We began this season with a net loss of 4 players, including 3 of 1st or 2nd division standard. We reluctantly decided to drop our newly promoted 2nd team from division 1, but that still left us with fewer players than boards to fill. Our 1st team narrowly won their first match 3-2 away to Nomads 1. Mike B unexpectedly […]

The NCA Blitz Championship took place on Tuesday 18 Aug at an excellent new venue, Gotham Memorial Hall.It was organised and well run by Stephen Humphreys who was ably assisted by Ruth. There were 35 entrants including 10 from Gambit. It had the same format as last year, run as a single Open section, with grading, junior and senior prizes, […]

This season’s NCC took place in Selston. Only 19 people entered, probably a result of the location, time of year, relatively short notice and not enough publicity. This compares to 23 last season and 22 the season before. I understand that Neil had struggled to find a suitable venue in Kirkby earlier in the season due to lack of help […]

Last weekend saw the grandly named ‘Nottingham Summer Chess Festival’ at the Dunkirk Community Centre. It combined a 4 round ‘Congress’ (3 sections) with a 4 round Rapidplay (2 sections) and a 7 round Blitz (1 section). A total of 55 people played (25 local players), with 20 playing in all 3 events, 15 in two events and 20 in […]

An unusually low number of 11 members played this season, quite a contrast to the 27 who played just two seasons ago, with several who normally play being unavailable due to holidays etc. The format was a 5 round Swiss held over two consecutive Tuesdays with 24 minutes for each player plus or minus time (in multiples of 4 minutes) […]

It was the usual format of 5 rounds of two games at 25’ + 10” increments, ran during the season with a window of about 6 weeks for each round. The trickiest part was trying to find Tuesdays when neither player in a pairing was playing a league match, especially when many of us were helping out other teams. Somehow […]

We stretch ourselves by entering so many teams. Although it allows members to play a lot it also relies a lot on members being willing to turn out for teams other than their own and often at short notice. Thankfully we have many members who happily help out other teams and they are greatly appreciated by our captains who have […]

9 members entered the congress which had almost 200 competitors in total. Ronnie was our best performer. He entered the Intermediate section as 44th seed out of 53 and finished joint 11th with 3 points; with a win in round 5 he would have finished joint 3rd. He will gain 20 rating points as a result. Marshall, in his 1st […]

This took place at the weekend and 169 players took part. Open Section. Almost everyone expected this to be dominated by GM Mark Hebden and IM Jonah Willow, but it did not work out like that at all. In round 3, Mark lost to Nigel Birtwistle and Jonah could only draw with Shabir Okhai, great results for our league players. […]

We entered 7 teams again this season. Here is a summary of how they are doing so far. Gambit 1. Any hope of challenging for the 1st division title disappeared once Florian informed us he was moving away from Nottingham, meaning he might only be able to play in occasional away matches. Even had he been a regular it would […]