Category Archives: News

Good results all round for both teams in day 3 of the SNCL in Dunfermline. The 1st Team beat Hamilton and Stepps Warriors, both with a 3-2 scoreline. The 2nd Team recorded wins against Pentland Hills (3-2) and Oban 4-1. Both Teams lie 3rd with 1 round to play.

The 2nd Team have some chance of promotion to Division 2. They need to beat Musselburgh and hope that CSBOS can win against East Kilbride.

The SNCL Organising Team, led by GLynis Grant, announced that next season will be their final one in charge. They have run the SNCL for a number of years (decades?), and the league is as strong and well supported as I can remember.

Dear club members

On 22 January 2019 the club innovated (at least in modern times) by playing an odds competition. There were two teams comprising of the stronger four players, and the less strong four players. The stronger player gave up one pawn for every hundred point difference in their grading compared to the the less strong player. A maximum of seven pawns or their equivalent could be removed from the board. In one game the stronger player chose the material to be given up and in the other game the opponent chose the material.

There were substantial differences between the opponents in grading. Under normal circumstances, we might have expected the result to be a resounding win for the stronger players, perhaps 7:1 or thereabouts.

However, the result was 3.5-4.5  i.e. the stronger players lost. It was an interesting and fun evening. The result indicated that the odds we chose were roughly right for allowing unequal battle between two dissimilar players. In many ways, this resembled the handicapping system in golf where players of different abilities can compete more or less equally, thus maintaining the sense of competition.

Raj Bhopal

We entered 2 Teams in the Edinburgh 2020 Team Rapid event at Edinburgh University Teviot Hall on Saturday. The 1st Team came first on tiebreak from Glasgow University, with a strong Strathclyde University Team in 3rd. Individual scores (5 games): Neil Berry 3.5, Alastair White 2.5, Willie Rutherford 4, Andre Antunes 5. Both Willie and Andre won individual board prizes too.

A critical moment in our 2-2 draw with Edinburgh University. After 1.Na4?, my queenside initiative developed smoothly with …Qa5, …Ba6, …Rfc8, …Nf6-e4v and so on. Fortunately my opponent missed the shot 1.Nxd5!, when after 1…exd5 2.Qxd5 White exploits my lack of coordination to regain the material with interest.

A big change to the schedule on 20th Nov. Instead of the planned 10 second buzzer lightning event (which will be rescheduled) we are extremely fortunate to have a visit from the Israeli GM Emil Sutovsky , who will give a 2 hour talk.

He is renowned as a ferocious attacking player so his talk is sure to be hugely entertaining.  If you aren’t familiar with his play then check out his win against English GM Danny Gormally at the Gibraltar Chess Festival in 2005.

Among his notable successes: he was World Junior Champion in 1996, won the Hoogeveen Tournament in 1997, won the Aeroflot Open in Moscow in 2005, won the gold medal for the best individual performance on board two at the 2010 Olympiad,  and won the Biel Masters as recently as 2015. He has been the president of the Association of Chess Professionals since 2012.

There will also be a short talk at the start of the evening by new FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich.

Please arrive for a 7.30 pm start.

We’re delighted to announce that we’ve received a cheque for £1000 from the Post Office’s CommonUnity competition to help us to support junior and senior chess activities. Our sincere thanks to Lynsey Shovlin for spotting the competition and entering us into it – an excellent piece of initiative!

And of course our thanks to the Post Office – one of the few organisations that are even older than us 😉

Cheque for £1000

We’ll be considering how best to use the prize for maximum benefit in the near future.

#commonunity