Women's World Championship

Sadly, our club president, Jovanka Houska was knocked out of the Women's World Championship in round 2 by the top seed Humpy Koneru, of India.

Jovanka, pictured playing Koneru below, played very assertively and was a great credit to herself and to English chess.

Matthew Bunn plays in FIDE Open

Snodland's Matthew Bunn played in the FIDE Open that ran alongside the London Chess Classic, this was the toughest tournament that Matthew has ever played in and in round 1 he was paired against International Master Jack Rudd. Matt played very well and had a promising position, but hey, these masters know what they are doing and Matt eventually lost.

Matt, pictured above, scored wins against all of his lower-graded opponents but had some really tough opponents where the games were closely fought but the result didn't go the right way. Matt finished on 3.5/9 and it was an excellent learning experience and hopefully a springboard to greater success.

The London Chess Classic

David Fowler and David Lettington both visited the London Chess Classic and were lucky enough to see the top 4 English players take on 4 of the best players in the world.

England's Luke McShane was the star performer, beating Magnus Carlsen, the world number 1, and not losing a single game in the entire tournament.

Former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik had a tough tournament, including a strange loss to the US number one Hikaru Nakamura.

The tournament was huge success and there were hundreds of spectators every day.

Two match results

We've had a few match postponements due to the bad weather but still have these two match results to report:

Kent League tables

The Kent League tables for the Mid/East Kent region (as of 01/12/10) are below:

Chess in the Snow

12 inches of snow wasn't enough to stop us from playing chess this week! One of our members even walked 5 miles in the snow to play his club championship game (and he won, too!).

Pete Hickey and David Lettington enjoy a game in the snow.