Author: David Hulme

This weekend’s Crewe Congress attracted 110 players from all around the country, including 13 players from our own club excluding two further members filling in to give games in odd number sections.

The club’s star performers were Lukasz Holcman(playing his first ever congress) and Chris Rhodes who were involved in a 4-way tie for 1st prize in the Intermediate section (U135) despite being ranked 8th and 21st respectively at the outset. Both players finished with scores of 4/5 with Lukasz performance rating at 140 (compare to current grade 123) and Chris at 156 (compare to 111).

The other prize winner was Nigel Gardner also making his congress debut, ignoring childhood events from some time ago. He collected the grading prize in the Minor Section scoring 3/5 with a rating performance of 99 compared to current grade of 70.

Other players with notable scores include Congress Administrator Neville Layhe with a creditable 50% and a performance of 156 vs current grade of 137 in the Major Section (U165). Doug Barnett scored 3/5 in the Intermediate section, with Richard Renegade and Dave Price scoring 2.5 in the same section. Junior Harry Gardiner was the lowest graded player in the whole congress, but should be proud of his score of 2/5 in his first ever senior congress with a performance rating 20 pts above his current grade and finishing in joint 18th position out of 28.

Many thanks should go to the Congress Team of Neville Layhe, Les Hall and Dave Price together with Matthew Carr (I.A) as the Arbiter. We have received many delightful messages from  players including one from Alan Riddle playing in the Minor section which is shown below:

Hi Neville,

I’ve attended quite a number of congresses over the last few years but this is the first time I’ve felt motivated to contact the Organisers afterwards to congratulate  them on a successful event and thank them for providing it.

The congress was friendly and well-run (good teamwork?) and the venue was excellent – even the special snack menu was reasonably-priced.  Overall it is difficult to find anything to fault.

Something I specially liked was that the upper limit for the Minor was only 104. This must have boosted entries from lower-grade players like me.  It was a welcome change from events where the Minor goes up to 120, 130 or even 135.  At those events players graded under, say, 90, know that they are going to be hopelessly outgraded in least the first 2 rounds and the most they can ever look forward to is a grading prize.  Please don’t ever think of raising that limit above 104!

Thanks again – I hope to be back next year.

Best wishes,
Alan Riddle

Four matches this week has seen 18 different members representing the club in league and cup matches. First up the “E” team traveled down the road to Alsager on Tuesday night to take on the host’s new C team in a division 5 match. Captain Nigel Gardner reported that all four boards were closely contested and was delighted as his team won by a big margin of 3.5-0.5 that did not really reflect the play. Wins came for Amy Lovatt (making it 6 in a row), Steve Ballantyne and Nigel, with Doug Barnett taking the heat on top board with a draw.

On the same night our Wirral team had a 7-man cup match against favourites and cup holders, Chester. Captain David Hulme noted that the Chester team was the strongest seen in over 25 years of the Wirral Knock-out with a board 7 graded 175, and Crewe conceding over 350 grading points. With a deficit of over 40 grade pts on every board, the handicap award of 2.5 game pts was never likely to be enough to give Crewe a realistic chance. The over the board score of 7-0 for Chester was unsurprising but did not give a true account of the battles undertaken.

Wednesday night saw our “D” team travel to Stafford in a Div 4 match, while the AMAL witnessed the “F” team playing Meir B in div 5. The “D” team came home satisfied with a 2-2 draw as Mike Williams and Dylan Sayers both won, with all four players outgraded.

At home the “F” team was pleased to have Simon Layhe available who managed a win on board 1, with junior Harry Gardiner achieving another superb result with a win against an opponent 50 grade pts higher and Richard Hind continuing his fine summer form with the third win to ensure the team were victorious 3-1.

This weekend we look forward to the 2nd (modern) Crewe Congress which has attracted approx 110 players so far and looks certain to beat the number of 100 from last year’s maiden Congress. I am pleased to report that the club has 13 of its own members (almost 50% of the club’s players) playing in this congress with several making their debuts in a Congress Event.

The division 5 derby between our “E” and “F” teams was played on Wednesday with the result going as expected. Draws on the top two boards were good enough for the Es as Chris Rhodes and Steve Ballantyne held Dave Price and Phil Wright. With big grading advantages on boards 3 and 4 Amy Lovatt and Nigel Gardner both won to secure a 3-1 victory for the “E” team.

Last night saw the “A” team start their Div 2 campaign with a re-arranged trip to Cheddleton to avoid an early season postponement. Despite the absence of top board Ola Titiloye the As had a good grading advantage over the host’s “D” team. First to finish was Doug Barnett with a win on bd 5 soon followed by a draw on bd 3 for Neville Layhe. The “A” team were guaranteed at least a share of the points when Rick Renegade, making his NSDCA debut won on board 4 in convincing fashion. On bd 1 Karl Lockett was playing Chedd’s junior star Jacob Boswell (age 15, grade 177) and despite a promising middle game position found himself on the backfoot as Jacob found a way to win. Last game in progress saw David Hulme lose to Karol Grzybowski as Karol recovered from a Knight deficit with David running out of time, to give Chedd D a creditable draw and leave skipper David Hulme disappointed with the drawn match result.

Rick Renegade surged to the top of the table with two further wins on Wednesday night to take his point tally to 13.5pts from 17 games, to overtake long term leader Neville Layhe who got stuck on 12.5 pts from 18. Finishing 3rd was highest percentage scorer Martin Gill with 11/12.

An overall number of 23 members participated in this year’s event which bodes well for the future of our club.

In other news the C team started their division 4 campaign with a comfortable win in the derby against our D team. Wins for Doug Barnett, Chris Rhodes and Amy Lovatt were more than enough to secure the points as captain Dave Price was held to a draw by Martin Gill to avoid a whitewash for the Ds.

Next week sees another derby with E vs F in division 5, while the “A” team travel to Cheddleton to start their division 2 season.

 

With just one week to go in the club’s summer Rapid-play the book-makers are having a headache as long term leader Neville Layhe is being reeled in.

Neville has run out of opponents while sitting in pole position with 12.5/18. In 2nd spot is Rick Renegade with 11.5/15 but has the difficulty of finding an opponent while many are on holiday or will be tied up playing the first NSDCA league match of the season. In 3rd place is outsider Martin Gill with the outstanding score of 11/12 who is scheduled to play in the D vs C team “derby” and is probably now regretting missing one or two club nights earlier in the summer.

Good luck to these three in the final week. The full table can be seen from the links on the right hand side of the website’s home page.

The club had several members playing at Leek over this last weekend in the Staffordshire Congress. Doug was accompanied by Rick Renegade in the major section, while Les Hall, Martin Gill and Phil Wright played in the Minor tourney.

Doug was our star performer finishing unbeaten with 4/5 to share 1st prize with Jon Blackburn Snr (the popular Cheddleton player) while Rick could only muster 1.5 pts from his 5 rounds although facing the two highest graded players in the section.

Martin was our best scorer in the Minor section with 3.5 pts to finish just outside the prize money in joint 4th. Les did very well to finish with 3/5 and Phil scored a creditable 2 pts as well.

The club kicked off the new league season with a lucky win in the Wirral League Division 2 match vs Pensby (last Tuesday 12th Sept). It was a case of ” black magic” as all players won their games with black pieces to produce a narrow 3-2 win for us. The opposition were much weaker than normal without their regular top board and fielding two players below grade 100 on the bottom boards, giving us an advantage of 140 grading pts over the 5 boards. Unexpectedly we trailed twice with wins by Martin Gill and Ola Titiloye leveling the score on both occasions. It was left to skipper David Hulme to clinch the match with a huge slice of luck as his opponent lost on time in a tricky position when failing to make the 35 move time control with a piece down, only for one of Pensby’s spectators to point out there was a forced mate imminent which would have given them victory.

The Summer Rapid-play tournament saw another dozen or so games played last night, with the latest table appearing on the right hand side of the website under the Teams header.

Neville Layhe continues to lead the tourney but is running out of opponents to play having amassed 10.5 pts from 16 games so far. His nearest rival is Rick Renegade who trails by 2 pts having played 4 games less (with 1 point awarded for a win). Just behind Rick in 3rd place is Martin Gill who was runner up in the 2016 event and is making a late surge in the competition. Mart has the much higher percentage with 8/9, but needs to overhaul the points scored by the players ahead.

The challenge in the final three weeks will be to arrange games to give themselves the best chance of winning the Rapid-play trophy, as the competition closes on 27th September and with the winter league matches starting next week.

So far 21 members have entered the competition and 64 games have been played which shows the commitment made by Neville to have played 16 of them !

The first Wirral League match takes place on Tuesday, with Crewe hosting Pensby 1 in a Division 2 fixture at Chester, where all our home matches in the Wirral League are played.

All of the clubs fixtures are shown in date order under the Fixtures 2017/18 tab, while each of our team’s fixtures are sorted on the right hand side under the Teams header.

It was the the SCS “A” team’s turn to visit Alsager last night for the final match of the 2017 South Cheshire Shield. Having already secured the title, captain Dave Price allowed himself the luxury of making his season’s debut but came unstuck against Gordon Parker making a rare appearance for the hosts on bd 2. The rest of the team fared better as Doug Barnett and Chris Rhodes both won with the white pieces and Simon Layhe also making a rare appearance picked up the only score for black with a draw to ensure narrow victory 2.5-1.5.

Full details of all SCS results and table etc can be accessed via the new LMS (League Management System) from the link on the NSDCA website. The final table shows the A team clear winners with 10 pts from 6 matches, followed by the B team on 6 pts pipping Newcastle on board count with Alsager propping up the table, and utilising 9 players to give experience to as many as possible.

Thanks to secretary Les Hall, we can report some success for two of our members who played at the Leyland Congress over the August bank holiday weekend. Neville Layhe’s new July grade of 137 saw him shunted into the higher Major section by the organisers, over-riding his entry into the U135 competition based on his previous rating. However Neville had the last laugh by collecting 3rd prize with a superb score of 4/6 in the U165 section and although results are not available from the chess results server, it is understood most of the opposition were graded 155+ and Nev’s performance worked out at 177 after losing to the outright winner in the final round.

Meanwhile in the Minor section (U135) Rick Renegade playing in his 2nd ever congress also got among the prizes with the same 4/6 score but claiming 2nd prize. As no details available I cannot shed any more light on the performance.

Congratulations to Nev and Rick.