the top four got beat, to effectively remove their chances of winning the comp, but we still had 8 of the top 11 seeds on 2/2, including our two late arrivals Amy and Lee.

Round 3 cut the leading pack in half as Bart Fajfer, Simon Layhe, Amy & Lee all emerged with 3/3, while Lukasz and Joe joined the leaders with the assistance of their handicaps.

In round 4, Bart clinched a win against Simon and Amy stopped Lee in his tracks for this pair to move on to 4/4. Meanwhile Lukasz was victorious against our 2018 champion Rick Renegade, and Joe scrambled another unexpected win on the clock, to leave four players in contention going into round 5. Of course if there were to be any draws on the top boards in Round 5, this would bring several more players into contention.

As Lukasz and Joe had played in round 1, we had to separate the two 100%- ers to play the handicappers thus Bart was paired with Lukasz for an all-Polish clash, while Joe and Amy battled on behalf of the Union Jacks. In the Polish clash Lukasz’s extra 5 minutes ( 9 vs 4) proved decisive, while Amy kept her cool to defeat the surprise perfomer of the night – young Joe.

And so we had a tie after the 5 rounds, with Amy scoring a perfect 5/5, while Lukasz’s 4/5 was supplemented by his 1 point handicap. Bare in mind this was Amy’s first time playing OTB since our last handicap in September 2021, this was a superb achievement to score 5/5 with only 6 minutes on the clock and no handicap ! And so, our time-honoured way of finding the outright winner was brought into play – our version of an “Armageddon play-off”, where white is given one extra minute and must win, otherwise black is declared the winner in the case of a draw. Amy called the toss of the coin unsuccessfully, meaning Lukasz would play white and now had 10 minutes on the clock against Amy’s 6 minutes.

Lukasz quickly gained the upper hand as he attacked Amy’s Sicilian with gusto. An unusual deployment of both white knights created holes in Amy’s queenside which was exploited with a manoeuvre to attack the Q on d8 with B on b6, supported by knights and then jumped to c7 with a fork to win a rook. Amy could play Qb7 to leave herself an exchange down but boldly went for a king-side attack playing Qf5, allowing Lukasz to retain a whole rook advantage. Lukasz seemed to be cruising to victory, but Amy unleashed a blistering double Bishop attack supported by the Q against a king-side castled position. As Lukasz centralised his piece majority, Amy had advanced her h pawn and when Lukasz decided to capture this pawn, this allowed a Rook to swing over to the king side open h-file. Lukasz defended against the bishops with some pawn blocks and eventually gave up his Queen for the rook and exchanged some minor pieces. Lukasz held his nerve and allowed Amy’s attack to fizzle out under time pressure to become the deserved winner.

Congratulations to Lukasz , who becomes the 8th different winner of this event and will collect the Les Hall Memorial Trophy at next year’s AGM. Commiserations to Amy who has fallen at the final hurdle (Armageddon-style) two years in succession, and we hope she will be back next year for another assault on our favourite competition.

Leading Scores after 5 rounds:

1st = 5pts – Amy Lovatt, Lukasz Michalek

3rd = 4.5 pts – James Grange, Jarek Czyz

5th = 4pts – Bart Fajfer, Simon Layhe, Doug Barnett, Jakub Grabowski, Joe Hignett.

Many thanks to all 30 of our players who made it such an enjoyable night; Steve Cross who did a vital job in writing out all the pairing cards, and our new club steward – Harry – who prepared the room before the players arrived and managed resetting clocks for every board in every round.

A final note for Lukasz to remind him that defending the trophy will be made much tougher as he will suffer the same fate as all previous winners – a reduction in time allowed and removal of half-a-point from any scheduled handicap !

More Photos on our Gallery page.

The club held its AGM on Wednesday 31st August.

1. Subscriptions held at £20 p.a for Adult Members and £10 for juniors (under 18 @ 1st September 2022)
2. Committee positions: a)Chair – Dave Price – continues. b) Treasurer – David Hulme appointed as Neville Layhe retires. c) Secretary – Karl Lockett newly appointed to be assisted by David Hulme. d) Events – David Hulme to continue assisted by Harry Gardiner. e) Club steward newly appointed – Harry Gardiner. f) Club Librarian newly appointed – Neville Layhe.
3. Club’s 8th Annual Time & Point Handicap to be held on Wednesday 14th September, commencing at 7.30pm prompt. Contact David Hulme for details and to register beforehand.
4. New NSDCA League season to commence 3rd October. with two teams in each of three divisions. Teams to comprise 4 boards. More boards may be agreed with opposition. No team grade limits, with players unable to play for any lower team if playing on board 1 or bd 2. Cup competitions to commence in new year.
5. Internal long-play events to start on Wednesday 7th September for all members interested – games to be graded, and ECF membership required in addition to club subscription. Members to be assigned to divisions based on ratings and previous winners to be promoted.
6. Summer KO Tournament to be completed in September.
7. Pre-season friendly arranged with Newcastle at The Mals on 21st September.
8. Eight Trophies awarded and presented including the new Les Hall Memorial Trophy for the time & Point Handicap. See Honours List for details and photos to be added asap.