Challenge Cup Results

The Challenge Cup 1st round brought some interesting results. Soriah Williams defended very well against Matt Bunn's attack and then managed to win a rook and the game!

Craig Miners managed to checkmate Neil Miners in only 16 moves, with an unusual double bishop attack.

Matthew Gazes defended very well and managed to hold a draw against his much more experienced opponent Len Hammond, despite being a pawn down. This game will be re-played, with Matt having the white pieces this time.

Bob Fenn and Henry Williams had hard-fought games against Mesut Yilmaz and Nick Allen, respectively. Eventually, the two higher rated players won through.

Arjun Toor scored a nice win against John Morgan and sets up an exciting quarter-final match against either Matt or Len.

David Lettington managed to win against Ben Stokes in a Giuoco Piano opening after winning a knight early on in the game.

Visit from IM Bob Wade

International Master Bob Wade came to the chess club on Saturday to do a brief lecture. Bob demonstrated two games; Steinitz versus von Bardeleben, played at Hastings in 1895 and then he showed a recent win that he scored in the London League.

Bob then simultaneously played all of the members present. Well done to Henry Williams and Soriah Williams who managed to draw. Especially well done to Bob Fenn and Matt Bunn, who managed to win! Bob Wade won all of the other games. Matt Bunn's win is shown below:

Many thanks to Bob for an enjoyable day!

A-league results

There were 3 A-league games this week:
Bob Fenn 1-0 Soriah Williams
Neil Miners 0-1 David Lettington
plus Len Hammond won by default

Both Challenge Cup preliminary games were completed:
Luke Chapman 0-1 David Lettington
Malcolm Stokes 0-1 Craig Miners

Challenge Cup draw

Cllr Paul Hickmott did the draw for our cup competition, the Challenge Cup. There are 18 competitors this year, meaning 4 unlucky people have to play in a Preliminary round. The draw is below:

Speed Chess Championship results

The Speed Chess Championship was won by David Lettington this year, who managed (with quite a large chunk of luck) to win every game.

There were 14 competitors, split into two groups. In Group A, David and Bob Fenn both got off to flying starts, with Craig Miners in hot pursuit. If Craig had managed to beat Bob in their individual game, he would have finished as runner-up in the group.

In Group B, Matt Bunn managed to win every game, despite nearly missing the whole event because of a delayed train. The runner-up spot was a very close run thing, with Nick Allen, Matthew Gazes, Len Hammond and new member Mesut Yilmaz all in the running. In the end, Matt Gazes won his game against Nick Allen to take runner-up spot on tie-break.

In the Semi-Finals, Matt Bunn beat Bob Fenn, whilst Matt Gazes played brilliantly and got a won position aganist David Lettington, but unfortunately Matt ran out of time.

The Final was a repeat of last year and was a very exciting game, with an offbeat opening from Matt Bunn that caused lots of complications. However, once David had centralised his Rooks he managed to co-ordinate them with his light-squared Bishop into an unstoppable attack.

IM Bob Wade to visit club

Snodland Chess Club are privileged to have International Master, and former British Champion, Bob Wade visiting the club for a coaching session and game demonstration.

The event will take place at 10.30am on Saturday 14th April, at the Cricket Pavilion in Rocfort Road, Snodland.

If you are interested in attending, please e-mail or phone David Lettington.

Snodland Partnership donates to chess club.

Snodland Partnership have very kindly made a donation to the chess club to enable us to have more teams in Kent County Chess Assocation competitions. We will also be using the money to provide chess coaching. We will particularly be concentrating on junior players.