Club Championship 5th Round Draw

The draw for the 5th round of the Club Championship has now been made and can be viewed here. Ideally, the top two games, which will decide the Championship, should be played before Christmas. The remaining games don't matter so much, but will still need to be played for rating purposes.

There is the possibility that there could be a 2 or 3 way tie, depending on results, and Tom would like your views on how to decide the winner in this instance. There are several ways we could do this - decide it based on the head to head results of the players concerned, have play-off games between the players concerned or, simplest of all, use the Performance Rating of the players concerned. The player with the highest Performance Rating for the tournament is deemed the winner as their games have been played against stronger opposition. Please let Tom know your thoughts.

Ashby 2 Still Winless

Ashby 2 are still without a win in Division 2. A 4-1 defeat at the hands of Market Harborough 2 leaves us going into 2025 with just one draw from our 5 matches. Draws from Patrick Buckley on board 1, against Ashby Old Boy Andrew Foulds, and Steve (yet again !!) on board 4 were all we could manage.  

Elsewhere, in the U1450 Championship, James Foster beat Paul Mayer in their Semi-Final match to set up a Final against Mick Brown on the 19th December.

In the Club Championship, Nick Wyld beat John Howlett in the remaining 4th Round match. The draw for the 5th, and final, Round should be online in the next few days. 

Ashby 1 Juggernaut Rumbles On

Ashby 1 made it 5 wins out of 5 in Division 2 after beating second placed Loughborough 2 by 3.5 - 1.5 last night. This completes their fixtures for 2024 and they will be heading into the New Year with a 2 point lead at the top of the table. They will kick off 2025 against Anstey 2, who have joined Loughborough 2 in joint second place.

Performance Stats

Please use the following links to view the Performance Stats for both the Club Championship and the U1450 Championship. These stats show your Performance Rating, rather than your actual rating, in each competition.

Club Championship

U1450 Championship

In the U1450 Championship, some players are shown as having played less games than others. This is because Darren and Doris Pearce defaulted some of their games. In addition to this, any games involving Colin Marley are not included as he is not a Member of the ECF.

More Tips From Tom

Tom Dove has submitted another excellent contribution to the website, this time on the subject of Gambits. Click on the Tom's Tips tab (and you won't get much more alliteration than that !!) to view his thoughts.

David Reynolds Cup Update

The standings in the David Reynolds Cup have been updated to include games played up until the end of November. James Foster has jumped into the lead, closely followed by Tom Dove.

Tom's Tips

I received a very interesting and informative email from Tom Dove this morning, suggesting ways of improving your chess openings. I have published these under the tab Tom's Tips at the top of this page. Please take the time to read it as I am sure you will all find it very helpful and instructive. Many thanks to Tom for taking the time to write it.

Cup Presentations

Les was presented with the trophy for winning the  LRCA Minor Championship by Nick Wyld last night.

Les then reciprocated by presenting the LRCA Harrod Cup to Nick.