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 […]

7 members entered this tournament organised by Domenico Napolitan, held at the Dunkirk Community Centre this weekend. Domenico aims to hold several more of these next year. There were two sections, each 6 rounds, 15” + 5’ increments, and we won both sections! Mike B stormed to victory in the Open section with 5.6 points. In the final round, facing […]

8 members entered the 3rd Derbyshire Congress at Trent College in Long Eaton last weekend. Mike B scored 3.5 / 5 in the Open section, ending up joint 3rd, half a point behind the winners. He had 2 wins and 3 draws. In the final round he beat the Nottinghamshire County Champion Alexandr Klimchik. There were 4 members in the […]

The Nottingham heat of the ECF UK Blitz Championship Qualifiers was held at the High School on Sunday with 37 players each playing 15 games at a rate of 3’ + 2”. With at least 25 minutes between rounds, it was a relatively leisurely pace. The national emergency test alarm fell nicely between rounds, with the control team sensibly starting […]