Bexhill 4 had a very successful trip over to Eastbourne. Three of the Merchants and Alan took on Eastbourne’s fifth team.
On board 1, Alan finished quickly, pinning his opponents queen to checkmate and putting the first point on the board for Bexhill. Sharon on board 4 was next to finish. After some initial pressure coming out the opening, Sharon launched a devastating king side attack and her opponent was forced to resign.

Next to finish was Sam on board 2. He went into a tricky rook and pawn endgame a pawn up, and managed to see it home.

Last to finish was Sebastian on board 3. He was playing another very strong Sussex junior and they were the last to finish, battling it out late into the night as the clocks ran low. Sebastian was up an exchange but down a few pawns. His opponent played very well, and the pressure of the pawn assault was too much, and finally Seb had to resign.

Overall, a 3 – 1 victory for Bexhill 4.

Congratulations to our Bexhill Juniors who had a great day out last weekend at the third Sussex Junior Chess Grand Prix of the season. (@sussexjuniorchess ) 9 of our juniors competed and every one of them did us proud!
Special mention goes to Eszter who scored a fantastic 2.5/6 in her first tournament and picked up an arbiters award. Timmy Nguyen scored a whopping 6 out of 6 and took home the Under 11 minor trophy! Amazing! Noah also had a great day, narrowly missing out on a top three spot but taking home the top under 9 trophy! Andy scored 4/6 in the U18 major section sharing third place. Sebastian Merchant, after a slow start to the day, finished strong on 4.5 from 6 and shared third place in the under 18 minor section.
Well done everyone!

Bexhill rapid 23

On Sat 18th november, sleepy Bexhill on sea was once again descended upon by some of the best chess players in the county and beyond. Players young and old were locked in fierce combat for 6 grueling rounds of intense rapidplay chess.

By the time the winners were announced some 8 hours after the battles began, new friends were made, new champions were crowned but sadly, some had fallen by the wayside.

All results and plenty of photos can be found  below, Bexhill Chess Club would like to thank each and every one of the players and supporters for making the day so successful and we look forward to seeing you all again next year!

Bexhill Rapid 2023 winner: Ilya Iyengar 5.5/6

2nd place: Andrew McGettigan and Gavin Knott 5/6

Top Senior: John Sugden 4.5/6

Top Junior: Tobias Taylor 4/6

Top Bexhill player: Anh Nguyen 4.5/6

Top Under 1900: David Fryer 3.5/6

Top Under 1820: Richard Welford and Janis Petersons 4/6

Top Under 1550: Hal Gomez, Aditya Gupta, Samuel Merchant 3/6

Bexhill Challengers winner: Aidan Burnside 5/6

2nd place: Rose Burgess 5/6

3rd place: George Taylor 4.5/6

Top under 18: Sebastian Merchant 3/6

Top under 12: Harry Morter 3.5/6

For all the photos, see the main report here.

What a wonderful evening! Thank you to everyone who came down to Bexhill chess club this evening for our simul with Mark Rich! Mark is a national master (and super nice guy) and he very kindly offered to play in a simul. against any club members who were up for the challenge! He took on 22 players at once! And finished with a phenomenal score of 15 wins, 6 draws and 1 loss. Incredible! Thank you so much Mark for your time. It was an incredible experience to be a part of. We each played somewhere in the region of 30 moves, meaning Mark played around 660 moves!!! Many congratulations also to our lone winner, Lawrie! Well done!
A wonderful evenings chess.

We are very pleased to announce something new for the 2023/24 season. After the massive popularity of our recent blitz and handicap tournaments, we have decided to offer something else for those that enjoy a little bit of competition with their chess. We will be hosting a series of Grand Prix events, four round Swiss rapid tournaments at our Friday evening meetings, approximately one every 5 weeks throughout the season. There will be prizes for those performing best in their rating and age groups over the season with the top 5 scores counting towards your Grand Prix total. All the full details can be found here.
The tournaments are free to enter and are open to all Bexhill chess club members!
We hope you are all as excited as we are! Lots to play for!
The first event will be on Friday 10th November.
Any questions, let us know!

And just like that, the 2023/24 Junior chess season is in full swing!!
Our junior meetings recommenced last Friday at our new meeting time of 6pm on a Friday evening at St. Marks.
For many of our juniors, it was a case of getting the chess engines up and running in time to head to Crowborough on Saturday for the first Grand Prix of the season! Several of our juniors competed in a wonderful tournament that ran alongside an adult rapid tournament and it was wonderful to see some new faces and plenty of familiar faces as around 150 people battled it out!
Full results for the day can be found on the @sussexjuniorchess website and on the Crowborough chess club website for the adult tournament. 3 of our adult members competed in the main rapid section, Steve Merchant and Bill Luxton finishing on a respectful 2.5 and Bill Tracey just behind on 2.
Well done to all our members who had a great day, but special mention goes to Noah and Timmy, who both received arbiters awards for outstanding performances in their very first tournament! Both achieving 3 points and finishing 10th and 12th in their section. A fantastic achievement!
Well done everyone!

bexhill #bexhilljuniors #bexhillchess #sussexchess

A note from our chairman Bill Tracey:

I would like to congratulate all members of the club who participated in The Chess On The Beach event.

Including juniors, I counted 27 members of our club who were in attendance on the day. This is a fantastic turnout and shows the commitment that there is in the club to supporting the events that we organise.

It was very pleasing to see how well many of our members did in the Blitz on the Beach tournament, with the top four all being Bexhill members.

I would  like to thank John Kimber, Mike Chapman and Bill Luxton for arriving early to help with setting up..

I would particularly like to thank Steve and Sharon Merchant for being the driving force behind this event. Without their vision, drive and organisational skills this wonderful day would not have been possible.

Bill

See here for a full report on the days events.

Date for the diaries! Very pleased to announce that we can finally confirm we will be holding our yearly rapid tournament again this year in the beautiful setting of Bexhill town hall. The date will be Saturday 18th November.
Full details on how to book will be coming in the next week or two!

Tonight was the last meeting of the season for the Bexhill juniors and also the 1 year anniversary of the founding of the Junior club. So we had a party! Many thanks to all the kids and especially all the parents that made this evening, and the whole season so wonderful!
Look forward to seeing you all again in September.

(Amazing chess cake made by Karen Burgess.)

Bexhill juniors hosted a handicap Blitz tournament on Wednesday evening. Some good fun and some great chess!
Luke Chapman and Harry Morter shared first place with 4.5 from 5, though Luke took the winner trophy on tie break and Harry took the runner up trophy.
They went into the final round both on four points. Harry offered an early draw which was declined. Luke seemed to be getting the better position and was slightly up in material, when he blundered his Queen! He played on valiantly and won back the lost material. But upon going into a winning endgame, he sportingly offered a draw which Harry gratefully accepted! Great chess and great sportsmanship!

A wonderful tournament with all the games played in good spirits. Well done everyone!