Two Exciting Events Coming Up - Join Now

ECF Chess for All

The ECF chess for all festival starts this weekend and will run from Sunday 30th May to Friday 4th June on chess.com. Details and how to register can be found at https://www.englishchess.org.uk/chess-for-all-festival/  The event is aimed at players from beinners up to 1500 - 1600 elo (ie up to around 120 three digit ECF grade) who are looking to improve their playing strength. Entrants will be divided into Beginners and Improvers. As a rough guide, those with no Chess.com rating or under 1000 should register for the Beginners Club, and those from 1000 to 1500/ 1600 the Improvers Club.

The charge for Festival entry is only £15.00, and includes –

1. 4 group training sessions by Zoom by top ECF recommended trainers for each group (Beginners / Improvers)
2. Online tournaments for every day of the Festival, some of which will have trophies and prizes
3. Access to online streams with sumuls specifically aimed at entrants to the Festival
4. ECF supporter membership to the end of the ECF membership year (August 31st 2021) for those who are not already ECF Members or Supporters. Membership benefits include the right to play in ECF tournaments and events (including for England) in ECF Online Internationals, as well as the ability to get an official ECF online rating

Coaching
Coaches for the two sections are FIDE Instructor Lateefah Messam-Sparks and International Master Lorin d’Costa.

Simuls
The two festival simuls will be played by IM Lorin D’Costa and GM Keith Arkell, who will be taking on registered festival entrants in closed competitions, where you can try out some of the ideas from the coaching sessions.

Grandmaster Keith Arkell
Keith Arkell has been a Grandmaster since 1995 and is a specialist in maintaining the initiative in long positional battles, and of course the endgame where he is a recognised expert with few equals. He writes the regular Arkell’s Endings column for the ECF newsletter.

 ECF Marathon

During the weekend at the end of the Festival, the ECF is holding a 24-hour marathon event in aid of the British Red Cross, which will involve players of all standards – https://www.englishchess.org.uk/checkmate-covid-the-rematch.

The ECF’s Checkmate Covid – The Rematch chess marathon will be played from 5.00pm on Saturday June 5th to 5.00pm on Sunday June 6th (BST). Last year’s event proved a great success, raising £12,000.00 for the British Red Cross and having a great deal of fun in the process. The whole event will be played on Chess.com, and will be open to members of the English Chess Federation Open Club.

The event, once more in aid of the British Red Cross, is a 24 hour Arena tournament where you can play as many or as few 5 minute games as you want. You can join, leave and come back to the tournament at any point.

There is no charge for entry, but registration is encouraged to help gauge numbers. Entries will be accepted on the day, with the tournament open to joining for ECF Open Club members whether or not they have registered. However, only those who have registered and donated at least £5.00 will be eligible for prizes.

There will be live commentary for most of the event by a variety of streamers as well as on the ECF’s Twitch channel, which will feature a number of notable guests, including top GMs, throughout the night. You can go to https://www.twitch.tv/ecf_commentary now and click on the heart shape to follow the channel in order to get notifications of when we go on air.