Scotland's finest
Scotland’s finest – Photo by Alastair White

Club members Alastair White and Raj Bhopal are representing Scotland at the European Seniors team event for players over 65.

The team is performing pretty well so far with three wins (all 3-1) and four very narrow (2½-1½) losses. Alastair, playing mostly on board 2, has so far scored 4 draws and 1 loss, while Raj is in fine form with 4½/5 on board 4.

Details can be read on the Chess Scotland site

The following game is one by Raj

Notes by Raj
This was a tense positional struggle, where I had a modest advantage throughout most of the game. Black equalised once or twice but at no time had any advantage. Everything hung on whether White could take advantage of Black's bad Bishop.
Paradoxically, and surprisingly, White offered an exchange of bishops,
leaving knights and 6 pawns each. This offer of exchange must have come as a welcome relief, but exchanging bishops was a mistake for black. White's king penetrated into the black queenside. There seemed to be, nonetheless, an impasse. White had, however, reserved one tempo. P to a4 created a Zugwang. Black's blockading king had to give way for the loss of a pawn, making the a pawn passed. Black resigned on the 47th move when material was equal.

 

As part of its bicentenary celebrations the club, along with International Master Lorin D’Costa (from “She Plays To Win”), held a chess weekend on September 3rd and 4th in support of women and girls in chess.

There were a number of events at the club’s premises over the weekend including: scheduled training sessions for both beginners and experts, 5-round female-only tournament(s) (15 mins each on the clock), simultaneous displays with Lorin and other chess experts. There were over twenty-five attendees over the weekend.


Saturday started in the morning with Lorin running a beginner’s class before everyone engaged in some stimulating group-based exercises.

After lunch Lorin explained to the beginners how games were played with a clock before running a five round allegro tournament.

Joint winners of the SPTW Saturday afternoon tournament, Hayley and Yvonne, being presented with their trophies by IM Lorin D’Costa.

In the Saturday evening simul Lorin took on twelve opponents, which included WIM Svetlana Sucikova and WFM Suzie Cooke together with some token male players. Lorin wiped out the opposition – except for Suzie who held the fort in her game!


There was a great turnout for Lorin’s Sunday morning training session with fantastic drop-in support from GM Keti Arakhamia-Grant, WIM Svetlana Sucikova and WFM Louise Head!


In the afternoon an allegro tournament was held for everyone.

This produced some exciting chess with Pavlo Sokolenko, from Ukraine, emerging as the eventual winner – closely followed by his mother Olga Sokolenko in second place! The training day gave some useful practice for Flossie Wilson before she headed off to Romania to represent Scotland at the World Youth Chess Championships the next day.


The event was supported by Edinburgh Chess Academy, Chess Scotland and Lothians Junior Chess.

She Plays To Win (SPTW) is a UK Girls Chess Project to try and encourage more girls to participate and learn chess in a fun environment. SPTW is run by the current England International Women’s Chess Coach Lorin D’Costa who has successfully been coaching girls’ chess nationally and internationally for over 11 years.

She Plays To Win with IM Lorin D’Costa

Saturday 3rd & Sunday 4th September 2022:

Enter online at congress.org.uk

Edinburgh Chess Club, along with International Master Lorin D’Costa (from “She Plays To Win”), is holding a chess weekend in support of women and girls in chess.  We’re running a number of events at the club’s premises over the weekend including: scheduled training sessions for both beginners and experts, 5-round female-only tournament(s) (15 mins each on the clock), simultaneous displays with Lorin and other chess experts.  Attendance can be for one day or both days.

The events are open to all!

The schedule is as follows and entries can be made for any or all sections:

Daytime Saturday 3/9/22 10am to 5pm – free entry – covering Beginners training session(s) in the morning and, after a lunch break between 12 and 1pm, in the afternoon a Starter Girls and Women five round rapid tournament with a time control of 15 minutes per game;

Evening Saturday 3/9/22 6.30pm to 9.30pm (at the latest) – £10 to SPTW – Lorin’s simul/talk/lecture – open to both men and women – but with priority bookings to women;

Daytime Sunday 4/9/22 10am to 4pm – free entry – covering the morning’s Beyond Beginners / Intermediate training session(s) and, after a lunch break between 12 and 1pm, in the afternoon a Rapid tournament [which is open to both males and females but with priority bookings to women and a team prize for a team of 2, male and female if possible].

The event is being supported by Edinburgh Chess Academy, Chess Scotland and Lothians Junior Chess.

She Plays To Win (SPTW) is a UK Girls Chess Project to try and encourage more girls to participate and learn chess in a fun environment. SPTW is run by the current England International Women’s Chess Coach Lorin D’Costa who has successfully been coaching girls’ chess nationally and internationally for over 11 years.

Games will be graded on the Chess Scotland Allegro Grading list for 2022-2023

Ian Whittaker, Curator

As part of its bicentenary celebrations Edinburgh Chess Club hosted a Schaakstad Apeldoorn team from the Netherlands over the weekend of July 15 to 17th, 2022. 

The visitors had a very strong 10-man team, led by Team Captain IM Merijn van Delft, which included 2x IMs and 2x FMs!

Edinburgh Team Captain Neil Berry (left) and Event Organiser Henk Bulthuis (right)

We held a Blitz tournament on the Friday evening and then a 10-board match between an Edinburgh Club team and the Apeldoorn Schaakstad Club team on Saturday afternoon followed by dinner.

The Schaakstad Apeldoorn Team
The Edinburgh Chess Club Team

Altogether there were 27 players in Friday’s Blitz (3 minutes plus 2 seconds per move) with most players managing between 8 and 11 games in the evening.

The visitors were on fire with IM Merijn van Delft scoring 10/11 so he was declared the winner followed closely in second place by IM Nico Zwirs with 8/9.  Highest scoring Edinburgh player was Willie Rutherford on 7.5/9.

The match in progress

The 10 board match (1.5 hours each per game plus 30 second increments per move) on Saturday was closely fought with the Edinburgh club eventually narrowly winning by the close margin of 5.5 to 4.5 – final results were:

Match Results

The event was sponsored by Broadex Technologies with Edinburgh Napier University Conference & Events providing a sponsorship discount for the visiting team’s accommodation.

Broadex is a high-tech company with an engineering team and production facility in Livingston Scotland and headquartered in China.

Final comments in the visitors book from IM Merijn and Team Captain Henk!

A most enjoyable weekend for all!

A replay of the original Edinburgh vs London correspondence chess match started last month (June 2022) over 42 boards inspired by the famous Edinburgh – London correspondence match from 1824.

Things are being done a little differently this time!  Moves are being made online, and we are playing individually against a London side using the ICCF web server.  The CC match is running from 2022 (the bicentenary of the club’s formation) through to 2024 (200 years since the original CC match started) with a standard CC time control of 10 days for 50 moves and allowing the use of computers.  On each board we are competing against our opponent twice i.e. as white and black.

Both teams have fielded strong squads with representatives from both the OTB and CC worlds. For Edinburgh Club we are being led by two Scottish Champions and FM’s: Club President Neil Berry is on board one vs SIM Clive Frostick and Graham Morrison is taking up the following three boards playing against IM Jo Wharrier, SIM John Rhodes and GM John Brookes respectively!

Further down the board list we have players such as the current Scottish Correspondence Chess Champion CCM Al Buchan, CCM Peter Bennett and past ICCF President IM Alan Borwell.  We are also delighted that a guest player for the club is chess historian SIM Tim Harding who has utilised the club’s archives for his work in the past.

The London team is being captained by Phil Beckett (who has been described as one of the “unsung heroes” of British Correspondence Chess – see Austin Lockwood’s bio on welshccf.org.uk) and amongst other things he currently acts as International Secretary and British Championship TD for the EFCC and also runs the Handicap Tourney for the BCCA.

The Edinburgh team captain Andre Antunes was pleased to report last week:

“We’re now 2 weeks into the match, and we already have some initial results! That’s incredibly fast for correspondence chess.

James Addison won both his games against Joyce Evans, and I also won one game against David Elwood, making the current score 3-0 in our favour. Still a lot to play, but definitely a good start!”

The club is very grateful for the assistance of Gordon Anderson (International Secretary, Treasurer and ICCF delegate at the SCCAfor helping to organise the event on the ICCF server and to Phil Beckett for arranging the London team.

For the full team list and current results see iccf.com.

Message from Andre about Sunday’s event:

This Sunday we played the 2022 Club Championship. Given the (late) time of the year, we opted for a different format, playing a swiss tournament in Allegro time control.

A total of 14 players took part, with Willie Rutherford taking the top spot with 4.5 / 5.  Tom Leah followed second with 3.5 and David Archibald third with 3.5.

Congratulations Willie !

Next season we hope to resume the usual Championship / Challengers model, I’ll be sending an email after the Summer.