Category: Crewe’s Congress Crew

The weekend trip to Scarborough was made worse than normal due to Austen and Boelo.

Instead of bringing a pen maybe a snorkel and sou’westers may have been a better choice as some chess players ended up seeking help.

Photo of a player in the flood at Scarborough awaiting arbiter rescue. Paul Doherty’s head can be found in the bottom left hand corner

For everyone travelling from Crewe at least 5 hours getting to Scarborough and we did avoid the flooded roads and when we finally settled down in the playing area to be informed. Some hotels had been flooded, roads flooded and the toilets were out of action. Despite all the disruption it was still a record attendance with nearly 500 players.

As well as the weather the organisers had decided to use a new software for entry and pairing (AIDACHESS) This had a few teething problems.

” I AM NOT A FAN”

Our top performer for the weekend was Tommy in the Inter U1750 with an impressive 3.5/5

Harry scored 3/5 in the Open

Dave P is still having a good run with another 50% in the Major U1900

Jamie in a tough Open section, Jack in the Minor, Dave and Mal in the Foundation.

I would normally attach the links to view the full pairings and results but AIDA is not user friendly and the results were not put onto the normal Chessresults.com

Full list of winners only available currently on the link below. AIDACHESS have be asked to show the full list of winners.

Scarborough Chess Congress

Well done Tommy 3.5/5 shares a rating prize in U1750 section

Not many of our members will know about the 4NCL (4 Nations Chess League) which takes place over 5 weekends every season and features many of the UK and Europe’s leading players with a sprinkling of GMs in all 1st division teams. The league is split into five divisions with promotion and relegation comprising 12 teams in an “all-play-all” competition for the top 4 divisions, and an 11 round team Swiss for the other 36 teams. The bottom division is Div 4, as the 3rd division is split into two roughly equal strength divisions.

https://www.4ncl.co.uk/

The weekend of 10th-11th October was the first weekend of the 26-27 season and Crewe Chess Club had four members playing for different outfits. James Ratcliffe played for Sussex Martlets, while Jamie Roberts played for the Audible Checks in division 2. Harry Gardiner played for the North West Eagles in Div 3K and Richard Lee represented his long term affiliation with Cambridge University in Div 3B. Harry played at the same Dudley venue as James & Jamie, while Richard played at Bedford. Also making a guest appearance for the Audible Checks on Sunday was Jamie’s dad – David – no doubt to avoid a costly fine, default board and further point penalty.

Please see below for a photo of Jamie, Harry and James making their debuts in the 4NCL.

The Crewe CC tourists had a trip to the seaside last weekend, as it was time for the Rhyl Congress. The tournament was held, as usual, in Rhyl Town Hall, a building made world famous for its leaning tower. Results were kept top secret, and were not published on the usual channels until today, I believe.

We had two entries in the Minor, Mal and Jack. In the last round they were paired together to decide who would win the prize for the best Crewe player in the section. I am not sure how much the prize was, but ask Mal because he won; well done to him.

I did not play on the Friday night, and when I turned up on Saturday I had an unpleasant surprise waiting for me: I was paired against the Crewe CC chairman. Pricey played well but in a tense position but he dropped 2 pieces for a rook and I managed to bag the point. Our chairman then went on an unbeaten run to score 2.5/5.

Three Crewe players tried the Open; Jamie, Oskar, and Harry. Best performance was by Harry. Harry’s only loss was to the tournament winner, Keith Arkell, who got his revenge for last year. Harry finished clear second, bagging another win against a titled player. Jamie also fell victim to Arkell, but bounced back, playing some fine attacking stuff, I did enjoy watching him maul his last round victim. Oskar and Jamie both ended the weekend on a decent 2/5.

In a recent news item our secretary mentioned that Crewe A beat Crewe B. The top board in this match featured our two club champions, James R (rapid play champ) and Harry (classical champ). There was a glaring omission in this report. It was not mentioned, that Harry, who was playing on increment, with about minute left, managed to win the dreaded king, bishop and knight, v king ending. Great stuff, maybe Mario can get the full game score on the site. Will Crewe win the league again this year?

Stay tuned.

Last weekend regular congress-player Martin Burns headed off to play the Bank Holiday 6 rounder at Leyland. This is one of Martin’s regular annual runs (he likes to be in daily commuting distance) where the organisors think he is part of the furniture.

Martin started like a house on fire and after 3 rounds was on a 100% with just one other. From here Martin battled hard in every game and had his work cut out to hold on to 3 draws to finish on 4.5 pts. The competition was fierce as Martin shared 1st place with four others including Carl Gartfield from NSDCA club Macclesfield.

Congratulations to Martin whose rating has climbed from 1794 to 1823 on the back of this performance.

Another great weekend some good results and some not so good

Jamie and Harry both in the Open, Dave in the Major and Jack in the Minor.

Our top scorer for the weekend was Jack with 3.5/5

Dave decided to play up a section and had some tough games but it paid off as he managed to claw a few rating points back with 3/5. (According to Mr Secretary, DP gained 39 pts to jump to 1615)

Please don’t ask Harry about my last game I won a Queen for a Rook thinking my opponent would just simply resign I switched off and was held to an embarrassing draw😂

Jamie’s performance is worth noting, as the Secretary reckons this will add another 15 pts despite scoring less than 50%. This should take the rating higher up the scale to approx 1959 as all five opponents were rated higher than him.

I would like to say well done to ex Crewe player Andrew Crosby scoring a perfect 5/5 in the Minor section winning both first prize and the veterans prize

Julian Hawthorne was also at the congress played in the Inter scoring 3/5

Tournament detail Chessresults.com