Monthly Archives: July 2022

s 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!

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.

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 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

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.

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 SCCA) for 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.