Culcheth Chess Club Blog

This fixture was originally scheduled to take place in September but at that time a fair few of us were away on holiday. When Atherton regrettably postponed the match that was scheduled to take place on the 19th of October, it gave us an ideal opportunity to fulfil this fixture.

Thoughout the history of this blog there have been numerous match comments from captain’s describing matches along the lines of “We won the match 5 – 0 but in truth it was a much closer contest…”

Perhaps that phrase is now overused but I cannot think of a better description for this match. Long standing member Mike Rotchell came to the club at 9pm as a spectator and pointed out when he arrived every single one of the games, an hour and a half in… looked to be on a knife edge.

Perhaps it is just the nature of chess as a sport that most games are decided by a few critical moments, such seems to have been the case here as in each and every game the more experienced player managed to come out on top.

Match scorecards and some game annotations can be found below: I only have 2 games so far but more may be added to this post as and when I recieve them!

Followers of this blog can look forward to a flurry of posts in Novemeber where we may have as many as a half dozen of A and B team matches to report upon!

Jonathan V Tom (to view on the big screen)

Nick V Rob (on the big screen)

Damian V Bryan (on the big screen)

Whilst we are currently on our post season summer break, some members have been getting their chess fix playing on the online format.

Generally speaking most of these games are 5 minute affairs and as such can be wildly less accurate but also more entertaining from a neutral’s perspective then games played at the longer format!

The anonymous nature of online play also allows a more uninhibited style of play and every now and then the least of us can produce a game to be proud of.

Here are a short selection of games sent to me by members this month. If you would like your game to be included in the next edition send them to my inbox!

Nick V a German guest (open in full screen)

Ukranian member V Damian (Open in full screen)

Ilya demonstrates the power of two bishops Ilya v Chess.com member (open in full screen)

Lichess member V Dan (open here for full screen) This one’s a real miniature!

Lichess game played by Bryan Slater (Open in full screen)

Finally Jonathan Miller demonstrates a well know pitfall in the Budapest gambit that his opponent walked straight into!

Chess.com player V J Miller (Open in full screen)

The WDCL league season came to a close recently as such we can take a look back at the past year.

The A team performed solidly in division one finishing in 2nd place overall. In our key games against league winners Atherton we were edged out by a single point on both occasions. Our only other loss came in the A team V B team fixture towards the end of the year in which we spread our strength (with the title at that point already having been decided) in order to give everyone present a competitive game.

The B team in the end survived to fight another season in Division 1, they got off to a rocky start and for a fair bit of the year were glued to the bottom of the table. In the end relegation was to boil down to the final match which was to be played v Northwich to decide upon who would be relegated. Rather anticlimactically Northwich were unable to raise a team for this fixture and were therefore relegated.

Mike Selway led the “4th” team in the Richard Furness league to 2nd place. Mike fittingly ended the season with a fine individual win against a 1600 rated player.

Nick Cooke’s “3rd” team in the same division finished further down the table despite ending the year on a high note with a match win against Winwick.

As for the Cup’s Andy Coe led us to our only silverware of the season with a fine win in the Kalmar Cup.

Our Peninsular cup team got demolished in round 1 against a resurgent Northwich early on in the year, the Kalmar Shield team also suffered an early exit.

All in all a positive year, a few old faces were missing who we hope may return in the future. We welcomed a few fantastic new members to our ranks.

On a personal note, Damian won division 1 player of the season with a score of 6.5/8. (Lee Kay from Atherton should have pipped me to this but he let me off when Atherton defaulted the final fixture.)

A mention to Ilya Dubov as well who won 8 of his ten games across all competitions this season.

Final table’s below: