Tuesday 18th August – Club AGM 7.30pm followed by the AGM Team Blitz (approx 9pm start)
Tuesday 25th August – 1st night of club championship 26/27 (if not involved in knock-out semi-finals **)
Tuesday 8th September – Annual Time & Point Handicap for the Les Hall Memorial Trophy. Arrive 7.20pm prompt for 7.30 start.
Tuesday 15th September – Last night to complete all Summer KO semi-finals
Tuesday 29th September – Last night to complete all Summer KO finals.
NSDCA League fixtures to commence either w/c 14th or 21st September.
** Knock-out Semi-Finals: Open – David Lambton vs Tom Lee and Jamie Roberts vs Doug Barnett Major – Steve Ballantyne vs Mario Scarpa and Julian Bulbeck vs David Roberts Minor – Andrew Caccamo-Turner vs Mal Green and Barrie Wood vs Mayank Patil
Following on from the previous news item, James Ratcliffe completed his work in the U16 Championship to finish on 3.5/7 in the mid-table. The full table can be seen
There were a couple more Crewe players involved in the weekend events. In the Yates U1500 competition Matthew Dean played 5 games – all against higher rated opponents, and did manage one outstanding win against a player rated 220 higher.
Jamie Roberts played in the Penrose U2000 and scored a strong 3.5/5 to finish joint 6th – just 1 point behind the winners – in a field of 61 entrants. This has taken him to a new personal best rating of 1937 – up 150 pts since 1st January !
Tuesday (21st July) saw the 5th annual challenge match between Wallasey & Crewe for the WC Cup with the Caritas Centre at full capacity as 78 players and several spectators/organisers packed into the main playing hall and another dozen or more playing social chess in the analysis room.
Playing Hall
Analysis/Social Room
It was only 4 years ago that Alan Kelly and Dave Price set on this journey when two cars from Wallasey brought 8 players to The Mals Club in Crewe for the inaugural match. Alan and Dave had become good friends as a result of meeting at so many congresses over the previous few years and thought it would be a good idea for the two clubs to develop a close competitive friendship. Fast forward four years and the numbers involved increased to 14, 22, 32 and now 39 players per side. This is the biggest club vs club match I have witnessed since falling in love with the game in 1972, but am told that Wallasey had a match with Pensby in the late 1980s with 42 per side. Note to Dave P – your target is to better that in 2027 !
The match itself was played in great spirit by both sets of players, with play commencing at 7.35 and the final game concluding around 10.50pm when Steve Pickles (Wallasey) and Harry Gardiner had to agree peace with a draw after slugging it out for over 3 hours.
The final result was most unexpected as Crewe cruised to a landslide win by the score of 29-10, despite both teams having identical total ratings of 57822. The full scorecard can be seen from the LMS here:
As Alan Kelly was unable to attend due to ill health, Saul Marks marshalled the troops from Wallasey and ensured Alan was provided with a birds-eye view of proceedings via a Whatsapp link. Luckily for Alan he did not have to suffer all of the agony of watching his club mates struggle thanks to many internet outages caused by the sheer numbers accessing the limited connectivity !
As usual the home team provided a wonderful buffet courtesy of Dave Price’s effort, while Emma Cooke provided a superb service from the kitchen much to the delight of many of the 78 players.
The closing presentation saw Dave Price in typical jovial spirits receiving the trophy from Saul Marks, while revelling in the atmosphere and duly delivering the booby prize of the toilet roll to the beaten captain.
Many thanks go to the organisers Alan and Saul from Wallasey, together with Dave Price from Crewe, as we look forward to extending the challenge next year.
Thanks to Saul for providing an in depth report from the Wallasey side of the board :
The fabulous annual Crewe Chess Congress took place last weekend, 26-28 June. We are grateful to the people at the Mornflake Stadium for hosting us for the fifth year in a row. We were also lucky to be given a generous supply of the famous Mornflake Mighty Oats goodie bags, they really do contain some nice stuff. This year Mornflake also gave us a stack of porridge pots to hand out, loads of you snaffled a pot and I hope you were powered on to play better chess as a result. We were delighted to have a new sponsor this year too, in Chesspick, the chess coaching company, and we used their pens and score sheets for the weekend.
This year we were a bit worried before the start of the event, as the temperatures rose, and a few people withdrew. We need not have been concerned;there were 228 players on the starting blocks, coming from far and near, just three short of last year’s record. We hired in some air blowers, made good use of the ice machine and were ready for the 30+ degree onslaught. We also set up a small cafe, with drinks and biscuits, to sustain the players between moves.
A cool feature of the congress was that many of the boards in the Open and Major were played on live boards; so, for instance, you can check out Gee’s amazing knight sac (round 4 in the Open) at your leisure. From the diagram below, White moves Nd5
The Open was one of our strongest ever, featuring 9 players rated over 2100, in a field of 60. Crewe players did well. Dave Lambton raced up the leader board , and was on 2.5/3, though the height proved too much for him and he lost his last 2 games. Harry Gardiner, otherwise known as Crewe CC Champion, had an amazing congress. Harry got into a couple of scrapes but nobody could beat him and he finished joint third. The overall winner was Jacob Boswell, Jacob formerly of these parts, showed incredible determination; his third round match against Mike Surtees was a 126 move epic, in which he converted a drawish rook ending into a win. Jacob showed he is also capable of a pouncing on tactical opportunities; see his round 2 win against George Zhao:
The Major featured many of the usual suspects, and a few new faces. Crewe had five players in this one, and our best result was by Oskar Jarzynski. Oskar scored 3.5/5. James Pack and Joel Ofeni were always in the lead, and as both had 4/4 they were paired together in the last round. A quick handshake and share the loot maybe? No way! They decided to slug it out. James was winning until tragedy hit; on move 56, when just about any move was winning, he moved e8=Q+ and allowed his opponent to give up a bishop for a text book draw. Well done to them both. See below – hope James will not mind us posting this “instructive position,” as they call them.
Crewe CC had seven players out of the 66 entrants in the Inter, including the top rated player, Karl Lockett, and fast improving junior, Tommy Cooke. Competition was tough though, and first prize was shared by Stellio Jerome and John Gibbs.
The minor looked like our best bet; we had 8 in this one, One of our favourites, Tim Weston, was nearly downed by his own clubmate, Dave Roberts, in round 1, but it was the old old story; an won endgame ain’t won until you have won it; they drew. Simon Humphries was playing well, but he faltered at the end. Our own Jack Patullo had a good weekend, ending up in a tie for second. Star of the show though was Sam Ollier. Sam joined Crewe CC last year, but this was his first chess congress. Well, Sam only went and won it with 5/5! An amazing performance. What next for Sam?
Take a bow Dave Price, the congress organiser, who put in so many hours setting up the event. He is still mithering me about stuff now as we wrap things up. I would like to thank Gerald for all his help, and for introducing me to the fabulous Benny’s Cafe, which is just across the road from the stadium ( check it out next year). On Saturday Gerald’s step counter topped 17000 steps. Also thanks to our amazing chief arbiter, Matthew Carr, who also supplied loads of equipment, live boards, sets and so on. We had three other arbiters too, who all helped make the weekend run smoothly; Dan Turner, Hambel Willow and Mario Scarpa ( who is also our IT guy). Our snack bar could not have happened without Emma, with Helen and Louise standing in as well. Finally of course, thanks to the players: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did, and that we will see you next year.
It is that time of year again, and no, I am not talking about how the strawberries are coming; though they are doing quite nicely; see picture below.
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No; I refer to one of the great sporting contests of the summer; I mean of course the Crewe Chess Congress. Can you believe we are nearly there? The action starts next Friday, at the usual great venue in the heart of Crewe. It looks like we will have one of the strongest fields ever in the Open section; check out the current list of runners and riders elsewhere on this site. There are three other sections too, and chess addicts of all levels are welcome. We have 200 entries so far, so get your entry in soon to avoid missing out on one the best weekend congresses of the year. Thanks are due to the people from the Mornflake Stadium, who have given us loads of free parking at a spacious and comfy venue. The stadium is near to loads of eateries, and is close enough so you could nearly hurl that blundered piece at the train station (please don’t though).
Another important cup competition has been much in the news lately, yes the Crewe CC Knockout cup is due to start on Tuesday. Can Young James Ratcliffe, who scored a fairly reasonable 6 out of 6 to become Crewe CC Rapidplay Champion, win another trophy? Will an outsider cause a cup upset? Who knows? What we do know is that we will be in the grip of cup fever this summer.
Think there is some kind of footy contest going on too, but don’t let that distract you.
