Wednesday 28 October 2009

Team Three at Massey F (27th Oct)

The third team (Roy, James, Joe and Chris) played in the second round of the Divisional Cup at Massey Ferguson Social Club. Our worthy opponents were Coventry Chess, including nine year old Rajan who made Chris really work for her win. You can see this below - with apologies for losing the way in the notation at the end. (Click through to move 16 and see whether you can guess what happened next move.)



Sad to say this was our only win of the evening. James concluded his winning streak with his first loss this season - on time after a tough game. Thanks to Joe for organising us all and for transport. We will be back at the same location next Tuesday and hoping to do better.

Friday 23 October 2009

second team 20 Oct v Uni 'C'

Even with the first board defaulted to Rugby we knew it would be difficult to gain a good result from the game, Simon Turner, John Hall and Jim McDonald all played well giving their opponents something to think about but positions and the lack of minor errors gave the Uni team the edge making the final resul 1-3.

Hail the heroes at Blogger (and heroines too!)

This is off the subject of chess for a moment so if you really can't stand computers of the internet look away ... (but then you probably would not be reading this message either :-)).

This morning the blog was not working. In fact all sorts of blogger blogs were not working for something like 30 minutes. It will happen from time to time. If it happens to you do not panic. The best thing to do is go away for a while and come back later when its fixed. The good thing about blogger is that it has a lot of people using it. So if you get a message that says its not working and giving you a code then putting this into a Google search will probably bring you to a solution or - as happened this morning - a whole mass of people with the same problem. Which at least tells you its not just you with problems. Check out this discussion if you want to see just how busy Blogger is when things go wrong - talk about work pressure ...

The problem was fixed within an hour. Bearing in mind that this is a free service and I suspect that the someones fixing it were working in the middle of the night that is impressive. So this service (these blogs) are hosted on a free service, but its an impressive one with some excellent customer care. Better by far than some of the other services I pay for.

Wednesday 21 October 2009

Sue's first game: where did it all go wrong?

This game ended after two hours with my king trapped on h1 by a queen on h8 and a rook on f2 but my brain was scrambled by then so I'm not sure how it happened :-(

Oct 20 First team

No glory for us last night losing 0.5 - 3.5 to Uni A !

Nalin should have won, Jonathan was slightly on top but fell away at the end, and Bob fell into the following rather clever trap. Only Martin came away with anything - a draw. Oh well wait till the away match!

Although this is a loss - its a neat game with a nice combination by White.

Advice please ...

I played a charming student last night who comprehensively slaughtered me. But it did have some interesting moments. I've put up here the position going into black's move 11. (This is something you can do in the PGN editor if you choose manual set up and clear the board and then set out the peices).

I played d6, a wasted move disregarding the threat of Ne5. Could I have done something more promising with this? Its the sort of position that I always seem to play badly ...

Tuesday 20 October 2009

Leamington match 19/10/9

A lesson in chess for the whole Rugby team from our home match with the Daventry team.
1, Nigel Malka, 2, Simon Turner and 3, John Hall all lost

Nigel moved too quickly and didn't see the the danger till too late and this time it was position that he lost and 20 moves later he suffered for it.
Simon again made a move and didn'y see the danger to his queen,
John had the most even game and it was all down to a pawn ending, looked like a draw but a race offen doesn't end in a draw.

Friday 16 October 2009

A good win according to Bob

This was played a week after a horrible loss, albeit against a very very strong player, so I felt like I needed confidence and most importantly a win. In this game black comes up with a lot of tactics but his general plan was not great. I apologise for the unusual opening but you will be surprised at what bad moves and plans decent players will come up with when faced with unexpected moves! Onto the game...

Thursday 15 October 2009

Tuesday 13th matches

A team, A good win from Nalin (but you just have to get these wins higher up the board order now!), I played poorly and lost , Martin Wilson looked to have a pretty good game early on, was a pawn up, but his opponent found som king side counterplay and the game was drawn.
Jonathon drew his match - I saw it as I left - cliff hanging stuff - and they agreed a draw due to mutual panic. They measured the amount of time left and Jonathon had 8 seconds left and his opponent 7 seconds.
great time handling guys !
Anyway - match result Rugby A 2 Uni B 2

B team ????
C team, I think we lost 1-3 but congratultions to James Mendes on keeping his 100% score !

Wednesday 14 October 2009

New Coventry Chess Club site

New websites for local chess clubs are springing up all over. The CDCL flags up that Coventry Chess Club now has a new site.



The web address (URL) is http://coventrychessclub.yolasite.com/ if you want to check it out. They have a 'Trainng' section (links to chess quizzes). Perhaps something we could look into? Its possible to make some using the PGN editor (see Instructions link in RHS colum of this webspage).

You will see I am not mentioning my game last night ... which was unmentionable. :-(

Tuesday 13 October 2009

Leamington League Team in Chipping Camden (8th Oct results)

Sorry I originally put this message in the comments section of a previous post.....


Leamington League Div3
Away vs Chipping Camden
08 Oct 09.

Rugby team: Jim MacDonald Roy Talbot and Joe Oswell

Rugby lost 2-1.

Thanks to Roy & Joe for turning-out as CCamden takes an hour+ to get there!!

Leamngton League (12th Oct)

Leamington League Div 3
Home to Kenilworth C
12 October

Rugby won 2.5 to 0.5. Simon Turner & Jim MacDonald won; John Hall drew. Simon's game finished at 22:30!

A steady start to the season, with 2 wins & 2 losses.

Wednesday 7 October 2009

The third team

Still not sure of the result as I haven't been able to contact Joe.
But anyway it was at least a draw because although Raj was defaulted, James Mendes won on top and - absolutely brilliantly - in her first game in the league the provider of our new blog - Chris Pegler - won. Even though as she says it was against someone else relatively new, it's still a great achievement! So (although she is a bit shy over it) I thought we ought to put the game in our blog. After all Chris they won't come every week !

Second team games

The first week (Sept 29th) the B team did brilliantly against Newdigate winning 3.5 - 0.5
Nigel drew, Simon Turner, John Hall and Jim McDonald all won !

Obviously they they don't want to scare the opposition too much at the moment so last night they eased up by losing 1-3.
I'm not sure if this is double bluff or not because it was against Newdigate again !!!!!

Nigel drew, John Hall lost, Jim McDonald drew, and Pradip Shah (after starting well) lost.

First matches of the season

As you all know we had our first matches of the season last night (Well not quite - Nigels team couldn't wait and had to start last week !).
I don't yet know the results for the B and C teams but the A team managed a draw - Jonathon and Martin both drawing and (sadly) Nalin losing. Anyway to keep things level I managed to squeeze out a win in the following game.