The club’s junior coaching sessions on Sundays are proving to be a great success. We now have nearly 40 participants between the ages of 6 and 16 over two classes, and a number of them have already joined the club. This includes Tushit Chatterjee, who won the recent top Scot junior regional qualifier at Prestonpans with a 100% score!

Congratulations to him and thanks to our junior coaches for their hard work and commitment to helping develop these young talents and their love of the game.
Tournament table and rating performance

There must be something in being club president that helps your play – first we had current president Raj doing well in the European Seniors and now we have his predecessor Neil Berry scoring well in the Bavarian Open in Tegernsee in Southern Bavaria, where he finished in a fine 10th place out of 550 competitors with 7/9, just half a point behind the winner in a field containing 13 GMs.

Neil describes it as a great tournament and a beautiful place to visit, which having visited the area myself I can happily confirm. If you fancy combining chess with a holiday then look out for next year’s event.

Our President, Raj Bhopal has been playing in the European Senior Chess Championship and was delighted to play a legend of the game – GM Nona Gaprindashvili, who was women’s world champion from 1962 to 1968, and is still a strong player in her 80s. The game finished in a draw, so Raj can now say he’s drawn with a world champion. Definitely a day to remember.

After a couple of convincing wins in the quarter and semi-final of the Summer Plate, Edinburgh 1 came up against a very youthful and talented Edinburgh West team in the final.

Matthew Willder produced a quick win for us on board 3 but all the other games were tight.

Raj was fought to a standstill in an opposite coloured bishops endgame. Mark Gyalus had a very sharp game that mercifully was agreed drawn while time was running out for both players.

The final result was a deserved victory to Edinburgh West by 3.5 to 2.5 – before allowing for handicap points. Taking into account the handicap the result was 5 to 2.5. Congratulations to Edinburgh West.

Report by Ivor McConnell