News

It was a busy start to the new league season last night as we had 8 teams in action all playing derbies as their first matches for 26/27.
Before the league matches got underway we had the play-offs for the Time & Point Handicap deferred from last week. In the semi-finals James managed to beat Steve K, and Tommy edged his way to overcome Nathan (he who could have won the trophy but for his superb sportsmanship last week).

So we had the “youthful showdown” as two 14 year-olds slugged it out to become winner of the coveted Les Hall Memorial Trophy. Tommy won the toss for choice of colours and interestingly chose black, allowing James an extra minute on the clock which reduced the time difference to 3 mins (6 vs 9), with Tommy hoping the black odds would do the trick.
James was always in the ascendancy and was a piece up with a couple of minutes remaining on his clock vs Tommy’s 4 mins. The black king advanced into danger and effectively became trapped and allowed James to finish with a very neat mate in the middle of the board with a Rook and bishop as black tried to activate his King, hoping to play for time, leaving James as the worthy winner !

I was not able to watch the Major KO final between Julian and Mario, so can only report on Julian’s success adding another trophy to his collection.

Congratulations to James and Julian who will be awarded their trophies at next year’s AGM.

In the league division one matches Crewe A won 4-0 against the B team, while a weakened C team held the D team to a 2-2 draw, but could have easily won.
Crewe G narrowly won 2.5-1.5 vs Crewe H in NSDCA division 3 and the K team beat the L team 3-1 in division 5.

For the first time we’ve got to the end of the night and still don’t know who the winner is. The Swiss Manager Pairing Software did its work, thanks to the expert knowledge of chairman Dave, to give us a four-way tie at the end of the scheduled five rounds. With the clock ticking past 10.30 at the end of round 5, we decided it was too late to continue to the play-offs as two of the contenders are 14 years old and have school in the morning.

Despite best efforts to get the event underway at 7.30, we were thrown the usual curve balls as illness caused one withdrawal around 5.30pm. The crammed car park forced numerous players to park away from the venue causing inevitable delays and then pairings had to be revised as several expected members did not arrive. However it was great to see a returning member as Rick Renegade rejoined the club, some 9 years after walking in on our 2017 T&P Handicap. We were also delighted that our 2016 winner Lukasz Holcman accepted the invitation to join us for what many see as the highlight of the club year.

The first round got underway at 7.45pm with 55 players in action (one getting a full point bye) and results went mainly to plan as the top half of the pack notched up the majority of wins. However there were three surprise results as the underdogs picked up valuable early wins. These went to Phil Foster (ranked 39), Mal Green (43) and six year old Jasper Ludlow (54th), which meant they were head and shoulders above the pack with their handicaps of 1.5; 2 & 2.5 pts respectively to be added to their 5-round scores.

Round 2 saw several of the big guns suffer unexpected losses as 3 of the top 6 came unstuck. The round 1 underdog winners suffered the consequence of much tougher pairings in Round 2, as the cream began to rise to the top. There were 13 players on 2/2 with all being seeded in the top half.

Round 3 produced some titanic battles as only four players emerged with a 100% record still intact, and several draws (which are quite rare in this event) railroaded another four of the leading pack. Only one of the top ten seeds was on 3/3 meaning all the other top 10 were now out of contention to win the event. The handicaps are stacked so the top players must score 5/5 to have any chance of winning, as there will normally be some improving lower rated players that score more than 5 pts with the handicaps. So at the end of Round 3 we had James Ratcliffe, John Astley, Pawel Stanny and Nathan Fourie as the only players on 100%. However the handicaps of scratch, one, one and 1.5 pts gave Nathan a bit of an edge.

Round 4 saw James and Nathan emerge victorious. Several other players were in contention going into round 5 thanks to the handicaps which gave them the chance to score more than 5 pts. These included Finn Charboneau, Tommy Cooke, Dave Roberts, and Steve Knott. However it would be the board 1 pairing in round 5 that would determine the likely outcome. James Ratcliffe (5 mins) knew he had to beat Nathan (11 mins) to force a play-off. If Nathan could avoid defeat he would be the outright winner with a combined score of 6 or 6.5pts. If James could win his 100% score guarantees a play-off place with anyone scoring 5 pts or more. The final round saw Tommy and Steve Knott both win to move onto 5.5 pts.

The drama from board 1 was electric, as James gained a pawn advantage but Nathan swapped off nearly all the major pieces to leave one of those difficult Rook endings which often end up in draws. However with Blitz games nothing is straight forward and James made a big error moving his King into check when he only had 23 seconds left. As the Arbiter I advised the players that Nathan was entitled to claim the win, but Nathan chose the sporting option of playing on, knowing he couldn’t really force the win but should hold on for a draw despite being a pawn down. James somehow kept the game alive moving with incredible speed and control, and having been over a minute down when he put himself in check, suddenly found he was hovering around 8 seconds left when Nathan froze and let 11 seconds disappear to be “flagged”.

It took some time to work out that four players were now involved in a play-off.
So next week we will have two rounds of armageddon chess to determine who will win the Les Hall Memorial Trophy.

The semi-finals are James (W) vs Steve K and Tommy (W) vs Nathan.
White players receive an extra minute to their allocated times, so James will have 6 mins vs Steve’s 12. Tommy will get 10 mins vs Nathan’s 11. If these games are drawn then black is deemed the winner. Colours for the final will be based on the toss of a coin or other agreed method, where white will be given one extra minute again and draw odds give black the win.

Hopefully the semi-finals will take place at 7.00pm next Tuesday (15th) and the final should start no later than 7.30pm.

Please see below for the final cross-table and rankings, noting that three players scored 5.5pts with the handicap to finish in the play-offs with the only 100% record. Dave Price and Pradhyun Ranjith scored 5 pts with their handicaps and there were 8 players finishing on 4.5 pts with their handicaps as well.

Full result’s

Congratulations to Andrew Caccamo-Turner who secured his first trophy at the club last night beating Barrie Wood in the Minor KO final. This is a pleasing reward for a young man who was thwarted from sharing the U1150 Swiss Rapidplay trophy recently on a cruel tie-break. Since the start of 2026 Andrew has steadily improved with his rating moving from 973 on 1st January, up 150 points to 1123 on 1st September. Having accepted a voluntary promotion in the Club Championship he is clearly relishing the challenge.

It was another cracking club night (1st September) with over 50 members in action taking part in 8 different club competitions plus some rated friendlies as well. In addition to all this there were one or two new faces in the social room which was busy as usual.

Even though my tomato production has only just started to slow down for the year, we have still not quite seen the end of the Crewe CC Summer KO competitions. Will newcomer Tom Lee collect the Open KO trophy, or will Dave L prevail; can Mario win a cup; who knows?

As another hectic league season nears, Crewe CC’s internal club championships have started already. Harry picked up his first win, and the fans wonder if he can continue his unbeaten run in this contest; a run which, at the time of writing, is now at 1262 days and counting.

Phil Grocott, our reigning division 3 champ, started with a draw against Ebube in division 2.

In division 3 Steve Knott and Wallace Hung scored early wins.

Division 4 early leaders are Jimi Worrall and Steve Duncan,

There were 6 games in division 5, with young Jasper Ludlow sharing the lead.

I would like to thank over 40 members who have already paid their subs for the new chess year; so I will. I have done about 2 minutes of research on t’internet and have come up with some figures, which may or may not be of any interest to those who have not yet coughed up.

-£30 a month could buy you a gym membership; but you will look just as good if you do a few press-ups every day, and cut back on the crisps.

-Arsenal FC’s standard season ticket is £921.50; that only gets you 19 visits to the stadium, and City will take them down this year anyway.

-Edinburgh Chess Club’s standard membership costs £100, and it would take you ages to get there for a game.

So… please renew, and get ready to waste some more of your evenings at St Mary’s.

Finally, don’t forget the Les Hall Memorial Trophy is next week (8th Sept), the secretary will no doubt be plotting things for that one already.

All the best.

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

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.

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:

lms.englishchess.org.uk/lms/fixture/145414

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 :

https://wallaseychessclub.uk/news/92