Category: News

Crewe J and Crewe K are leading Divisions 4 & 5 with 100% records. The Killers beat a strong Holmes Chapel side on Thursday to achieve 4 wins from 4.

The internal division 3 competition is approaching the halfway mark with 4 players on 3 points at the top. Steve Knott has an impressive 3 wins from 3 games. Mario, Jack and Simon are on 3 closely followed by Tim on 2.5 from 3 games. After losing his first game Mario has now won 3 on the bounce, don’t be fooled by that smile he is the deadly assassin. Steve K has beaten 3 of the Incredibles who won div 4 last year. Underestimate him at your peril. Yours truly is in a relegation battle with 1 point from 4 and yet to win a game. Some interesting pairings this week.

Argh:

Exclamation

1. used by polite chess players to express despair when realising they have dropped another clanger.

There were quite a few moments of pain at St Mary’s on the last Tuesday of October 2026, a night which will not be remembered for a very long time. Maybe there was something in the air. Lately, when I head off to to the club on Tuesday nights, my beloved has taken to saying, “ I don’t want to hear the B word when you get back.” She means, of course, the word “blunder.” Amazing how we study endings, openings, classic games and so on, all for it to be chucked away by doing something ridiculous.

Crewe B had to face the hugely experienced Holmes Chapel on the night I refer to. Top board looked lively but ended up in an early draw. On board 2 Captain Dave was on the back foot, and in desperation sent his knight behind enemies lines,only for it to be snaffled by his opponent, John Turner. John soon bagged the point. I was confident that Dr Raeburn would win his game on board 4; he was the exchange up, had all the space, and was moving in for the kill. Unfortunately Andy had not allowed for that fact that his own king was exposed, and he walked right into a mating net. On board 3 Tom Lee was getting crushed by Pat Bennet; pawns were dropping, pieces had nowhere to go; terrible. I came back to their board as they were setting up the pieces, and was surprised to hear that Tom had been declared the winner. Pat had blundered his queen. Well done to Pat for taking it so well. Crewe 1.5 – Holmes Chapel 2.5.

Tim Weston appeared to be struggling in a rook and pawn ending. I missed the finish and asked him how he had got on. Tim shrugged and told me, to my surprise, that he had won. Apparently his opponent just resigned, in a position where he was absolutely fine. This result helped the helped Crewe H beat Newcastle in the Division 3 match.

As you know, we keep getting new members at the club, and Koray Calli won on board 1 to help Crewe L beat Alsager E 3-1. He made it look easy, and I reckon he could be a pretty useful player for us. On board 3 Freddy’s opponent offered him a draw, so Freddy accepted quick as a shot, and then showed his opponent why the position was dead lost.

One last one; in an internal club game Wallace Hung had played well against Mario, until he walked into a back ranker and Mario cleaned up. I see Wallace bounced back two days later, helping Crewe K beat Holmes Chapel 4-0. Well done Wallace.

I admit, fellow members, that I am just as guilty as you are, and will keep trying to keep in mind those pesky seeds of tactical destruction. I will probably forget though. On a brighter note, I guess you could argue that it all evens itself out, even though you remember you own blunders more than those of your opponents. I know, I know, you were winning anyway.

Just one more thing. Well done to Jamie R for joining, for the first time, our slowly expanding 2000 point rating club. He has been improving steadily for some time, and we think he will go on to be a good bit stronger.

Stay tuned.

All the best.

Our glorious M team (yes our 13th team !!) made the trek to Cheddleton on a foul Friday night to play a division 6 match against the host’s D team.

Our team was full of players making their league debuts for the club and all set off in nervous excitement. The team all arrived in advance of the captain (yours truly) as I was delayed by a certain junior dressed in his pyjamas as I knocked on the door at 6.45pm – not a promising start – as the weather was horrible and almost certain to delay our journey.

I was taking our two reserves – Mayank and Andrew C – who were paired up with stronger opponents than planned as Cheddleton’s own team was disrupted by the filthy weather (Storm Austen). As I arrived the match was already underway with our four debutants – Phil Foster, Jo Estridge, James Foster and Thomas Rowland. I could only smile with pride as the team set about their tasks. Thomas was first to finish but played his longest ever game before resigning after about an hour. Young James on board 3 was in the ascendancy with a two major piece advantage, but fell into the common trap of “stale-mating” his opponent. On board 2, Jo’s game was a delight to watch as advantages swung too and fro, from being a piece up out of the opening, then a piece down in the middle game and then creating a great plan to find the check mate. The friendly spirit between the teams was great to watch as the match was heading to a conclusion with the scores level and the last board in play. The game between Phil and Peter Hiscock (father of two of the other Chedd players in their team) was a cracker ! Both players were thinking of offering a draw but decided to play on and it was not until around 10pm that Peter found a superb combination to sac a piece and blow open Phil’s defences to emerge victorious, and give the Cheddleton the narrow victory. (2.5-1.5)

Meanwhile Mayank and Andrew had finished their games, sharing the spoils (one win, one loss). Mayank showed some excellent attacking skills, after developing his pieces much quicker after an early gambit to force and breakthrough against the uncastled King. Well played Mayank !!

A glance at the league tables shows Crewe in “rude health” as we appear top of all league tables currently except for division 6. To be fair this is mainly because our teams have played more matches than most other clubs so far as every one of our 13 teams has played 3 matches already. It is of course far too early in the season to read anything into this.

Finally, just to mention we have our “Congress Crew” playing at the Scarborough Congress this weekend. Hopefully there will be a news item on that in the next few days.

My guess is that some people will have read the previous news item on here, so both of you know already about the recent hi-tech coaching session we had on t’internet. Well; Mario has been working behind the scenes on building an exclusive members’ area, on this very site, and there, right now, you can view Richard Lee going on with himself. You can watch it as often as you like. Any paid up Crewe CC member just needs to get in touch with Mario, and he will set up your membership key to this exclusive world. The members’ area also has a games database. Simon H will be adding coaching material soon, we hope. If you have any suggestions about the area then please approach a member of the committee.

Sometimes people stop playing chess; strange I know, but it can happen. The great Bobby Fischer “stopped playing” for years, though of course it then turned out that he had not stopped playing, he just stopped playing in public. Sometimes other less important aspects of life just get in the way. Sometimes people lose the plot and, mistakenly conclude that chess is a waste of time. Anyway, it is always great to see people return and start playing again. Richard Renegade has come back with a bang, and has won his first two games of the league season, helping Crewe E to the top of Division 2 of the NSDCA league.

On 9 October Ballantyne’s gang went to Cheddleton; they won again and are the surprise leaders in Division 3. It is not unusual for Crewe CC to send more than one club to Cheddleton on a Friday night, and Crewe E beat Cheddleton’s A team at the same time.

Tuesday 13 October was maybe the busiest night of the season so far for us. We had 4 teams playing in Division 1, 1 in Division 3, and 2 in Division 5. 28 players in league action on one night. I need to ask Mr Secretary to where that sits in the records, he is certain to have a spreadsheet about it all.

Anyway, you ever seen one of those sinkhole things on the news, when a front garden disappears overnight, and perplexed folk stand around pointing into the abyss? Well, I think I saw one on Tuesday night at St Mary’s. Jamie was playing Karl, and Jamie’s entire queen-side had just vanished. Gone. Jamie’s dad was looking for it in panic. It was not totally clear whether he really had enough compensation, but Jamie told me after that he hoped his two bishops would be enough against a rook and a pile of pawns, Eventually Karl let him off the hook ( if he was ever on it) and Jamie managed to prevail. Turned out it was a vital win, as Crewe A just managed to scrape past Crewe C 2.5/1.5. Crewe A are sitting at the top of the league after three matches.

It looked on paper like Crewe D would struggle against Crewe B, and they did. The D team’s only compensation was that they won on board two. Dave Lambton seemed to be all over Jude’s king like a rash, but the attack went wrong. Jude came out of the mists a piece up, and he collected the point nicely. Crewe D 1.5/ Crewe B 2.5.

Also in the match room our juniors managed an impressive whitewash, quickly beating Pepper Mill B 4/0. I was chuffed to see Freddie-Lee win on top board in that match.

Crewe K were evenly matched in rating by Kidsgrove B but managed a narrow win, 2.5/1.5. I was impressed with Kidsgrove’s team shirts; nearly as good as ours.

7 miles away on the same evening, Crewe H managed a draw against Alsager C.

And that’s not all. There were a few games in the internal competitions too, with Barry leading the way on 4/4 in Division 5 of the club championship. In the previously mentioned exclusive members’ area you will see Mario’s latest triumph; he was on typically imaginative form. Feel free to send Mario your games, so we can all see where you messed up.

It’s all go.

Stay tuned.

Report from Martin Burns:

Foolishly, Richard Lee has moved home, and he now lives too far away to come to Crewe CC much.  Next time any of you decide to move just look at a map first; Kobus went to South Africa; ridiculous. Though he now lives down south, it is clear that Richard still has a soft spot for the club, and that he continues to worry about how bad we are at playing chess.  He decided that if he could not be with us in the flesh then he would bring us some of his wisdom via that magical thing that is Teams.  He scheduled in a Teams session, loosely aimed at those with a rating between 1200-1600, at an hour not too early last Sunday morning.  About 20 of us assembled, eagerly and virtually, to hear his words.  His sermon was all about tactics. Usually when folk think of tactics in chess the emphasis is on what dastardly tricks you can find to crush your opponent, but Richard stressed that it is important to be aware that your opponent might be trying to lay traps for you. He borrowed the phrase “the seeds of tactical destruction,” not, as you might think, from the bible, but from Dan Heisman, a respected chess trainer.  We were told to look for clues in the position to make us aware of possible pitfalls; the king might be exposed,  pieces might be lined up on a diagonal, and so on. Richard then invited members of the audience onto the virtual stage to have a go a finding the dangers in some chess positions.  As usual Richard came well prepared, showed his mastery of the technology as well as the game, and managed to not laugh at our solutions too much. It was all great stuff, and I enjoyed it immensely.  As he said though, he can point us in the right direction, but the only way to get good at this stupid game is to practise, then practise some more.  I look forward to the next session, which we hope will be in November. Mario plans to put a recording of the session in the members area of the website, so watch this space.

All the best.