Just a quick note to say we had 171 attendances averaging out at 43 per week for the month of August, despite dozens of members taking a break or being on holiday. This represents an increase of more than 28% on last year when we had 133 attendances, and is pretty remarkable for the time of year.
September promises to be a great month as members return after summer/school holidays and we have the following scheduled itinerary:
Sept 2nd – 6.30pm onwards – summer knockout semi-finals, Grand prix Rapidplay and Club championship games.
Sept 2nd – 8pm – Richard Lee coaching session in small room
Sept 9th – 7.20 arrival for 7.30pm start in the Annual Time & Point Handicap event for the Les Hall Memorial Trophy – all members welcome. Please let David Hulme know if you can play in this fantastic annual event.
Sept 16th – NSDCA 2025/26 League season commences with four home matches for teams A (div 1) , I (div 4) , K & L (div 5), together with outstanding knock-out semi finals and the usual club night with internal competitions and social chess in the small room.
Sept 23rd and 30th – Usual club nights with mix of NSDCA League matches, social chess in the small room and internal competitions in the main hall, noting 30th September is the cut-off for the Summer knock-outs and Grand Prix Rapidplay.
Finally a gentle reminder to all members that annual subs are now due. Adults £30 and Juniors £20 (U18 @ 1.9.25) for the year 1.9.25 to 31.8.26
PRE-SEASON MATCH: We suffered a big defeat in Tuesday’s (19th August) Pre-season challenge match as Chester made their first trip to Crewe since we formed our club in 2014. We sent the invitation a few weeks ago and after an original plan to play 10 boards each, Chester pulled out the stops to increase the teams to 13-a-side. Like the annual Wallasey challenge, the idea was to make teams reasonably close in ratings and we succeeded by selecting teams with just a 26 total point rating difference. As the News at Ten gongs sounded the match was perfectly balanced at 4-4. After that things went down hill for us as Chester reeled in several wins to emerge comfortable winners 8.5 to 4.5. Full score card is on the LMS.
It is planned for us to take a team of up to 20 players next August, to see if we can gain revenge !
2. SUMMER KNOCKOUTS: After the recent AGM the draws were held for the semi-finals of our Summer knockouts as follows:
OPEN: Carmel vs Oskar and Lukasz vs Richard
MAJOR: Tommy vs Doug and Nathan vs George (Bulbeck)
INTER: Simon Humphries vs Gerald and Freddie vs David Roberts
All games to be played by 16th September, with Simon already through to the INTER final.
3. SUMMER GRAND PRIX U1300 RAPIDPLAY: This new event is well in progress and is a little different to most of our competitions. As many players take holidays and summer breaks, this competition winner’s trophy will be awarded (at the next AGM) to the player with the highest percentage score rather than the most points, as at the closing date of 30th September. Any player who has completed less than 10 games will not be eligible to win the competition and players can play a maximum of two games against any other opponent, with one as white and black.
4. CLUB CHAMPIONSHIP 2025/26 – The new competitions start on Tuesday 26th August. Pairings have been posted on the club’s LMS section. There are five divisions this season due to the increase in number of members. The pairings can be seen by following the links from the fixtures tab which show all NSDCA fixtures (once they are published) as well as all Internal Competitions.
5. TIME & POINT BLITZ HANDICAP: This will take place on Tuesday 9th September, commencing at 7.30pm. It is a five round (swiss-type) blitz event with a combination of different times being allocated to all members to complete their games and handicap points (between 0.5 and 2.5) to add to players scores on top of their results. The idea is to make sure lowest rated players have a chance of competing with the highest rated.
This will be the 11th annual competition and is usually chaotic and a lot of fun. The winner will receive the coveted “Les Hall Memeorial Trophy” at the next AGM.
PLEASE CONFIRM WITH DAVID H IF YOU WISH TO PLAY IN THIS EVENT ASAP.
6. NSDCA LEAGUE SEASON 2025/26: Fixtures are due to be published by 31st August. Since our AGM on 12th August, the league has decided to run an extra division so there will now be 5 divisions and therefore we have chosen to enter two more teams (K&L) into division 5, making 12 teams from Crewe.
7. ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTIONS: The secretary has recently sent an email to all members asking for payment of subscriptions for the year 1st September 2025 to 31st August 2026. Adults £30 p.a and Junior (U 18@ 1.9.25) £20 p.a
8. Any questions on the above please contact secretary David Hulme or any other member of the committee.
Last night saw our Annual General Meeting being held in front of a record attendance of 43 members plus a few guests and potential new members, after receiving 15 apologies for absence (mainly due to holidays).
The main highlight of the night was as usual, the Presentation of Trophies. This year the guest presenter was our top player Richard Lee who continues to attend the club every week despite a 100 + mile trek each way ! Before making the awards Richard told the assembled audience that he felt priviliged to be asked and how proud he was to be associated with such a friendly club which in his words; is the best he has come accross in 20 years or so of competitive chess, which includes playing 4NCL chess for Cambridge University.
The presentation took much longer than previous years due to the volume of awards. There were 15 internal club trophies presented, plus 7 NSDCA league trophies and the South Cheshire Shield. To supplement this there were further awards made by Steve Ballantyne to individual members of the victorious South Cheshire Shield “A” team and the Perry Trophy “A” team.
After the prolonged meeting, we held a four team Blitz competition with 28 players staying behind until after 10.30pm. The four highest rated players in the club were assigned to different teams with Gee Cross’s team (Crewe 4) emerging as the winners on board difference just ahead of Crewe 2 led by Harry Gardiner. Full details are shown on the LMS under AGM Team Blitz
Dave Price of Crewe CC receives the WC Challenge trophy from opposing captain Alan Kelly, in exchange for the traditional toilet roll!
The fourth annual “WC Challenge” match between Wallasey and Crewe was played on Monday 21 July, to round out our 2024/25 season. This unique fixture sees the away team provide a teamsheet and the home team select players to match them.
Following Wallasey’s first victory in the series last year, Crewe’s captain Dave Price was determined to win the enormous trophy back and compiled the biggest team yet. Wallasey captain Alan Kelly and vice-captain Saul Marks managed to rustle up an excellent set of opponents and, after several days of players dropping out on both sides and others subbing in, the teams settled at 32 players apiece. Crewe outgraded Wallasey in the top third of the teamsheet, with the middle third very closely matched, while the bottom third saw Wallasey’s players hold the higher ratings. Incredibly, across 32 boards, the difference in ratings between the sides was just 63 ELO points in Crewe’s favour, with each side outgrading the other on 16 boards each.
A coach was hired and Crewe’s (motley?! – sorry, couldn’t resist!) crew made the journey to Wallasey to wrest back the trophy. On a warm night at the Conservative Club, fortified by an excellent supply of sandwiches and biscuits in the kitchen, as many players as there are squares on a chessboard sat down to do battle.
It was almost 9.00pm before the first results started coming in and, as expected, many of the lower boards were the first to finish. The less expected element is that Crewe won the bottom four boards, despite being outgraded, and raced into a 7-0 lead before Chris Clemenson on board 21 finally got Wallasey off the mark by beating Nathan Fourie.
After his game finished, young Seth Marks took charge of the results entry duties, which was somewhat less than straightforward, as the projector resolution issues have still yet to be resolved.
Wallasey staged something of a fightback, with Steve Simm (board 18), Saul Marks (24) and Tom Whitby (10) all winning, to pull the score back to 9-4. Graham Heath (26) and Phil Owen (5) joined the list of Wallasey winners, while Ken Jones (17), Paul Evans (2) and Phil Davies (3) all contributed draws, but the combined might of club champion Mike Coffey (4) and exciting juniors Joe Ledgerton (6), Thomas Moran (8) and Terrence Jiang (13) failed to register anything among them against very strong opponents. Even Chinenye Basil-Nwachuku (12), who joined Wallasey from Crewe shortly after last year’s fixture, couldn’t stop his former team’s juggernaut (I thought they came in a coach?!) from inching ever closer to victory.
Their excellent start and subsequent gradual accumulation of points had brought the score to 15½-7½. A rare defeat for draw specialist Ian Stent on board 23 against Keith Dudeney took Crewe over the line, securing their third win in four years.
But there was plenty more chess to be played and increasing numbers of spectators clustered around the remaining few boards. Additional wins for Alan Jackson (board 16) and Martin Cockerill (25) were balanced by defeat for Steve Pickles (1) who spent a long time analysing the game with his opponent, Richard Lee, as everyone tidied up around them. Paul Greenway’s game on board 27 was the last to finish, as he finally overcame Phil Wright, after spending much of the second half of the game in time trouble, with Katie Lamb notating for him.
The final score was a convincing 20-12 win for Crewe, which was celebrated. In a typically raucous ceremony, Wallasey captain Alan Kelly, who had presented his opposite number with a bottle of red wine and a large glass on a tray mid-evening, now handed over the trophy and, in keeping with the competition’s name, duly received the traditional toilet roll in return!
Thank you to all the organisers who spent weeks putting this fixture together, the supporters who came to enjoy the spectacle and the volunteers who lugged equipment and furniture, set up boards and tidied up afterwards. As always, it was a great occasion with many a laugh and a wonderful way to end the season. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait till we return in September!
I know that you are all desperate for next few days to skip by, as this weekend does, of course, bring us that Crewe Chess Congress.
But before then, our club members got a brief distraction from staring at the clock, or fretting over how to get the better of that Alapin line you hate, or watching lectures on Youtube that show you how to beat anyone easily just by using 3 simple rules, or praying that your nemesis gets germs and can’t play (nothing too serious): Tuesday night saw the last round of this year’s Crewe CC Swiss Rapidplay.
In round 5 of the Open, favourite Carmel was doing fine against Lukasz, until she blundered in time trouble. Ebube, who was having a fine tournament, lost his game against Gee. This meant that in the last round only 2 people could win it: Lukasz, who seemed surprised to be in such a lofty postion, was on 4 points; and Gee, who surprised nobody by being in such a lofty postion, was on 4.5 points. Lukasz had the adavantage for much of the game, but as they say, it ain’t easy to win a winning position. Gee defended well, and at one point even looked like she might have got the advantage, but she had her eyes on the prize and knew a half point was enough. In the end Lukasz had to agree to the draw and Gee was the new Crewe CC Rapidplay Champion.
In the U1600 section, top board in round 5 was a clash between the father and son Bulbeck. George tells me he was doing well, but as happens so often in these events, time pressure caused a blunder and Julian managed to win. Was there any pressure on George to lose, or face a walk home? We will never know. Anyway, this win gave Julian 5 points out of 5 and a guarantee of winning the section. Julian’s last round loss against the section’s only unbeaten player, Tommy Cooke, may not have hurt too much.
In the U1300, I was delighted to see the ever amiable Phil Grocott win the section with 5 points out of 6. He just about won the title on tiebreak from Ian Wright. Well played Ian.
Thanks to Secretary Hulme for running the tournament so smoothly, and I hope that the members who played, there were over 50 of them, enjoyed the event as much as I did.
Pictured below, in the social room; Lukasz and Gee having a look at their game. Richard looks amused by the standard of their play.
Harry Gardiner is once again the king of Crewe Chess Club. He has now won the Club Championship for the third time in four years. I reported last year that his performance of 10/11, with a rating of 2119 would be hard to beat. This year he has done even better, scoring 11/12 with a tournament rating of 2157. Division 4 was won by Tommy, Division 3 by Nathan, and Division 2 by Oskar, which means that at the grand old age of 21 Harry is, by some distance, the oldest winner of any section of the championship this year. Congratulations to them all.
Our players performed fantastically and could not be separated from the potteries juniors as we were joint team winners. To decide the winner of the team trophy, it was agreed both teams to have a play off with each player only having 5 minutes on the clock.
Freddie-Lee Cooper Scoring an impressive 3/5
Archie Broadhurst achieving a fantastic win with a king and Rook finishing 1.5/5
