Seasonal report

Some of you might have noticed that our first fixture of the County Championship 2023 season is now open for registration. The final placings for the 2022 version were settled just a day ago, so now's the time for a report on how we did in that competition, and how we're doing in the ongoing rating-limited competitions.

County Championship 2022
We just held on to our division 2 status (you can see the final table here). It came down to the final two boards in the final match between Kent and Cheshire, which was adjudicated as a win for Kent after time ran out. If Cheshire had got that, we would probably been relegated by a 2% swing in win percentage.

A lot of our matches were very tight and would have swung our way if it weren't for points lost by closed accounts (fair play, inactivity). I've taken some steps to tighten up the conditions for joining the club, so with any luck we should avoid so much of that in the future.

U1600 League 2022
We're currently top of division 3 in this competition (table here). However, we're behind in our two remaining matches, so it's by no means guaranteed that we will hang on to a promotion place.

U1300 League 2022
We're heading for a respectable mid-table finish in the group in this one (tables here). It's to the immense credit of our U1300 members that we've managed to raise a team for every match; a lot of other clubs really struggle with this.

Summary thoughts
I think the season provides a fair reflection of our strengths and weaknesses. We have a reliable solid core of players up to about 1600, so we can expect to do reasonably well in those limited competitions. We're a bit thin on numbers above that range, which means we tend to be outgunned in the open competitions (League and Cup) when we take on large teams with a lot of high-ranked players. If anyone has a few northern grandmasters among their friends who aren't in the club yet, encourage them to sign up!