On Tuesday 9 June, Bexhill Academy students, including 4 who are members of our club, competed in the u-14 Schools’ team championship finals at Windlesham House.
Bexhill Academy entered 2 teams, but neither had been pre-selected for Division 1, so the prestigious Butler Cup they won last year had to be returned. Nevertheless Bexhill’s 1st team won Division 2 and collected a trophy. Our juniors performed exceptionally well ;Andy Nguyen 3/3, Harry Morter 2/3, Isaac Jennings 2/3. The 4th team member who ( along with Isaac and Daniel below) has been playing regularly at the Academy chess club, Jonah Jerins scored 3/3. Andy said afterwards : ” We made a clean sweep in the first two rounds. Losses in round 3 put Harry and I in a must-win situation, but we did it.”
Juniors at the Academy are improving in play such that this year a second team was entered in Division 4 and they took a 2nd place trophy. Daniel Johnson scored 1/3, Maksim Burokas 1/3, Liam Bibin 2/3 and Ebu Udi 1/3. Liam said afterwards: “It was hard, but I enjoyed it. Somehow I beat 2 players. ”
Winner on Friday 5 June was Bill Luxton on 3.5/4 Congratulations!
Full results table from Michael Hayward who again worked tirelessly on the results and the draw for each round as well as setting up, locking up and basically everything!!
A BIG THANK YOU FROM US ALL
Excellent performances also from James Lumsden and Jonathan Mfula both on 3/4 and a noteworthy effort from Harry Morter on 2.5/4.
See our previous News page article or go to our Bexhill Grand Prix page for forthcoming tournaments 2 to 6 fordates – the next one is Friday June 5. Our Calendar page also has the dates of these events plus more of this year’s events just announced by our Chairman Bill Tracey after the recent committee meeting and planning with our tournaments organizer Michael Hayward. It’s quite an ambitious catalogue of varied sessions to keep us engaged in chess throughout the traditionally quiet summer timetable. Here is Bill’s latest update.
” Hi All
Following our committee meeting this week I am pleased to announce the full schedule of summer events.
The following are in addition to our Grand Prix events which are already posted on our website.
June19th Blitz. This will be 6 rounds of quick fire Chess with a time control of 5 minutes plus 2 seconds increments.
July 10th 960 Chess .In this form of chess the pawns start in their normal position but the major pieces will be arranged differently to how they would normally be. This means that opening theory is largely irrelevant. There will be 4 rounds with different starting positions in each. Time control will be 15 minutes plus 5 seconds increments.
July 31st. Our club championship in Rapid will take place with 5 rounds with a time control of 10 minutes plus 3 seconds increments.
August 14th Time Handicap. In this format the stronger player in each game will have less time than their opponent. The difference depends on the gap in ratings but could be as much as 9 minutes. There will be 5 rounds.
September 4th. A simultaneous exhibition will take place where our very talented junior Luke Chapman will take on all comers. It is likely that he will play 20 to 25 people at the same time. There will be no time control other than the total time for the event will be 2.5 hours.
September 25th. We have decided to run a rapid tournament open to all the clubs in Sussex. It will have 5 rounds with a time control of 10 minutes plus 3 seconds. There will be an entry fee of £10 all of which will be used as prize money. This event will be restricted to people aged 18 and over.
Hopefully as many members as possible will take part in some or all of these events, but we do recognise that fast play is not for every one so if you do not fancy playing on any given evening you will be very welcome to play social chess.
Editor : Those of us who participated in the 4th Sussex University Chess Congress on 18-19 April received this messagerecently from Sussex University. I thought it merited wider publicity on our website, both for the mention of the support we have consistently provided with equipment and for the excellent contribution of Rose Burgess as assistant arbiter. It is also worthy of recordthedetermined organisation and leadership of Hooman Honarvar who has initiated and sustained the development of chess through the Sussex University events which we, at Bexhill Chess Club, have been there for since the student-led inception at the Falmer campus. His speech at the start of the final round was inspiring for its evocation of community, peace and harmony – with the living embodiment being a gathering of a large and diverse assembly of chess players.
Here s part of the message :
” Congratulations to Candidate master Jacob Yoon, the winner of the under 2400 section of the Congress and Mr Russell Goodfellow for the under 1900 section and the joint winners of the under 1600 section Toby, Sandom, Artem Dudakh and Aarav Ghanshala.
Another congratulations to FM Sergey Korshunov on winning the blitz tournament with a perfect score of nine out of nine.
Many thanks to Lance Leslie Smith for taking on the chief arbiter role of the event and doing a great job at that and many thanks to FIDE arbiter Mike Forster, deputy chief arbiter and a person who has been with us since the first edition of this event and another thank you too Mr. Owen Gibson for providing remote help for the event.
Congratulations and thank you to Rose Burgess for acting as a section arbiter and obtaining her final level 2 arbiter norm.
Thank you you to International arbiter Matthew Carr for providing us with live boards so all your brilliancies and blunders can be broadcast live with 15 minutes delay, of course!
Thank you to the great clubs of Bexhill and Horsham for providing us with very nice wooden boards. Special thanks to Hastings Chess Club and Mark, Bryant and Henry Cove for providing emergency double-sided score sheets!
Thank you to Sussex Junior Chess for their continued support and providing clocks and sets and national master Callum Brewer for his chest sets, and all the parents who helped with the smooth running of this event.
Thank you to Sussex University Student Union for helping to organize this event.
Thanks to David Lightfoot for helping with the publicity of the event around the campus. Please look out for the next editions of his excellent Isle Of Wight Chess tournaments and some more!! in the ECF calendar.
Thank you to David Howell patron of Sussex Junior Chess for spreading the word about our event on X.
Finally, as we’ve said before at Sussex university it’s not just about chess it’s about chess community and we are very honoured to have had you at our event.
You will be hearing very soon about an exciting event in July until that announcement please save the date for 20th till 25th of July. We will be back 😉 “
Hooman Honarvar, delivering his speech before the exhibition match, between international master Sohum Lohia and FIDE master Sergey Korshunov , which was narrowly won by Korshunov. This was fund-raising for the Doctors Without Borders ( Medicines sans Frontiers) charity.
Photograph above from ZOE & JOHN – see the above link if you wish to see more.
In the tournament u-2400, Bexhill’s Luke Chapman finished 24th/40 on 2/5 in a very tough field
In the u-1900, Mjchael Hayward had a very good tournament 0n 3/5 finishing 7th/32. Bill Tracey and Lawry Rhodes took part finishing 19th and 20th respectively on 2.5/5.
Given there were 51 contestants in the u-1600, my maths indicates an amazing 123 total field.
Here is an important update from our Chairman Bill Tracey. The GRAND PRIX tourament series, for Club Members starts at 7.00 pm prompt on15 May. Further dates are in Bill’s message below. Further updates on Summer events will follow after yhe planning is resolved
Hello All,
Now that the Sussex League has been completed our summer events will shortly get underway.
On Friday 15th May our Grand Prix no.1 will commence.
This tournament consists of seven rounds running from mid May to the end of September.
All rounds will be on a Friday evening, and each round will consist of four games with a time control of 15 minutes plus five seconds increments.
To qualify for any of he prizes on offer a member must play in a minimum of 5 of the rounds.
There is no requirement to pre enter simply turn up on the night. We will aim to start at 7.15pm so please arrive promptly at 7pm to register.
These games will be rated. So a reminder of the ECF policy on rating games:
Anybody can play in 3 rated games in a season and the ECF will not charge. If how ever someone plays in 4 or more games in a season the ECF will charge a one off fee of £20 to rate the games.
My advice is to be a member of The ECF to avoid this . If you choose to join the ECF , bronze membership will cover our competitions, gold membership will cover you to play in other tournaments such as the world famous Hastings Congress.
The dates are as follows May 15th. June 5th,June 26th July 17th, August 7th, August 28th, and Friday 18th September.
In addition to The Grand Prix, there will be approximately 6 other events on Friday evenings during the summer.
These dates will be announced shortly.
Details will also be posted on our website in the near future. Please check our calendar regularly for all dates. ( EDITOR – The Bexhill Grand Prix page on this site needs further updates due to the reduction of events from 10 to 7 this year. Please bear with us)
It was a busy night at St Marks on Friday as we hosted two opposing teams for the final matches of the season in Division 3. The results leave both teams fairly close to each other in the middle of the current table.
Our 3rd team finishing 4th on 12 points , and our 4th team in 6th place with 10 points. It reflects our strength in depth at the mid-range of ability. The positions should nit be affected by the few matches left to [play between teams who are curently sitting below the leaders who are shown here :
A very good result at Brighton on Monday- teams evenly matched.
Oliver did well, after an ambitious Wing Gambit in the Sicilian, when, in pursuit of active play, he lost some further material. However, with N + 4 pawns v R + 3 pawns- all pawns on the same wing – Oliver was relaxed about showing it was a draw.
Janis went into a late middlegame with 2 Bishops v a R and P. Once both bishops were activated, he was able to demonstrate their combined power.
I didn’t get to follow Phil’s game, being occupied on bottom board!
There, after going the full distance, I had a N v B endgame. White was able to pick off my h-pawn , with his King ( which was thereby de-centralised). Meanwhile I had played to fix White’s isolated Q-side pawns, on the white squares, with mine on black. I masked the pawn on c4 from White’s defending white squared bishop with my N and my King picked it off. My centralised King was able to force the Bishop away from holding up my c-pawn advance. The game then resolved into a pawn race, in my opponent’s time pressure. He misplayed so that my c-pawn promoted with a tempo to spare, my Q able to prevent White’s g-pawn promoting. As time was called, the evaluation was a Black win.
The outcome leaves a strange position where Brighton’s 4th team is now placed higher than their 3rd team!
Clearly much will depend on our final fixture against Brighton 4th team this Friday 24 April, and what happens between Uckfield 1 and Brighton 4 on 27 April.
Bexhill 5th team hosted Worthing 4 on Friday 17th April, in each team’s final matches in this season’s Division 4 – it was a ‘clean sweep’ but as usual that result masks tough competition. The match was notable for its warm and friendly atmosphere and we are grateful for our opponents making the long journey and arriving here before our own side!!
Congratulations to both our recently-recruited team players :
Adam on a first League win!
And another strong performance by Geoff.
A solid game by Jo secured honours on top board.
Lawry almost threw a winning position away, by missing a tactic, but ‘swindled’ the win by a long king-walk towards his passed pawn under checks from Q and R to a place of shelter and could force a winning promotion of his a-pawn- His opponent then lost on time.
The position at the top of Division 4 shows second place guaranteed as there is only one outstanding match between two bottom-of-the-table teams.
