Club Calendar

The calendar of events for the 2013/14 season is now available.

The first event is the Colchester B v Colchester C match on Wednesday 2nd October.

Essex Rapidplay

The North Essex Rapidplay Championship is being held at Writtle Chess Club on Saturday 21st September.  Anyone interested in playing should register as soon as possible - a copy of the entry form can be found here.

British Championship 2013

Adam Taylor is currently playing in the British Championship. The position below is taken from Adam's round seven game against Amy Hoare. The game has been fairly even but Adam (white) is looking for more than a draw. What was Adam's best option here to improve his winning chances?

Answer can be found in the comments for this post.

Later on in the same game, Adam's plan has been successful and he now has a winning position. There are several good moves to choose from in the diagram below - what move leads to the simplest win? Answer, again, in the comments.

Summer Quickplay Results

Ten players took part in the Summer Rapidplay (rules for the competition can be found here). The first round of matches all finished 2-0 with Clive, Nathan, Ed, Dave Chatfield and Juan beating Phil, Dave Wood, Pete, Roger and Mark respectively.

The second round of matches also all finished 2-0 meaning that going into the last round Dave C, Nathan and Juan were in the lead with 4 points each.

In the final round Dave C drew with Clive twice, Nathan beat Ed 2-0 (though had to rely on a swindle in the first game to avoid losing) and Phil picked up an excellent draw against our Spanish visitor (the highest rated player by a considerable margin), Juan.

The tournament used random pairings which did mean that some players had a considerably harder draw than others (Clive probably being the unluckiest) - final standings shown in the table below.

After the tournament Roger presented the winners of last season's club competitions with their trophies - Pete Smith won the Club Championship and Ed Goodman won the Club Shield.

 

Position	Name	NB	JH	DC	RS	CB	PD	EG	MJ	PS	DW	Total
1	Nathan Barnes							2.0		2.0	2.0	6.0
2	Juan Hernandez					2.0	1.5		2.0			5.5
3	Dave Chatfield				2.0	1.0			2.0			5.0
4	Roger Sharman			0.0						2.0	2.0	4.0
5	Clive Bellinger		0.0	1.0			2.0					3.0
6	Phil Daley		0.5			0.0		2.0				2.5
7=	Ed Goodman	0.0					0.0			2.0		2.0
7=	Mark Johnson		0.0	0.0							2.0	2.0
9=	Pete Smith	0.0			0.0			0.0				0.0
9=	Dave Wood	0.0			0.0				0.0			0.0

ECF Grades

The July 2013 ECF Grading List has been published. The grades for active Colchester players are:

Ref	Name	Sex	Age	Standard	Previous	Rapidplay	Previous
250046C	Bellinger, Clive	M		143D	143E
155695C	Daley, Philip	M		124D	124C
227455D	Duff-Cole, John A	M		91B	91B
292991A	Glenn, Samuel	M		118E
139627E	Gooding, Ian	M		167D	174C
256466L	Goodman, Ed	M		82D
286563E	King, John	M		26D	26E
213710A	Smith, Peter	M		111C	114B		117D
119459J	Sowerby, John G	M		103C	101C
272685D	Taylor, Adam C	M	15	190X	187X	194A	193X
282343D	Taylor, Nathalie	F			71D	67D	72D
276510L	Thrower, Adrian	M				67E	69E
275674C	Thrower, Ethan J	M	14			92A	87A
120924D	Wagstaff, Michael K	M		142E	142E
269649G	West, Graham	M		141E	141B
147307E	Williams, Stephen M	M		169E
290797F	Wood, David C	M		19A	19E	34X	35X

There are also a number of other Colchester players - like Dimitrios Kolomvas and Mark Johnson - who have played some graded games in the last season (but not enough to have a grade yet).

Summer Quickplay

There will be a quickplay competition on Wednesday July 31st - 15 minutes on the clock. All are welcome.

Pairings will be random with the first round pairings being made at 7:15. Two games will be played in each round (against the same opponent) - one with white and one with black. The aim is to have 3 rounds (6 games) with blitz games used to decide any ties.

New pages

Two new pages have been added to the site:

• Internal Competitions - this page gives information about the rules for the internal club competitions e.g. the club championship and the, new this year, club grand prix
• Club Honours - this page shows the winners of the main internal club competitions (since 2007)