Culcheth Chess Club Blog

Greeting chess friends,

After a long enforced absence from the chessboard cautious discussions are underway with the aim of restarting over the board chess.

We wanted to keep club members and any new potential club members updated of our progress and we would be interested on hearing your opinions on the below. Feedback is important to us even if you have never visited the chess club before if you have any comments do feel free to let us know your thoughts in the comments box below (you just need to register for an account to comment on the blog but this is quick and easy to do).

Sadly our old venue at The Daten Sports Club in Culcheth has undergone big refurbishments and we no longer feel it is a suitable venue for a chess club. We are grateful however to Nick Burriss in this regard who has managed to secure for us a new venue for chess at “The Pack Horse” in Culcheth https://www.facebook.com/pack.culcheth/.

The room is of a good size and there would be no fee for the room hire involved which is certainly a boon. The only downsides so far with this is disabled access (the room is on the 1st floor) and lighting. The lighting issue should be easily solved by the purchase of some lamps.

With the new venue being agreed a suggested date for chess resumption has been sometime in September. We so far have no details on how many of our neighbouring chess clubs are set to recommence by then. Ideally we will be playing league matches against other teams, however in the absence of this Damian has suggested we could perhaps begin a Club Championship in place of League matches. There is no reason the Championship could not be rated and games played against each other in the same manner which we did in the league. What we would need for this however is enough active players to make it work and the demand for this is currently unknown? Would you be willing to play chess on a regular basis? Again let us know your thoughts on if you would be interested in this in the comments section.

We are also having discussions on what precautions people would feel comfortable with with regards to Covid. Chess can be seen as high risk for transmission of the virus being played indoors at close quarters to your opponent, proposals so far to mitigate this risk have been that all players should wear face masks for the time being and the room should be well ventilated windows left open and tables spaced as far apart as possible. Again we would be most interested in hearing what measures we can take to make you feel comfortable in attending a regular chess club night again.

For now stay safe all and we hope to see you at the chess club in our new home at a date not too far away in the future!

Whilst we still seem to be a long way from being able to play competitive over the board chess again, a few of us have started playing on the chess.com platform over recent weeks. (As an added bonus see Rob Furness’ livestream coverage of his games from below!)

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/872367913

While in the long run we hope to get back to normal chess, for the time being we would like to open an invitation to any local chess players that would like to join us online.

If you would like to play just follow the steps below. Time control at the moment is 15 minutes each with a 5 second per move increment. Maximum number of rounds ideally would be 5 but in reality due to number of entrants often ends up being 3 or 4 rounds. If we can get to at least 10 regular players that should allow for a 5 round event. If your new to the club or thinking of joining in the future it’s a great way to get to know us!

To join any wednesday please follow the steps below.

1. Create an account on http://www.chess.com this is a free online chess platform.
2. Request to join https://www.chess.com/club/culcheth-chess-club this is where our wednesday event is held. (please include your name in order for me to accept you), all players in the local area or with previous connections to the chess club are welcome.
3. Once accepted to the club, register to play in the weekly tournament. Registration starts from 7pm and games will start promptly at 8pm every wednesday.

Good luck and have fun, the link to this wednesdays event can be found inside https://www.chess.com/club/culcheth-chess-club

We want to attract all skill levels, don’t be discouraged if you lose your first couple of games we do have some strong players at the club! However the tournament is structured in a way that you should be paired against someone on the same score as yourself as the event goes on.

Hope to see you there.

It is with great sadness we report the passing of a long standing local Chess player from Penketh. Below are a few words from his friend Mike Selway;

“Dave sadly died on 19 Sept. He contracted cancer just before last Christmas & gradually deteriorated until he became hospitalised finally succumbing after being moved to a hospice. Until lockdown in March I visited him at his maisonette in Culcheth for a weekly game & after lockdown we played first of all over the telephone & then via Skype. To begin with I couldn’t beat him as his grade was far higher than mine although we did have some great close games. His game gradually became affected by his condition & I kept having to go over the pertaining board position as his concentration was beginning to suffer. Consequently I was winning more & more games. We played our last game on 28 June. Unfortunately it remains unfinished but I have kept a record of it. It would be nice to play it out at the Club if & when we can resume activities. He called me from hospital a few weeks ago to tell me that he had just been informed that the cancer was terminal & he didn’t have very long to live. He was very upbeat about it & it was almost as if he was phoning to tell me that he’d just bought a new car. I hope that when my time comes I can be just as philosophical!

(Dave’s final, unfinished game against Mike is below)