Category Archives: General

Chess Whimsies

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Two great senior guys from Writtle, Ivor Smith and Jim Howson, kindly collated these 10 challenging chess puzzles.

(Note – the solutions are not necessarily unique)

Q1.

Place the Black King
(1) Where he is stalemated
(2) Where he is mated
(3) Where he can be mated in one move
(4) Where he can be mated in two moves

Q2. White mates in 2

Q3. White’s pieces fell on the floor. Just a King and a Pawn. Place them back in the correct position on the board and it’s White to play and mate in 2.

Q4. White takes back his last move and then mates in two moves.
Watch out for the unexpected.

Q5. A group of experienced players gathered round the board and racked their brains in vain efforts to discover a series of four legal moves from each player (White of course moving first) which could have brought about the position. Can you find the moves which had been played ?

Q6. Place all 16 White pieces on the board in legal positions
(i.e. Bishops on opposite colours and no pawns on the first or 8th ranks)
so that none of them can move.

Q7. At the start of a game, with White moving first and Black copying his
first three moves exactly, how can White mate with his fourth turn?

Q8. If White starts with the moves
1) f3 2) Kf2 3) Kg3 4) Kh4
which first three moves must Black play in order to give mate with his fourth?

Q9. Alphametics involving chess terms are few and far between but here is one.

BISHOP +
BISHOP
————
=   KNIGHTS

There are 10 letters involved in this simple addition sum.
Your task is to find which of the numerals 0 to 9 each letter represents.

Q10. Place 4 queens and a rook on the board so that every square is either occupied or attacked.

Update: 04/01/2013
Need to check your answers? –
Ivor has now released the solutions. You can find them here.

New NECL season

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This season will see division three consisting of 7 teams all playing each other twice (a total of 12 matches). I’m hoping this will give members new to competitive chess more opportunities to play. Overall we have 27 teams, down from the 30 of last season.

If you notice a lack of contact or other information on the main site for your club (particularly email contacts for captains) please nudge your secretary and get them to update the page.

If any club is unclear about the ECF funding issue please check. Chelmsford has decided that any player wanting to play for the club or play in the club tournaments must be an ECF member which will make life easier for the club administrators.

Good luck to everyone in the coming season.

 

Brentwood D dropped

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Brentwood have dropped the D Team for 2012-13 season.

After the loss of several members for various reasons it was decided to trim down and reconcile the number of teams. Hopefully the new venue should bring stability to what has been a highly disruptive couple of years and along with it more new members to replace those who have moved on.

Brentwood Chess Club New Address

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As of 01/09/2012 Brentwood Chess Club has moved from the Rising Sun to:

Brentwood Baptist Church, Kings Road, Brentwood, Essex. CM14 4DR. Entrance is on Kings Chase and we play upstairs, we can accommodate people who need disabled access but need advanced warning (please contact relevant captain) as there is no lift so we can make arrangements.

We still play on Tuesdays at 7.30pm.

BCC Club Championship

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BCC Club Championship after 5 rounds ended in a tie for first Trevor Coote and Gavin Strachan on 41/2 / 5. Although it appeared like Trevor was going to lose after Gavin won his final round very quickly, at just gone 11 Malcolm Kingsley blundered and fell into a very clever mating net. Trevor and Gavin have to now play two 15 min games and if these are drawn then one Armageddon match (White has to win but gets more time) to decide the champion.

NECL update following LCM 23rd August

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Thanks to all of you who attended the LCM on 23rd August at Chelmsford. The NECL has decided to continue to submit their games for grading to the ECF. Once this decision was reached it was a question of deciding how to deal with the options of direct membership or game fees.

League fees for next season were set at £1 per player to cover the league costs and a £10 deposit per team. The league intend to use the deposits together with an existing balance as a float to cover any shortfall in time between money needing to be paid to the ECF and money being collected from the clubs. David Millward will send out a separate document covering the wider financial issue.

Clubs will need to decide how to collect the ECF money. The simplest route is for players to join the ECF directly although it can also be done through the NECL. Players can join individually online at www.englishchess.org.uk and also by post (form attached) or phone (01424 775222). Membership can be retrospective but I would advise actively encouraging regular club players to join at the start of the season for easier club administration.

One alternative is for clubs to collect game fees from non-ECF members at each match (£2 per player per match) ready to pass onto the ECF via the NECL when necessary. ECF membership is mandatory for anyone playing more than 6 games (when it becomes cheaper anyway than paying individual game fees).

This season will be a trial (perhaps in more ways than one) for the league and individual clubs and we will revisit all this at the end of the season to see how things have worked out.

Clubs running an internal championship have to make a similar decision on whether they want to submit their games for grading and, if so, whether to make membership of the ECF mandatory for anyone taking part or whether to pay the grading costs by collecting game fees from non-members. If an event is to be ECF graded every game played within the competition has to be submitted. The Daytime League will be graded and Jim House will be contacting these players directly.

Please make sure all clubs submit their league entries by 14th September at the latest. This will allow fixtures to be arranged online at www.necl.org.uk about a week before the fixture meeting on 24th September at Baddow’s venue.

One other change moves the deadline for registering players to 24 hours before a match instead of 5 days. Registration is still via post or email to the League Secretary and not via the website.

Good luck to everybody involved with organising the changes at a club level. Please get in touch if there are any queries or if you need any advice.

Robin Slade
Championship Secretary