Friday, 10 January 2025

Ashby 1 Continue Promotion Push

Ashby 1 started 2025 the way they finished 2024 - with a 4-1 win against one of their closest challengers, Anstey 2. Tom Dove has kindly submitted the following match report:

"Ashby 1 continued their relentless push for promotion with a convincing win over fellow promotion hopefuls Anstey 2.

Tom was the first to finish, heroically fighting of IM Robert Taylor, and agreeing a draw in a dead position, after an an exhilirating display of dazzling chess from both players.

Next to finish was Andrew, trapping John Robinson's Queen and graciously accepting his opponent's immediate resignation.

Richard managed to salvage a draw from a difficult position, after a series of accurate moves left Rob Mitchell unable to see any way to progress.

Controversy reigned on board 4. Patrick, facing 7 year old Ted Ronald, found himself the exchange and 3 pawns down by move 15 and staring down the barrel of a forced mate in 4. Intending to pick up his Queen and start the final sequence, Ted violently sneezed, causing his hand to lightly brush his King. Patrick ruthlessly enforced the touch-move rule, which left Ted's King only one legal square, walking stright into a Royal fork. Visibly shaken and a Queen down, Ted's resistance was short lived and his mother quickly took the distraught and sobbing child home.

Gheorghe punished his opponent's slow opening play, leaving Matt Connor too many problems to solve with precious little time on the clock. A lovely Knight manouevre saw a glue factory nag transform into a rampant stallion, dominating the board. An unstoppable mate threat ended the game."

A couple of the above descriptions are tongue in cheek. I'll leave you to decide which ones !!

On a serious note, it would be nice if the Captains of all of our teams could produce a match report for publication on the website.


Ashby 4 Kick Off 2025 With A Loss

Ashby 4 weere beaten 2.5 - 1.5 by Wigston 5 in their opening match of 2025. Team Captain, Ric Dawson, set an example that the others were unable to follow, with a win on board 4. James Foster, playing off his new rating of 1568, was thrown in at the deep end on board 1 but managed a draw against an opponent rated 158 points higher.

Thursday, 9 January 2025

2025 U1450 Championship

The draw for the 1st Round of the 2025 U1450 Club Championship has now been made and can be viewed here, or from the link at the side of this page. All games are to be completed by the 27th February. Anybody who is unable to play their game wll be scored as a default for this round.

Sunday, 5 January 2025

Shropshire Congress

Les Fancourt finished joint 10th out of 52 entries in the Intermediate Section of this weekend's Shropshire Congress, with a score of 3/5. After scoring 2.5/3 from his opening games, Sunday proved to be slightly disappointing, with just a draw from his two games. Nonrtheless, he scored over 50% and his performance rating for the tournament was over 1600, so well done to him.

Friday, 3 January 2025

2025 U1450 Championship

The 2025 U1450 Championship will be held as a 6 round Swiss format competition this year. You will have 2 months to complete each round. Neil is just waiting on the final list of players who will be taking part and the draw for the 1st round will then be published. Hopefully this will be in the next couple of days. You will then have until Thursday 27th February to play your first match. We be keeping to a strict timetable this year and if anybody is unable to play a match in the 2 months allocated they will, unfortunately, be scored as a default.

Darren & Doris On The Move

Doris & Darren Pearce have announced that they will be moving to Scotland in February, so they will be leaving the Club. Other commitments will prevent then from attendng the Club in January so, unfortunately, we have to say goodbye to them. I'm sure that we all wish them the very best and hope that they will be moving near enough to a Club so that they can continue to play.

Thursday, 2 January 2025

January Rating List

The 'Live' January Rating List has now been published and can be viewed here, or from the link at the top of this page. I am not showing Rapidplay ratings in this list, although I can if there is a demand for it.

The January list contains all of your LRCA games (both league matches and individual competitions), the Ashby Club Championship, the Ashby U1450 Championship, any County matches in which you may participate and any Congresses or other tournaments in which you may participate.

As far as I am aware, only Les and Steve are currently playing County matches for Staffordshire.


Friday, 20 December 2024

David Reynolds Cup Standings

The latest standings in the David Reynolds Cup have now been published and can be viewed here or from the tab at the top of the page.

To qualify for inclusion in the standings you must have played at least 4 league matches by this point in the season and 8 games by the end of the season.

As there are no more league matches before the end of December, the next standngs will be published at the end of January 2025.