Last week 445 players went to the Scarborough Chess Congress; the Crewe CC contingent are pictured below. The picture was taken at the impressive Spa Complex, overlooking the Sun Court, with the North Sea in the backgound. The Sun Court’s chequered flooring could not have been better designed to make chess players feel at home. One feature I like about this weekender is that, depending on your luck, you might see the sea from your seat in the playing area. Best result was Jamie, who got 3.5 in the major.
Left to right; Mal: Dave R; Dave P; Harry; Jamie; Carmel; Simon.
Elsewhere, James Ratcliffe decided to take on a new tournament, the Coventry International Masters. He scored 4/9 in a field brimming with titled players. Not bad when you consider that he was outrated by 200+ points in most of his games!
A couple of weeks ago, some of our members ventured over the hills to Yorkshire, for the Leeds Congress. Guess what? Carmel only went and won the open section! Her recent victory in the Les Hall Memorial meant that she has won every open competition in our club, but this is her first win in a weekend congress open. I think, and unusally Mr Secretary agrees with me, that this is the first time any Crewe CC player has won an open. Well done Carmel; may it be the first of many.
When Bobby Fischer won the 1964 US Chess Cchampionsip with a score of 11/11 people were pretty impressed. A few years ago, a prize fund of $64000 was set up, to be awarded to the first player to repeat the feat of winning the championship with a 100% score. I thought it would be a good idea to offer £6.40 to anyone who wins the Crewe CC Open Championship with a 100% score. Harry was on 4/4, and looking good, but on Tuesday night he had to face Andy Raeburn. Andy is in great form and held Harry to a draw. Keep the day job Harry. £6.40 will be carried over to next year.
Phl Grocott continues his fast start in Division 3 of the Club Championship, and is now on 4/4. This year we have a 5th (yup 5th) division of the individual championship, which is currently being lead by one of our newer members, Barry Wood, on 4/5.
Chess players, like many athletes, can be a bit superstitious. Some players like to boost their chances of success by bringing a lucky pen to the board. Mario has taken this to the next level; he sticks to the same beautiful pen, but after losing on Tuesday he tells me he is going to change the ink, see picture below.
As is normal at this time of year we had a few league matches going in the main room. One match that caught my eye was Crewe E v Crewe F. There was an age gap of more than 70 years between Crewe E’s youngest and oldest player. The board 1 pairing was the battle of the 13 year olds, Oskar and Jamie, Jamie was on top for most of the game but blundered a rook in the blitz finish. We all know that feeling. Crewe F won the match.
Crewe D beat Newcastle, 4-0. It was not as easy as the result suggests though; Simon, top board for the D’s, had to defend patiently for hours until he got his breakthrough. A very young Crewe L lost 0-4 to Holmes Chapel C, but our juniors will only get better.
Late news; last night Crewe A scraped a draw against Alsager. It could have been worse, their clever team captain took them to the wrong venue. Message to captains; always read your emails.
A band of Crewe CC players are heading off to play in the fabulous Scarborough Chess Congress this weekend; we wish them well.
Bart has just returned from a holiday in Georgia. He happened to be in Batumi during the European Team Championships. He is pictured below; demonstrating the principle of over protection.
The sun keeps shining (metaphorically speaking) as the Club continues to grow. September has been an incredible month with attendances averaging 57 members per week, plus visiting teams ensuring the Caritas Centre has been packed out throughout the month.
Tuesday night (30th Sept) was another superb night as the Internal Summer competitions all reached their conclusion. Firstly looking at the Open Knockout final Richard Lee played Carmel Barwick and came through victorious, although reports from the analysis room afterwards told how Carmel could easily have won. The Major knockout final had already been played the previous week as 13 year old underdog Tommy Cooke defeated George Bulbeck. The Intermediate final saw Dave Roberts playing a recent arrival Simon Humphries, with Dave emerging as the winner.
It was also the final night of the Grand Prix Rapidplay which started in early July for members rated under 1300. The tournament has been a roaring success with 22 players taking part and 131 games played in total. The competition winner is the player with the highest percentage score, subject to playing a minimum of 10 games. 17 of the 22 met this requirement, with Jack Patullo achieving the highest score of 84.4% ahead of Lee Bebbington on 77.3%.
Congratulations to all the Summer Tournament winners – Richard, Tommy, Dave Roberts and Jack who will receive their trophies at next year’s AGM. All names have been added to the “Honours List” shown on the website under Members Page, which dates back to our first tournament held in May 2015 when Greg Willet won the inaugural Time and Point handicap.
Details of all the Summer Club tournaments have now been archived and can be seen in the “past seasons” tab on the Crewe Chess Club’s LMS pages.
I have been playing competitive chess for over 35 years, that’s over 1700 long play games, and hundreds of rapid games. What a complete waste of time, you might think, and you might be right. In all that time I have never achieved that holy grail of checkmates; the smothered mate. Well, on Tuesday night, Adi Kostic, who has only started playing rated games in the last few months, managed to pull off this famous checkmate. He was playing Mayank in the Crewe CC Grand Prix.
Pictured below is Adi, about to pounce
Here is Mayank, realising he is in trouble. You can see the mate is coming.
Congratulations are also due to another of our younger members, Tommy Cooke, who recently beat George B to win the Major Knockout. George is no pushover, he is so keen he recently went all the way Roumania to play chess.
13 year Oskar is a chess veteran compared to Adi and Tommy, he has been coming to Crewe CC for years. Oskar had a major influence on the derby match on Tuesday. League champions Crewe B were expected to beat Crewe C, but Oskar, playing for the C’s, won the only decisive game of the match, leaving the old-timers to slug out some hard fought draws. Crewe C 2.5 – Crewe B 1.5
Now I think about it, if Crewe CC fielded a junior team it might come out on top against a good few teams in the NSDCA league. On Monday night Jamie Roberts, another junior, played his first game for the A team. Even though he was full of germs, he was close to winning. One of those fundamental rules in chess is that if you are a pawn or two up in a rook ending, it’s a draw; whereas if you are a pawn or two down in a rook ending, it’s a loss. In the end Jamie had to agree a draw in time trouble.
Great to have Jamie on the “A” team, even though our trip to Macclesfield did not go too well. Things started badly with a battle with the ticket machine in car park, and only got worse. We came away on the wrong end of the 2.5/1.5 scoreline.
The club secretary keeps an eye on the numbers and told me that on Tuesday “only” 53 players turned up. The league is now under way, as are the main internal competitions. Harry G is already on 2/2 in the main championship; there may or may not be a substantial reward for the person who can end his 2 year unbeaten run in this event. Just to show that our older members can play a bit, Neville is on 2/2 in the second division, and Phil G is on 2/2 in the third division.
It’s all happening, come down to St Mary’s for a look.
The NSDCA league season got underway this week with 3 of our 12 teams in action, while 2 teams were sidelined by opposition postponements.
Div 2 – D team – won at Cheddleton 2.5-1.5, with David H winning and draws from Simon L, Ebube and Pawel.
Div 4 – I team – won against Gables B 2.5-1.5, with Tim and Phil winning, backed up by Steve B’s draw.
Div 5 – K team – lost vs Meir 1-3, with Lee B picking up our sole point.
Meanwhile at a packed Caritas Centre on Tuesday (59 members + 2 visiting teams), the Summer knockout semi-finals were all completed to give line ups for the finals as:
Oh what a night – to remember – on 9th September 2025 as we held the 11th Annual Time & Point Handicap with a massive 56 players taking part; 60 members attending in a record turn-out plus a number of spectators and parents sat around the hall’s perimiter.
As usual the night started with a little expected chaos, as two members failed to arrive out of the 55 entries which caused hiccups with 1st round pairings. This was compensated for by two late entries and just after a bye was awarded to the odd numbered mid range player, we had another new arrival.
This was the first time the club was using its Swiss Manager software and Harry Gardiner took on the challenge of sorting byes, withdrawals, new players and pairings which was pretty daunting. Harry did a phenomenal job, after Keith Dudeney had expertly input all the 1st round results, as we emerged with pairings for the 2nd round at 8.25pm, a little behind schedule. However the 2nd round started at exactly the same time as the 2024 event, which was a credit to Harry’s efforts bearing in mind we had 20 more players than the previous year
(Andy Raeburn looking confident before the start of play)
After this things ran a little more smoothly as the Events officer started reducing time allowed in all games with an excess of 20 minutes in total. As regular readers will know this 5 round event is unique as it gives handicaps to most players to add to their scores as well as extra time for lower rated members. This makes it very difficult for the top players to win the competition as they need to score 5/5 to have a chance.
By the time we got to the end of Round 4, it was time to work out who had a chance of winning before we started the final round. And what excitement this created as it was announced 3 players were on 4.5 pts after 4 rounds (incl handicaps) and then there were a further 11 on 4pts, with 3 players on 4/4 and others on 4 pts due to their handicaps being added to their running scores. On top of all this David missed one other player who was 4.5 pts !
Luckily as the results rolled in for round 5, just one player emerged with 5.5 pts which was Richard Fish who had scored 4/5 plus his 1.5pts handicap. From the group of 3 who were on 4/4, two players drew and eliminated themselves from the Trophy chase, as Carmel Barwick was the only member to complete the course with 5/5 which guarantees an automatic share of 1st place.
And so we came to the conclusion of the competition which required the Armageddon tie-break to be applied. Carmel won the toss for choice of colour, selecting white thus gaining an extra minute on her standard allowance of 5 mins, while Richard had 11 minutes and just needed a draw to win the trophy.
See the play-off game here …. which ended in dramatic style with Carmel emerging victorious with just two seconds to spare. A great credit to both finalists who played in such a sporting manner, with chairman Dave applying his Arbiter skills in a tense climax.
The scores and results can be seen on the sheet below taken from Swiss-Manager, with handicaps added afterwards to show Final scores and positions
Congratulations to Carmel who becomes the 10th different winner of this event, with Richard as runner-up. There were some great performances as youngsters JJ Patrick and Jack Patullo finished joint 3rd with 5 pts alongside the ever-youthful Mal Green.
Thanks go to everyone who played and contributed to a fantastic night, and special mentions go to Harry and Keith for their work with the Swiss-Manager software and the team of clock setters (Harry, Dave Price, Lukasz) as well as those that set up the room at the start of the evening (Barrie, Doug, Harry & Dave P).
It has been a long hot one, and my tomato plants are still gamely popping out the last goodies of the summer, but time stops for no chess club, and the internal individual leagues are slowly starting to bud some results. Nev, in Divison 2, Phl and Tim in Divison 3 and Ian in Divison 4, all bagged points.
No less than 37 games were played in the Grand Prix Rapidplay on Tuesday. Yup; 37. The Grand Prix is a great new internal tournament special to Crewe Chess Club. It was dreamed up as a simple way of getting new and lower rated players as much rated chess as they can eat. If you enter this contest, you can play as many rapidplay games as you like. The winner is the one who has the highest pecentage score of those who have played 10 games or more. This week Harry and Dave H were kept busy by a heaving pack of players, desperate for another game, and another and another. Jack Patullo, and Freddy Lee Cooper are vying for first place in a competition that will end soon.
The club social room is normally packed, as you can see below, with people playing skittles, bug house, moaning about defeats, and so on. This week things were different, the room was made ready for club legend Richard Lee, who had prepared a training session for us; move over Ben Finegold. Richard has long been concerned about how rubbish we all are and has beeen threatening to teach us some stuff for ages.
Richard is on the right, in the social room.
As Alekhine said (maybe), chess is an ocean where a gnat may drink and an elephant may bathe. Chess is endlessly beautiful, so where do you start? Well, Richard lead us to the shore and took us for a paddle into bishop endings. He had clearly done a lot of prep for this, not only collecting some fascinating problems, but also he had put it all on powerpoint, to make it easier for us to get what he was on about. He would set up a position, let us argue about it until ours heads hurt, and then he would explain the solution. Some positions were solved by one or two of us, after much nudging. Some of the problems we found impossible, but, knowing us, that will not surprise you. It was a very enjoyable session and, on behalf of the baffled and delighted bunch of members who took part, I cannot thank Richard enough.
Below is one of the positions we looked at, a composition from way back in 1928, by the Sarychev brothers; a thing of beauty is a joy forever.
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
