MSCL AGM Agenda

I've been sent the Agenda and Proposed Rule Changes for the Mid-Sussex League AGM on 12th June in Lewes. I've circulated them to a few people but if anyone else would like to see the documents please ask and I'll email them. They may appear on the MSCL website in due course but they don't seem to be there yet.

Hastings

Another success occurred at Hastings on Sunday. A team of eight comprising members with a grade of less than 120 played a similar team from the Hastings club.
Results were: Bob Davies draw, Rob Gotay win, Andrew Caswill loss, Rob Counsell win, Carl Rabey loss, Dave Waldon win, Sylvia Card draw, Andrew Shoulders win.
 Overall a successful win for Brighton&Hove of 5 to 3.Well done.

McArthur Cup Presentation

Paul Buswell, SCCA tournament controller and Hastings chaiman, presents the trophy to our captain, Paul Batchelor. Congratulations to all the McArthur Cup team - Luke Rutherford, Brian Denman, John Henshaw, Geoff James, Paul Batchelor and Chris Lowe - for a very exciting finish in Hastings yesterday.

The McArthur Cup is a Sussex County Chess Association knock-out competition which this year included Bognor and Arun, Brighton and Hove, Hastings and St. Leonards and Horsham. There's more on BBC Radio Sussex in an interview with Bernard Cafferty, broadcast on Saturday Breakfast yesterday morning. If you missed it it can still be heard at 1:53 to 1:57 on BBC iPlayer.

Mc Arthur Cup etc

Cometh the hour, cometh the man. With a minute left on his clock Luke Rutherford prevailed in a Quick play finish to clinch the Mc Arthur cup for Brighton & Hove for the Fourth consecutive year. Thank you to everybody who contributed to this achievement. Well done and congratulations. The double was last achieved by us in 2004.

Woodpushers' Rapidplay

If you don't know what to do with yourself now the league season's over don't forget the Woodpushers' Rapidplay event on Tuesday evening. Still some places left for a three-game evening and a follow-on next Tuesday.

Yes!!!

Apparently the second team were victorious last night!!
Well done - I have no further details.

The fourth team also won 3½-1½.

Exciting finishes

Congratulations to the first team on proving to be the best and coming top of the Mid-Sussex League.

We have two matches left, both to be played tonight: the fourth team, playing away, are already assured of promotion to the second division, and the second team only need to beat Woodpushers 2 at home this evening to make it into the first division next season - no pressure! So many congrats to the fourth team on the success of a very determined effort and best of luck tonight for the second team. With a bit of luck, and an extra team, we will be back to two teams in each division next season. (I can't, unfortunately, make it tonight so perhaps someone could blog the result?)

Also big congrats to our talented nipper Callum who took part in the England Squad Trials at the weekend; he didn't just win a place on the U11 England Team, he came joint 2nd! He has already been booked for two fixtures and is very excited!!

First Team wins Division One of the Mid-Sussex League

For anyone not aware. The First team defeated Eastbourne One 3-2 yesterday to clinch Division 1 of the Mid-Sussex League. Wins were recorded by Mustapha Othman and Luke Rutherford. Geoffrey James and John Henshaw drew their games. I myself was unable to get time off for this match. I do however offer my hearty congratulations to the team for this important win.

Dates for your diary

Tuesday 12th June: MSCL AGM  at Lewes Chess Club

Saturday 16th June: home match against St. Albans Chess Club
 
Thursday 6th September: Brighton and Hove Chess Club AGM

Saturday 29th September: home match against Dieppe Chess Club

e2e4 report

This Chessbase report of e2e4 events, written by Steve Giddins, features the last Brighton event. If I'm not mistaken the first Brighton picture features Andrew Shoulders and (I think) Charles Holcolmbe (seated,facing away).

http://chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=7945

Holcombe Handicap

More details of the above tournament are now diplayed on the club notice-board.
Eighteen people have entered the tournament. Names are placed in alphabetical order. The names of players are shown below so that people can start to arrange their games.
There are two preliminary rounds, to be completed please by Saturday 5th May.
Preliminary round : 1) P. Benson v M. Cain. 2) N. Tasker v O. Weiss.
Please choose colours and your time handicaps have ben calculated and shown against names on the notice-board.
Round 1 : Please complete by Saturday 2nd June.
a) Winner of P. Benson v M. Cain play A. Caswill.
b) M. Cedrez v M. Chou.
c) S. Chadwick v R. Counsell
d) R. Davies v A. De. Silver.
e) K. Gee v C. Holcombe.
f) R. Jones v C. Rabey.
g) A. Shoulders v J. Smuts.
h) A. Stanton play winner of N. Tasker v O. Weiss.
Note due to the generosity of Charles the winner will receive at the AGM a cheque for £75 and the runner-up a cheque for £25. Not obligatory but the remaining contestants will gratefully receive free drinks.

Happy Easter!

Congratulations to Andrew Shoulders on winning the U60 grading prize on 2.5/5 in the U120 section of the Coulsdon Easter Congress (£35).

We are open as usual on Easter Saturday.

Woodpusher Rapidplay

Julian (of the Avenue Bridge Club and Woodpushers Chess Club) is organising a rapidplay tournament to take place over two consecutive Tuesday evenings. The details are as follows:

WOODPUSHERS  CHESS  CLUB                    

Avenue Bridge Club, 15 Third Avenue,

Hove, BN3 2PB.  Tel: 01273 775752.

Email: AvenueBridgeClub@aol.com

1^st Tuesday Night Rapidplay

Six round swiss rapidplay, held over two Tuesday evenings. Advance registration by email preferred – pay on evening.

Tuesdays 29^th May and 5^th June.

Schedule

6.45 – 7.15 pm Payment taken from registered players.

7.15 – 7.29 pm Payment and registration from those previously  

 unregistered; first come, first served.

7.30 – 10.45 pm 3 x 30 minutes rapidplay games.

Entry fee £10.      Students/Juniors £7.     One night only £5.  

Unregistered surcharge £1 extra.

Players joining on 5^th June assumed to have 1½ points.

We are hoping to make this the first of a series of swiss rapidplay tournaments, designed not just to give players competitive opportunities, but to support the Avenue Bridge Club and both Brighton and Woodpushers Chess Clubs. Half the monies taken will be given back as prizes – prize list to be published when registration is complete.

Not wanting to be overly ambitious with our first event of this nature, capacity will be limited to the first 30 registered players – we may review this after the first event. So the answer is clear …

Do not delay – register today!

Club Championship - the semi-finals

The Club Championship has been running very nicely, producing some unusual pairings and some interesting games. I don't know how the stronger players view it - ordeal or doddle - but speaking as a weaker player it's always instructive to take on some one stronger, and sometimes the wheel seems to turn on such subtleties rather than obvious wizardry. We are now at the exciting juncture of the semi-finals when the four top seeds - yes, no upsets in the seeding - will play with both colours against their opponent. See the Club Championship page for how it's gone so far.

The other tournaments are also coming along nicely with all results up to date.

On the brink...

  Two good wins last week. On Thursday we overcame Horsham. Winners Luke, Brian, Geoff and John. On the Saturday Hastings' 2 were our opposition. Wins from Geoff and myself were instrumental in our victory. Now this Thursday we are on the brink. Incidentally the last time Brighton/Brighton & Hove won the league with a 100 per cent score was the 1990/91 Season. Will we make history Thursday? I hope so.

Thursday bridge

Space will be limited tomorrow as we have a fifth team match and part of a bridge match going on upstairs. The bridge will mean the back room is unavailable for internal matches. The bar will be available for friendlies if we need to have quiet in the front room, depending on whether any matches have been arranged. (With apologies from Julian for the late notice.)

Holcombe Handicap

This knockout tournament will commence after Easter and last for 3/4 months. A time handicap is calculated depending on grade difference. This enables players, of different strengths, to hopefully have more of an even game.
It is a light-hearted tournament. The results of each game are not sent for grading. However Charles Holcombe has kindly offered a prize of £75 for the winner and £25 for the runner-up.
It is a knockout tournament and therefore players who enter, must be prepared to complete their games by a definite date.
A list for names is on the club noticeboard, or if one wishes one may enter by sending me an email.
Closing date for entry is Thursday 5th April.

Game viewer

Hi All,

I had some problems embedding a game in this blog, but it seems to work now. I think the problem was that the viewer does not support 'non-standard' .pgn features such as variations, some points to note are:

1) Don't put variations in the pgn file, keep it simple, annotations go between {squiggly brackets}
2) On our resources page, click the large grey 'IMPORT PGN' button.
3) Paste PGN into box
4) If .pgn import is successful it should return to the viewer front page
5) Next to 'IMPORT' button you will now see a box with the code you need to copy, check the 'small' tickbox to display as below, otherwise it is too big for the page.
6) Copy code, then when you are writing the blog entry click the 'Edit HTML' tab BEFORE you paste the code/link int the post.
7) NOTE that if you 'Preview' the post the replay board will be visible but will not replay (this confused me for a while!)

Play Online Chess

[Event "Corus (Group B)"]
[Site "Wijk aan Zee NED"]
[Date "2009.01.19"]
[Round "3"]
[White "Nigel Short"]
[Black "Erwin L'Ami"]
[Result "1-0"]
[WhiteELO "?"]
[BlackELO "?"]
[EventDate "2009.01.17"]
[ECO "C48"]
[WhiteElo "2663"]
[BlackElo "2603"]
[PlyCount "37"]

1. e4 e5 {Comments work} 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Nc3 Nc6 4. Bb5 Nd4 5. Nxe5 Nxb5 6.
Nxb5 c6 7. Nc3 Qe7 8. Nf3 Nxe4 9. O-O Nxc3 10. dxc3 d5 11. Bg5 Qd6 12. Re1+
Be6 13. Nd4 c5 14. Nxe6 fxe6 15. Qh5+ g6 {comment test} 16. Qg4 Kf7 17. c4 d4
18. Qf3+ Kg8 19. Bf6 1-0

1

A nice option to get the bigger size is to select the pop-out version which give a link as below, remember to pase the code in 'Edit HTML' mode !

Nigel Short-Erwin L'Ami

[Event "Corus (Group B)"]
[Site "Wijk aan Zee NED"]
[Date "2009.01.19"]
[Round "3"]
[White "Nigel Short"]
[Black "Erwin L'Ami"]
[Result "1-0"]
[WhiteELO "?"]
[BlackELO "?"]
[EventDate "2009.01.17"]
[ECO "C48"]
[WhiteElo "2663"]
[BlackElo "2603"]
[PlyCount "37"]

1. e4 e5 {Comments work} 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Nc3 Nc6 4. Bb5 Nd4 5. Nxe5 Nxb5 6.
Nxb5 c6 7. Nc3 Qe7 8. Nf3 Nxe4 9. O-O Nxc3 10. dxc3 d5 11. Bg5 Qd6 12. Re1+
Be6 13. Nd4 c5 14. Nxe6 fxe6 15. Qh5+ g6 {comment test} 16. Qg4 Kf7 17. c4 d4
18. Qf3+ Kg8 19. Bf6 1-0

Geekdom

Thanks, Kev. Didn't realise you'd have to have your own very cool blog to pull this off, which now has its own link on the Links page. Hopefully the problems with the game viewer can be sorted as it would be excellent to have a Members' Games archive on the blog. I have labelled yours as a start. This is what the Club Championship is all about (and winning it, of course). Meanwhile there's a forum for debate on chess/tech with the blogger on hand, a subject many of us find nearly (more?) as challenging as chess.