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National Junior Success!
Theo Slade, of Marhamchurch School, has very recently won the Southern Final of the UK Chess Challenge Under 9 section held in Berkshire. He scored 5.5/6 and goes on to play in the final-final of the Challenge where he will up against top juniors ranging in age from 7 to 18.
An encouraging number of Cornwall juniors took part in various agegroups having qualified from the Cornwall zone. Some creditable results were achieved in what for many was their first national event (all scores out of 6 except where stated):
Ellis Cooper (St. Uny) scored 2/3 but withdrew (he and his siblings were ill)
Jason Stephens (Perranwell) 1.5
Jack Andrew (Truro Prep) 2
Daniel Richards (Perranwell) 1
Harry Snelson (St. Just) 2
Zak Granville (St. Mary's C of E) 1
Richard Stephens (Perranwell) 4
Zak Cutner (Truro Prep) 2
Harry Greenwood (Heamoor) 3.5
Bailey Watling (Trewirgie) 2
David Richards (Penair) 2
Chris Piper (Truro) 2.5
Adam Simmons (Launceston) 2
Daniel Miller (Launceston) 3
Ebony Jeffries (St. Uny) 2 A better idea of the magnitude of Theo Slade's achievement can be gleaned from studying this document!
An Invitation to The Jonathan Latham Memorial Congress
Ben Edgell has asked that this be publicised. The Jonathan Latham Memorial Congress will take place in
October of this year between Friday the 22nd and Sunday the 24th and is to be held at Gordano Community School, St. Mary's Road, Poertishead, Bristol BS20 7QR. Any profits made from this congress will be donated to the Royal National Lifeboat Institute (RNLI). Players wanting to compete please use this Entry Form. The End Of Season Placings For The Two Divisions
In the Premier Division - you have Ian George to thank for the football-style name for it! - his team - Camborne - finish as the victors just ahead of second placed Truro. In contemplating the final table I am left feeling sad for Godolphin
who have had major tribulations this year and whose very survival as a club is now in serious doubt. I really don't know much about the in-house politics of the various clubs apart from my own but I am reliably informed that Godolphin have lost a staggering number of players this year and found themselves simply unable to meet their playing obligations because of attrition. Godolphin have had a habit in the past of trampling all before them; how times change! Obviously we hope that they can recover but only time will tell.
In the Minor Division Falmouth B finish as the winners for this year and Liskeard A as runners-up. Check the results section for who played whom.
Results & League Tables for 2009/10 Premier Division Minor Division The AGM
Our annual AGM was held at The Royal British Legion's branch in Truro on Thursday the 10th of June 2010. The attendees were Ian George, Robin Kneebone, Anton Barkhuysen, Cristopher Reeves, Mike Middleton, Jeremy Menadue, Mark Hassall, Don King, Stephen Fanning, (and his wife), Colin Sellwood, Richard Nancarrow, Ian Lewis, Colin Gardiner, Mick Ferrie, Gerald Crouch, Ian Renshaw and myself. Apologies for non-attendance were sent by Simon Bartlett and Philip Williams. The various officers presented their reports. When the election of officers item came up for consideration the status quo was largely preserved with the only noteworthy change being that I have now relinquished the League Secretary's job and this has reverted back to Ian George who has been a popular and efficient discharger of the office in the past. A motion proposed by myself that one of the rules that we play by - "Teams must be arranged in current grading order" should be very rigidly adhered to (in order to minimise disputes) was considered by the gathering and voted upon. It was pretty well 50/50 and the deciding vote was cast by President Robin Kneebone who favoured perpetuating the status quo. So the wording remains as it is and no changes will be written to this rule. Next Ian George's motion that "Any member dissatisfied with a decision made by an officer or organisaion in accordance with clause 2.04 may appeal in writing to the President who shall take one of the following actions: a) Reject the appeal, b)Appoint an independent member or instruct the secretary to convene a meeting of the Executive Sub-committee to investigate the circumstances of and issue a ruling on the appeal. Any decision made in accordance with a) or b) above shall be definitive and binding on all parties." was voted upon. It was unanimously approved.
This year's Secretaries Meeting
A precis of this prepared by indefatigable Ian George may be read here
This year's Busby and Under 135 Cup Events In the Under 135 event for this year just 3 teams have entered so I have given a bye in the first round to Falmouth. Truro and Newquay are paired against each other.(Newquay playing at home) The winners out of these two will go on to play Falmouth in the final. Results Update
In The Busby Cup Truro narrowly prevailed over Newquay in the final winning the title on board count. Cangratulations to Truro.
Chess Things For Sale Chess books and magazines for sale. Informators, BCM, CHESS, some openings books. Contact Robin Kneebone kneebone@tinyworld.co.uk if interested The World Championship The World Championship match is over and defending champion Viswanathan Anand of India has hung on to his title! I honestly thought that I was neutral in this but when I found out that the score between the players was tied going in to the final game of the contest I felt some anxiety for Anand's tenure of the title so maybe I was rooting for him! He and his opponent Topalov played a very enthralling match with a high number of decisive games for such a short contest. (The match was played over just 12 games) The summation can be found here. Lots of high class non-boring fighting games! An Interesting Development Ben Edgel wrote to me recently informing me that he has created a chess blog! It's intended for
chessplayers in the west of England. I sincerely wish him well with it. A link to it may be found
here. The Cornish Chess Championships of 2010 As most of you are already aware, the premier event in Cornish chess's annual calendar - which is usually held in early January - had to be postponed this year because of the exceptionally cold weather that we were having then and, instead, took place over the weekend of March the 5th-7th. There was a good attendance at all three events and the weather this time actually blessed us being fine and sunny for much of the time even if it was still very cold whenever you ventured outdoors! In fact this was felt to be such a pleasant time of the year to be playing it that the tournament controller Ian George in his summation remarked that there was interest in possibly re-scheduling our annual congress to this time of the year every year and he asked those present to go away and give the matter some thought and then let either Anton or himself know. So, if you have an opinion or preference about this please e-mail either man or bring up the matter yourself at the AGM. Just how well various players did can be gleaned from these documents:
The Somerset vs. Cornwall County Match In the match that took place between Somerset and Cornwall at Exminster Centre on Saturday the 18th of March 2010, Somerset ran out as very comfortable winners. The fixtures and individual results can be found here. Kudos to Anton Barkhuysen, Colin Sellwood and Robin Kneebone all of whom managed to win their games for us. Musings
In exploring my own copy of ChessBase it dawned on me that I've hardly used the substantial database of recent games (that are automatically included and copied to your hard drive when you install the program) in a very long time. Although compendious I would imagine that not very many casual players make much use of it either; after all, who's going to be seriously interested in studying the games of rank and file players when you can download worthwhile databases of world-class players for free? So I went off in search of online collections of celebrated players and found a real treasure trove! I was so much more impressed with the calibre of these games that I've now deleted the database that came as part of the package and replaced it with thirteen individual databases each featuring the games of a renowned player. You can locate the exact treasure trove that I found at this URL.
Download whatever turns you on. Obviously, this site is interested in promulgating its own proprietary program for handling pgn files - Pgn Mentor as they call it - and this does look like a good program which might be easier on many chessplayers pockets than the more monolithic ChessBase. Junior Chess in Cornwall We need more YOUNG players! If you're reading this and you're under 15 or are perhaps the parent of a youngster who is keen on chess but are unsure about how to meet up with other players then please click here for the information you're seeking. It'll be nice to have you on board! Our World Ranking Out of idle curiosity I checked where our site ranks in the global hierarchy of websites on the Internet and you will no doubt be enthralled to hear that we check in not far short of the 16 millionth place! So there! So now you know! The Devon versus Cornwall County Match In the match that took place between Devon and Cornwall at the Liskerret Centre on Saturday the 5th of December, not altogether surprisingly Devon ran out as the comfortable winners. They've outgraded us heavily for years and Cornwall generally feel that they've done well if they manage to win just a couple of games. That was the case this time too with only Jeremy Menadue on Board 1 and Robin Kneebone on Board 5 playing well enough to win their games. We drew 6, defaulted on 2 and lost the rest! The fixtures and individual results can be found here. Some Good News After a long spell out in the wilderness - too long! - Penwith chess club may be reforming next season!. According to Roger Grey the players might be: David Saqui, Stefan Leaver, Neil Wride, Richard Humpleby, Geoff Amos, Don Turtle, Alex Markin, Percy Gill, Robert Dunn, Roy Summers, Robin Kneebone and Roger himself. There could well be a revival! The new gradings for this season have been released by Ian and
are downloadable by clicking on the link above. May I remind
everybody that because of the revised way the gradings have been
calculated this season, old gradings limits that used to apply to
some events are no longer applicable and have been 'upfloated' to
reflect everybody's generally higher gradings. The pertinent new
limits are: 164 or below to be eligible to play in the Minor
League, Please note Ian George is responsible for posting the various tables for this website. (He has special software for doing this that I don't.) As before when submitting results please send copies to him as well as myself. Thank you. The Kerrier Cup for 2009/10 Results Robin Kneebone has been officially adjudged the winner of this event. Download a pdf document about it from the link at the top. The Revised Grading System An
explanation of how the gradings are computed. Association and Clubs Officers, Organisers & The Official Rules Names, addresses, phone
numbers/email addresses Short details of each club with a link to its own page. |
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Our Chess Archives Links to all sections, including county match results, winners of team and individual competitions and a games collection. |
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Web Site Update This site is gradually being updated. Until this is complete, you will find that some links currently do not work. In some cases, where you have clicked a link to a page that has not been created yet, you will get an error message and will need to use your back button to return to the page you came from. Only 5% of the links on this site are problematic. These are gradually being repaired! If you would prefer a different text size onscreen as you're reading this then you have a couple of options: one is you could avail yourself of the facility built in to virtually all modern browsers for changing the font size. In both Internet Explorer and Firefox click on the 'View' menu and then select 'text size' and choose the option you want. (In IE you have to close the browser and then re-open it to see the change.) If you're using Google's rather neat Chrome browser then instructions on how to change the default font size can be found here. The other is, you could try using a different browser or another version of your browser! For more information about this latter option click here. Reporting of Results Team captains can report league and cup results online. Simply go to the result form and click on the link to my e-mail address to send a result to me. Or, you can be traditional and send a card to me by snail-mail. Your choice! I quite appreciate receiving the cards because they give me some permanent hard-copy of the various results over a season. If somebody would be so kind as to give me the master template for printing these results cards I will happily post it somewhere on this site. |
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Contact me I hope that all visitors to this site will find something of interest to them. If you have any comments, suggestions or anything to say about chess in Cornwall, please send me an email at Gary Trudeau Gary Trudeau |