The 2024-25 season began last night (week 0 in the NCA Fixtures) with two matches between teams in our club, Gambit 2 v Gambit 1 and Gambit 5 v Gambit 4. The matches were affected by several members’ unavailability, a potential flight delay, a car problem and a traffic issue. Otherwise it was a perfectly normal evening, and we comfortably […]

The now traditional pre-season Swizzle took place on Tuesday, featuring 14 members, 3 new members and 2 quests. As usual it was a 5 round time handicap Swiss. Players got time depending on their and their opponent’s colour group (1900+ = Blue, 1700-1899 = Red, 1500-1699 = Green, <1500 = Black), with the biggest difference being when Blue played Black; […]

Mike Barnes won his 8th county title this weekend coming 1st on 4 points, closely followed by Dave Flynn, Eldars Gulijevs and Shabir Okhai on 3.5 points. Florian and Drag finished on 3 points and Paul, playing in his 1st weekender, scored 1.5 points. Mike beat Florian in round 4 after Florian had beaten Drag in round 2. In the […]

26 players entered in week one, a record attendance. In round 1 there were 2 shock results with Marian beating Graeme and Leo beating Mark, while the rest of the higher seeds avoided slip ups. Round 2 saw more shock results as Peter G-M beat Drag and young Albert beat Keith, a man 8 decades older than him. Felipe played […]

After 5 rounds of our club’s ECF rated Rapidplay we have a tie between Mike Barnes and Florian Biermann, both on 8.5 points after both won their 5th round games v Felipe Lessa & Drag Sudar respectively. There will now be a two match playoff in July. The final standings are:- 8.5 Barnes, Biermann F6.0 Huthwaite, Talmacel5.5 Lessa, Radford, Sudar4.0 […]

The meeting took place at WB’s venue on Monday 20 May. There were 9 proposals; 7 passed and 2 didn’t. Four proposals that passed were either administrative or simple clarification of the rules. Three proposals were passed (by comfortable margins) with practical implications. All matches have to be played with increments. This passed without any votes against, possibly because 3 […]

13 members played in the congress. In the Open section, Mike N-E got 3 points, including an impressive win over a 2135 and a win over Drag who scored 2 points but had to face a 2126 and a 13 year old 2137 as well as Mike. Our third competitor in the Open was Jan who scored 2.5 and who […]

Our 6th team had a dramatic 3 – 1 victory over 2nd placed Nomads 3 last night to move 3 points clear of 7th placed Central 2, whom they have to play on the final day of the season. Only two hours before the match only three players were available but Graham was located and stepped in to produce a […]

Our 1st team had an emphatic 4 – 1 win over already crowned league champions Mansfield 1 on Thursday to end the season in 2nd place, one point above our 2nd team. It has been a tricky season for captain Florian as, for various unavoidable reasons, 1st team members have missed 21 of the 60 individual games, with at least […]

Report by Mike Naylor-Eade Gambit 2’s excellent season continued on Wednesday with a 3-2 win against a full strength Ashfield 1. First to finish was Felipe who lost to Dan Hardman after getting a bit cramped in the opening and never finding a way to equalise.  The other games looked a bit more promising with Jan having a nice space […]