English Small Club of the Year Award!

Snodland Chess Club has been awarded the English Chess Federation Small Club of the Year award.

The ECF gave the award for the rapid expansion and development of the club since its inception in 2003. The award will be presented to the club later in the year.

The club hopes to build on this award, by running 4 teams in the Kent Leagues next year, instead of our current one team.

The club will continue to run junior coaching sessions and we hope to encourage many new players to the club over the next year. Beginners are especially welcome!

Jovanka Houska delivers lecture at club.

International Master Jovanka Houska delivered a superb lecture at the club, by demonstrating her win against Grandmaster Jonathan Speelman.

Jovanka first ran a coaching session for junior players (photo right) and then presented prizes to winners of this year's club competitions. After this she demonstrated various techniques in pawn and Queen endgames that enabled her to defeat Speelman, a former World Championship Semi-Finalist.

Winners of this year's club competitions were:
Best Game:

Bob Fenn (photo right)

A-league:

Bob Fenn

B-league:

Soriah Williams

Intro League:

Matthew Gazes

Challenge Cup:

David Lettington

Speed Chess Challenge:

David Lettington

Speed Chess Final ends in tense thriller!

The Speed Chess Championship ended in a tense final, as David Lettington made a surprise rook sacrifice to force checkmate.

Matt Bunn, the other finalist and last year's winner, played a very sharp line of Dutch Defence as David unusually played 1.d4 as an opening move.

The game became a battle along the central files, with Kings castled on opposite sides of the board. David was able to swing his pieces into attack and eventually broke through Matt's defences with only seconds left on the clock.

However, David was lucky to be in the Final, as he had a completely lost position against up and coming player Matthew Gazes (picture left). Matt had outplayed David entirely and deserved to win, but unfortunately his time ran out. Perhaps Matthew Gazes will be next year's winner?

Winners of the Speed Chess Championship so far are:
2004 Nick Allen
2005 Neil Miners
2006 Matt Bunn
2007 David Lettington

Challenge Cup Final Result

The 4th Challenge Cup Final ended in victory for David Lettington.

Len Hammond (photo right) survived some pressure in the opening stage of the game to fight back stronlgy and gain the initiative. However, as time passed, Len wasn't able to find the right moves to break through and David took the opportunity to counter attack.

Winners of the competition so far have been:
2004 Nick Allen
2005 Nick Allen
2006 David Lettington
2007 David Lettington