Round 3 of the chess.com daily chess champs has just started. Rather to my surprise, I'm not hugely outclassed by my group, I'm 5th seed and more importantly there are only two players over 2k which I was surprised by. 46th group out of 47 in...
As I had predicted, I did get past 18 points in round 2 of the chess.com daily comp, and this was enough to win my group. I was on 19 with one game to finish, my closest rivals couldn't get past 18...and then the cheating cheat that I'd mentioned ...
The latest season of the 4NCL on-line club league has just ended. It runs on alternate Tuesday evenings, interleaved with the 4NCL congress I wrote about, so it's entirely possible to enter both. I persuaded a few club mates from Settle to have a ...
No sooner has one game gone than another one arrived. Actually I've been playing most Tuesdays this year, in the 4NCL On-line Congress and the 4NCL League, the former being solo and the latter in a team with my club. Last night was the last round ...
Time to blog another game, if only to prove I can sometimes play reasonably well OTB. This was Saturday's trip to Harrogate. My opponent was only 1540 but played extremely well, I didn't really have any significant chances until he saw some ghosts...
So I made it through round 1 of the chess.com daily champs quite easily in the end, despite hanging mate in one. Other than that, I had 21 wins and second place only managed 19 points. I've never made it past round 2 but previously have always bee...
Not sure if that summary is strictly correct, given that it was a daily game, but I've carelessly timed out a handful of daily games myself so I'll take it when my opponent drops a half point. Not a very exciting game, one of the drawbacks of the ...
I had been thinking of giving it a miss, but these long dark January nights don't fill themselves. The chess.com annual competition is a bit crazy with groups of 12 playing on a 24h schedule, all games start at once so that's 22 games to check eac...
Yorkshire League again today, Bradford B the opponents. A very variable team, they have a large strong club but sometimes struggle to put out good 2nd team. They almost managed today, outranking us substantially on the top 4 boards, but only had 5...
Games coming thick and fast now. Well not really, but the 4NCL congress is fortnightly and we also had a Yorkshire League match at the weekend. So it feels busy enough. Going in to Round 2 I was one of the 5 tournament leaders on 1 point, so came...
New season, slightly new league format (parallel 3A and 3B leagues for the first half of the season, then playoffs between the top halves and bottom halves). We are in 3B along with a couple of last year's teams and a few new ones. First match v ...
I've been keeping an eye out for some more regular rated games, the Yorkshire League is about to start again but that's only about a game a month and I'm going to miss a couple of them. There aren't really enough players in Settle to enter the wee...
So, a few days ago my rating reached the heady heights of 1995. I briefly wondered if I'd top 2000 but a couple of losses came along so it won't be for a while now if ever. Entirely undeserved, I've achieved it by beating a succession of 1800ish p...
Final round of the Wharfedale League last Tuesday, and plucky Settle (sitting in 2nd place!) were taking on the unbeaten leaders from Ilkley, Chess Centre Falcons. Tie break score means we had to win 3-0 to overtake them in the league, which was a...
So, 1.5/3 overnight was a reasonable position to be. The draw for round 4 was already made so I googled my opponent and found a couple of games on-line, including an odd line in the Budapest. This paid dividends when he played it against me the ne...
Round 2 I was up against the young Shriaansh Ganti who had turned me over a few months ago in a rapid game (though I had chances). I hoped that my greater experience and patience would pay over the longer format, and so it turned out. With the sam...
Back to Ilkley last weekend for their 2nd Festival organised by the irrepressible Andy Wainwright. A slightly different format to last year, fitting a standard 5 round Swiss into two days without the Friday evening session which makes for easier t...
Settle Chess Club has been playing in the Wharfedale League over the past few weeks. This is a small local competition with teams of 3 in an all-play-all G60 format (which I don't like, have I mentioned how much I prefer playing with an increment?...
Time for a more cheerful blog after yesterday's disappointment. Round 2 of the crazy chess.com daily chess competition started a couple of weeks ago. I'm in the 272nd group out of 276, and being at the end of the list has the nice feature that alt...
Last game of the season for us today, vs Bradford B. They are propping up the league and fighting Harrogate C for the wooden spoon but have lost all their games quite narrowly (unlike Harrogate whose best result so far has been a 1-5 thrashing) so...
On with the show. Round 3 was another highly rated player, who appeared to know what he was doing in the opening. By round 4, there were two of us trailing on zero and we met in this round. I was pleased with how I played the opening, won...
I've decided to take occasional trips to the chess Mecca that is Ilkley, home of the eponymous Chess Centre. Not that there's anything wrong with Settle Chess Club, it's great, and just 5 mins walk down the road, but there's a bigger range of play...
Another Yorkshire League match and this time it was away at Holmfirth. A bit of a trek from Settle, and traffic delays meant we barely arrived by kick-off time which wasn't ideal. Holmfirth had put out some fairly weak teams over the winter but al...
A fun Vote Chess game that the little band of Fetch Everyone Chess Club (we're a running club really, some of us play chess too) played against the might of Team Gandalf. As it happens, Michael Basman IM passed away a few days into this game. We...
I'm an idiot. No, I'm an idiot twice over. Yesterday we played Harrogate C in the league. Being the lowest team (of a big strong club) they weren't likely to have any really strong players and are in fact propping up the bottom of the table so we...
