SBCC-News

SOUTH BIRMINGHAM CHESS CLUB News

Older news can be found in the Archive section

28^th August 24

This year’s Annual friendly match took place at Olton over 14 Boards,

Pre-Season-Friendly-Match (southbirminghamchess.club)

27^th August 24

Club Champions

Each Year South Birmingham run Internal Club Tournaments. The club Championship was run as a standard play Swiss over 7 rounds with the winner holding the title as Club Champion

This Year Adithya Vaidyanathan became SBCCs youngest ever Club Champion. The Club Championship Trophy was presented by current SBCC President Mark Drugan at the Annual Friendly match.

SBCC Std Play Champ 23-24 | ECF League Management System (englishchess.org.uk)

This year’s SBCC rapid play Swiss over 7 rounds was won by Cory Hazlehurst and wins the David Dunn Trophy, presented President Mark Drugan at the Annual Friendly match

SBCC Rapid Play Champ 23-24 | ECF League Management System (englishchess.org.uk)

Preesh Gandhi was this year’s winner of the Performance Cup which is awarded to the Player with best score graded under 1600. 8 wins and 4 draws.
Best draw against 1944 at Rapid-play, Best win 1752 at Standard play, these are rated games so no freebees here… Well Played Preesh.

28^th July 2024

Summer League

SBCC Entered 5 teams in the BDCL Rapid Summer League this year, 1 in the Open section, 2 in the7400max and 1 in each of the 6600max 5800max sections.

three titles have been won…. 7400max 6600max and 5800max,

The below first picture is after the final 6600 match at Warley Quinborne

Left to Right: Louis Maciel, Darren Whitmore, Derek Green, Steve Edwards, Rob Glass …… other contributing players not in the picture

Sean Doherty, Sean Ralph, Milenko Walner, Mark Drugan, Sathya Vaidyanathan, Junior Taitt and yours truly…

From the winning 7400max team who have retained the title. With the table showing South Birmingham in 1^st and 2^nd Place

Hello chess friends.

This is the final email from the targets… as you are aware we won the 7400 rapid summer league, for the second year running! It’s way we did it that even surprised me, just look at the team I assembled, basking in their own glory. I’m not sure how we did so well, but the team definitely played for each other, it’s the only way to get these results in a very competitive division. It is incredible, played 14, won 13, drew 1. You could call us the invincible’s? Just look at the final table

We destroyed everyone, no other way to say it. The only team to take us close were our own B team, the Druge with the Vaiders… it was our toughest and closest game of the season, and they were absolutely brilliant and pushed us all the way to the last match.

The players..

Dazzler - my word what’s he been doing ?! Only Magnus Carlsen could have known how he felt, winning 12.5/14 points over the 7 matches. He’s been playing rapid online but sets the board up, it really shows how’s been able to condense his thinking for this time control, and bring his classical game to the rapid board. He played every match, we can only dream of such greatness.

Claudio - after I was forced to play game 1, I knew we needed an extra player. I was able to draft in Romania’s premier chess streamer, and it was so good to have him back in the fold. He beat a GM online over the weekend, as you do, and he played that way all season, just ripped through people. He was a little board rusty at first game leaving a piece en prix for no return, but after that he didn’t lose a game. Just took out trash on board 4 all season long.

Nat - I think Nat is a little like me over the board with regards his emotions, feeling good he is awesome! And he felt good playing summer league, which was nice after he had to miss a chunk of the winter season. If there was one game that told me we had this season, it was when he took out 2111 rated Lambourne, and it wasn’t time trouble or a blunder, he just outplayed him in both games, my season highlight. He looked healthy and happy, he did the business, the man.

Cory - Couldn’t believe it when the classical open champion was available for the team, what a board one. He delivered all season and blunted the other teams attack. So solid, very technical play, I watched fully both his games last match, you can feel the class it’s just a next level thing. Big thank you and congrats on a great season, only loss of the season was to Adithya, he smashed the rest.

Tim - I had to have Tim in the team else we wouldn’t have been the A team, which after 2 seasons as B team meant a lot to me. Tim’s always in the 7400A, and so it had to be. Mr super solid got a respectable 4/8 and made sure we had what we needed, a lot of draws as I recall.. careful play and a great anchor for any team. Another awesome player.

TC - ok so I only played one game, but I beat Sathya who went 10/10 (!!) after our match for the rest of the season, which meant we won the first game against our biggest rivals, the B team. My illness, reactive arthritis, is quite energy sapping, only Samson could know how I feel after losing hair, getting better though pretty sure… the boys carried me and I thank them for it.

Just look at these season stats, unbelievable!

Takeaways

The B team were excellent, and with Singerman on the verge of securing the 6600 title, and Terry already securing the 5800, now we’ve added the 7400 South Birmingham are considered the rapid chess powerhouse of the midlands.

This team has been lovely every game, always buzzing and happy, it’s been a real pleasure.

We win three years running, we call it a dynasty.

If a picture could some up the season, this would be it. Targets 7400 Champions 2024

Left to Right: -Nat Kasifir, Iulian Valduva, Matt Little, Tim Lane, Cory Hazlehurst and Darren Whitmore.

TC and the targets

June 24^th End of Season Curry Night usual venues POW and Diwan

Two people at the Pub above (Patrick and Mike) got replaced at the curry house below, (Junior, Dominic and Kitty…..) Louis was at both, Joe was unusually missing at both …

20^th May 24

Seasons Report.

9 teams were entered into the Birmingham League and one team entered into the Dudley League, the two teams in division one survived to play again next season, with the B team finishing in ninth and the A Team Finishing Joint Top on 20 pts, this led to a playoff which rivals Sutton fielded an international and Grand Master, this ultimately gave them the edge and the League title for the 10^th time. The 1A team also got to the Terrill Final and won over the boards but lost the Match to the 3½ handicap. Overall, a very good season winning 64 and drawing 17 of the 102 boards… Three teams found themselves in Division two, Trying to survive as a third team is always a tough ask in any division, then when two players left at the start the C team found the task to much and were duly relegated, However the A and B teams sat in the top spots for most of the season with the B team looking to be favourites, Missing players in the final three games saw the team slip to third handing the Title to the A team and second spot to Warley Quinborne.

The Division three side managed to finish Joint fourth and reach the Terrill trophy semi final not bad for a team out graded most of the time. Two teams in Division four, the 4A team seem to copy the 2B being in a good place for nine matches then falling away in the run in. 4B were promoted from 5 last season and made their target of surviving in the division. The Fifth Division team were a totally new team with many of the players using clocks and score sheets for the first time, they finished in the top half and have some promising future players…. The Dudley team managed to win their League for the second season running, well not quite, we needed something from the match for the title and we were losing 2 – 1, the last board to finish looked lost for SBCC to everyone… so, when the young lad played on and won…. I should really say Sathya Vaidyanathan won the Dudley League again for South Birmingham… In the League Lightning Tournament SBCC won the open Section for the fourteenth time. There were also some impressive Individual results during the season, Cory Hazlehurst became only the second SBCC Player to win the BDCL Standard Open Individual Title, and Mark Drugan won the Standard 1750max Section, Sathya Vaidyanathan also was a joint winner, in the 1750 section in the David Dunn Memorial Rapid-play, with Elis Dicen wining the Open Section, then finishing second in the Warwickshire Women’s Rapid-play the following day. Adithya Vaidyanathan won the Shropshire Open Std Congress, Elis Dicen won again at the Leamington Open std Congress. The BDCL’s Morry (most promising junior) and Wood (best game) awards had been won by Sathya and Adithya Vaidyanathan respectively All in all, the future looks bright 😊

Dudley Team Left to right, Javier Castells Gill, Sathya Vaidyanathan, $ingerman, Steve Edwards, Mark Drugan, also thanks to Mike Walner who Played Board 1 in most,

Titles won 2023-24

1st Summer League Max 6600

1st League Lightning champions

2nd League Lightning section B (£10 prize)

Joint 1st Division 1 Championship

Terrill Trophy finalist - 1A

1st in Division 2 championship

Birmingham League Individual Open Champion - Cory Hazlehurst

Birmingham League Individual Max 1750 Champion - Mark Drugan

Birmingham League Individual Max 1750 Runner up - Joe Kadar

Winner Baruch Wood Best Game Trophy - Adithya Vaidyanathan

Winner Ritson Morry Junior Trophy - Sathya Vaidyanathan

Dudley League 1800 Max - Champions

SBCC Lightning teams in action

1^st August 23

Today ECF August grades are released, these will ultimately decide the Nine team line ups for the BDCL 2023-24 Season

ECF: South Birmingham (ecfrating.org.uk)

29^th July 23

Olton Memorial Tournament (From Hitman)

South Birmingham arrived at Olton Chess Club for the Memorial Tournament on Saturday with a crack team of chess players...unfortunately they didn't play so Myself, Tim Lane and Derek Green represented the club....

There were 10 teams with teams from Kenilworth, Halesowen, Olton, Shirley, Mutual Circle along with ourselves... There was a good buffet laid on and a big prize fund we later found out...

There was much interest about who we might get in the 1st round which started at 11am...although, the emails had stated 11 and 11.30 as starting times and I had asked for clarification on this the night before. Some players obviously hadn't and arrived after the matches had started.

We were paired against Shirley and Wythall and I was told that Keith Ingram had pulled out so my opponent on board 1 would be Robert Reynolds, he of Olton fame and organiser of the event. 2 moves in to a Scandinavian Defence, in walked Keith Ingram, to which Robert set the pieces up again for Keith to play instead. I asked Robert if he'd conceded the game and I told him I wanted the grading points...he took it well...

I was white and Keith played the Petroff Defense to which I played the 3 Knights which I haven't studied but used Lopez type ideas and I won a very nice miniature in 19 moves...Tim on board 2 drew his game in which he looked better and the star of the tournament on board 3, our very own KITTY, won with a masterclass of the Morra Gambit in the Sicilian...He danced and skipped down the Warwick Road but was back for Round 2.

Round 2 started at about 2.30pm and we were playing the Kenilworth Optimists...Board 1 saw me against Andrew Patterson. I've played him in the 4NCL a few times and our record was level. As black, I played well and equalised quickly and might have been better but I lost the exchange and then the game. Kitty won again and Tim drew his game. We finished with 4 out of 6, equal with one of the Halesowen teams and won a trophy for 6 months and a good amount of money which we've donated to the club.

From correspondent Kitty

Whilst a number of ex and current South Birmingham Chess Club members were busy distinguishing themselves at the British Championships a representative group of three went to represent SBCC at an Olton organised event intended to commemorate the sad passing of several of members over and immediately post the 'covid period'.

The Olton event passed successfully. It was well organised and ran, as usual, by Olton's Reynolds bros. to whom we again offer our grateful thanks.

The free food was not bad - little triangular sandwiches with the crusts cut off, pork pie slices, chicken drumsticks and cocktail sausages etc. as well free do-it-yourself tea & coffee. There were 10 teams each of 3 people of varying grades. Each person played in one of the 3 grade sections against a randomly drawn player in their section. The South Birmingham contingent comprised Kevin Hitman Hurney (open section), Tim Tal Lane (under 1859) and Derek Kitty Green (under 1650).

In round 1 of 2 Hitman was first to finish against Keith Ingram who failed to push a pawn in the center until it was too late and he was forced to resign at move 19. I followed next with my opponent failing to spot a pleasing little combination and he resigned on move 20. Tim had a more difficult game but, while never in any difficulties, was unable to quite break through his opponent's position. A draw ensued. 2½ points to us after round 1 of 2. Only 1 other team amassed this total - Halesowen.

Round 2 of 2 began at 3:00pm. Hitman essayed an aggressive R deep into enemy territory but ended up losing the exchange in the middle game as a consequence and eventually came second. My opponent, Peter Hughes, as nice a gentleman as you could wish to meet, played a number of moves that favoured me and I eventually got a queen winning discovered check in which resulted in his resignation. Tim again had a difficult opponent. One of those who didn't know when to give up. Tim was down on the clock at one stage but later recovered this, but, in the mean-time, in a rooks and pawns endgame, may have overlooked a rook move winning a pawn and later a check - also winning a pawn. At least that was what it looked like from the side of the board and, as we all know, the view from the side of the board sees all the 'obvious' things the players missed in the heat of the moment. Although, in truth, the Jury's still out on this! Anyway Tim had an extra a pawn but could not get it down the board and eventually had to concede a draw.

I was about to go home after my game but was told I might be needed if a play-off ensued between teams finishing on equal points. So I stayed. The final result was that indeed, a play-off was required for first place between us and Halesowen - both on 4 points. However It was getting late and a quick decision to share the trophy was agreed so no play-off required.

25^th July 23

Half Vaida 6600 Champions 2023

Another week, another title, this week SB Team Half Vaida became the 6600 Summer League Champions adding a second trophy to the SBCC pot.

Left to Right: - Sathya Vaidyanathan, Steve Edwards, Adithya Vaidyanathan, Alan Woollaston, Sean Doherty. Also thanks to Matt Little and Daren Whitmore

17^th July 23

Strikes 7400 Champions 2023

Tonight Matt Little’s 7400 Team won to become 7400 Summer League Champions and secure the first Title of the season for SBCC, Well Played Team 7400 Champions.png

Left to Right: -Nat Kasifir, Iulian Valduva, Matt Little, Sebatian Tudor, Martin Smyth and Darren Whitmore.

5^th July 23

Summer Programme 2023

South Birmingham Chess Club is open throughout the summer

A programme of special events has been arranged for Wednesdays as follows:

5 July Blitz tournament (3 minutes + 2 seconds increments per move)

12 July 5-minute tournament (+2 second increments per move)

19 July 10-minute tournament (all-play-all max 8 players per section)

26 July Simultaneous Display by club champion Cory Hazlehurst

2 Aug Lightning tournament (10 seconds per move)

9 Aug Fischer Random chess, kreigspiel, four-handed chess, friendly

16 Aug Blitz tournament (3 minutes + 2 seconds per move)

23 Aug End game competition (test your knowledge, solve set endings)

30 Aug Annual Friendly match home to Olton

6 Sept Opening night of the new season (time to pay your subs!) and play a few friendly games, see which team you will be in and see the fixtures.

Events will start promptly at 7.30 p.m. Please try and be at the club by 7.20 p.m. if you wish to compete.

We will try to accommodate late entries but late arrivals may be unable to complete their games in the available time and unfinished games will have to be defaulted.

If you do not wish to compete in the above programme, there is no problem, just come along and play some friendly games.

Visitors and members from other clubs are welcome to come along on a Wednesday and join in our events or just play friendly games of chess.

The club is fully licenced and drinks are cheap!

11^th June 23

BDCL Rapid Play SBCC can boast 3 winners

Three Sections of the Birmingham District Rapid play tournament were won by South Birmingham

Major: - Won by Adithya Vaidyanathan

Intermediate: - Won by Sean Doherty

Minor: - Won by Chaniru Ranasinghe

May 15^th 23

And their off

The Birmingham District Summer League began second week in May, This is the beginning of the 2023-24 season events, with five teams from us entered into the four sections,

Open, 7400 max (x2), 6600 max, 5800 max. With two teams in the 7400 section rivalry within the club has seen some sharp tactics between the team captains, with each side trying to get the players out they need. We shall see who triumphs.

May 12^th 23

Season Summary,

The main BDCL Season came to an end and 3^rd was the popular finishing place with no less than four SBCC Teams ending in this spot, Division One, Division Two, Division Three and Division Four.

Division Five however showed the way and finished Champions of their Division, The Dudley 1800 max Division was also won by SBCC, We also entered players in the six sections of the BDCL Individual tournament,

Winning three sections, these combined with the 10 second League Lightning sections and the Summer Rapid play divisions, makes a dozen honours amassed making it a very good season.

Full list below

1. Division 5 championship

2. Townshend Trophy

3. Barrington trophy

4. League Lightning Championship

5. Section 2 of the League Lightning competition

6. Winner of 5800 section of summer league

7. Maximum 1900 Individual champion - Robert Glass

8. Maximum1750 Individual champion - Bruno Silva

9. Maximum 1750 Individual Runner-up - Matthew Little

10. Maximum 1300 individual champion - Chaniru Ranasinghe

11. Morry Trophy for best junior - Adithya Vaidyanathan

12. Dudley League 1800 championship

12^th April 23

Good Day Team
Hope the Easter Break has been Okay for you.
Tuesday 11th Mo knights had a big Fence to get over if we are to keep our Promotion race on track, Halesowen are the Opposition and will be waiting for us

A win and we will then have 16pts and a playoff Match against Warley Quinborne will be arranged
Warley Quinborne beat Mercia 3½ - 2½ in their last match, however I was disappointed to find in this crucial match, that even if WQ had lost 6 - 0 they would have still won, as Mercia played out of Board Order...
Our Team for for this Halesowen match was

Adithyan Vs Mark Bethel
Mo Vs Andy Ambrose
Dominic Vs Paul Evans
Joe Vs Tony Staokes
Me Vs Peter Banks
Derek G Vs Marco Hoogenkamp

This was the first time for me at this Townsend Venue, on arrival I thought Spacious and okay, the down side was quite a audible chat can be herd from the room next door for the first hour, My oponent played with fingers in his ears ......
Mo had said on the way he was glad the seasons coming to a end as he was feeling a bit worn out he was at the daventry Easter Congress.... I wondered if he would get tuned in ........
Turns out he never had chance and after 15 minutes came up to me and said he would make his own way home.. ????? I asked the dumb Question ....... well you never know he said he was worn out..... so 15 mins 1 - 0 ...to Mo Knights
now remember that chap who Had a bigger grade than me.... yes that one Kitty ... well after 30 minutes they had Blitz nearly all the piecec off and Kitty had made it 2 - 0 to Mo Knights ..What could possibly go Wrong I said looking at my
cramped Position... I dug in like you do with a plastic spade on a pebble beach, getting nowhere fast.. However Kitty reported back Board 1 Adithya must have the faulty Clock again as his time don't seem to be going down whilst the other chaps was down to 20 odd minutes
Dominic was in a fairly even game whilst Joe Brush was exchange down..... Adithya was next to finish and yes 3 - 0 A really Big thank you to MOM Mona for her time in bringing the Lads, Brother Satya was also here just in case .....any draw would do ......
My digging in had worked and after big Girls came off I was looking okay with a Bishop Pair and Rook Vs NRB + 5P each My opponent offered and in some ways i wanted to play on now
However the draw gets us over the line so Captain does what captain does and the big fence was cleared, Joe went on to finish second while Dom had repetition to prevent a mating attack. 4 - 2 to the Mo Knights
we now have the 16 pts and Regardless of what happens next .... and after loosing the first two matches, we have survived this division with a record of P11 W7 D2 L2 and the Fat lady is still not Singing......

❸	P	W	D	L	Pts
Rushall	11	9	1	1	19
Warley Quinborne	11	8	0	3	16
South Birmingham	11	7	2	2	16
Mercia	11	6	1	4	13

March 2023

The Eight South Birmingham teams in the Birmingham & District League have acquitted themselves quite well over the last six months; none of the teams will be relegated this season while promotion is still possible for four of them.

The top team have played all but one of their games in Division one and may still yet finish in the top three, In Division two all three teams are safe and the B Team currently Joint Second could be in a Promotion play off,

In Division Three Promotion is still a possibility with three games left to play, a remarkable achievement considering they are virtually the lowest graded team. In Division four promotions again is possible with one game left against the top side.

Division five lie in third place and still have a five games left, but have some good players to call upon.

21^st March 23

Tonight Match came with transport difficulty mainly due to the Bus Strike, Derek the Domino Stockhall now lives the other side of the city to our club and has to rely on Public Transport result being he could not make this one, reserves were thin on the ground due to the fact Four & Moore (SBCC Division 4) and Five Star (SBCC Division 5), were also playing tonight..... However, looking into his SBCC box of tricks Tricky, otherwise known as Terry Walker, came up with a Greek gift, Sia Kouka
So we lined up as Follows

Horologist Vs Ron Neal
Brush Vs Peter Loach
Dr Dom Vs Les Andrews
Kitty Vs Micky Harrington
$ingerman Vs Mike Darlow
The Greek gift Vs Bill Dixon

I was hoping after the Team drawing the last two matches, we would get the promotion show back on track, however maybe I am Listening to the Kitty Hype a bit too much... You all know it, he has a higher grade than me so as a result I played him higher again, it never went well for him and by 8.15 we were 1 - 0 down to the Bottom of the table Oscott... not too long after Brush was walking round with a pint giving me the thumbs down Crikey 2 - 0 and My game was now looking ropey with mating threats after I castled into trouble ...damn...
Mo grabbed the Match by the B------- and got our first point on the board, I Zombied out of trouble gained a Couple of pawns and My opponent threw in the towel 2 - 2 Dr Dom added us another .....Hooray we are now 3 - 2 UP with Just The New Girl on the Block. The Game was looking even with Q+2R each +4P Bill +3P Sia, the Big Girls came off, and we were down to the following with Black to move
SIa
Sia Proved Cool Under Pressure not only from her opponent but also from the onlookers .... a rook exchange took place and with around 10 minutes left Bill reluctantly agreed a draw ..... The Greek Gift had won us the Match on her League Debut...........
Thank You for Playing From the Mo Knights Team
Tonight we sit in Second Spot but its close and Mutual will be another Battle which may need another dabble in the Trick Bag...
Next Mo Knights match Away to Mutual Circle, Tuesday 28 March
Last Mo Knights match Away to Halesowen Tuesday 11th April........

14^th March 2023

10 second League Lightning Team Tournament

This year’s 10 second League Lightning tournament took place, again at Olton Chess Club; With South Birmingham’s Four teams making a third of the entries, Due to the lack of teams the four teams in each section played a double making 6 rounds in all.

South Birmingham A consisting of Jon Swindells. Richard Mycroft, Patrick Duncan, Pelle Larsen, won Section A for the thirteenth time with 17 out of a possible 18 Points, South Birmingham C Consisting of Matt Little, Claudio Vaduva, Sebastian Tudor, Steve Edwards, won section B with 15 points, the twelfth time a SBCC team has won this, and South Birmingham D, Derek Green, Derek Stockhall, Kacper Sikorski, Paul Heeney. Finished Runners up in Section C on 13½ Points.

Full Section results as follows

Section A

1) South Birmingham A 17 pts (Taking the Championship)

2) Mutual A 14 pts

3) Olton A 9.5 pts

4) South Birmingham B 8 pts

Section B

1) South Birmingham C 15 pts

=2) Mutual B 12 pts

=2) Sutton Coldfield A 12 pts

4) Solihull A 9 pts

Section C

1) Olton B 16 pts

2) South Birmingham D 13.5 pts

3) Solihull B 13 pts

4) Sutton Coldfield B 5.5 pts

2^nd Mar 23

Hello Chess Players,

Last night our division 4 team were playing in an away match at Stourbridge. Our team were in joint second place in the league and a win was needed to maintain our promotion hopes.

Our four regulars were all keen to play but it was difficult getting a fifth player to complete the team. Eventually new member Mark Swanepoel agreed to play and so we had a full team.

The only problem I now had was getting the five players to Stourbridge. I could only take four passengers. A begging phone call to Singerman produced a positive result and transport was sorted out.

I was taking three of the players from the club and Singerman was taking the other two players. About ten minutes after leaving Moseley, I had a text to say that Mark had caught the wrong bus

and had gone in the opposite direction to where he was to get his lift with Singerman. So it looked as though we were a player down.

At the start of the match in Stourbridge we had to default on board 5 and this put the pressure on the four players. The first game to finish was on board two were Chris came second to his opponent. So 2 - 0 to Stourbridge.

The pressure was now on. Playing at his usual rapid play speed, Adithya on board 1 came up with a few tricks and won a piece. Now leaving his opponent with just a queen and a few pawns and resignation followed. 2 - 1 to Stourbridge.

The next game to finish was on board 4 were Paul was playing aggressively and managed to deliver mate. The score was now even 2 - 2. Everything was now in the hands of Sathya on board 3. His opponent had sacrificed a piece on f7 in the opening in order to expose the king and launch an attack. Sathya was defending well but using a lot of time on the clock. Sathya kept trying to swap pieces off so that he could win using the extra piece but his opponent avoided any swaps. Eventually both players had less than 5 minutes on the clock and moves were made quickly. Sathya then noticed that his opponent made an illegal move so according to the rules Sathya gets an extra 2 minutes on his clock which is useful when you are in time trouble.

Amazingly, Sathya picked up the clock and added the extra 2 minutes on to his clock before you can say Ian Nepomniachtchi. A few tricks then followed and Sathya produced a nice finish and an attack on the king won the queen and won the game and the match.

Well done team.

28^th Feb 23

All,

The TAL-ent squad visited West Bromwich on Monday 27 February. Tom-Tom was unavailable so, since we’re a five-person squad, two reserves were needed. Bruno and Muhammed stepped up to fill the available slots, and the teams lined up like this:

Colour	Board	West Bromwich	Grade	27/02/2023	South Birmingham A	Grade
W	1	Ortega, Irvin B	2304		Clarke, Neil	1951
B	2	Walker, Nicholas A	2069		Smyth, Martin D	1932
W	3	Quraishi, Shahab U	1899		Whitmore, Darren H	1879
B	4	Crump, John E	1863		Lane, Tim A	1833
W	5	Davies, Dave M	1742		Dos Santos Silva, Bruno Alexandre	1711
B	6	Pincher, Jonathan P	1729		Isik, Muhammed Oguz	1702

My game against John Crump started 1. b3 e5 2. Bb2 Nc6 3. e3 Be7 4. c4 Bf6 and I soon got a small edge. I’ve always found John a difficult opponent so, when he offered a draw after about twenty moves, I had an attack of cowardice and accepted. Looking at the position I should probably have played on.

Darren, black in a c3 Sicilian, made a slip in the opening which cost him a pawn and castling rights. Some inventive defence enabled him to reach a R+P ending a couple of pawns down, but the position couldn’t be held.

Neil put up a great fight against the 2300-rated Irvin Ortega but eventually fell to an inventive temporary piece sacrifice which converted a pair of doubled pawns into a steamroller that exploited the position of an immobilized rook to win the material back with interest.

Martin drew with Nick Walker, leaving us 3-1 down.

Bruno played the Sicilian (a Dragon, I think) against Dave Davies and sacrificed the exchange for a promising Q-side attack where a black pawn on a3 limited the mobility of white’s king, which was on a1. White returned the exchange to defuse the attack, but Bruno got two passed centre pawns in compensation. White managed to win both of these, but the effort cost him his own a2 pawn, after which the black pawn on a3 became a game-winner. 3-2!

Muhammed met his opponent’s French Defence with the Exchange Variation and launched a K-side attack which looked to be winning. But near the end of the evening a white rook got pinned in the middle of the board, and Muhammed ended up with two pawns for a bishop in an ending. With both sides very short of time, black offered a match-securing draw which Muhammed had no choice but to accept.

Colour	Board	West Bromwich	Grade	27/02/2023	South Birmingham A	Grade
W	1	Ortega, Irvin B	2304	1-0	Clarke, Neil	1951
B	2	Walker, Nicholas A	2069	½-½	Smyth, Martin D	1932
W	3	Quraishi, Shahab U	1899	1-0	Whitmore, Darren H	1879
B	4	Crump, John E	1863	½-½	Lane, Tim A	1833
W	5	Davies, Dave M	1742	0-1	Dos Santos Silva, Bruno Alexandre	1711
B	6	Pincher, Jonathan P	1729	½-½	Isik, Muhammed Oguz	1702
				3½-2½

The TAL-ent squad has two league matches left, at Walsall and Stourbridge.

Cheers,

Tim.

24^th Feb 23

Townshend Trophy Final

Hello Chess Players,

Last night saw our International division 5 team representing Spain, Poland, Sri Lanka, Bearwood and Acocks Green playing against Stourbridge division 4

in the final of the Townshend Trophy. We were playing at a midway venue Warley/Quinborne on the Halesowen Road.

We had a half point start because we we playing against an higher division team.

So if we drew the match, we would win with the extra half point.

The match had to be completed by 10.00 p.m. so a 7.00 p.m. start had to be made with a time of 90 minutes each on the clock and no increments.

After exchanging team lists a representative of each team rolled a dice supplied by me to determine which team would have white on the odd boards

which is a great advantage in a five board match.

I invited the Stourbridge captain to go first and when the dice settled it landed on a 1. Kacper then represented our team and threw a 6. So far , so good.

We now had the three whites. I deny all suggestions that I supplied a loaded dice, and trained Kacper which way to throw the dice.

The teams lined up as follows:

1. Javier Castells Gil 1600E J. Conway-Lees 1833

2. Matthew Smith 1434 R. Evans 1569

3. Luke Lambert 1456 S. Alcock 1513

4. Kacper Sikorski 1400E B. Doran 1333

5. Chaniru Ranasinghe 1418 C. Woodall 1431

We were lucky that two of the Stourbridge regular players Foxall 1753 and Wilkinson 1609 were not available to play.

I was expecting their strongest team and my original strategy was to win on the bottom two boards and get a draw on one of the top three boards.

Play started and we were soon under pressure on the top three boards. Board 4 was strange which started 1.e4, c5 2.e5. Not something that I have seen before and also confused Kacper who took some time to reply after wondering what his opponent was up to. Kacper soon sussed him out and after winning his queen came up with the team's first win.

After being a pawn down, Javier managed to get some counter play and established a killer knight on f6 and a rook on the seventh rank. He won his opponents bishop and then had a mate in one . His opponent then sacrificed his rook which stopped the mate and pushed his only moveable pawn forward. Unfortunately Javier took the pawn without thinking and his opponent now had stalemate.

We now needed half a point to win the match. On board 5. Chaniru was playing well and managed to check his opponents king and rook at the same time and

thus won the rook. After swapping all the pieces off, a win followed. Chaniru's win gave us the match.

This left Luke on board three who was a piece down and under time pressure. The pieces came off leaving Luke with just king and pawns and his opponent with an extra Bishop. We all thought that the end was nigh for Luke. But alas, Luke held the position and his opponent could make no progress in the time left on the clock. A draw was agreed and great result for the team and winners of the Townshend Trophy. Well Done team !

Terry

22^nd Feb 23

Jim Barrington Final

Tuesday Night our SBCC 4 Played Shirley 4A in the cup final at Olton,
I was diverted on route due to Road closure at Reddings Road, the normal three minutes left to the Olton club took over 15 minutes partly because of the Traffic and Partly because I was not where I thought I would be after the Diversion… any roads, we got there with only two Players
for Shirley, funnily enough, both ex SBCC Fred and Chris Pitt we filled the cards and their Chris and our Chris Rolled the Dice for White on Odds we got a three they got a Six and selected White on Odds as a five board Match three whites may favour. With all now in attendance, they lined up as follows

Shirley & Wythall A				South Birmingham
Purcell, Robert J	W	1727	1	Vaidyanathan, Adithya B		1713
Dickson, Fred S	B	1646	2	Moore, Chris	W	1521
Pitt, Chris W	W	1627	3	Vaidyanathan, Sathya B		1516
Jimenez, Frank C	B	1583	4	Heeney, Paul	W	1497
Asbury, Jon A	W	1568	5	Swanpoel, Mark	B	1350E

and they started as follows ......Wow, some Chess moves.....
Board 1 Queens gambit Declined 1. d4 d5 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 Nc6 4. Bf4 Be7

Board 2 1. d4 Nf6 2. g3 d5 3. Nf3 Nc6 4. Bg2

Bd 3 Scotch 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 exd4

Bd 4 French defence 1. e4 e6 2. Nf3 d5 3. exd5 Qxd5

Bd 5 Old Benoni Defence 1. d4 c5 2. d5 d6 3. c4 b5

I went to the Bar as you would and on my return had a little walk round the boards Bd 3 for us Sathya, was in Big trouble... castling was denied and his king is on the move white Bishop Queen Rook looking to kill lets say Chris P was in a good place,
Our Bd 5 Mark also ran into trouble with his opponent now forking both Rook's the Big girls have already taken an early Bath. Mark has a bishop Pair but Pressure is mounting, Bd 2 Very even moving along slow but sure, Bd 4, also even but moving
rapid as Nurse's games usually do.... Adithya, Board 1 the Smallest player in the league seems to be matching Rob Purcell, except for time... Adithya 58 mins Rob 32mins... ..... nearly two hours gone chatting on Bd 5 ....its over Shirley lead 1-0.
Bd 3 has dropped the ball Sathya has some play however a draw is agreed... Shirley Still lead, and smiling Bd 2 Chris and Fred now also agree a draw Shirley still lead ... Down to Paul the Nurse.. Paul has N+3P Frank has B+4P the Pawns are locked and although Paul has an Advanced one it's all blockaded and reluctantly another Draw is agreed Shirley still lead .and very happy... 2½ - 1½ just The little guy left and has the South Birmingham World of Chess on His Shoulders Rob B+3P Adithya B+3P same colour Bishops...... tic toc tic toc tic toc a pawn each comes off, Robs dashing about to make the move's under time pressure then it happened.... Another light green Square with number 1 on appeared on the Adithya chess records next to the other 6...

only this one is special, it made the match score all Square and won us the Trophy on board count. Well played team you have won SBCC the Jim Barrington trophy which now makes it four times and not since 5A in 2002...
Come on Div 5 Thursday you can Match them.... I thinks
$

18^th Feb 23

Happy Saturday chess friends..

Monday saw us travel to Sutton B, this was it…the season on the line… winner looked 99% chance of staying up, loser was heavy favourite to go down.

Firstly as captain I was in a strange position, I had 7, yes 7 team members all wanting to play. Someone had to be dropped, I spoke with my number 2 Milenko, it was difficult, I decided the best chance to win was to drop the player who had won more points for the team than any other this season… so I dropped myself! The teams lined up as follows;

Milenko vs Marks

Seb vs Windows

Steve vs Dhesi

Bruno vs Hayden

Ciarán vs Ajimal

Claudio vs Oliver

I picked Seb, Claudio and Ciarán up from the club, Steve jumped in with Bruno, and Milenko arrived solo. For the first and only time this season, we outnumbered and outgunned our opponents.

Once the match started I popped for some food, upon my return about 8:10pm board one was chatting. How could it be over so quickly? Milenko knowing how important the game was played into his prep, and managed to blunder a whole piece without compensation on move 7. He was horrified. How he got Marks to agree a draw just 8 moves later a piece up and a cpu evaluation of +7.1 no one will ever know…. I still don’t understand it, I guess Marks panicked… 0.5-0.5

Seb our superstar was doing the business on board 2, Windows couldn’t keep up, Seb had the better position, had an extra 30 minutes on the clock, and simply squeezed him on both the position and the clock.. finally the chance came and Seb sacked his bishop… Windows took it as I recall and resigned a move or two later under the vail of checkmate... 0.5-1.5

Steve was next to finish.. he’d been working on different lines and played into a closed position. Dhesi looked confused.. he couldn’t understand the position.. Steve could and knew which pawns needed pushing (push em baby). He one a pawn, then another, then another.. Dhesi fell apart with Steve in a rampant won position, job done. 0.5-2.5.

If you would like to know some of the lines Steve plays, please visit his website chessatedgbaston.co.uk and grab yourself some knowledge!

It was starting to look all too easy… But Ciarán was facing the tricky Ajimal, who has taken some decent scalps this year.. With black he lost a tempo in the opening and got his g file opened early, he played what he could to survive but was positionally busted really… he fought hard however till gone 10pm… he nearly held it but Ajimal always had that slight advantage.. 1.5-2.5

Bruno was busy on board 4, in a typical Bruno game, awkward for both sides and searching for moves that may help… he lost a pawn but wasn’t suffering for it, he had the better position for sure… after a lot of huffing and puffing it looked tight still, Bruno checked the match card and offered a draw knowing it was what we needed and Claudio looked good on 6 still… the draw was accepted. 2-3

Claudio was down on board 6, I bet he beats most of us online.. but you know he has struggled OTB this season. He had to work for three hours, scraped a win off a player he should have swatted away really.. but OTB chess is a different animal to online. Anyway, he did the business and we romped home 2-4.

So proud of us staying up this season, let’s hope Terry won’t begrudge us the victory over 2A now, as we have made good use of those points and secured a fifth team in the top two divisions for SB.

Only one game to go.. match card attached…

Sutton Coldfield B	Jan	2	4	South Birmingham C	Jan
Marks, Robert	1717	½	½	Walner, Milenko	1760
Windows, Glenn F	1712	0	1	Tudor, Sebastian	1783
Dhesi, Iqbal S	1671	0	1	Edwards, Steve A	1739
Hayden, Lawrence F	1661	½	½	Dos Santos Silva, Bruno A	1711
Ajimal, Jettender	1655	1	0	Morris, Ciaran	1712X
Oliver, Peter J R	1602	0	1	Vaduva, Iulian	1693

TC 🚗🚗

17^th Feb 23

Good Morning Club,
get the coffee
Wednesday saw Mo Knights travelling to Coleshill for the scheduled Div 3 Fixture, a venue I had not had the privilege of seeing before, the route was either across many "A" roads in rush hour or round the M42 from J2 Hopwood,
M42 was supposed to be the fastest, however I know going to Redditch each day (Work) extensive delays are happening at road works on Hopwood hill, so I planned joining M42 at J3 Maypole, Now the team.... I was made aware
at an early stage that Dr Dom was on call and could not make this one, Then Kitty (You Know the one who has a higher grade than me) decided to again mess with his Jeep...??? (When will he ever learn?) as a result, the hour
job replacing a cable turned into the usual kitty Pantomime spread over three days which he could not resolve in time for the match, living in the land time forgot made him ineligible for this match, so two reserves were needed.
I had offered two reserves a chance to play for the best Social Club team against University last week, however Uni's withdrawal from the League on the day of the Match dashed that one, so I re-offered for this. The saint could not
make this one due to a pre-planned club individual game..... so my reliable reserve Nurse was brought in.... The other reserve from the week before is New Guy Sean Doherty, and from now on will be known as... DB7... no, he does not have one,
but works for them, in fact for this Match he got a train to Grand Central (Brummies know this as New street station) and an Uber to Coleshill... now that's commitment..... over the years the Nurse's Spot Cotteridge has proved very handy
to pick...players up, and I was able to find Mo, Nurse and Domino at the said location. We got to Coleshill by 7.15 with Brush and DB7 already there, now any chess, err oh yes, but I did not see it. LOL ...... After 4 straight wins, we are safe
and now playing for pleasure, I thought it would be the tail wagging if we win this one. Bd5 Domino had agreed a draw by 8.15 against Paul Barrett seemed a long way from Hampstead hill for 35 minutes of chess by the time we started.....
10 minutes later ...... The Brush had agreed a draw on board 2 against ex land time forgot Lichfield John Smith 1 - 1 Me as Black was in trouble again, however a lot of Knight moves by me in a very cramped position swung the game back round
and now I had some threats, my opponent Graham Barrett (no relation to Paul) was ex Handsworth, East Birmingham West Warwickshire Solihull Div 1 Player at one point and a very nice gentleman. I huffed and Puffed chasing the Win but
had to settle for the draw... i had a game 9.50 .... 1½ each.. DB7 on Board 5 had R+4P Vs R+4P, But his opponent looked to have the better with not much in the way of three connected, it was looking lost or drawn at best.... on the other hand
Nurse looked to be in command of his end game with a win or at least a draw.... Well, you know how it goes... Nurse ended up loosing while DB7 somehow Won.... 2½ each, It's all on Board 1 Horologist 1702 Vs Peter Thompson 2020 ....
The Coleshill man knew how to handle the Time smith and was up on time.... the game was even but it was looking over as 008 appeared on our man's clock ..... Thompson quickly looked at the clock and held his hand out and said … Draw?...
What a Sport didn't give a toss for the grade (or Coleshill table position for that matter) and based it on the Board position. 3 - 3 Man of the Match ...... Everyone... the only sour note was as we are driving back on the M42 they closed it.......
And we had to double back on ourselves, which added at least 20 more minutes (10 mile to the journey) ... For anyone who has not been, Their venue is Very, very smart, but they have been told they need to now pay £20 per night grand a year....
Next match Mo Knights Home Monday Night 6th March Mercia
Next Dudley Boyz Home Monday 20th February Wolverhampton
Staffy Miles, Trucker, Horologist, stand by your beds
$

Coleshill	Jan	3	3	South Birmingham	Jan
Thompson, Peter I	2020	½	½	Isik, Muhammed Oguz	1702
Smith, John	1749	½	½	Kadar, Joe	1682
Barrett, Graham	1617	½	½	Woollaston, Alan T	1622
Barrett, Paul	1553	½	½	Stockhall, Derek A	1553
Vanes, Thomas	1562	0	1	Doherty, Sean	1503E
Phipps, Malcolm J	1539	1	0	Heeney, Paul	1497

2^nd Feb 23

Chessplayers,

Having narrowly defeated Redditch in the quarter-finals of the Terrill Trophy a couple of weeks ago, the TAL-ent squad narrowly lost to them in Division 2 last night.

Colour	Board	South Birmingham A	Grade	2023-02-01	Redditch	Grade
W	1	Clarke, Neil	1951	½ - ½	Lambourne, Daniel M	2072
B	2	Smyth, Martin D	1932	0 - 1	Hosken, Nigel K	2054
W	3	Whitmore, Darren H	1879	0 - 1	Vaughan, Jonathon	2051
B	4	Lane, Tim A	1833	½ - ½	Towers, Nigel S	1821
W	5	Glass, Robert	1806	½ - ½	Russell, Scott	1798
B	6	Edwards, Steve A	1739	1 - 0	Whitten, Andrew S	1673

On Board 4 Nigel Towers played the Exchange Variation against my French Defence and offered a draw after fifteen moves. The position was dead level, so I took the half-point, and we went down to the bar for 45 minutes. When we returned, Rob and Darren had also finished. Rob’s game saw the Open Defence to the Ruy Lopez (3. … a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.0-0 Nxe4), a fairly rare bird at club level (Rob said it was only the second time he had faced it). Darren’s game had started 1. d4 d5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Bg5 and was starting to get tactical when I left the room. Judging by the (final?) position on the board when I returned, Darren had lost a piece in the tactics.

Neil, having drawn a heavyweight encounter with Dan Lambourne in the Terrill Trophy match, ventured down the same path again. A strategically complex game was agreed drawn when both players were down to their last few minutes.

Steve Edwards, Black on Board 6, played 1. e4 d6 2. d4 Nf6 3. Nc3 c6 (known to some as the Pribyl Variation) and eventually won a piece and the game.

Martin’s game on Board 2 was wild, even by Martin’s extreme standards. It started off sedately enough (QGD Exchange Variation) but soon livened up when Martin played … g5, … g4 and … h5. White achieved a preponderance of central pawns and broke through against Martin’s uncastled king, but Martin had access to the open h-file as compensation. In severe time trouble and faced with an array of tactical possibilities, Martin may have missed an opportunity to push White back with … Bf6xd4+ followed by a Q move to the h-file, but in the chaos it was hard to be sure. Anyway, at the end of the evening White found a knight sacrifice that forced mate, so we ended up losing a close match 2½-3½.

Cheers Tim.

1^st Feb 23

Hello again chess enthusiasts.. Monday night saw
⛄2 Cool⛄ vs Oscott, the lads travel out Ciarán was partying somewhere so I happily team tied Steve (Trucker) Edwards to ⛄2 Cool⛄ here was the teams… this match couldn’t be lost…
Milenko vs Hickey
Seb vs Lake
TC vs Thomas
Bruno vs Biddle
Steve vs Spillane
Claudio vs Harrington
On the way over Claudio was chatting in the car, how nervous he was, on a way to match having played 7 lost 7… imagine how you’d feel… he cares as well.. anyway, I gave him white on 6, just smash him I thought I know how good he is… and finally, the man delivered in the truest of styles.. a Russian game was on the board and Claudio didn’t take e5, defended with Nc3 and just smashed him. Harrington didn’t last more than 20 moves… devastation. 0-1. I gave Claudio a hug as he stood from the board.
I was next, and had played two boards higher than I should.. I wasn’t well prepared, that’s being calm and fed, this hadn’t happened and playing Keith my old friend.. (we even stopped the clock and went out for a joke and a smoke) I just didn’t have the fight in me. Tired from a long day, little sleep watching the climax of the NFL.. I just rushed one move and lost, brain wasn’t working though.. 1-1. I was glad I played high, as the bottom board could have took me out that night…
Steve, played a very cagey game. Spillane had the Pirc defence on the board.. Steve went about getting active and it looked tight, but Steve had it all worked out.. he set up a knight fork and won the piece, Spillane fell apart and should have resigned sooner… 1-2 to us 😀
The others board looked very evenish… with Bruno a pawn up, and Milenko a pawn down.. Seb was super even… eventually Seb and got into a double rook endgame, all four rooks were active, looked like someone could get mated at any moment, but you know what they say.. all rook endgames are drawn (it’s not true btw), but a draw was agreed with neither player able to find an answer, great hold on board 2 against Lake. 1.5-2.5.
Bruno and Biddle looked really good for us, I would even say Bruno was winning. He had opened with d4, Biddle played a kings Indian set up… Both players took a long time placing their pieces on good squares, and Bruno took control using his heavy pieces to own the open file after winning the pawn… alas trying to rush Biddle Bruno blundered his pawn advantage.. a draw was quickly agreed… the one that got away but at least Bruno guaranteed we hadn’t lost.. 2-3.
Milenko was last, as he usually is… all season he has had to play the board one monsters.. and he’s done very well. Hickey got a pawn however, and although Milenko soldiered on for as long as he possibly could, Hickey was going to queen.., his Herculean effort didn’t yield anything that night, but it will surely stand him in good stead moving forward.. 3-3 on the night.
So happy we didn’t lose… so happy to see Claudio win… all the team were great ( but me lol..) anyway, a win from our last two games and we’re safe, and we have played all the top teams… we may be safe now as I can’t realistically see Oscott or Stourbridge getting another point.. but we all know live sport throws up strange results sometimes.. so we can’t be complacent.
Match card attached

Oscott	Jan	3	3	South Birmingham C	Jan
Hickey, AJ (Tony)	1890	1	0	Walner, Milenko	1760
Lake, Andrew N	1797	½	½	Tudor, Sebastian	1783
Thomas, Keith	1775	1	0	Little, Matthew	1668
Biddle, Mike A	1720	½	½	Dos Santos Silva, Bruno A	1711
Spillane, Kevin J	1673	0	1	Edwards, Steve A	1739
Harrington, Michael J	1641	0	1	Vaduva, Iulian	1693

TC 🚗🚗

27^th Jan 23
Hi All,

The TAL-ent squad travelled to Longbridge last night. We’re a five-person squad and Neil was unavailable, so Mark and Bruno stepped up to play on Board 5 and 6:

Colour	Board	Longbridge	Grade	South Birmingham A	Grade
W	1	Woodhouse, Stephen V	1891	Smyth, Martin D	1932
B	2	Cartwright, Gavin	1889	Whitmore, Darren H	1879
W	3	Maddocks, Phil	1751	Thomson, David	1857
B	4	Davies, Robert	1738	Lane, Tim A	1833
W	5	Crees, Steve	1681	Drugan, Mark A	1806
B	6	Cleak, David	1571	Dos Santos Silva, Bruno Alexandre	1711

We outgraded our opponents by, on average, roughly 100 points per board – would it be enough?

The evening started promisingly with my opponent quickly getting into a mess against 1. b3 and succumbing to an attack that pretty much played itself (game below). On Board 6, Bruno established a pair of raking bishops against his opponent’s Pirc Defence and, having picked up the exchange on a8 (or maybe b8), won further material with a passed a-pawn. By 8.40 we were ahead 2-0!

On Board 3, Tom-Tom played the Najdorf against Phil Maddocks, who had beaten John Emanuel last week in the Terrill Trophy. I didn’t see much of this, but Tom-Tom lost a pawn and the right to castle, and was on the back foot after that. Dave manufactured a passed h-pawn and tried to go into (what looked like) a holdable K+P ending, but there was a tactical flaw – 2-1.

Dazzler (white) vs Gavin Cartwright started 1. d4 d5 2. Nf3 Nc6 and the players castled on opposite sides of the board. Dazzler was on top throughout, but his opponent steered the game into a R+P ending that was harder (for me, at least) to evaluate. However, Dazzler had everything under control and bagged the point – 3-1.

Mark (black) vs Steve Crees was a main-line Ruy Lopez where white omitted 9. h3 and ended up with doubled f-pawns. This didn’t seem to cause him any difficulty, and the forward pawn soon got to f6, where it remained a thorn in Mark’s side for the rest of the evening. Mark had trouble getting the a5 knight back into play and, when he eventually managed it, the position unravelled – 3-2.

Martin vs Steve Woodhouse (a university-days friend of mine) was a 2. c3 Sicilian which, after Martin channelled the spirit of Sean Ralph with an early … g5, quickly became unfathomable. Martin was walking a knife-edge for the entire evening but managed to survive into a RBB vs RBB ending a pawn down. Sadly, the balancing act had cost Martin an enormous amount of time, and he eventually lost the exchange, and the game, in time-trouble – 3-3.

We play Longbridge again in a few weeks’ time, in the semi-final of the Terrill Trophy. With Neil back we ought to be favourites but, after last night’s match, we know they’re going to be a tricky proposition!

My game: 1. b3 d5 2. Bb2 Nf6 3. e3 Bf5 4. f4 Nc6 5. Bb5 a6 6. Bxc6+ bxc6 7. Nf3 e6 8. O-O c5 9. Ne5 d4 10. Na3 dxe3 11. dxe3 Nd5 (not a good square for the N as I can threaten e4) 12. Qf3 Nf6 (12. … h5 would have avoided the worst) 13. Qc6+ Ke7 14. Rad1 Qc8 15. Qxc5+ Ke8 16. Qc6+ Ke7 17. Nac4 (threatening 18. Ba3+) 17. … Nd5 18. Rxd5! 1-0 18. … exd5 19. Ba3+ Kd8 20. Nxf7 is mate.

Cheers, Tim.

Longbridge-2	Jan	1½	4½	South Birmingham-2	Jan
Woodhouse, Stephen V	1891	0	1	Clarke, Neil	1951
Cartwright, Gavin	1889	0	1	Smyth, Martin D	1932
Maddocks, Phil	1751	½	½	Iskauskas, Alexander	1912
Boyle, Anthony	1605E	0	1	Whitmore, Darren H	1879
Crees, Steve	1703	1	0	Thomson, David	1857
Cleak, David	1571	0	1	Lane, Tim A	1833

25^th Jan 23

Olton 3B Vs Mo-less knights

Tuesday night, a Mini version of the Annual Friendly Match took place at Olton,
Hazel Bees and Mo Less Knights tag teamed against their Div 1 and 3B,,,,
Mo could not make this one due to mock exams Week ... (Good luck Mate)
I was unable to get hold of The Trucker(Steve E) to replace Board 1, so we all had to move up a board...
Joe the Brush played 1
Doctor Dom played 2
$ingerman sat at 3
Kitty was now playing the Dizzy heights of Board 4 (he has been 6 all season)
Domino was on his usual Board 5
As Luck would have it, reserves tell me they are coming along for the ride, so board 6 for us was hands-on Nurse
First to Finish was in very Short time was Kitty Derek, they basted out like it was blitz with a bit of clock thumping thrown in
this obviously works better for Kitty as his opponent Richard Evans gave his queen away and promptly resigned after 15 to 20 minutes   1 to us
Domino Derek was playing a new chap Khan Akbar who has played Leamington for them .... it was not too long before experience told 2 to us
A little time passed before the Nurse injected the Killer solution into his opponent....   Mohammed Gohar another Leamington victim.. 3 to us
$ingerman was playing Warren Archibald and was in an even game for at least 25 moves, however a dancing Knight caused havoc and down hill it went 3 - 1
We were now looking for a draw from the last two Boards. Dominic looked drawn with maybe a repetition at one point and The Brush looked in big trouble a piece down, exchange down and Pawn down against Tom Evans,
Dominic played a few tricks which his opponent saw, and now the game is slipping away........eventually it's over and the most likely outcome is a drawn match... 3 - 2
2R + 5P Evans RK+4 Brush, The Paints out the pictures changing before our eyes Brush gets rook+P for Knight +P then another P each gets swapped R+3 Evans, R+2
Brush has pawn advancing with king his opponent can only marvel at the brush strokes as another queen is born and goes to Reign Supreme We had to drag him out of the room to congratulate him so chuffed we all was
What an Artist...........
Well played team, I'm losing and still loving it Mo Knights now have 8 pts and relegation is more than likely avoided
as for the Bees, that's another Story
Next MK game   HOME Monday 6th February
$

Olton B	Jan	2	4	South Birmingham	Jan
Evans, Thomas	1679	0	1	Kadar, Joe	1682
Hughes, Sam	1605	1	0	Heining, Dominic P	1648
Archibald, Warren	1550	1	0	Woollaston, Alan T	1622
Evans, Richard	1550	0	1	Green, Derek	1603
Khan, Akbar	1375E	0	1	Stockhall, Derek A	1553
Mohammed, Gohar	1375E	0	1	Heeney, Paul	1497

Hello Chess Players

As Alan says, also at Olton Chess Club last night was the 1B's second match of 2023 against Olton. We had reserves mostly made up of 2B - and not 2B - with supersub Matt Little once again stepping in to play on board six with bugger all notice.

First to finish was Nat on board 3, who I was very excited to find played the Caro-Kann. Richard Reynolds violated what I was always was taught was the golden rule of endings: "Never exchange into a King and Pawn ending unless you could safely bet the life of your first-born child on the result". Worse, Richard did so in a position where Nat could develop an outside passed pawn. After doing some counting and realising that he queened in eight moves whilst Nat could queen in six, Richard resigned. 1-0 to us.

On board six was another King and Pawn ending. Matt Little played the Giuoco Piano in a very trendy fashion. With Be3 as well as a4 and ...a5 inserted, I could have been watching some of the games played at Tata Steel over the last few days. The game finished with Matt's opponent two doubled, isolated pawns up but unable to bring his king to seal the deal. A draw was agreed.

On board four, Jack finished next against Robert Reynolds. As you'd expect, Robert played very solidly as black and Jack ended up trying to press in a Fianchetto QID. A draw was a very fair result here.

On top board, I got a bit careless against Alan Lloyd's Catalan and ended up losing a pawn for very little counterplay. After that I was gradually able to get my pieces to better positions whilst Alan overpressed. I managed to win a piece with Alan in time trouble, and he resigned once his Queen had run out of checks. It's the first time I've beaten Alan, and am now unbeaten in five this year. Maybe I should quit while I'm ahead.

This made us 3-1 up with two to go, but Mark on five and Elis on two both had difficult positions. Mark was black in a KID and eventually lost a piece, succumbing to a mating attack in a blocked to finish. Elis was last to finish against Mark Cundy. This was a Leningrad Dutch in which White played d5 and Black played ...b5, meaning it looked like some bastardised Benko Gambit from hell. Mark's pressure meant he picked up some loose pawns, and was able to convert his win in time trouble.

A 3-3 draw then was a very fair result. It puts us on six points, so two more points from our final three should be enough to see us avoid relegation. We next play Wolverhampton on February 15th.

Cory

Olton	Jan	3	3	South Birmingham B	Jan
Lloyd, Alan D	2125	0	1	Hazlehurst, Cory S	2035
Cundy, Mark A	1956	1	0	Dicen, Elis Denele	1963
Reynolds, Richard C	1826	0	1	Kasafir, Nathanael	1869
Reynolds, Robert	1793	½	½	Moss, Jack O	1858
Liszewski, Richard	1773	1	0	Drugan, Mark A	1806
Threlfall, Roger	1676	½	½	Little, Matthew	1668

Good evening chess players..

A quick note on our match ⛄2 Cool⛄ Vs Sutton A, we were out graded by an average of over 150 points upon every board.

We had our full team, no subs, so we lined up as follows…

Milenko vs Mildenhall

Seb vs Gardiner

Bruno vs Escott

TC vs Sosynski

Ciarán vs Lawrence

Claudio vs Pyda

Well, our first match in about 6 weeks, a good warm up for us as we have two crucial matches ahead against teams we have a good chance with. Anyway.. I finished first against Soszinsli, who the teleported had told me has written multiple books on chess theory, all available at Amazon… titles include “the centre game re-examined” and “the Scandinavian defence - winning with 2… Nf6”. All his book theory couldn’t help him, and with the white pieces he played into a very stale position. No colour had advantage and a draw was offered… I accepted.. 0.5-0.5. Ciarán was next to finish, and played aggressively.. alas he had to take two pawns for a piece and it just wasn’t enough… 0.5-1.5 Next was Seb and Claudio.. the dynamic duo played well, however Seb lost the exchange and played the endgame bishop vs rook, it wasn’t enough… and Claudio got into a bad endgame, he was equal but with his pieces on the wrong squares he just didn’t have enough either, so 0.5-3.5, match was gone but we never expected anything from this game. Bruno takes man of the match this week, he outplayed Escott comprehensively winning a piece, he exchanged down to a winning endgame and made no mistakes, a great scalp, 1.5-3.5. It should be noted it looked like Escott had face planted into the floor with half of his face badly bruised… Bruno offered no medical advice though Milenko… o Milenko.. I felt very bad about his game, he was in a great position, had outplayed Mildenhall, and was in a winning position. Even the fella that beat Seb on board 2 said it was completely winning… but Milenko hadn’t been looking at the clock, if he had of done he would have realised that his 10sec increment wasn’t being added on, he only realised with 40 seconds left and just starting blitzing… it was horrible, he just had to make instant moves and Mildenhall lucked out and won. Should he have asked to stop the clock and ask for the captains? I don’t know what the procedure is here, but Milenko lost a won game because the clock wasn’t set properly. Do check your 10 secs is being added on… what a load of *********.

We lost 1.5-4.5.. match card attached. Next two games are crucial.

Match card attached..

TC 🚗🚗

South Birmingham C	Jan	1½	4½	Sutton Coldfield A	Jan
Walner, Milenko	1760	0	1	Mildenhall, John	1914
Tudor, Sebastian	1783	0	1	Gardiner, David	1906
Dos Santos Silva, Bruno A	1711	1	0	Escott, Keith L	1899
Little, Matthew	1668	½	½	Soszynski, Marek J	1881
Morris, Ciaran	1712X	0	1	Lawrence, Roy A	1814
Vaduva, Iulian	1693	0	1	Pyda, Arjun	1780

19^th Jan 23

Chessplayers,

South Birmingham’s 2A side were involved in a tense finish at Redditch last night, where we played the hosts’ Division 2 side in the quarter-final of the Terrill Trophy. Sadly I saw none of it, as I was too wrapped up in my own game to leave the board.

The teams lined up like this:

Colour	Board	Redditch 2	Grade	2023-01-18	South Birmingham 2A	Grade
W	1	Lambourne, Daniel M	2072		Clarke, Neil	1951
B	2	Vaughan, Jonathon	2051		Smyth, Martin D	1932
W	3	Evans, Harry	1894		Whitmore, Darren H	1879
B	4	Towers, Nigel S	1821		Thomson, David	1857
W	5	Smith, David	1818		Lane, Tim A	1833
B	6	Whitten, Andrew S	1673		Glass, Robert	1806

Tom-Tom, white on Board 4 in a Nimzo-Indian, and Rob, white on Board 6 in a Ruy Lopez with the unusual 3. … Bb4, both drew fairly quickly. Next to finish was Darren, who was (I’m told) undone by a nice tactical finish.

The other three games ran on to the end of the evening. Neil and Dan Lambourne slugged it out to a standstill with major pieces on the g-file and h-file, leaving us 1½–2½ down with two games in play.

My own game was symmetrical for the first nine moves (c4, Nc3, g3, Bg2, e4, Nge2, O-O, d3, h3) and remained level until White mistakenly played Bg2xNc6, which handed me the advantage. Short on time, I returned the favour by going into an opposite-colour bishop ending (a pawn up) that I could (and should) have avoided. Up to this point my opponent had played confidently, but now he started to lose his way, and the position turned in my favour when I won another pawn and, in due course, the game – 2½–2½.

Martin’s game finished seconds later in unusual circumstances (I didn’t actually see it myself) when his opponent, playing black, played …Bf2 and announced mate, to which Martin (after a few seconds’ thought) replied Kh4xNg5 (the knight might have been on another square). Is it an illegality to say “mate” if there’s no mate on the board? Both players were in desperate time trouble at this stage but, anyway, Martin won to give us the match!

Cheers,

Tim.

18^th Jan 23

Hello Chess Players,

This season we entered both our division 4 and 5 teams in the Townshend trophy but our division 4 team decided that because both teams cannot win it,

they would play what must have been the worst games that I have seen this season which included 2 self mates and resulted in a 5 - 0 defeat.

This was all part of their plan to give our division 5 the better chance of winning the trophy and to place themselves in the Barrington trophy.

The captain of both teams assures me that so far all has gone to plan.

On Monday our division 4 team played in the semi-final of the Barrington trophy and by beating Kynoch 5A by 4 - 1 have guaranteed their place in the final.

Our team was Adithya Vaidyanathan, Chris Moore, Sathya Vaidyanathan, Paul Heeney and Mark Swanepoel.

We soon went into the lead when Sathya had a quick win on board 3 finishing before his younger brother for a change ! Mark playing his first competitive over the board game played enterprisingly but far too quickly and came off second. Wins quickly followed from Adithya, Chris and Paul.

Well done team.

Kynoch-5A	Jan	1½	4	South Birmingham-4	Jan
Skyrme, Joshua	1528	0	1	Vaidyanathan, Adithya	1713
Norton, Aaron	1522	0	1	Moore, Chris	1521
Chan, Karl L	1504	0	1	Vaidyanathan, Sathya	1516
Rake, Anthony J (Tony)	1477	0	1	Heeney, Paul	1497
Hackett, Bob	1377	1	0	Swanepoel, Mark	1350E

Division 4 will be playing their second game this week when they are visiting Solihull in the league.

Our team are currently in first place and hopefully maintain that position ?

Our division 5 team following their captains plan reached the semi-final of the Townshend trophy and played away against Westminster last night.

To get to the semi-final they had beaten Kynoch 5A and Kynoch 4. We expected a tough match because Westminster had two strong players on the top two boards but we were stronger on the bottom three. We soon went into the lead when Chaniru completely outplayed his opponent. On board one Javier played very enterprisingly but overlooked a finesse which lost a piece. He fought on and gave his opponent a lot of trouble but came off second in the end. Kacper had a fairly even game but got down to a Rooks and Pawns ending rejecting a draw and showing his endgame skill to bring home the win. Luke had an excellent game and was winning pawn after pawn and was soon three pawns up. Then he blundered a knight - oops ! He went on to draw the game.

Perhaps the best game was on board two where Matthew was playing sound stuff and although there was a lot of positional manoeuvring there was a sting in the tail where Matthew offered a queen sacrifice which forced mate. Win for us 3.5 - 1.5.

Well done team.

Westminster-5	Jan	1½	3½	South Birmingham-5	Jan
Maciel, Gavin	1732	1	0	Gil, Javier Castells	1600E
Lawrence, Peter W	1683	0	1	Smith, Matt	1434
Stepanovic, Goran	1321	½	½	Lambert, Luke	1456
Joiner, Paul	1231	0	1	Sikorski, Kacper	1400E
Vuran, Ismail	1084	0	1	Ranasinghe, Chaniru	1418

We now play Stourbridge in the final.

Terry

17^th Jan 23

Good evening All,
Yesterday (Monday), Mo Knights assembled on a cold night at MASC to resume battle in the Terrill Trophy, On the way Derek Green, aka Kitty had some issue with his beloved Jeep,
It seems the four-wheeler got into a sulk outside a chip shop, and refused to start, or to even acknowledge any electrical output at the turn of the key... Luckily for the rest of us ............
After a mess with some dog leads ?? Power was resumed, and the sulky beast got going straight to the club well in time to set the boards in the analysing room and PUT THE HEATERS ON

The Rest of us, Horologist, Brush, Dr Dom, Singerman and Domino all arrived just before clock off...... Our opponents for the evening were Mutual Circle 3, the Understudies of our last round victims MC1 who
we managed to beat with the help of a 3½ handicap... I was First to Finish after e4 e5 nf3 nc6 d4 exd4 bc4 (Scotch) and 29 moves later I blundered a Knight in a losing game... Brush, Dr Dom and Domino
all followed suit, Joe Kadar aka Brush reports after analysing his game he was winning in at least three positions+3.14 followed +4.56 and of course disappointed not to find the move......
Mo Isik aka Horologist. Showed why he is Board one in a very tight affair with the majority of pieces still on found the winning combination against his 166 higher opponent and stopped the rot, A Great win Mo on Board 1
Kitty playing Black on Board 6 1.e4 a6, 2. d4 b5, 3. Be3 Bb7, 4. Nd2 Nf6 his Spike causing a 10-minute think by white for move number 4. No pawns taken until move 27 in an almost locked up position when black wrangled white's a3 pawn. Other than that pawn, all black's wiles were thwarted until a poisonous knight was offered, which white couldn't resist. Black then played Qxd4+ followed by QxR in the Amen Corner (a1) thus gaining an exchange advantage which, together with the extra pawns was pressed home in, perhaps, a less than perfect manner for a black victory. Well done ..... So 2 - 4 knocks us out the trophy and allows us to concentrate on Division 3 survival.....
A message to the Hazel Bees......... (1B) you will not be alone
Next Match Mo Knights are also playing at Olton Tuesday 24th January
Finally, yes all the heaters unplugged and lights turned out when we left, However the equipment cupboard Door is well and truly ------
$ingerman

South Birmingham-3	Jan	2	4	Mutual Circle-3	Jan
Isik, Muhammed Oguz	1702	1	0	Hollier, Mike J	1866
Kadar, Joe	1682	0	1	Hampson, Joshua T	1880E
Heining, Dominic P	1648	0	1	Wells, Phil	1701
Woollaston, Alan T	1622	0	1	Trigg, Matt D	1590
Stockhall, Derek A	1553	0	1	Singhal, Saket	1569
Green, Derek	1603	1	0	Scott, Hamish W	1450E

17^th Jan 23

BEES Vs Lichfield

Hello Chess Players

Last week the 1B side kicked off 2023 by hosting Lichfield. Attentive readers may remember our 2022 matches coincided with extreme weather. The weather was fiercely mild, but the conditions in the back room were fairly Arctic, mainly because your intrepid captain forgot to switch the heater in the room on until 7.28pm. We had four reserves but still had a strong side. Neil, Darren and David have all been regular Bees in the past, while Adithya made his debut for the 1B side. It's great to be able to give our younger players some Division 1 experience.

David Thomson on the fifth board drew his game fairly quickly: it was an Exchange Slav and the position was symmetrical and pretty level. On board six Adithya (who was Black) started like a train. After about an hour he had a pawn on d3 and pieces bearing down menacingly at his opponent's king in the centre. He couldn't quite convert the advantage, and his opponent kept calm, won the exchange and ground Adithya down in the endgame. On board one I was playing Maurice Staples. I was White and my Catalan turned into a Stonewall position after he played ...Ne4 and ...f5. Maurice thought for a very long time to think of a suitable plan. With 21 moves played I had an hour on the clock and he had less than five minutes. I couldn't quite find the plan to convert my advantage and agreed a draw in an ending that could easily have turned sour. Boards 2, 3 and 4 all followed a similar pattern. All were in Queen-Pawn Openings, in each game the South Birmingham Player was slightly level and was way ahead of time, and all of them pressed on and won. Elis was last to finish on board 2, who was black in an Exchange QGD. Neil is playing the Colle-Zuckertort like Carlsen at the moment, and Darren won his game by means of a well-timed ...g5. Neil and Darren have now played their three games for the 1B side. Played 6, won 6: a great effort!

We now have five points from 7 games, having played most of the teams in the top half of the division. Two more wins from our next four games would virtually guarantee safety.

Olton is our next match, a week today.

Cory

South Birmingham B	Jan	4	2	Lichfield	Jan
Hazlehurst, Cory S	2035	½	½	Staples, Maurice J	2027
Dicen, Elis Denele	1963	1	0	Nevett-Farman, Benjamin I	1940
Clarke, Neil	1951	1	0	Green, Anthony J	1977
Whitmore, Darren H	1879	1	0	Hulme, David	1879
Thomson, David	1857	½	½	Idris, Magdi	1823
Vaidyanathan, Adithya	1713	0	1	Routledge, Adam	1786

11^th Jan 23

Alpha Vs SC1

Hi All,

Monday saw us play one of the strongest teams in the league and even though they were without 2500+ Ghasi, they still had a strong looking team.

We were closely matched and the match started with us just waiting for Pelle Larsen. When Pelle did arrive, his game progressed quickly and Henrik Stepanyan had a passed pawn in (I think) a Grunfeld type opening. Henrik was playing quickly and his d-pawn advanced to the 6th rank but Pelle seemed to have it covered. A draw was soon agreed... On 1, John Pitcher was playing S. Okhai in a Bishop'sOpening but neither player achieved an advantage and a draw was agreed... The 1st decisive game occurred on board 4...A sort of Queens Gambit Declined/Slav became very congested with pieces and pawns aplenty around the centre with not much being swapped off. I didn't see what happened but John won to put us 2-1 up... Martin Smyth was involved in a Pirc against Ed Ng...Martin turned down a draw to press for a win but eventually had to settle for the draw... On board 6, Darren Whitmore was playing the young A. Padia and it was a Sicilian...his opponent had a Q-side 3v2 pawn majority and if I remember rightly, Darren had the 2 bishops amongst other pieces...Looked very close but the next thing I heard was that Darren had lost... I was on board 3 and white against M. Mesesan and the score was 21/2 - 21/2...The game was a 4 Knights Opening which I know very little about but I wanted to avoid his theory of the Petroff which can be a bit drawish but his superior knowledge of the opening may have given him the edge. I played a sharp idea with 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nc3 Nc6 4.d4...The game continued with black having the opportunity to win a pawn but I would have had some compensation with development and the initiative. He turned the offer down but he gained control of the e-file and I had to defend stoically. He appeared to misplay it and I gained a passed pawn on a6 and improved my pieces. My time was a problem and I went down to 4 seconds due to all the defending and also losing some time being spoken to by the bar staff regarding a club matter. He was a pawn up but the position was drawn if I held the position. Unfortunately, my first thoughts of being active and not having time for a second thought meant I moved my king forward and allowed his king to use the back rank and my position fell apart. So, a 21/2 - 31/2 defeat....'A bitter pill to swallow'

Kevin Hurney

South Birmingham A	Jan	2½	3½	Sutton Coldfield	Jan
Pitcher, John	2312	½	½	Okhai, Shabir	2294
Larsen, Pelle O	2218	½	½	Stepanyan, Henrik	2267
Hurney, Kevin	2028	0	1	Mesesan, Mircea-Marius	1998
Emanuel, John L	1951	1	0	Ali, Golam S	1924
Smyth, Martin D	1932	½	½	Ng, Edward	1889
Whitmore, Darren H	1879	0	1	Pyda, Arjun	1780

The end of another year means one thing at SBCC……. BEER & CURRY NIGHT

IMG_20221202_203827_745 IMG_20221202_220448_805

Clockwise…. Decimator, Silhillian, Skywalker, Trucker, Druge, Tal, Tricky, Staffy-Miles, Pershore-Mat, 2-Cars. Clockwise… Chopper, Silhillian, Decimator, Skywalker, Kitty, 2-Cars, $Ingerman, Staffy-Miles, Tricky, Trucker, Pershore, Tal, Druge.

13 Dec 22

BEES Vs Sutton Coldfield

Chess Players,
Attentive readers of my reports for the 1B side will recall that we only play matches during periods of extreme weather. So naturally, last night I was stood at Bournville station, waiting for a train to take me to Sutton Coldfield Chess Club in the middle of the fourth ice age.
We were outgraded on the top three boards but had strong reserves in Tim (thanks once again for the lift) Neil and Martin so outgraded our opponents on the bottom three.
I was first to finish on top board, playing Shabir Okhai. Sutton are obviously keeping Ameet Ghasi only for the easy fixtures. It was an advance Caro Kann line - 1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. e5 c5 4. dxc5 e6 5. a3 - which is so fashionable I've bothered to look up some of the theory. As befits a match so close to Christmas, I played all of the right moves but not necessarily in the right order, and ended up in a position where I never quite got the time to co-ordinate my pieces. Put it this way - I only got to move my light squared bishop once, on move 28, and it led to a mate in two.
On board two, Elis was playing Henrik Stepanyan. It should frankly be against the rules for such a top, classy player as Henrik to play anywhere but top board, but I digress. Henrik gave up a pawn for a lead in development and it was also hard for Elis to disentangle her pieces. Henrik's pressure led to an exchange win and he converted the point.
On board three, Imogen was playing Mircea-Marius Mesesan, not a name I recognised. He played e4 and c4 against her Modern setup so it ended up being a sort of Botvinnik structure. In the end Imogen was struggling against Kingside pressure, and her opponent converted it to a winning ending with a passed a-pawn. This will probably be Imogen's last match for a while as she concentrates on her exams. Very best of luck Imogen, and if you want a study break and want to play a match do let us know!
Neil pulled back a point for 3-1 on board 4, playing a very fine win against Gholam Ali. What a season Neil is having, especially when playing Colle/London style d-pawn openings to generate a Kingside attack. He even turned down a forced draw, and ended up mating Gholam's king on d4.
Martin on board 5 looked comfortable against John Mildenhall. John also played a London/Colle style Queens Pawn opening, but without Neil's finesse, and the position got quite stodgy. Martin ended up two pawns up in a Queen ending, played very well to almost convert...then forgot that Queens can capture backwards and hung his queen. If I were an ITV football commentator, which I assuredly am not, I'd call it an early Christmas present. Ah well, these things happen once every season or so.
It meant that Tim's game on board six was moot, apart from for pride. Tim looked to have chances in a Bird/Larsen position. Arjun Pyda did excellently to not only neutralise Tim's edge create a win from a Rook ending in a blocked position. By opening up key lines and creating weaknesses on both sides of the board, Tim's position got overstretched and although Tim fought terrier-like, it wasn't enough to save the game.
A 5-1 defeat feels slightly harsh, and leaves us with three points perilously near to the drop zone. The next match against Lichfield is a true four-pointer.
Season's greetings,
Cory

Sutton Coldfield	Aug	5	1	South Birmingham B	Aug
Okhai, Shabir	2272	1	0	Hazlehurst, Cory S	2068
Stepanyan, Henrik	2270	1	0	Dicen, Elis Denele	1968
Mesesan, Mircea-Marius	2058	1	0	Dicen, Imogen	1874
Ali, Golam S	1930	0	1	Clarke, Neil	1943
Mildenhall, John	1912	1	0	Smyth, Martin D	1928
Pyda, Arjun	1777	1	0	Lane, Tim A	1834

13^th Dec 22

Festive Greetings everyone
Tonight in a very cold Clubroom, that seem to take ages to get any heat going, Mo Knights took on Warley Quin who have Mike Widboar back playing for them .... Tidy player has won Div 1 Individual and WQ have won 5-1 Lichfield and 6 -0 Solihull in the last two games.
We lined as follows Out graded on all boards
1 trucker 1725               Vs   Jon Turner    1869
2 Mo knight         1668 Vs Micky (Amrik) Singh    1828
3 Dr Dom    1637       Vs Mike Wildboar            1815
4 $ingerman        1659           Vs   Florin Valea           1661
5 Domino PTE 1549 Vs    John Fahy    1720
6 Kitty                   1579               Vs    Steve Moxley               1696

Kitty Finished First with twin Big Girls too much for any man...... Won
Domino was next 1. d4. f5. 2. Bg5. d6 3. Nf3. Nd7. at the end K+6P Each ??? Draw
Dr Dom next 1. e4 Nc6. 2. d4. e5. 3. Nf3. exd4. 4.Bc4 Nf6. 5.e5. d5.   Draw
$ingerman 1.d4 d5 2. Bf4 Nf6 3. e3 Nc6 Queen's Pawn... Mason Variation... I was black and spent 15 moves going backwards, however, after I was forced to castle King side on move 21 the pressure lifted ..
I could not do it earlier as he had Queen backed by Bishop aiming at h7 and the Queen side was open ...without sharing the whole game... he ended up taking my Big Girl with Knight, which also turned into a Rook fork
However, I saw this coming and worked out threaten his bishop first with Pawn, if he goes for My Girl I take bishop and now threatening his, big girl if he takes queen I take queen If he takes rook I take Knight he takes Pawn
QRP Vs QBN this left him a rook pair Vs My Bishop Pair and Rook ........... and Finally the Rock has come back to $ingerman Won
so winning 3 - 1 after 4 games....... oh and look our top Guys are still at it................ After a blunder on move 4 Mo still ground out a Draw ..... Ding Dong Santa has landed......and the Points are in the Sack..........
Now for that Trucker on One.... and he was on one,,,,, Q+2R each 40 seconds vs 40 seconds Steve coolly Rampaging around the board not only took Jon's Big Girl but got another one for himself....... Grace under pressure.... Won
So No one Lost, and we all went home Happy......... here's a tip for somebody if you want the heater to work ............ Switch it on at the wall....... it does help.....

South Birmingham	Aug	4½	1½	Warley Quinborne	Aug
Edwards, Steve A	1725	1	0	Turner, Jon	1869
Isik, Muhammed Oguz	1668	½	½	Singh, Amrik J	1828
Heining, Dominic P	1637	½	½	Wildboar, Mike	1815
Woollaston, Alan T	1659	1	0	Valea, Ionut Florin	1661
Stockhall, Derek A	1549	½	½	Fahy, John F	1720
Green, Derek	1579	1	0	Moxley, Stephen	1696

8^th Dec 22

Hello chess players..
Last night our team ventured forth.. a long way in the cold.. to a match where we finally had a good chance. Although we were out-graded in the match, it wasn’t by the 200 plus points a board or worse he had dealt with to date. If we’re going to stay up, we couldn’t lose this one.
On the morning we had our full team, only the second time this season! That didn’t last long though as on the day our star player Seb, caught a bug and wasn't available… this wasn’t good. Steve happily stepped up though and he took Seb’s board on grade merit, which was good as the players played the boards they’d prepared for. The teams lined up as follows..
Milenko vs Julie Wilson
Steve vs Sharratt
Bruno vs Conway-Lees
TC vs Shaw
Ciarán vs Horwill
Claudio vs Foxhall
I arrived with Steve just minutes before the game, Milenko was waiting… but where was car 3 with the other 3? Bruno was driving.. and couldn’t drive fast on a spare tyre, and also had a bad satnav. The message came through at 7:35 were 10 mins away stall the match! I did what I could, and the match started at 7:45. The room was cold, and cloggers were dancing outside the door.. I’ll just leave that thought with you.
Ciarán finished first, with a brilliancy I would suggest. With the black pieces, he saw something and pulled at a thread. Horwill the virtual nonagenarian castled real early, and Ciarán just launched the king side pawns. It looked dangerous, but good at the same time! Horwill couldn’t cope, the kingside attack was just too strong, throwing away pieces couldn’t save white and a move before being mated the resignation came, awesome display.. I was sitting along side on board 4, was very impressed! 0-1 to us, the start we needed.
I finished second.. Shaw played a dodgy line of the CaroKann.. I just got a better position.. be blasted up b4 only to lose it and didn’t recover.. I just found the best replies to his moves and before long I exchanged down to a won endgame. I was the exchange and two passed pawns up… thought he’d resign sooner, but by 9:30 we were 0-2 up. Booming.. I went to get food..
Just before I got back the text came through.. 2-2.. 🥴
Claudio, who doesn’t want to look at a chess board till 2023 played into a bad position. He was on board 6 to get him going.. I still believe in him though… you don’t get 2200 plus blitzer on lichess without being very good… Claudio was positionally busted however.. 1-2.
Bruno played the up and coming Conway-Lees… who only loses to SB players (Walsh, Sia, TC) and has gone from 1680 to 1820 in three months.. he’s young hungry and probably a grading ringer.. I didn’t see the game at all… he just had a little too much against Bruno with white, and took his victory accurately, at least I think.. I’m not sure really what happened but 2-2.
Ciarán and I sat in the bar for probably 40 minutes… what was going on upstairs? I couldn’t look, but this is what happened.. Steve played his signature d3 opening, and a crazy complex game ensued for three hours… I looked at it just gave me a headache… anything could have happened, but Steve missed a trick towards the end and Sharratt found the right moves.. 3-2 to them now.
Milenko battled like a special forces soldier.. a good one.. he was up, then down, playing into a slightly dodgy endgame with a trapped bishop. Julie had played a great game, most thought Milenko would do well to hold on for a draw, but Milenko knows there is more than one way to win a chess game. As he had a time advantage, he just kept playing any complication he could.. Julie got flummoxed… she couldn’t work it out, lost on time. Mike had saved us all…. 3-3 😃
I’m happy with a point, we are still sort of on track to stay up.. long break now till end of jan for us.
Have a happy festive period with your loved ones from 🚗🚗

1^st Dec 22

Good evening / morning everyone
Tonight, Dudley Boyz played Match two Away to Wolves at their old venue, the working men's Club, I never saw much of the other games as I was last to finish,
we lined up as follows

1. Pearson Jones, Peter J vs Staffy Miles aka Mike Walner

2. Rosser, Geoffrey C vs Trucker aka Steve Edwards

3. Lee, John vs $ingerman aka me

4. Adams, Andrew vs Teleporter aka Chris Pitt

Teleporter finished 1st after offering a draw, the room became very cold and I think this persuaded him to get out as soon as possible Chris had a Bishop pair plus 6P vs N.B.+6P
30 minutes later 10.15, Trucker on 2 was next with a win quickly followed by Staffy Miles on 1 with another win, I then threw in the towel in another nearly but not quite affair which went 66 moves
so another loss for me and another win for the Team....Well done Chaps .................we are top of the league by my reckoning

Next Dudley Match, 30th January Home Wolves again in the return fixture........

Next Mo Knights Match, December Home Warley Quinborne........

30^th Nov 22

Hi Chess Players,

Colour	Board	SB “A”	Grade		Oscott	Grade
W	1	Neil Clarke	1943	1 - 0	Tony Hickey	1962
B	2	Martin Smyth	1928	1 - 0	Andy Lake	1825
W	3	Alex Iskauskas	1890	½ - ½	Keith Thomas	1804
B	4	Dave Thomson	1891	½ - ½	Mike Biddle	1748
W	5	Darren Whitmore	1861	1 - 0	Kevin Spillane	1678
B	6	Tim Lane	1834	1 - 0	Mike Darlow	1592

The TAL-ent squad hosted Oscott in Division 2 on Monday 28 November. The Division 4 side were playing too and, with no musical accompaniment from below, we enjoyed the unusual luxury of playing in the main room. The TAL-ent squad is a five-player one, so we always need one reserve. On this occasion we were able to use 2B’s Alex Iskauskas, who we placed on Board 3, allowing Tom-Tom, Dazzler and me to play one board lower than usual. You might have noticed a photo in the main room of Mikhail Tal playing a simul in Birmingham in 1964. One of Tal's opponents in the 58-yeard-old photo, Mike Darlow, was also present in person for this match, playing Board 6 for Oscott. Mike lost to Tal in 1964, and he got into trouble on this occasion too, resigning when I won a piece after twenty moves of a Dutch Defence. (I tried typing something about losing twice to Tal, but it was too naff. For those of you who aren't in on the "joke" and have no idea what I'm rambling on about, my initials are TAL.) Next to finish was Neil, playing white in a QP opening where he locked down the Q-side before launching a K-side attack. I didn’t see the end of this but apparently Neil sacrificed a piece to get a double check that led to mate! Hopefully we'll get to see this finish soon. Tom-Tom, as black, had started 1. e4 g6 against Mike Biddle. Mike castled long, Dave castled short, and an unbalanced position resulted. Mike opened the f-file but ceded control of e5, and then offered a draw. The position was still hard to evaluate but Tom-Tom made the sensible decision, with a 2-0 lead, that a half-point was a useful return. The rest of the games went on until the end of the evening. Darren, white in a Scandinavian Defence, had been dead level all night, and eventually ended up in a B+7P vs B+7P ending. I could see no winning chances at all, but Dazzler kept probing for weaknesses, and eventually his opponent cracked – match over! Martin’s game featured a closed centre where Martin had chances to probe on both sides of the board, while his opponent had few attacking options. Eventually Martin found a decisive breakthrough on the Q-side and won a piece. Last to finish was Alex, who seemed to have an edge all evening, with his opponent’s king hemmed in on b8 by a rook on the a-file (the a-pawns had gone) and the queen working the diagonals. I was downstairs during a crucial passage of play and, when I returned, the position had simplified to R+4P vs R+4P, and a truce was negotiated. So, 5-1 to the good guys! We’re (temporarily) top of Division 2, but our next fixture isn’t until the end of January, so I imagine we’ll have been overtaken by then.

Cheers, Tim.

27^th Dec 22

Hi All,

On Wednesday, our 1st team did the double over Solihull with a win against their 2nd team... This win puts us top for the time being with 9 pts from 6 games. The match was being played in the Analysis room as we find it a bit cramped in the small room. The match started with us still waiting for Pelle and just before I was going to contact him he walked in....Pelle was the first to finish in a very sharp French Defence with his opponent advancing on the king-side and putting a knight on d6 forking the king and rook. Pelle had threats on the king-side with...fxg2 threatened. I didn't see the conclusion but Pelle Larsen won against R. McNally.... Neil Clarke was reserve on board 6 against J. Summerfield, stepping in for Patrick whom was unable to play....He played a Modern with...Bxc3 doubling his opponents c-pawns. Structurally better for black but giving up a defensive piece and some dark square influence so it was unbalanced. The game was later agreed drawn.... On board 1 was John Pitcher v the wonder-kid Ben Larkin...A Caro-Kann was looking solid from John's point of view with black having a knight on the rim...the game finished with a rook taking a pawn on f6 checking the king on f8 and if...Qxf6, John had Nh7+ forking king and queen. Another master class from John... Bernard Chan v R. Carpenter on 4 was a type of Queens Gambit/Slav position with Bernard looking for a way through. In the end, there was too much for his opponent to defend against with weaknesses and mating possibilities so a nice win for Bernard. John Emanuel v T. Sadler was a sort of Kings Indian Defence with John seemingly having the initiative but I missed the crucial parts of the game but John won.... I was on board 4 as black vs Tom Darling....Not sure where to start really but for some time now my concentration hasn't been right and I'm making at least 1 blunder a game (a losing move)...occasionally I've gotten away with it as against Shirley in the Terrill Trophy but mostly I've been punished...Move 9 saw me make a blunder which lost a piece if he'd have played the simple continuation of 10.Nxc6 and 11.e5!. He played 10.Nxc6 but 11.0-0 instead of 11.e5....1.e4 g6 2.d4 Bg7 3.f4 d6 4.Nf3 c5 5.Nc3 cxd4 6.Nxd4 Nc6 7.Be3 Nf6 8.Be2 0-0 9.Qd2 Bg4?? I thought this move didn't look right but didn't analyse fully until I'd played it. 10.Nxc6+- bxc6 11.e5! undermines the defence of the Bishop and if 11...Bxe2 12.exf6 attacks 2 pieces so white wins a piece. The game was then drawn until my second blunder of not noticing my a pawn could be taken.Great win by the team so well played to everybody...next match is Sutton Coldfield next year on Jan 9th....

Kevin Hurney

25^th Nov 22

Clock Watchers Vs Mo Knights
due to various delays I got to the Lichfield venue around 20mins late so I dropped Mo and Domino off then went to park the car, Unfortunately the roads around the venue (Where I have always parked) are now restricted to Blue badges and Taxi drivers, so I spent at least another 20 Minutes finding a car park and finding my way back to the venue... My opponent had started the clock and I had 38 minutes left ...... oh well lets do it now i'm here... all the 2+1 online must account for something .. teams lined up as follows.....

Yuriy slobodyuk Vs Mo 1. e4. e5. 2.Nf3. Nc6. 3. Bb5. a6. 4. Bxc6 dxc6. Ruy Lopez (Spanish)
Lukasz Walijewski Vs Brush 1. d4. d5. 2. Nc3. Nf6. 3. c6. Bf4. Qeens Pawn (Chigorin variation)
Mike P Maher Vs Dr Dom 1. d4. Nc6. 2. c4. g6. 3nc3. d5. 4.cxd5. Nxc5. Gruenfeld defence
Peter Collins Vs $ingerman 1. e4. e6. 2. d4. d5. 3. e5. Nc6. 4.c5. Nf3 French advance variation
Mike Hoare Vs Domino 1.e4. d6. 2. d4. Nf6. 3.Nc3. Nbd7. 4. Nf3. c5 Pirc defence
David Fone Vs Kitty 1.e4 c5. 2. Nc3. Nf6. 3. Nf3. d6. 4. h6 g3. Sicillian defence

After 27 moves I still had 20 minutes to my oponents 15 ....... I had also got the upperhand with the exchanges however my opponent has been around at a high level for a long time and used a get out of jail card by forcing repetition so I was last in and first in the Bar next door ½ .. Domino came second in his encounter not to long after ..then......Joe and Domonic got draws so we are losing 2½ - 1½ with two to finish....Mo looked to be up against too many advancing Pawns ...and Kitty’s game was very complex with lots of everything...... tic toc.tic toc tic toc.tic toc. tic toc went the clock watchers clock, kitty 1 min 47secs Vs 1 min 43sec I expected a Smacking fest to break out... none of it.... they Played like they still had hours left ....then with less the 20 seconds Kitty is threatening Mate... (SHOW off).....His opponent whipped a piece off Kitty now had at least 10 second advantage he quickly put the pressure back on. and won on time... Match score 2½ each .... can Mo Stop the advancing Pawns and get a draw ???.........we would of all been happy ....... no draw…. He won Instead.. Well Played Mo…

Lichfield		2½	3½	South Birmingham
Slobodyuk, Yuriy	1726	0	1	Isik, Muhammed Oguz	1668
Walijewski, Lukasz	1718	½	½	Kadar, Joe	1678
Maher, Mike P	1699	½	½	Woollaston, Alan T	1659
Collins, Peter M	1697	½	½	Heining, Dominic P	1637
Hoare, Michael WA	1659	1	0	Stockhall, Derek A	1549
Fone, David W	1581	0	1	Green, Derek	1579

$ingerman

21^st Nov 22

⛄⛄2 Cool⛄⛄ vs Redditch Div 2

Hello everyone,

A brief note on tonight’s match, we lost to a great team. I’ll keep it short and sweet..

All the black games were lost in two hours, Seb was first out, closely followed by Derek and I… they were just too good. Another opening error for me (I’ve shared what not to do on WhatsApp), Derek lost a piece, Seb was positionally busted.

The white boards, who at least took it past 10pm, all had good games. Milenko was in a great position and went full attack and while he enjoyed his game, the fella defended correctly and was able defect and Milenko who was left with an empty position.

Claudio - still looking for a draw at least in div 2 couldn’t work it out and got took out.

Bruno was the man who salvaged the white wash and secured a draw with white to give us something at least..

We lost 5.5 - 0.5.

One silver lining, the four teams below us in the league, we haven’t played yet, all I want is to keep our team in div 2… this night wasn’t changing our fate.. but our next match be Stourbridge, we need to roar..

Hope your all well!

🚗🚗

17^th Nov 22

Four and Moore Vs Longbridge

Hello Chess Players,

On Wednesday night our division 4 team were at home to Longbridge 4 in the Barrington Trophy. Our team was a combination of youth and experience with three juniors in the team and the experienced "Nurse" .

It was very much an International team with our members representing, England, India, Russia and Sri Lanka. Our line up was :

1. Adithya Vaidyanathan 1644

2. Paul Heeney 1505

3. Sathya Vaidyanathan 1441

4. Andrei Artemov 1360

5. Chaniru Ransingh 1000E

The opposition was :

1. Paul Furness 1645

2. David Cleak 1531

3. Jon Weaver 1562

4. Richard Collett 1404

5. Ben Allsop 1335

We were out-graded on all the boards so we were not expecting an easy match. On board 1 "Wonder Boy" (Adithya) playing at his usual rapid play speed had control of the board throughout and got down to a rook, bishop and pawns ending

where he had a rook on the seventh rank. It wasn't long before a win followed and put us in the lead 1-0. This was his second game this week. On board 3 big brother Sathya got into difficulties but managed to find a way out and found a perpetual check so halved the point.

Next to finish was Andrei on board 4 who had his opponent on the defence and eventually won a piece. The win soon followed and the match was ours. We had got two and a half points and would win on board count if the remaining two games did not go our way.

On board 5 Chaniru had a complicated game were his opponent was attacking on the king side and Chaniru's king had no cover as all the king-side pawns had gone. Chaniru managed to get a passed pawn on the seventh rank which kept his opponent on the defensive. Mistake by his opponent soon put an end to the game and another point was ours. So great win for the team. Well done team.

Terry

South Birmingham-4	Aug	3½	1½	Longbridge-4	Aug
Vaidyanathan, Adithya	1644	1	0	Furniss, Paul	1645
Heeney, Paul	1505	0	1	Cleak, David	1531
Vaidyanathan, Sathya	1441	½	½	Weaver, Jon	1562E
Artemov, Andrei	1360X	1	0	Collett, Richard F	1404
Ranasinghe, Chaniru	1000E	1	0	Allsop, Brian	1335

15^th Nov 22

SBCC Five Star

While Woolly and his happy gang were giving Mutual 3 a good bashing last night, our eighth team (division 5) were making their way over to Great Barr to play against Kynoch's first team who are in division 4 . Those of us who had to come through Moseley first had to negotiate the heavy traffic and traffic jams caused by the fire around the corner from the club.

Once we got moving and onto the main road, good progress was made.

We were in the last eight of the Townshend Trophy and we arrived at the venue in good time and were all there for the start of the game.

It was a five board match and because we we playing a team one division higher, we had a half point start.

This meant that we needed to draw the match over the board in order to win it.

Our lineup was

1. Chris Moore 1483

2. Matthew Smith 1416

3. Javier Castells-Gil 1400 E

4. Luke Lambert 1400 E

5. Kacper Sikorski 1050 E

The opposition had their five strongest players to play against us and were headed by Larry Wright who is a strong player and was in my team when I was captain of Warwickshire.

The division 4 Kynoch team line up was :

1. Larry Wright 1805

2. Oliver Green 1568

3. Waleed Tahir 1526

4. Stephan Danaher 1525

5. Dalmar Guleid 1516

It wasn't long before we got our first point. Playing on board 5 Kacper had all his pieces in the right place, managed to force his opponents king out into the centre of the board and

had a mate in only 15 moves. Well done Kacper.

Soon afterwards on board 1 ,Chris who had been a piece down for some time had come under a fierce attack and was unable to hold the position, so the point went to Kynoch.

With the score now level at 1- 1 , we seemed to have good positions on the remaining three boards.

On board 3, Javier played a solid game and soon had the advantage. He turned this into a win and put us in the lead 2 - 1. We now needed half a point to win the match.

On board 4 playing white against a Modern/ Pirc/Robatsch sort of opening , Luke was in attacking mood and had the initiative throughout. All the pieces came off and Luke was left with a rook and four pawns ending against a solitary rook. His opponent saw no hope and resigned. We had now won the match.

On board 2, Matthew was under pressure and went a piece down. It wasn't long before the inevitable happened and Kynoch got the point.

So over all a very satisfactory evening where we won without the help of the handicap and are now in the semi-final.

I am hoping that we are drawn at home in the next round because the other three teams left in the cup are Stourbridge, Redditch, Westminster.

Once again, well done team.

Kynoch-4	Aug	2	3½	Five Star	Aug
Wright, Larry	1805	1	0	Moore, Chris	1483
Green, Oliver	1568	1	0	Smith, Matt	1416
Tahir, Waleed	1526E	0	1	Gil, Javier Castells	1400E
Danaher, Stefan	1525	0	1	Lambert, Luke	1400E
Guleid, Dalmar	1516E	0	1	Sikorski, Kacper	1050E

Terry

15^th Nov 22

Mo Knights vs the Tough Ask Terrill Rd 2

Good evening as I write this possibly Morning by the time you Look at it.
Mo Knights were paired against Mutual Circle 1 in the Terrill and although we get 3½ Start for divisional difference it’s still a tough ask given the Potential grade difference between the teams.
To make things more difficult I was notified in advance By Joe Brush and Dr Dom that they were not available for this Match, We have one natural replacement with Steve Edwards however Finding a Second may be troublesome, especially with the Div 4 Team also playing later this week. I got in touch with the Club chief negotiator and we managed to get a willing candidate on board 6...so a full team was available. I set out for the club and found all roads into the Moseley Village were blocked by the boys in Blue .. it turns out their was a fire in one of the shops next to the Bohemians pub by the Lights... I managed to go round by driving back towards Kings heath and round via Valentine, Woodfield, Billesley, and Oxford Rd ... at 7.30 we were Three players Short Mo Steve and Derek Domino all coming by bus .. Mutual Agreed to delay the start to 7.45 ..... they had 1 missing... Mathew Harborne, as by magic all appeared bang on 7.45. Yippee were off.......I have to Say What a Utter Joy to Play in the main room and have deafening silence for a change........ I think the main noise was my tummy rumbling.......... now a bit of Chess........ for you the Six boards Started as follows
Board 1 Steve Vs Mathew Harborne

d4. Nf6
Nf3. c5
e3.. e6
Bb5 Nf6

Board 2 Mo Vs Luke Boynton

d4. e6
c4. b6
e4. Bb4+

Board 3 Singerman Vs Kyle Reed

c3. d5.
d4. Nf6.
g2. g6.
Bg2 Bg7

Board 4 Domino Vs Mike Hollier

     1. e4    d5
     2. exd5 Nf6
     3. Nc3 Nxd5
   4. Nxd5 Qxd5

Board 5 Kitty Vs Chris Evans

   1. d4   Nf6
   2. Bg6   e6
   3. e4    h6
   4 Bxf6   Qxf66

Board 6 Willing candidate Vs Hamish Scott

b3 c5
bb2 Nc6
e3 d5
Bb5 Nf6

we did not disgrace ourselves and for the Next 2½ Hours all except one board were still Playing, however as you would expect Mutual started to rack up the points and four out the Five to finish went their way

I was last to finish and in a even game Big girls + R + 4 P each I was doing my best to hang on and tried not to lose, You could Hear Nothing from the 9 other People watching he had refused the draw offer but he was starting to lose position

with time Pressure and in the end I got the Draw ............ so all in all we did not to bad.................. Shame our willing Candidate was not around at the end, I would of brought him a drink but then again he is has School tomorrow...........

MO KNIGHTS 3 .......5 MUTUAL CIRCLE 1 .......4½

Mo Knights 3	Aug	5	4½	Mutual Circle 1	Aug
Edwards, Steve A	1725	0	1	Harborne, Matthew J	2131
Isik, Muhammed Oguz	1668	0	1	Boynton, Luke	2025
Woollaston, Alan T	1659	½	½	Reed, Kyle	1943
Stockhall, Derek A	1549	0	1	Hollier, Mike J	1838
Green, Derek	1579	0	1	Evans, Christopher J	1733
Vaidyanathan, Adithya	1644	1	0	Scott, Hamish W	1450E

Adithya THANK YOU for your Grate 40 Minute VICTORY.....

$ingerman

Phew what a ~~scorcher~~ night !! Alice rather understates his contribution last night in his match report. Adithya was the real hero of course for setting up the possibility for a match win in the first place but, in the end, it needed something from our captain ~~Suleiman~~ 'Singerman the Magnificent' to put the icing on the cake.As our captain was otherwise deeply engaged here's a few more notes on events as they unfolded… 20 mins in and glancing across to Adithya, next to me on board 6, I saw he was already a piece up and had a 15 minutes advantage on the clock as well. His opponent, only about 130 points higher graded, gave up soon after. Astonishingly even had Adithya not pressed his clock at all during his game he would still have won with a good half hour to spare ! Match score 4½-0 incl. handicap to the good guys. Once Adithya had won, some of us, including this reporter, saw ourselves in the role of hero by getting the half-point now needed to win the match. Not long after however, Steve succumbed to an opponent graded over 400 points higher. Match score 4½-1. Then Mo lost to his 340 grade points higher opponent. Match score 4½-2. No matter I thought, thanks to Adithya, we only needed a half point and I was just the chap to provide it ! I was doing well - solid position - Q +2R and pawns each and I had 21 mins he had 9 mins - so was feeling quietly confident of the hero badge. Alas, phrases involving chickens, hatching and counting spring to mind as, under no pressure on the board, I did a wrong move order and gifted my opponent the game. I said 'drat' to myself. Or something like that. Several times. Match score 4½-3. Next to me I saw Domino, a vital endgame pawn down, and the inevitable followed. Match score 4½-4. Only Alice left playing. His opponent over 300 points higher graded. Surely he couldn't get anything out of it ? Alice up on time 24 mins to 10 mins. Material was equal so he wasn't even a couple of pieces down thus preventing the 'Zombie' tactic coming into play. The board was open in that both sides had many opportunities for Q/R checks. Alices king was rather safer from checks but, as a consequence, easier to mate. His opponents king could be checked from many positions but Alice had to be careful of not being able to get back to cover his position if a check was not available. It looked very easy to make a mistake by either player. We were all gathered round watching. You could hear a pin drop. The match depended on this. A draw was enough for us but they needed a win. It really was awfully exiting ! Alice, surely he must have been quaking inside ?, played as cool as a cucumber checking his opponent all over the place, coming back to cover up at the right moment and all the while running his opponent's clock down. Eventually the pressure told and his opponent, down to 2 mins left to Alice's 5, offered a draw which Alice accepted since, courtesy of Adithya's earlier win, it gave us the match.

kk🐱

10^th Nov 22

Dudley Boyz 1800 Max

Good evening everyone,
The long wait is over and last night four Southern Brummies Staffy Miles, New Guy (Steve Edwards) Mo and Myself, disguised as the Dudley Boyz, took their place in the First Dudley Match since Jan 2020, our Opponents were Oscott Mike Biddle Kevin Spillane, Phil Jones and new kid Liam O'Connor, We played in the Analysing Room to soften the Music and keep the Rules Secretary happy. everyone was in place for Clock off and hostilities began, as usual I was to engrossed to see the others, so here is mine it was not long before I found I was getting in a unbalance position after my favored knight for Bishop exchange and having castled King side as Black most of my Pieces seemed over to the right of Queen side.. I could see trouble occurring as he lined up Queen backed by Bishop behind a pawn aiming towards my King of course.

. diagram
. This set play for the next hour. I got R for N after Nf4 but he persisted with his threat to try and dislodge everything until his own King side was rocking and eventually we got to this position

diagram 2
Me Black to Move my Bishop on a7 don't look so bad now mate in Four followed..After Playing Dave Davis, Julian Summerfield and John Stainforth it was good to play a weaker Player...as for the Other Guys.......

Mo was tactically better than Phil and also won reasonably quickly, we were leading 2 - 0 with the other two boards looking even, after some probing of his opponents position Steve agreed a draw on Bd 2 Match Won....
Mike alarm, had tried some tricks with a sac but Mike Biddle has seen it all before and got to B,N +6P Vs R+3P.... I think at the end he was hoping for the Alarm to go off,, so a 2½ - 1½ win gets us off the Blocks... well played Guys and thanks for Playing...
Next Dudley Game AWAY Wednesday 30th November at....... Wolverhampton

SB Dudley Boyz	Sep	2½	1½	Oscott	Sep
Staff Miles	1758	0	1	Mike Biddle	1748
Trucker	1725	½	½	Kevin Spillane	1678
Horologist	1668	1	0	Phil Jones	1480
Singerman	1659	1	0	Liam O'Connor	1498

$ingerman

8^th Nov 22

Hello chess players..
⛄⛄2 Cool⛄⛄ vs West Brom Div 2
Tonight our 2c side ventured forth away at a super strong div 2 side, with three players missing… we never stood a chance… so having already used Mo and Steve twice, wanted to save them for a match I felt we could win. So there was only one thing for it.. we’d have to get the band back together. 😂 With Claudio, Bruno, and Ciarán all unavailable.. Singerman, Domino, and Kitty stepped in. If we’re gonna get smashed let’s at least have a laugh… With the expectation of Ortega on board 1, I did the captains duty and decided to face him.. luckily enough, he heard I was on board one and bottled the match! (Walkers joke to me 😂) The teams lined up as follows…
TC vs Walker
Milenko vs Crump
Seb vs Quereshi
Singerman vs Davies
Domino vs Pincher
Kitty vs Blackhouse
I thought being out graded on every board, it would be I’ll case of I’ll see you in the bar at half 9.. but that couldn’t be further from the truth! At half 9 all games were still very heated.. the first to finish I think was Singerman, around 10 ish.. Singerman played into a good position and was really has holding his own, Blackhouse played a variation of the Pirc defence, and Singerman was equal to it.. the game built and pressure was everywhere… when the fireworks went off and the queens came off the board with a few other pieces, Blackhouse found an intermezzo with check and won a piece I think.. valiant effort by both players 0-1.
The games all tumbled in I’m not sure what order I was too consumed by my game.. but Seb who hasn’t lost in the league since he met Jack Moss, I think finished next.. he got to play his French defence but Quereshi knew what he was doing.. Seb said he never had a chance of winning, but was tactically sharp enough to make sure he wasn’t going to lose and a draw was agreed. 0.5-1.5.
Domino, who had soldiered his way on public transport arrived late, but still had a very decent position.. Pincher was no mug however and seemed to manoeuvre a small advantage into a larger one.. try as he might Derek couldn’t hold it and had to resign.. 0.5-2.5
Milenko was next and had prepared for walker.. but in Ortega’s absence had crump. He was able to get a Smith Morra on the board.. he was talking about it earlier that day.. his prep was on the board. He gave the first pawn, then the second, but knew exactly what he was doing. With his pieces active, he was able to win a piece and the match. Truly wonderful on board two. Here is the position he got.. he took the knight 😃. Well done Milenko! 1.5-2.5
I finished next, and after losing on move 7 last week, told myself just get a position... Walker played bishops opening, and I replied with a sort of Phillidor.. He pushed and poked, but I stood stout and try as he might, he couldn't break me. I gave up a pawn, but got the bishop pair and the open file in return.. one of their players said he never gets in time trouble.. but I took him there… with 3 minutes left on the clock, he took the draw I’d been offering… he had the extra pawn, but no way of breaking through. I played as well as Milenko.. 2-3. Hang on we couldn’t get something could we? What’s kitty doing still playing at half 10?
Kitty was looking good, I couldn’t believe it.. Kitty had played a sideline of the scotch and got a very decent position. The game went many moves and kitty fought hard for three hours..all the pieces eventually found their way off the board, he won a piece for two pawns.. entering the endgame bishop and pawn vs three pawns. Then we won the three pawns with the piece.. one problem.. he had an a pawn, and a black bishop. He couldn’t get the king out the corner and had to settle for a draw. He played great… you couldn’t get any closer to winning but a draw it was. 2.5-3.5.
Really proud of the team we got out tonight.. they were worried at half 10! Nice drink in the bar after.. we play like that a again we’ll be fine in div 2.

West Bromwich	Aug	3½	2½	Little Wonders 2C	Aug
Walker, Nicholas A	2071	½	½	Little, Matthew	1678
Crump, John E	1859	0	1	Walner, Milenko	1758
Quraishi, Shahab WA	1855	½	½	Tudor, Sebastian	1725
Davies, Dave M	1729	1	0	Woollaston, Alan T	1659
Pincher, Jonathan P	1726	1	0	Stockhall, Derek A	1549
Backhouse, Derek	1724	½	½	Green, Derek	1579

🚗🚗

3 Nov 22

BEES v Solihull B

Hello Chess Players,

After losing 5.5-0.5 to a Solihull side which massively outgraded us on every board - their board 5 being higher graded than our board 1! - the 1B side were looking to avenge that defeat against Solihull's B side.

This task was looking pretty tricky as we didn't have a full side by midday on the day of the match. Richard and Faraz are both on paternity leave, and hopefully enjoying being new dads! John Emanuel is now playing for the 1A side having played four games for them, which means that like last season we are fairly stuck for players. Neil and Martin stepped in, and special thanks to TwoCars who answered the distress call at the witching hour and played on board 6.

Terry informed me that one of the reasons it had been difficult to find a reserve was that people were unwilling to get to Solihull by public transport without a lift. What nonsense, I thought, there’s a bus straight down from Birmingham city centre to Solihull and a train station only a mile and a half from the venue. It's going to be easy to get to. So I left the Council House at 6.15. By the time I got to the station at 6.27 my shoes were utterly soaked - they are still wet now. At the station, I bumped into John Green who said that three of his players were late because of delays on the train network, so could we delay the match by 15 minutes. I made sure I didn't give a direct response - working in politics has taught me some things at least - and walked to the venue. Where Martin was the last of our team to arrive, because he had had issues with the bus getting to the venue. Maybe those players had a point about public transport after all. Whilst I worried about whether I was going to get trench foot from my soaking wet feet, the match began. I played Ben Larkin, definitely undergraded and a dangerous player. He had prepared 20 moves of theory which I walked slap bang into: 1. e4 c6. 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 dxe4 4. Nxe4 Nf6 5. Nxf6+ exf6 6. c3 Bd6 7. Bd3 0-0 8. Qc2 Re8+ 9. Ne2 h5 (this is fashionable now, and OK for Black if he knows what he's doing) 10. 0-0 h4 11. h3 Qc7? (apparently Nd7 is best) 12. c4 Be6 13. c5 Bf8 14. Nf4 Bd5 15. Bd2 Nd7 16. Nxd5 cxd5 17. Rfe1 Rxe1+ 18. Rxe1 Rd8 19. Bh7+ Kh8 20. Qf5 g6 21. Bxg6 fxg6 22. Qxg6 (at this point my opponent had only thought for five minutes. I had thought for about 40. And realised I was completely and utterly busted) 22...Nb8 23. Qxf6+ Nb8 24. Qxh4+ Kg8 25. Re7 Qc6 26. Rxg7+ Kxg7 27. Qe7+ (a bit cheeky really) Kg6 28. Qxd8 Nd7 29. Qg8+ 1-0. Suitably chastened, I retreated to the bar and took the opportunity to catch up on some work whilst the match concluded.

On board six, TwoCars got into issues in the opening and lost a pawn and the ability to castle. He put up a decent fight after that but the position proved hard to claw back. 2-0 to Solihull by 9pm.

Neil played a positionally great game against Ray Carpenter, trying to head for a good knight against bad bishop in a Colle structure. Ray is never one to die quietly, and decided to mix things up with an exchange sacrifice. This didn't work and Neil took the point.

Martin also beat Tony Sadler on board five, winning a pawn and converting the ending. That left Elis and Imogen to finish. Elis had played a Tromp and ended up in an endgame where her opponent just shaded her. Elis is off next week to play in the European Schools Championship and I'm sure we'd all like to wish her the very best of luck! Imogen was black in a Stonewall Dutch which turned into a very wild position. A draw seemed like a fair result.

So sadly a narrow 3.5-2.5 defeat. Rather than catch a bus back to Cotteridge, I hitched a lift with TwoCars who is owed a pint for his heroics next time our paths cross at the club.

Our next match is on Tuesday against Halesowen, where we will be hoping for our first win of the season.

Cory

Solihull B	Aug	3½	2½	South Birmingham B	Aug
Larkin, Ben	2015	1	0	Hazlehurst, Cory S	2068
Jaufarally, Nadia	2013	1	0	Dicen, Elis Denele	1968
McNally, Richard J E	2003	½	½	Dicen, Imogen	1874
Carpenter, Raymond	1956	0	1	Clarke, Neil	1943
Sadler, Anthony	1882	0	1	Smyth, Martin D	1928
Roper, Paul	1873	1	0	Little, Matthew	1678

28^th Oct 22

Hi Chessplayers,

Having drawn with Sutton Coldfield’s 2A side the previous week, the TAL-ent Squad were hoping to encounter less resistance from their 2B side this week (Wednesday 26 October). The TAL-ent Squad is in effect a five-person team and, with Tom-Tom unavailable, two reserves were needed. Nat and Sean stepped in to fill the empty slots but, when Sutton Coldfield turned up with only five players, Sean was stood down.

So we were already 1-0 up, and the evening was soon to get better. Next to me on Board 3, Darren’s game started 1. e4 e5 2. d4 exd4 3. Nf3 Nc6 4. Nxd4 Qh4 5. Nc3 Bb4 6. Nb5!? Qxe4+ 7. Be3 Ba5?? 8. Nxc7+ and Black might as well have resigned, though he chose to play on for a couple of hours. By the time Darren’s opponent resigned, Neil had also won. I didn’t see much of this game, but it looked like a double Stonewall in which Neil played the Rf1-f3-h3 manoeuvre and soon built up a winning attack.

So at this point we were 3-0 ahead, but Nat (white in a King’s Indian Attack) had dropped his a-pawn and appeared to be in difficulties while Martin’s game was (as usual) has to decipher. My own game as Black against Larry Hayden had started 1. e4 e6 2. Qe2 and then transposed into a King’s Indian Attack vs my Botvinnik formation (pawns on e5, d6 and c5). As the end of the evening approached I was ahead on the clock (Larry was down to his last two minutes) and had a slight advantage over the board and, remembering Two Cars’ tale from earlier in the week of a “won” match that got away, I decided it was a smart time to offer a draw. Larry had no sensible choice but to accept, and the match was in the bag.

Nat did has best to stave off defeat, but his opponent barely put a foot wrong, and eventually Nat had to concede. By this time Martin’s position had simplified and it was clear he was on top – in due course a fourth win followed.

Colour	Board	South Birmingham A	Grade	2022-10-26	Sutton Coldfield B	Grade
W	1	Clarke, Neil	1943	1 - 0	Marks, Robert	1710
B	2	Smyth, Martin D	1928	1 - 0	Windows, Glenn F	1710
W	3	Whitmore, Darren H	1861	1 - 0	Dhesi, Iqbal S	1688
B	4	Lane, Tim A	1834	½ - ½	Hayden, Lawrence F	1635
W	5	Kasafir, Nathanael	1845	0 - 1	Ajimal, Jet	1646
B	6	Ralph, Sean	1836	1 - 0	Default	0000

Cheers,

Tim.

27^th Oct 22

HUGE WIN AT CHAMPIONS SOLIHULL!

Hi All,

We were at full strength last night for our visit to Solihull and although missing their BIG GUNS from last season, they were still strong.

It was a busy night with at least 3 matches at their venue and a lot of interest in this Division 1 encounter with people coming to see what was going on.

John Pitcher 2286 was black against a Kings Indian Attack v Oscar Pollock 2246. He was first to finish after a controlled game saw him bring the 1st point to the ALPHAS.

Second to finish was Patrick Duncan 2100 v B Larkin 2092...A b3 opening with Patrick having his king on its original square defending the knight on d2. He played Ke2 to connect the rooks and I didn't see what happened but 1-1 after 2 games.

Not long after, it was 2-1 to Solihull with John Emanuel 1964 v Andrew McCumiskey 2093 finishing...A Queens pawn opening saw both players advancing on opposite sides of the board which saw Andrew gaining a winning attack.

'The Alphas Strike Back'... Sounds like a Star Wars Film... with Pelle Larsen 2198 winning in an English Opening v Frédéric Rocca 2196.

So, 2-2 with boards 3 and 6 playing and Bernard defending a ending a pawn down and yours truly with an unbalanced 3 pawns for a piece amongst other pieces on the board.

I 2056, was playing against 13 years old Rohan Pal 1991, a former under 9 British Champion I found out afterwards. The game was a Sicilian 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 in which I played 3.Bb5 on the spur of the moment.

I had a lapse later in what's becoming a regular occurrence recently... I didn't analyse a black reply which meant a piece was trapped... I gave up 2 pieces for a rook and a pawn and later gave a rook up for a bishop and 2 pawns.

The ending was a Queen, Rook, Knight and 6 pawns v Queen, Rook, Bishop, Knight and 3 pawns. My extra pawns helped to win the game with Queening threats... 3-2

Bernard Chan 2121 v Alan Agnew 2180 saw Bernard hold the pawn down ending in an exciting finish to an incredible battle between last seasons top 2 teams.

This win sees us top with 6 pts from 4 ga and Lichfield away next week.

Kevin Hurney

Solihull A	Aug	2½	3½	South Birmingham A	Aug
Pollack, Oscar	2159	0	1	Pitcher, John	2281
Rocco, Federico	2192	0	1	Larsen, Pelle O	2200
Agnew, Alan	2191	½	½	Chan, Sheng Liang Bernard	2075
Larkin, Ben	2015	1	0	Duncan, Patrick CM	2128
McCumiskey, Andrew P	2083	1	0	Emanuel, John L	1976
Pal, Rohan	2011	0	1	Hurney, Kevin	2051

25^th Oct 22

Mo Knights 3

Just a few lines to say ....After our Win Against Stourbridge 2 in the Terrill Trophy we lost at home to Olton A 3½ - 2½ then the following week we lost 4½ - 1½ to Rushall, we were out graded by over a 1000 in the Rushall match
Full marks to Derek Stockhall aka Domino for getting to Rushall by two buses and a Train.... you can also see their unknown second Highest graded Rushall Player played Bd 6 250 pts above our Bd 6 Kitty.
Although we got nothing to put in the League Table points column there were plenty of encouraging signs to show against these two Division two teams last season we are not too far off the mark....

Mo Knights 3	Aug	2½	3½	Olton A	Aug
Isik, Muhammed Oguz	1668	½	½	Liszewski, Richard	1737
Kadar, Joe	1678	0	1	Holt, Trevor J	1763
Woollaston, Alan T	1659	0	1	Cottom, Andrew	1738
Heining, Dominic P	1637	½	½	Threlfall, Roger	1701
Stockhall, Derek A	1549	1	0	Evans, Garry	1670
Green, Derek	1579	½	½	Gillespie, Jim A	1515

Rushall	Aug	4½	1½	Mo Knights 3	Aug
Manpreet, Sangha	1994	½	½	Isik, Muhammed Oguz	1668
Whatmore, Steve	1820	1	0	Kadar, Joe	1678
Staniforth, John	1817	½	½	Woollaston, Alan T	1659
Pready, Alex D	1793	1	0	Heining, Dominic P	1637
Leary, Peter W	1789	½	½	Stockhall, Derek A	1549
Arapu, Cosmin-Constantin	1828	1	0	Green, Derek	1579

14^th Oct 22

Hi,

The 2A side hosted Shirley & Wythall on Wednesday evening. S&W are a strong side with some experienced players, though on exchanging team lists we were pleased to see that they were without Keith Ingram, who would probably have been on Board 3. The teams lined up like this:

Colour	Board	South Birmingham A	Grade	2022-10-12	Shirley & Wythall	Grade
W	1	Clarke, Neil	1943		Thomas, David R	1931
B	2	Smyth, Martin D	1928		Dale, Jonathan	1908
W	3	Thomson, David	1891		McConkey, Chris C	1818
B	4	Whitmore, Darren H	1861		Christie, Gordon SG	1806
W	5	Lane, Tim A	1834		Graff, Ben	1763
B	6	Vaduva, Claudiu	1750		Peace, Arnold	1682

As we were playing in the analysis room, I had a reasonable view of Board 3-6 but no sight at all of Neil’s and Martin’s games.

On Board 6 Claudio was black against Arnold Peace, who was an SB member many years ago. Claudiu got a constricted position in a Sicilian Defence and was unable to castle (safely) on either side. Arnold played a well-timed g2-g4 and g4-g5 and achieved a permanent bind on the kingside, which eventually won the game.

My game started 1. b3 f5 2. Bb2 Nf6, at which point I tried 3. Bxf6, as suggested to me by fellow b3 player Patrick Duncan. I too achieved a nice bind, with Black’s bishop incarcerated on g7 behind the doubled pawns, but then missed a tactical trick that cost me an important pawn. By this time I had given Black a second set of doubled pawns, making the position unbalanced and hard to evaluate – a smart moment for my opponent to offer a draw. Glancing round at the other boards I saw that Martin was a piece up and was clearly winning, Darren was pressing, and Neil & Dave were level-ish, so I took the draw.

Neil’s game also finished as a draw a few minutes later, but then disaster struck when Dave, white in what might have been an Exchange Variation Gruenfeld, stumbled into a mating net.

Darren was black against Gordon Christie in another Sicilian Defence, where white played 3. Bc4 instead of 3. d4. Darren quickly equalized and started pressing with an advance of his queenside pawns. At this point I went next door to analyse my own game and then took a trip to the bar. When I came back, Martin was about to queen a pawn, but Darren had lost one and was on the back foot. Martin’s opponent, a queen and a bishop down, strangely played on until he was mated, but Darren’s position continued to go downhill and eventually he had to throw in the towel, meaning that the final score was 4-2 to the visitors.

Colour	Board	South Birmingham A	Grade	2022-10-12	Shirley & Wythall	Grade
W	1	Clarke, Neil	1943	½ - ½	Thomas, David R	1931
B	2	Smyth, Martin D	1928	1 - 0	Dale, Jonathan	1908
W	3	Thomson, David	1891	0 - 1	McConkey, Chris C	1818
B	4	Whitmore, Darren H	1861	0 - 1	Christie, Gordon SG	1806
W	5	Lane, Tim A	1834	½ - ½	Graff, Ben	1763
B	6	Vaduva, Claudiu	1750	0 - 1	Peace, Arnold	1682

On Monday we have another tough fixture, away at Sutton Coldfield (Mildenhall, Gardiner, Escott, Soszynski etc).

Cheers

Tim.

Tonight we played Solihull at Home and was only out graded by 438 points ..... Unfortunately at the Start our Board One was not here, I had only got the Answer Service when i tried to Phone .. now playing with my Phone off. After half hour 2 Cars had popped down and tried to make contact, a message came back some issues delaying his arrival but will try and make it. Sat waiting was Solihull's 1956 Ray Carpenter... over an hour had passed since clock start .....Mo Arrived moved pressed the clock and took his coat off ...... game on...
Domino agreed a draw on Bd 5... then Joe Brush Won on Board Two ..so much for that 200 Pt deficit .. Brilliant Joe, Dr Dominic next on Board 4 won his ... Quickly followed by Kitty with the Match Winner on Board Six I desperately tried to get in on the action and although I had a very enjoyable game Julian got the Passed pawn on Move 68, $ingerman you Finish with nothing... Well not Quite I had the winning match card in my Hands....... oh and Mo ??? Not Club Champion for nothing had to play bullet speed and I think Ray was glad to get the Draw... Another Fantastic Effort....... Well Played team......... We shall never Surrender.

Mo Knights 3	Aug	4	2	Solihull	Aug
Isik, Muhammed Oguz	1668	½	½	Carpenter, Raymond	1956
Kadar, Joe	1678	1	0	Sadler, Anthony	1882
Woollaston, Alan T	1659	0	1	Summerfield, Julian H	1837
Heining, Dominic P	1637	1	0	Silverman, Paul	1587
Stockhall, Derek A	1549	½	½	Powell, Andrew	1503
Green, Derek	1579	1	0	Wood, Penny A	1443

$ingerman

05/10/2022, Matthew Little wrote:

⛄⛄2 Cool⛄⛄ vs Talent Squad..

Hello chess players…
Tonight saw the rescheduled match between 2c and 2a.. after losing 5.5-0.5 to the 2b team I wasn’t expecting much… Both teams lined up at full strength and played in grade order, the teams lined up as follows, 2c had white on odds.
Milenko vs Neil
Claudio vs TOGITC
Seb vs the Decimator
TC vs the Dazzler
Bruno vs TAL
Ceiran vs the Druge
Milenko took no time at all to play into a bad position, and Neil hot off his success in the blitz tourney wasn’t hanging around, I didn’t see the game but Milenko said he got battered and by about 9:15 had been dispatched by Neil so 1-0 to the 2a team.
I was next to finish, and after plating both Dazzler and Nat a lot at mine during lockdown I have lost a bit of fear of these great players… We played a tough even game for the first two hours.. but somewhere the Dazzler lost his way and I was able to win a pawn, then another, and then another! I’d had to settle for opposite colour bishops but with his pawns trapped on black squares the Dazzler knew what was coming and extended his hand. 1-1. Seb was next to finish, he played a very sharp line with the white pieces and the Decimator was on the back foot. It went all the way.. at the end it was knight vs two pawns, but one of those pawns was queening and the Decimator had no answer to Sebs near perfect moves. Once queened the hand shake followed, 2-1 to the 2c team. Dave said Seb deserved to win after the game. Hang on, this isn’t suppose to be happening?? Cieran and the Druge played a cagey game, I didn’t really see it but Ceiran ended up a pawn down in a rook endgame and I feared the worse! He’s not in our team to make the numbers up though, and somehow managed to hold what look liked a lost endgame and the dream was becoming a reality, 2.5-1.5. Bruno who seems to relish the positional battles managed to get Tim in a bit of trouble. Tim found a nice bishop for rook sac which gave him a couple pawns, but Bruno used his heavy pieces to good use and somehow left Tim with no options and just took the victory. We were all gob smacked.. we’d done it 3.5-1.5. Claudio was last to finish, he went into an endgame bishop pair and two pawns vs bishop and rook. Martin used the extra pawns and bishop pair to good effect and Claudio couldn’t stop those pawns… so the match finished 3.5-2.5 to the upstarts. Terry didn’t look pleased… I felt like we’d done something wrong.. but all’s fair in love and war and we didn’t dwell on the blow we dealt to the A team, just happy we are up and running.
The whole team were amazing tonight, my young team rolls on. We’re swimming…

Little Wonders 2C	Aug	3½	2½	Talent Squad 2A	Aug
Walner, Milenko	1758	0	1	Clarke, Neil	1943
Vaduva, Iulian	1750	0	1	Smyth, Martin D	1928
Tudor, Sebastian	1725	1	0	Thomson, David	1891
Little, Matthew	1678	1	0	Whitmore, Darren H	1861
Dos Santos Silva, Bruno A	1673	1	0	Lane, Tim A	1834
Morris, Ciaran	1655X	½	½	Drugan, Mark A	1801

🚗🚗

1^st October 22

Hi All,

Thursday saw the ALPHA ONE play a banana skin tie in the Terrill Trophy at Shirley & Wythall...Their 2nd division side are a difficult side and we needed 41/2 points to go through to the 2nd round.

Still without John Pitcher and Bernard Chan for this Shirley & W Mini Series (we played there last week in div 1), it wasn't easy finding reserves from players that wouldn't be playing in other Terrill matches and we also had the need of a driver to help with lifts.

Tim kindly offered Dave Thomson for our match, therefore dropping out of the 2A match on Monday, but I tried Jack Moss first in the hope that he could play which would mean Dave could play Monday. Jack couldn't play Thursday so he played Monday with Dave stepping in for us Thursday. Is anybody following this? Iulian Vaduva was our 6th player and his opponent never made an appearance so it was unfortunate he didn't get a game but it was nice knowing we had an early 1-0 lead.

I wasn't feeling too good on the evening so didn't take in much of the games but there was plenty of fighting chess and interesting games...My game was very exciting but I made an horrific blunder in a match where we could only drop 11/2 points...I played black v Keith Ingram in a Pirc Austrian Attack when I miscalculated and on move 11 my Queen was going to be lost...I made the best of it by gaining 2 rooks and 2 pawns for my Queen and Knight. Numerical value of pieces that beginners are taught would mean the exchange is fairly equal but I'd rather have had Keith's position than mine. I made the best of my pieces in a very tactical game with sacrifices aplenty and eventually achieved the best checkmate of my chess life with 5 or 6 pieces all involved....

Pelle Larsen was up against Dave Thomas in what was I think a Grunfeld Opening...I couldn't get a great view but Pelle seemed to be looking better and he came away with the point. Patrick Duncan on 2 was up against In-form Jonathan Dale...Jonathan used the Englund Gambit last week to beat John Emanuel so we had a bit of an on-line discussion about this and Patrick played b3 in this game. Patrick was doing early pressing and his Bishop ended up on h7 with Jonathan blocking it in with...g6. I didn't see what happened after that but Patrick lost ... John Emanuel vs C. McConkey was a game I don't remember much about so maybe John can fill us in with a short report on his game. Most importantly, John won.... The last game to finish was on board 5 and I had to leave before the finish as Terry was at the club with his Div 4 Townsend team and he was giving me a lift to Kings Heath...It looked like a Sicilian with a Stonewall pawn structure of sorts... Dave had pawns on light squares with white having pawns on dark squares. It came down to a rook and 2 minor pieces endgame and Dave got the full point to give us a 5-1 win...5-31/2 with the handicap... So, a very tricky tie safely overcome...well done to everyone....

Kevin Hurney

https://chessmicrobase.com/g/m8x8fv21

Shirley Wythall 2	Aug	3½	5	Alpha One	Aug
Thomas, David R	1931	0	1	Larsen, Pelle O	2200
Dale, Jonathan	1908	1	0	Duncan, Patrick CM	2128
Ingram, Keith R	1869	0	1	Hurney, Kevin	2051
McConkey, Chris C	1818	0	1	Emanuel, John L	1976
Christie, Gordon SG	1806	0	1	Thomson, David	1891
Freeman, John	1749	Ø	₩	Vaduva, Iulian	1750

29^th Sep 22

Terrill Trophy R1
Mo Knights 3 had their first Match Tonight Away to Stourbridge 2, It was always going to be a tough match and trying to get 6 Players there was also a challenge Two of the registered Mo Knights gave notice of being unavailable for this Match so Reserves were drafted in, with Div 4 and 5 also playing Trophy Matches this week volunteers were at a premium. Nurse aka Paul Heeney who has been a long standing companion was up for the game even though he is playing again tonight in the Townshend. The other reserve was a regular last season Sia. he has moved to the land of Tal. Although to busy with a new business venture to play regularly, he would not let me down..... So I had a team, but can we all get there....... Derek aka Domino now lives in Handsworth with no transport. however he said he will get a train.... and FULL MARKS he did and was there with Joe Brush and Sia, when Me, Nurse and Mo arrived .........
Wilson, Julie C   1821 Vs Isik, Muhammed Oguz 1668
Sharratt, Paul B   1794 Vs Kadar, Joe     1678
Shaw, Tony     1747 Vs Woollaston, Alan T   1659
Horwill, Eric     1734 Vs Stockhall, Derek A   1549
Conway-Lees, Joe   1691 Vs Zafarian, Siamak   1499X
Parkes, Gregory   1512X Vs Heeney, Paul     1505
I saw none of the other games as the tables were well Spaced out and I was to busy struggling with my own game I can say that Derek for all his effort was first to lose against Eric Horwill, The Nurse then got a draw on Bottom board and Sia Won, then I lost ...so with two to finish we were losing 1½ to 2½ ......... Hang on a minute....we get 1½ Handicap for being a division Lower ... so we are actually wining and a need a point from the last two to win...... Mo Vs Julie Wilson Bd 1 looked very even with lots of pieces on....Big Girls twin rooks and bishop each plus lots of Pawns...... Mo did have a time advantage of over 10 minutes... Joe Brush Vs Paul Sharratt on Bd 2 a rook and five P each but Paul looked to have the momentum edge. ........time ticked away and Paul got a pawn running it was looking a winner however Joe found a covering move with Checks forcing a repetitive draw ...... 2 - 3 to them over the Boards its all down to the last Board we need a draw they need a win........ Julie got into time trouble and offered a draw....... that could of been it however ....... Mo did not win the Club championship giving draws in won games and he got the full point ........ Well Played Guys .... Another SB Team in the Terrill Hat against all odds...
Singerman

27^th Sep 22

Chessplayers,

The TAL-ent squad visited Oscott last night in the first round of the Terrill Trophy, where we met their Division 3 side. There’s a handicap system for these Trophy matches, which means we had to win 4-2 to progress to the next round. The TAL-ent squad is a five-player outfit and, with Tom-Tom needed for first team duties later in the week, two reserves were needed. Nat and Jack stepped in to fill the empty spots.

Oscott were heavily outgraded, and the match reached the desired outcome with no bumps in the road. Martin and I won pieces fairly early in the evening to give us a good start. Darren played a nice positional squeeze where he slowly improved the position of his pieces before engineering a decisive …c5-to-c4 breakthrough. At this point Neil took a draw (“a practical decision”) which, with Nat and Jack both in good positions, more-or-less sealed the match. Nat, black in a Caro-Kann, had won a pawn early in proceedings and maintained his advantage all evening before wrapping up with a tactical denouement. Last to finish was Jack, whose game I didn’t see much of, but I think there was a forced mate on the board at the end of the evening.

Colour	Board	Oscott 3	Grade	2022-09-26	South Birmingham 2A	Grade
W	1	Neale, Ron	1716	½ - ½	Clarke, Neil	1943
B	2	Loach, Peter L	1621	0 - 1	Smyth, Martin D	1928
W	3	Harrington, Michael J	1633	0 - 1	Whitmore, Darren H	1861
B	4	Andrews, Leslie	1511	0 - 1	Lane, Tim A	1834
W	5	Dixon, Bill	1500	0 - 1	Kasafir, Nathanael	1845
B	6	Peers, Mike	1429	0 - 1	Moss, Jack O	1793

Cheers,

Tim.

23^rd Sep 2022

Alpha vs Shirley

Hi All,

With so many 1st team players withdrawing from this match, this was always going to be a very tough ask but our strength in defence is never in doubt...Shirley were missing a couple of players in J. Fallowfield and M. Walsh but we were without J. Pitcher, P. Larsen and B. Chan to add to already losing J. Swindells and P. Besedin. At 6.30pm, I saw a text from Tim asking me if I'd realised Faraz had withdrawn...I'd started out at 5pm and hadn't looked at my emails whilst travelling. Thankfully, Faraz had contacted the club on whatsapp and Matt contacted Martin Smyth whom agreed to play at very short notice. Great team work so thanks to all, especially Martin for playing... Shirley arrived at their club after most of our team and the match started late... I did write a few notes about players games but left it at Wythall so it will be a brief report.... I was on board 2 instead of my usual 4/5 and it threw Don because he'd prepared for JP and PL apparently refuting the b3 opening in his preparation. He studies hard at the game and understands so much knowledge but I did my usual and went my own way. A Sicilian Defence without d4 ensued and I was happy with my play, even having the advantage near the end but there was a lot of play still in it. He said the game was a bit like a Carlsen game though my ideas were obviously of an higher level....ha!!

Draw Agreed to start the match....see game below

Cory drew on board 3 against S. Briggs in a game where Cory had to be careful in the middle part of the game but seemed to neutralise well and obtained a good draw.

John was a sacrificed pawn up in his game but as usual in these games, black had compensation with his activity....a bit later the material was level and I didn't see the end but John lost against J. Dale.

Patrick was on board 1 against P. Purcell and I think it was that game that was a Nimzo-Indian...If I remember rightly, Patrick was a pawn up but Purcell had a protected passed pawn which proved enough for the draw.

Tim played his beloved b3 and always seemed better against C. McConkey with his pawn advance to b5 against a c6 + d5 pawn structure...Tim came in to the bar to give us the good news...

So, all on Martin's game...he did worry me early in the game with his Queen in opponent's territory and short of squares but Martin is very resourceful and both players repeated moves at the end to agree a draw....so, an excellent draw as we were out-graded on the top 3 boards but 3 draws were justice for what we deserved. Thanks to everybody involved in playing and getting this team sorted and thanks to Tim for his win and dropping players at certain points after the match.

Hurney Kevin vs Mason Don - Chess Microbase

Shirley Wythall	Aug	3	3	Alpha One	Aug
Purcell, Philip	2148	½	½	Duncan, Patrick CM	2128
Mason, Donald J	2178	½	½	Hurney, Kevin	2051
Briggs, Steven	2114	½	½	Hazlehurst, Cory S	2068
Dale, Jonathan	1908	1	0	Emanuel, John L	1976
Ingram, Keith R	1869	½	½	Smyth, Martin D	1928
McConkey, Chris C	1818	0	1	Lane, Tim A	1834

Kevin

15^th Sep 22

Chessplayers,

The TAL-ent Squad started their season last night with a tight match against Rob Glass’s 2B team. Both sides were at full strength but, since the TAL-ent Squad have one ghost player in our registrations, Bruno stepped in on Board 6.

Colour	Board	South Birmingham A	Grade	South Birmingham B	Grade
W	1	Clarke, Neil	1943	Kasafir, Nathanael	1845
B	2	Smyth, Martin D	1928	Ralph, Sean	1836
W	3	Thomson, David	1891	Moss, Jack O	1793
B	4	Whitmore, Darren H	1861	Drugan, Mark A	1801
W	5	Lane, Tim A	1834	Walker, Terry W	1769
B	6	Dos Santos Silva, Bruno Alexandre	1673	Glass, Robert	1778

I didn’t see anything of Boards 1 and 2, so I can’t tell you what happened there. On Board 3, Tom-Tom vs Jack Moss was a Dutch where Black engineered an early …e5. Dave had played Qc2 and Rd1 and then found his Nf3 uncomfortably pinned by … Bg4. Black had an open f-file and this eventually cost Tom-Tom a piece.

Board 4 started 1. e4 c5; 2. Nf3 Nc6; 3. Bb5 Nf6 4. e5 Ng4 5. Bxc6 dxc6 (the fourth and fifth moved might have been in the opposite order), which I don’t think I’ve seen before. A complex positional struggle ensued which came to an abrupt end when I looked up from a few minutes of deep thought to see that Darren had won a piece.

Rob vs Bruno on Board 6 was a Sicilian Dragon. Rob played a positional line and Bruno tried an early …d5, which left him with a weak isolated pawn on c6. Rob kept a small edge throughout, but Bruno defended resourcefully and eventually the game came down to K+5P vs K+5P, and a draw was agreed.

On Board 5 I subjected Tricky Terry to 1. b3 to which Terry replied 1. … d5; 2. Bb2 Bf5. Black got doubled c-pawns on c7 and c6 and, after 20-odd moves, I was able to win one of them from the front with Rf3c3. I managed to keep Terry boxed in and eventually the extra pawn was sufficient.

Neil vs Nat had resulted in a draw so, as the end of the evening approached, the TAL-ent Squad were 3-2 up with Sean vs Martin still in play. Closing time was approaching so we all headed downstairs where, some time later, Sean and Martin joined us having also drawn. So, 3½–2½ to the “A” team!

Colour	Board	South Birmingham A	Grade	2022-09-14	South Birmingham B	Grade
W	1	Clarke, Neil	1943	½–½	Kasafir, Nathanael	1845
B	2	Smyth, Martin D	1928	½–½	Ralph, Sean	1836
W	3	Thomson, David	1891	0-1	Moss, Jack O	1793
B	4	Whitmore, Darren H	1861	1-0	Drugan, Mark A	1801
W	5	Lane, Tim A	1834	1-0	Walker, Terry W	1769
B	6	Dos Santos Silva, Bruno Alexandre	1673	½–½	Glass, Robert	1778

Cheers,

Tim.

14^th Sep 2022

Annual friendly match against Olton

Hello Chess Players,

Tuesday 6 September saw a team representing South Birmingham make its' way to Tyseley to play in the annual match against Olton chess club.

This was our 35th.annual "Friendly" match.

We originally had agreed to play the match over 20 boards but the membership of the Olton club has been diminishing over the last few years and in the last twelve months they have had three members die and their strongest player Phil Holt is currently in hospital. We turned up with 19 players and Olton after having been bolstered by three players from Shirley Wythall chess club had 16 players, so to help balance the teams we let Olton have one of our best players in the guise of Martin Smyth to strengthen their team. Each team now had 17 players in their side. Sathya Vaidyanathan was left without an opponent until one of the Olton players Gary Evans turned up unexpectedly. So Sathya now played against Gary and the match now took place over 18 boards.

I was pleased that players from all of our eight teams were represented in the makeup of our team. Leading the team this year was Patrick on board one followed by new boy Bernard on board two. Most of our players had not played in one of these annual matches before.

We out graded our opponents on most of the boards and this came to show in the final result which resulted in a win for South Birmingham of 12.5 to Olton's 5.5.

This was our 22nd. successive victory !

Well done team !

Full results below:


Alan Lloyd	2134	0-1	Patrick Duncan	2128
Mark Cundy	1950	½-½	Bernard Chan	2075
Martin Smyth	1928	½-½	Cory Hazlehurst	2068
Richard Reynolds	1861	0-1	Kevin Hurney	2051
Robert Reynolds	1762	1-0	Neil Clarke	1943
Richard Liszewski	1737	1-0	David Thomson	1891
Andy Cottom	1737	0-1	Tim Lane	1834
Trevor Holt	1763	½-½	Jack Moss	1822
Chris Pitt	1639	0-1	Robert Glass	1778
Frank Jimenez	1632	0-1	Muhammad Oguz Isik	1693
John Asbury	1567	0-1	Matthew Little	1678
Sam Hughes	1598	0-1	Bruno Silva	1669
Warren Archibald	1565	0-1	Adithya Vaidyanathan	1644
Jim Gillespie	1515	0-1	Paul Heeney	1505
Kacper Drukarczyk	1675P	½-½	Chris Moore	1483
Dave Reeves	1482	1-0	Andrei Artemov	1415
John Clulee	1113	0-1	Luke Lambert	----
Garry Evans	1670	½-½	Sathya Vaidyanathan	1414
		5½-12½

Terry

7^th Sep 22

Hello everyone..

Tonight saw the opening campaign of the 2c / 2 cool ( going to be cold all year for us!!) vs the Tigers… all I can say is we tried. The Tigers were nearly relegated last season and we almost got promoted in the league below. No Milenko or Ciarán so Mo and Singerman aided us…. No Druge for them so up pops Domino. Anyway the teams lined up as follows; we tried to make use of the 100 point rule!

1) Nat vs Singerman

2) Sean vs Claudio

3) Jack vs Sebastian

4) Rob vs TC

5) Terry vs Bruno

6) Domino vs Mo

Singerman was first to finish and in his own words ‘got smashed’ by 9 o’clock. He was well out graded but had a go… 0-1 tigers.

Claudio finished next, an equal game for the most part, but fell for one of Sean’s endgame tricks, later revealed this was part of his work with Fabi, so we can’t be too hard on Claudio 0-2.

Sebastian got his pawns structure muddled toward the start of his game, Jack taking the knight on f6 so Seb couldn’t castle. Jack ground him then with a better structure and Seb finally folded, 0-3 all top boards had finished.

Rob got me in a pretty equal game, I had a good attack but pushed f4 when e4 was the move engine reveals… hard when all the pieces are on the board to see all the variations, clearly too much for me tonight. I did get him in a time scramble and almost held it but rushing to give Rob no time, I made a sill mistake.. I wasn’t happy... especially after seeing the e4 move on the cpu afterwards 0-4.

It was one of those nights, even our ringer club champion Mo got done by Domino, what can you say… outrageous! Mr Stockhall was very bouncy after the game as you can imagine.. Mo looked a little like I did.

That just left Bruno, and Terry had played his oh so familiar brand of positional chess, and about 10:45 agreed a draw to ‘give us a half’ as he put it, I did well not to put it a little diffently myself 😃 5.5 - 0.5 to the tigers.

The tigers I’m imagining are one of the weaker teams in this division, so what does our season hold ?? I told the lads not to worry as every dog has its day, and we will! I feel we our out of our depth though… maybe we’ll learn to swim, I do hope so…

Well done to the Tigers, they played great. Can’t wait to play the 2A team 😂

TC -

🚗🚗

Hello Chess Players,

After the lock down in March 2020 all over the board chess events closed down. South Birmingham Chess Club was one of the first clubs to reopen in the summer of 2021.

Since reopening the club we have welcomed about 45 visitors. Many of these had not played over the board chess before and needed to familiarise themselves with the rules.

20 of the visitors joined the club and have given it an international flavour. Our members now represent Cuba, Denmark, Hungary, India, Italy, Iran, Jordan, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Slovenia, Switzerland, Romania, Russia, Turkey.

Competitive over the board chess re-started in October 2021 in a limited form with many events not taking place.

Many of our new members will not be familiar with the activities that will be taking place from now on, so I thought that I would list all the items that the club and members can be involved in.

Internally we will be having a summer program of events that everybody can join in, including visitors.

These will be taking place every Wednesday starting next week 13 July. SEE BELOW

There will be a club championship starting in October. This will be a 7 round Swiss tournament and will be graded.

Members can enter a game for the best game prize in the Walker Trophy.

You can just come along and play a few friendly games.

There will be a 'Lads Beer and Curry' night in December and June.

Our first competitive match of the new season will be a 20-board match against Olton chess club on Tuesday 6 September 2022.

We have entered 8 teams in the Birmingham League in divisions one (2 teams), 2 (3 teams), 3, 4 and 5.

All the fixtures have already been arranged and members will be supplied with a Handbook with these in at the end of August.

We have entered 5 teams in the League Trophy knockout competitions.

All members are eligible to play in the l League individual knock-out competitions of which there are 5 sections based on grades.

All members are eligible to enter the best game competition for the Baruch Wood Trophy which includes a £30 prize.

Juniors under the age of 16 can be entered for the Ritson Morry Trophy which includes a £30 prize.

We will be entering the League Lightning tournament which is for teams of four. There are three sections and we usually enter four teams.

There is also an individual prize of money for the best performance! (don't get too excited it was only £10 when I won it)

A new event taking place next season will be a series of Blitz tournaments. They will be held at different league clubs and open to everyone.

South Birmingham will be hosting the event on Monday 3 October. It will take place in the Ball Room downstairs.

These Blitz events are being run by the Birmingham Chess League and the ECF.

We have entered a team in the Dudley league

We then come full circle and start the Summer League Rapid Play tournament in May 2023

Summer Programme 2022
South Birmingham Chess Club is open throughout the summer
A programme of special events has been arranged for Wednesdays as follows:
13 July 5-minute tournament with 3 second increments
20 July 10-minute tournament
27July Lightning tournament (10 seconds per move)
3 Aug 5-minute tournament with 3 seconds increments
10 Aug Fischer Random chess, Kreigspiel, four-handed chess, friendly
17 Aug 5-minute tournament with 3 second increments
24 Aug End game competition (test your knowledge, solve set endings)
31 Aug Lightning tournament (10 seconds per move)
21 Sept Simultaneous Display by one of our top players (Jon Swindells) graded over 2200
Opening night of the new season (time to pay your subs!) and play a few friendly games, see which team you will be in and see the fixtures.
Events will start promptly at 7.30 p.m. Please try and be at the club by 7.20 p.m. if you wish to compete.
We will try to accommodate late entries but late arrivals may be unable to complete their games in the available time and unfinished games will have to be defaulted.
If you do not wish to compete in the above programme, there is no problem, just come along and pay some friendly games.
Visitors and members from other clubs are welcome to come along on a Wednesday and join in our events or just play friendly games of chess.
The club is fully licenced and drinks are cheap!

Cheers

T. W. Walker AKA Tricky

Friday 10^th June

Another Season …. Another Beer and Curry Night Prince of Wales then Diwan Restaurant Alcester Road.

3^rd Dec 21

Another Christmas curry night was enjoyed with a good turn out doing the regular Prince of Wales route to the Diwan curry house

IMG_20211203_225446_909

Clockwise, Neil, Terry, Raphael, Milenko, Derek, Matt, Mark, Matt, Tim, David, Joseph or Diamond, Tricky, Raffa, Miles, Domino, Pershore, Druge, Conman, TAL, Decimator, Brush

2^nd Dec 21 Alpha 1

Hi All,

An amazing match last night saw our 1st team get an almighty draw against 2nd place Solihull... I didn't see much of the match as I was sat in the corner unable to move and it would have meant Patrick having to stand up which he had to do a few times anyway.....They had a Grandmaster, a 2400 player, a 2280 player...that's 3 players higher than our highest player..... Jon Swindells 2238 played GM K. Arkell 2465 and it was a Caro Kann in which Keith put his Bishop and Rook on the b8-h2 diagonal and provoked g3 by John who was then put under pressure with ...h5, h4 to open the h-file. Keith hadn't castled so he had a rook on h8 to aid the attack. Jon tells me he was better later in the game but Keith won the point. Pelle Larsen 2208 v S. Chow 2403 was a Grunfeld in which Pelle lost fairly quickly when he was about to lose his queen. John Pitcher 2260 v T. Wall 2281 was a Bishops Opening in which he had a classic set-up with Knights on c3 and f3 and Bishops on c4 and f4. John won... Pavel Besedin 2125 v A. Agnew 2185 I don't have much info but both were late and Pavel feels he went wrong by playing .b6 though he was defending with his opponent having more activity....Pavel lost Patrick Duncan 2118 v A. McCumiskey 2140 was a b3 opening in which Patrick always seemed to have a small advantage though probably not enough to win. When I looked late on, Patrick had 2 passed pawns which were enough for Andrew to resign....We were 1-3 down but then won the bottom 2 boards. I won't say much about mine but I played well for a whole game...very odd.. Next match is next year v Halesowen.....well done to our players ....an excellent first 5 matches .

Hitman.

	South Birmingham A	3	3	Solihull
2238	Swindells, Jonathan E	0	1	Arkell, Keith C	2465
2208	Larsen, Pelle O	0	1	Chow, Sam	2403
2260	Pitcher, John	1	0	Wall, Tim P	2281
2125	Besedin, Pavel	0	1	Agnew, Alan	2185
2118	Duncan, Patrick CM	1	0	McCumiskey, Andrew P	2140
2088	Hurney, Kevin	1	0	Karim, Ammar	2043

A footnote to the match above…although the scores came to 3 – 3 Solihull claimed a board disorder by the SBCC team, this was upheld by the BDCL rules committee and Solihull were awarded the Match..

The committee has considered by email, Solihull’s board order complaint in the above match. The rule in question is Rule 7.2 Before the start of each match the opposing captains shall list their players in descending order of strength etc.

Also, before the start of the season, Tim Lane, Hon. Gen. Sec. sent an email to all clubs on behalf of the Rules and Scrutiny sub-committees:

Rating Guidelines

The Rules Sub-Committee and Scrutiny Sub-Committee wish to provide some guidance on the interpretation of Rules 4.5 and 7.2 following the move to monthly four-digit grades. The Rules Sub-Committee will be disinclined to look favourably on board order disputes (Rule 7.2) where a player on a lower board outgrades a colleague on a higher board by fewer than 75 points (or by fewer than 150 points if the player on the higher board is a junior and the player on the lower board is an adult), using either the 1 September ECF Rating List or the (following) 1 January ECF Rating List. The Scrutiny Sub-Committee will continue to allow some additional latitude in the start-of-season scrutiny of players' assignment to teams (Rule 4.5) where there is a good case to do so because of, for example, the availability of drivers or the wish to group members of a single family in a single team.

In the previous four matches prior to this match South Birmirmingham had a stable board order. South Birmingham have stated that they consider their board order in this match complies with the Rating Guidlines and the Committee does not necessarily disagree with that. South Birmingham also stated that they” made a tactical decision to play Jonathan Swindells (2238) on Board 1 instead of John Pitcher (2260)”.

However, Rule 7.2 still applies and it is the opinion of the Committee that this Rule is not drafted in such a way as to permit changes in order of strength for tactical reasons.

So there you have it …$ingerman

2^nd Dec 21 BDCL Div 5

Hello Chess Players,

Last night saw our division five team playing at home against their nearest rivals Rushall. Our team were on top of their division with 8 points from 4 matches and had only conceded 1 point from the 16 games played and that was from two draws.First to finish was Bruno on board 3 who played an impressive game with a successful king side attack. (1 - 0) Next was anchor man Matthew on board 4 who reached an ending of Bishop and pawns v Knight and pawns and agreed a draw (1.5 - 0.5) On board 2 Sebastian played a steady game maintaining pressure throughout. At the right moment the pieces were exchanged leaving Sebastian with a winning end game and his opponent resigned (2.5 - 0.5) and the match was ours. Meanwhile on board 1 Claudiu had gone wrong early in the match and earlier when I looked at the position he was a rook down and had used very little time on his clock for the first 15 moves. This was unusual because he is one of our strongest new players. He soldiered on setting traps but they were all spotted by his opponent. Resignation soon followed (2.5 - 1.5), but we got the two points in the match and stay top of the division with 10 points. Well done team "Tricky".

Board	Home	South Birmingham	2½ - 1½	Rushall	Away
1 (W)	0000	Vaduva, Iulian	0 - 1	Grant, John	1623
2 (B)	0000	Tudor, Sebastian	1 - 0	Bray, Roger	1540
3 (W)	0000	Dos Santos Silva, Bruno Alexandre	1 - 0	Cooksey, Shane	1495
4 (B)	0000	McHugh, Matthew	½ - ½	Turner, Peter	1308

29^th Nov 21

Hello..
Tonight TNT had their third match. I got there early tried to set the Library room up. Got the heaters on… Lichfield came to play! Their team I would genuinely estimate had 150 years league experience… the teams were as follows..
The Druge vs Peter Collins
Milenko (the magician?) vs Lucasz Wajewski
Joe the Brush vs Mike Meher
TC vs Mike Hoare
Singerman vs Ray Sawyer
Sia (TNT’s new recruit) vs Arthur Hall
Joe was second to arrive and helped with setting up, it was time for action. I could see Singerman was not well… but he always turns up.. he’d had multiple injections of flu and covid boosters just days before and I could tell was only half there… anyway.. The Druge was last to arrive.. and respectfully initiated a minutes silence for David Dunne before the game… I’m so glad he did… someone needed to, and until then it hadn’t crossed my mind.. thank you Mark.

Sia was first to finish. I can tell he’s got skills but is not that use to OTB classical… his game was a bit up and down, Sia looked to have an edge, but then a slight error left a hole… thankfully Sia was able to save a difficult position with some tactics and a draw was agreed.. decent start with the black pieces, 0.5-0.5. I’d tell you the opening but the recorded sheet started d4 e4, c4 d5… think it was Albein counter gambit? Singerman was next… he soldiered through feeling bad but alas he couldn’t quite find his game.. the Urusov Gambit… gives white -3.3 but black has to play it right… and play it right he did…. So we were down 0.5-1.5 I was third to finish, and played just about the worse opening you could imagine… gambited a pawn move 3, lost a pawn move 4, and nearly lost a piece move 6.. after move six the engine has me at -5…. But a knew if I created enough mayhem I’d be ok… the first three moves each were e4 e5, Nf3 Nc6, c3 f5? And it got worse… but I sort of worked into the game and was a pawn down in an endgame with a few pieces… I took a threefold as it wasn’t looking good… 1-2 in the match. Joe and a Milenko at this point we’re still locked in positions that looked complex to say the least… Milenko was two pawns down the match was all but lost… The Druge promptly finished just after me.. pretty sure it was French game… e4 e6 started it all off… looked tense for ages… I didn’t get a good look but I could tell if anything he was better… and sure enough, after they agreed a draw, the engine Mark informs me had him at +2…. But anyway 1.5-2.5 Joe was in a game which looked hardcore to say the least… after over 2 hours both sides still had 15 pieces (you know what I mean) each.. gridlocked with both sides having threats.. no one was going to budge… they agreed a draw, looked a fair result. 3-2 That just left Milenko… cold and alone.. he played on, and on, and on, and on and on… two pawns down no one gave him a chance the match was lost… just a bishop vs a knight and two clear pawns up for Lichfield… but wait… Milenko wins a pawn… (he’s been working on his endgames..) then he wins another pawn.. what… this can’t be happening… and with nearly both teams crowding around the board, Milenko tricks his opponent and beyond all belief wins the game… 3-3 Match drawn. If there’s ever a man of the match… it’s certainly Milenko tonight… it literally felt like a miracle…

326	South Birmingham	3	3	Lichfield	r~v
1788	Drugan, Mark A	½	½	Collins, Peter M	1740
1735	Walner, Milenko	1	0	Walijewski, Lukasz	1743
1690	Kadar, Joe	½	½	Maher, Mike P	1705
1675	Little, Matthew	½	½	Hoare, Michael WA	1683
1690	Woollaston, Alan T	0	1	Sawyer, Ray	1563
UG	Zafarian, Siamak	½	½	Hall, R Arthur	1413

TNT over out (2 Cars) 🚗🚗

27^th November 2021

Ladies and Gents, a very sad day, It is my duty to have to inform you that David Dunn, a longstanding member of South Birmingham Chess Club, passed away in hospital this morning.

David was feeling unwell two weeks ago and after three days was admitted to Heartlands Hospital with Covid. He was put into an induced coma and put on a respirator. Being a diabetic, contracting Covid made him more vulnerable than most. At first, he showed some improvement but then caught an infection and didn't recover.

David last played for the club on 20 October when he played for the 1C team against 1A, drawing with Patrick Duncan.

David joined South Birmingham in 1981 and was registered in division 8, where he showed early promise. His play got stronger and he eventually became a regular member of our division one team, playing on board one on many occasions. By 2011 he reached a grade of 188 (2110) .

He regularly played in the club championship, winning it in 1987 and on many occasions after that.

I will pass on funeral details as soon as I know them. (See 9/12 above.).

In sadness,

Tal.

26^th Nov 21 Div 1 Seasiders

Ladies and Gents,

With zero points from our first three matches, the Seasiders headed to Warley Quinborne last night. Our regular Bd. 4, David Dunn, is currently hospitalized with Covid, so Nat Kasafir offered to step in to fill the empty board. Unfortunately Nat picked up a heavy cold and texted me mid-morning to ask if I could find a substitute for the substitute. Sebastian Tudor answered the call (thanks also to Milenko for offering to drive down from Cannock if we needed him) and the teams lined up as follows:

	Warley Quinborne		Seaside
1	Southall, Andrew C	2103	Emanuel, John L	1945
2	Smith, Simon C	1915	Smyth, Martin D	1938
3	Turner, Jon	1893	Whitmore, Darren H	1930
4	Emery, Ian	1848	Thomson, David	1908
5	Moxley, Stephen	1698	Lane, Tim A	1885
6	Valea, Ionut Florin	1585	Tudor, Sebastian	u/g

Sebastian, white on Bd. 6 in an English Opening, was the first to finish, a brief flurry of tactics leading to an equal endgame. John, black on Bd.1, found himself defending against the Milner-Barry Gambit (1. e4 e6; 2. d4 d5; 3. e5 c5; 4. c3 Nc6; 5. Nf3 Qb6; 6. Bd3 cxd4; 7. cxd4 Bd7; 8. O-O Nxd4). For white this system has the advantage of being fairly easy to play, while black has to tread carefully to avoid getting squashed on the kingside. The careful treading cost John a lot of time, and at one point I noticed he was down to less than ten minutes on his clock, while Andy Southall still had over an hour. I didn’t see the end of the game but white triumphed. Darren was black in a Sicilian and looked to have equalized quickly, doubling white’s c-pawns and achieving … d5, always a bonus in a Sicilian. But next time I took a look, Jon Turner had rustled up a mating attack on the kingside. My own game was also an Advance Variation but differed from John’s with 5. … Bd7; 6. a3 c4; 7. b3 cxb3; 8. Qxb3 Na5. Playing it this way gives white a permanently backward c-pawn, and I quickly build up a nice bind. But then I ran out of ideas for improving my position, and white got some kingside play, so we called a truce. At this point Quinborne were 3-1 up with Martin and David still in play. Martin had played a Stonewall Attack but the game had resolved to a dead drawn B+Ps ending. Martin gamely tried to keep the match alive but eventually had to concede the half-point. David’s game had started as a London System and remained complex throughout but, with the match lost and both players very short of time, a draw was agreed.

Warley Quinborne			Seaside
Southall, Andrew C	2103	1-0	Emanuel, John L	1945
Smith, Simon C	1915	½-½	Smyth, Martin D	1938
Turner, Jon	1893	1-0	Whitmore, Darren H	1930
Emery, Ian	1848	½-½	Thomson, David	1908
Moxley, Stephen	1698	½-½	Lane, Tim A	1885
Valea, Ionut Florin	1585	½-½	Tudor, Sebastian	u/g

Next up for the Seasiders is a must-win home fixture against Wolverhampton on Monday 6 December.

Cheers, Tim.

23^rd Nov 21

On Monday night TNT went to Sutton to see if they could get their season going, following a false start Whitewash at Uni we were hoping for better things, Again C19 was having an effect this time keeping Bd 1 Druge out of action, However The Brush who missed the Uni Match was Back ready to paint a picture, Brush (aka Joe Kadar), Miles (aka Milenko Walner) and Singerman (Vice Captain Woollaston) made their own way to Sutton while Captain Two Cars (Mat Little) took the Romanian Reserves Seb & I Claudius. I was last to arrive as the the match started 7.30... My Opponent was out the room answering a emergency Phone call, he came back and said Sorry got to go... It turns out Mother or Mother in-law had pulled the life line where she lives, he said she has probably pulled the wrong Chord in the Bathroom but it needed to be checked out........ So a point on the Bd to us and at least the White wash has been avoided......
Teams Lined up as follows

	Sutton Coldfield		South Birmingham		Aka
1w	Pyda, Arjun	1765	Walner, Milenko	1735	Miles
2b	Marks, Robert	1750	Kadar, Joe	1690	Brush
3w	Czopek, J Wojciech	1713	Little, Matthew	1675	2 Cars
4b	Windows, Glenn F	1705	Woollaston, Alan T	1690	Singerman
5w	Hayden, Lawrence F	1647	Vaduva, Iulian	UG	I Claudius
6b	Ajimal, Jettender	1608	Tudor, Sebastian	UG	Seb

The games started
Bd 1 Four Knights 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Nc3 Nc6
Bd 2 Queens Pawn game 1. d4 Nf6 2. Nc3 d5 3. Bf4 c6
Bd 3 Queens Gambit Declined 1. d4 d5 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 Nf6
Bd 4 Default accepted, 1. bar pay 2. drink drink 3. ditto ditto
Bd 5 Vienna Game Max Lange defence 1. e4 e5 2. Nc3 Nc6 3. Bc4 g3
Bd 6 Kings Indian defence 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nc3 Bg7

an hour plus passed with all the games looking fairly even to me as the players probed a little, i thought five draws will do nicely.......
Claudio on bd 5 was suddenly becoming under pressure as Larry Hayden had a passed Pawn running....... Fast.......however not fast enough and the flag fell as it Promoted.......Phew..... 2 - 0 to the good guys...
Sebastian on Bd 6 was in a even ending with Rook and 5P each however Seb advanced his king a little to much and Jet cut the retreat off with the rook and mated him with a pawn advance 2 - 1
2 car Mats started to find some room as the centre cleared and his opponent Albert obliged a little moving the king from behind the pawns, A king walk was on and his opponent saw the end 3 - 1 Hooray Match not lost ...... we went to the bar ... before we could get served Joe the Artist was joining us Painting a beautiful Picture of the sun setting on his opponent....Full marks the Match was won.......5 minutes later they had all &*% off, leaving
Miles battling away on Bd 1....... it was a very close game.......... queen and rooks all round....... Big Girls came off ...Miles got a pawn to seventh with rook behind and a Rook next to it on the seventh.......I knew what was coming.. and I am pretty sure so did his opponent but he had moved to much away pawn hunting and getting back was not going to work as he found out.......The touch paper was lit and after the dust settled another Win for us was chalked up making it a sweet 5 - 1 Match victory ........ Overall The team showed good fighting Spirit ................... Well done guys......... The clock watchers are next at our place Monday........
Singerman

19^th Nov 21

Hello Chess Players,

Our division 5 team played their third league match last Wednesday when they travelled to Solihull to take on their div 5 team On board 1 Claudiu soon banked the teams first point. After winning a piece, he proceeded to swop off the pieces and play for a won ending. (1 - 0) On board 2 Sebastian soon followed by getting to a bishop and pawns ending which was winning (2 - 0) On board 3 Bruno was in attacking mood and won a piece. After fending off a counter attack against his exposed king, he decided to try and swop pieces off and win with his extra piece. The play was all his and he soon achieved a winning game. (3.5 - 0.5) On board 4 Matthew was in sacrificial mood playing an enterprising Evans Gambit. Although he had an advantage throughout most of the game, eventually all the pieces came off and both players were left with two connected passed pawns each on opposite sides of the board but the pawns were kept from making any progress by a well placed king, (2.5 - 0.5) giving us the match, another good win for our division 5 team.

Full results below

Board	Home	Solihull	½ - 3½	South Birmingham	Away
1 (W)	1330	Reece, Trevor	0 - 1	Vaduva, Iulian	0000
2 (B)	1188	Plackowski, Tony	0 - 1	Tudor, Sebastian	0000
3 (W)	0000	Brown, Stephanie	0 - 1	Dos Santos Silva, Bruno Alexandre	0000
4 (B)	0000	Mullapudi, Pranav	½ - ½	McHugh, Matthew	0000

Tricky

16 Nov 21

Hi All,

Last night saw our 1st team make the journey to Sutton Coldfield to play a team that is always challenging near the top of Division 1....John picked myself and Pelle up and all seemed well though we left Moseley a little later than planned. There wasn't much time for error in getting there on time....anyway, here's the error... The sound wasn't working on John's sat-nav so I googled the directions and also had sound...As we were nearing Sutton Coldfield, my sat-nav went one way and John's another...Not Good. We followed mine and it took us about 4 miles from the venue and we finally arrived at the venue about 7.45. I wasn't sure whether it was operator trouble or the sat-nav at fault. On the return journey, it was taking us to the wrong destination again so I think it was the sat-nav at fault...this time I noticed before we started the journey back. Jon, Pavel and Patrick had started their games when we arrived and as usual, Sutton had chosen Quickplay finishes, all moves in 90 mins... During the match there was another concern, one of Sutton's longest serving members seemed to be suffering with his health...he was making vocal noises and coughing through the evening...A few of us looked over to see if he was alright and one Sutton player went over to him. After my initial concern for him, I then started to think of the C word...Covid....Should he not be going home as he wasn't playing and persistent coughing is a symptom of covid. On to the chess, Pavel 2125 was the first to finish with a win against John Mildenhall 1990 and it was type of French or Alekhine position with Pavel's major pieces controlling the centre and he had a well placed Knight on d6......1-0 John 2260 won next against the strong Henrik Stepanyan 2298....It was a Slav which looked like a French type position. Both players were probing on opposite sides with their Queens but I didn't see the finish......2-0 I 2075 against Noel Brown 1735 was a ridiculous game.....I should have lost badly but I will start from the beginning. It was a Nimzowitsch 1.e4 Nc6 2. Nf3 f5 3.e5 d6 4.Bb5.....He played some strange moves but we went in to the middlegame roughly level. On move 16, I put my Knight on e5 which put me in to a losing position. He went wrong on move 18 by taking the wrong Knight and it was level again. I practice tactics a lot and have reached 2900 on chess.com but my radar was as bad as the sat-nav earlier and Noel was playing well...he played a temporary sacrifice which won a pawn and then another as well as winning the Bishop back. All king-side pawns gone...his 2 passed pawns rolled down the board and I was GONE...it was resignable. He had moved very quickly and was always a long time in front on the clock which meant I was moving quickly to not get too far behind. 15 minutes left on the clock to his 30 and I was concentrating hard and quite distressed at the thought of my grade going to be at a depressing low....He then broke in to my concentration to ask if a Knight on the table was part of our set...I replied " It doesn't really matter does it", I felt some regret that I'd snapped at him afterwards... He'd played extremely well but he started to lose his way and he lost one of his passed pawns which left others weak and all of a sudden I went from 2 pawns down to 1 pawn up. I queened my extra pawn and he resigned. A very lucky escape for me 3-0 Jon 2238 v Mesesan 2073 was a Sicilian, I think but I'm not sure, and it went into a minor piece ending a pawn up and Jon queened the pawn to make it 4-0. Pelle 2208 v Golam Ali 1953 was a fascinating game in which Pelle had 2 pieces for a rook but Golam was attacking and looking threatening on the king-side. A time scramble ensued with Pelle a piece up but only 50 secs left to Golam's 90 secs. Golam graciously resigned rather than play for a win on time....5-0 Could it be our 3rd 6-0 in succession? Patrick 2118 v R. Lawrence 1870 was a very close match and when I saw it there was major pieces and Knight for Patrick v major pieces and Bishop. Patrick thought he was worse and fortunate...I know the feeling! A draw was agreed 5.5-.5.

We move to the top 4 wins from 4.... 21/24 in games for the season and John, Jon, Pelle and Pavel all with 100% records...

Next Match...Tough One against Solihull.

Hitman Hurney

10 Nov 21

Ladies and Gents,

The Seasiders took on a full-strength Shirley & Wythall side last night. Outgraded by an average of 215 points per board, we were comprehensively outplayed, losing 6-0.

	Seaside		0 - 6	Shirley Wythall
1	Emanuel, John L (W)	1945	0 - 1	Purcell, Philip	2140
2	Smyth, Martin D (B)	1938	0 - 1	Mason, Donald J	2140
3	Whitmore, Darren H	1930	0 - 1	Galloway, Iain A	2125
4	Thomson, David	1908	0 - 1	Briggs, Steven	2118
5	Lane, Tim A	1885	0 - 1	Thomas, David R	1983
6	Isik, Muhammed Oguz	1468	0 - 1	Ingram, Keith R	1863

David Dunn had to drop out of the side due to flu-like symptoms, and Muhammed Isik stepped in to fill the vacancy, with Dave Thomson and I moving up a board. Unfortunately for Muhammed he found himself playing the black pieces against the massively experienced Keith Ingram, who soon forced some positional weaknesses in Muhammed’s Hungarian Defence, eventually winning a decisive amount of material. Lane vs Thomas transposed into a Gruenfeld Defence where I had a space advantage but chose a bad plan. I missed a well-timed …Qa8 which gave black a Q+B battery that couldn’t easily be nullified, and my position went downhill fast after that. Mason vs Smyth started 1. e4 c5, 2. Nf3 Nc6, 3. Bb5 g6 4. Bxc6. I didn’t see much of this, but it ended in another point for Shirley & Wythall. Briggs vs Thomson was a c3 Sicilian that turned into something akin to an Advance Variation French Defence. Dave was low on mobility and looked likely to be squashed by a timely f5 break, but remarkably he managed to generate some counterplay and eventually managed to get rook and queen on his opponent’s first rank. Sadly the damage at the other end of the board was too great – 4-0! Unless I missed something, boards 4, 5 and 6 all ended in mate – not very usual in Division 1! Darren put up a good fight against Iain Galloway in a Dragon Sicilian, while John (white in a King's Indian) survived until the end of the evening against Philip Purcell but was left with an undefendable B+Ps ending. Next up for the Seasiders is a trip to Warley Quinborne on Thursday 25 November. The teams are likely to be closely matched, so hopefully we can get some points on the board.

Cheers,

Tim.

10 Nov 21

Hello Chess Players,

Wednesday saw our division 5 team play their first home match which was to be against Mutual. We were quite fortunate in being able to play in our main playing tournament room because for the first time this season

there was silence from the ballroom below us. Apparently, members of the band who hire the ballroom had tested positive for covid and were isolating and cancelled their booking. It was disappointing to find the absence of the Mutual board 4 player who defaulted. Considering Mutual have 13 players registered in division 5 for a four man team, they should have been able to field a full team. Unless a team declare that they are defaulting a board, a player has to hang around for 90 minutes before being able to claim the game. So first to add a point to our account was Matthew with his win on board 4. (1 - 0) On board 3, Bruno was out for blood and was soon a piece up. A king side attack followed and Bruno soon secured our second point. (2 - 0) Sebastian on board 2 seemed to play with ease, winning pawn after pawn and at one point was for pawns up. The game went down to an ending were Sebastian queened a pawn and his opponents resignation followed. (3 - 0) On board 1, Claudiu won the exchange and eventually reached an ending with 2 rooks and pawns v rook, white squared bishop and pawns. His opponent had a passed pawn on the a file which could be dangerous . Most of the play by white was attacking the a pawn. Eventually the a pawn was won, but not before black tried some mating threats. Fortunately, Claudiu being the good player that he is saw through all the threats and eventually won the ending. (4 - 0)

Well Done team.

Tricky

	South Birmingham	4	0	Mutual Circle
UG	Vaduva, Iulian	1	0	Bloom, Xander	E1575
UG	Tudor, Sebastian	1	0	Hughes, Peter J	1383
UG	Dos Santos Silva, Bruno A	1	0	Husain, Tan	1203
UG	McHugh, Matthew	₩	Ø	Default	~~

3^rd Nov 21

Wednesday Evening Wolverhampton were the visitors to our venue playing against the Champions Alpha-1, Match report from Captain Kevin (Hitman) Hurney,

Hi All,

Last night, our 1st team congregated in the small side room for our 3rd match in successive weeks...I arrived about 7.05pm and set the room up and our team were there by 7.25 all except Adam...After a phone call from Terry, he ascertained that Adam had pulled out of the match a couple of days earlier....I had received an email but it didn't make sense to me so I assumed it was an automatic response to an earlier message.... 7.45pm, Wolverhampton was not at the venue and we hadn't started the match. With hindsight to starting later and the games being incremental, we need to start earlier in the future as it was close to 11pm when I sorted the room out, transferring boards, pieces, chairs and a table to the main room. We were being pressurised by the staff to leave. I was told it was too late to get a drink as well when I came in to the bar! On to the match, getting close to 7.50pm, we started the match. and I was very surprised by the team that arrived from Wolverhampton. It would have been more in keeping in Division 4 than Division 1. A 160ish player (in old money) was on board 1 and we had higher than that on board 6. As usual in this room, it's not ideal for spectating and even the players find it difficult to move about but I will report what little I could make out in another whitewash...2nd in 3 matches. (W) John Pitcher 2260 v 1870 Rajeev Raghavan was a Pirc with both players venturing on opposite sides of the board, John having castled on the queen-side. I didn't see the conclusion but an early win for John 1-0 (B) Pavel Besedin 2125 v 1653 John Lee was another Pirc type position in which Pavel played...Ng4 and took the BIshop on e3 leaving white with doubled e-pawns. This was the basis of Pavel's play constantly looking at the e3 square and pressurising on the king-side. He was eventually a Rook up so......2-0 (W) My game 2075 v 1570 Gordon Sands was a Sicilian which was evenly contested with Gordon pressing with his Rooks on the c-file and I was expecting a thematic ...RxN on c3 but it never came. He offered a draw but I decided to play on and shortly afterwards I had manoeuvred in to a positional advantage which was worth 1.5 pts according to Fritz...checked after the game not during....surprisingly, he threw in the towel feeling the worst.....3-0 (W) Pelle Larsen 2208 v 1797 Steve Tarr was a difficult game in which Pelle had a space advantage with pawns on c4 and e4 I believe but he consumed plenty of time and it came down to a 2 Rooks and Minor piece endgame. He manoeuvred to get 2 passed pawns on the c + d files and his opponent called in the official receiver.....4-0 (B) Martin Smyth 1938 v Ug Karthik Selvan was a Sicilian in which white played Bb5 and Bxc6. Martin went a pawn up and in a lengthy game, he broke through to win more material ....5-0 (B) Jon Swindells 2238 v Tony Preece 1806 was the last to finish...Jon played ...g6 against a London type system and a sharp game ensued where after the king-side pawns were doubled on the h-file and Jon doubled up with his Rooks but was watchful of a few tactics that white was threatening. Jon was a pawn up in the endgame but was finding it difficult to finish the game. His clock went down to about 6 seconds but fortunately there were 10 second increments...It should have been a draw but his opponent blundered and he was distraught afterwards...Jon looked like he'd just got out of the ring with Tyson Fury too....

An excellent win with some tough games....

Kevin Hurney

	South Birmingham A	6	Wolverhampton
2260	Pitcher, John	1	Raghavan, Rajeev P	1870
2238	Swindells, Jonathan E	1	Preece, Tony	1806
2208	Larsen, Pelle O	1	Tarr, Steve F	1797
2125	Besedin, Pavel	1	Lee, John	1653
2088	Hurney, Kevin	1	Sands, Gordon G	1570
1938	Smyth, Martin D	1	Selvan, Karthik	UG

1^st Nov 21

SBCC Div 4 Match Report from tricky

Hello Chess Players,

On Monday our division 4 team played their first away match against Sutton Coldfield.

The first problem was how to get the team to the match because none of the players had any transport.

Tim very kindly stepped in and drove to our club and collected the team and took them to the match.

After the match I met the team and brought them back to Moseley.

With two members of our team unavailable to play (Kitty and Chris), this presented the opportunity for two of our newer members to shine.

Unfortunately the Sutton Coldfield board three player did not turn up and Paul (nurse) had a wasted evening but could not claim the game until his opponents time had expired. (1 -0)

The first game to finish was on board two. Claudiu played a very clinical game exchanging most of the pieces off early in the game and transposing into an end game where he was able to exploit his opponent’s weakness. (2 - 0)

Board three was next to finish. Muhammed (the horologist) played a very sharp game, setting traps, winning a pawn and exchanging pieces to produce a won end game. (3 - 0)

Leading the team on board one was Domino who played a very even game and help his opponent to a draw (3.5 - 0.5)

So overall a successful evening and keeping our 100 % record from three matches.

Well done team.

The results were as follows:

	Sutton Coldfield	½	3½	South Birmingham
1645	Oliver, Peter J R	½	½	Stockhall, Derek A	1578
1570	East, Chris	0	1	Vaduva, Iulian	UG
1435	Morley, Ian	Ø	₩	Heeney, Paul	1510
UG	Sanderson, Thomas	0	1	Isik, Muhammed Oguz	1500

27^th Oct 21

Another Day and another South Birmingham team, this time the Bees, get beat 6 – 0, however this was against our own current BDCL League Champions Alpha-1 and against them you really do need to get the players out if you are to stand a chance. Unfortunately the Bees couldn’t and paid the price in full. Well done to the stand-ins for at least having a go and I sure some of the games were closer than the score suggest.

	South Birmingham Alpha	6	South Birmingham Bees
2260	Pitcher, John	1	Hazlehurst, Cory S	2080
2238	Swindells, Jonathan E	1	Whitmore, Darren H	1930
2208	Larsen, Pelle O	1	Kasafir, Nathanael	1833
2118	Duncan, Patrick CM	1	Little, Matthew	1675
2125	Besedin, Pavel	1	Isik, Muhammed Oguz	1468
1885	Lane, Tim A	1	Vaduva, Iulian	UG

💲

26^th Oct 21

SBCC 3 had the privilege of going to University for the first Match, Their Captain met us and Guided us Down the Stairs to the Playing Room they had been allocated. It was their first match also so nobody had any Knowledge of what was going to happen, we had to wait outside in the corridor for a few minutes as the room was still being used.. At 7.00 the room was vacated and in we went and waited for the university team to arranged the tables and set the boards. we started and all was well for around ten minutes…over to our new Captain Matt Little aka Two Cars for the rest.

This was my big chance.. first game as captain… could I get a good start?? Losing Joe the Brush two days before the game didn’t help but we turned up with 6 Players.

I have to say these were the worst playing conditions I’ve ever experienced. There was a thespian group laughing and joking in the same room, separated only by metal shutter… then they turned the microphones on!!

It was disgraceful really, people shouting almost in the same room… if it had of been music it might not have been so bad…well maybe…… but people shouting in the same room… what can you say…

Singerman was first to finish, his king got chased into the middle of the board by a rook and queen… 1-0.

I was next.. got into a poor position with the black pieces.. Couldn’t get my head on… was it the distractions? I didn’t play well, not trying to make excuses but… 2-0

The Druge played a tough game… very even.. but he lost a pawn and his position crumbled 3-0.

Domino next… in a bit of trouble… kept talking about making a complaint during the game… who could blame him… eventually he got overpowered 4-0. He also lost his bag and was quite upset.

Muhamed played well on board 6.. but eventually lost 5-0.

Milenko last.. played well and probably had the best chance to win.. was in a really battle.. but eventually succumbed 6-0.

So we lost 6-0 in terrible playing conditions.. they were a strong team… but we should have done better.

Onwards and upwards.. there’s no other way after that.

Great start as captain!

🚗🚗

	University	6	SBCC TNT
1998	Kearney, James I G	1	Drugan, Mark A	1788
R1892	Mirza, Diana	1	Walner, Milenko	1735
1772	Lee, James	1	Little, Matthew	1675
1407	Dave, Arjun	1	Woollaston, Alan T	1690
UG	Garcia-Leon, Daniel	1	Stockhall, Derek A	1578
UG	Taylor, James	1	Isik, Muhammed Oguz	1500

A footnote to the match, The Uni team was embarrassed by what was happening and as bad as it was at times it was the same for both teams, we will give them the benefit of doubt, and six nil speaks loud enough.

The Uni have Apologised

Yes, we completely agree it was not really acceptable. We specifically requested not to be put next to loud groups or rehearsals on our room application which was clearly not heeded so we are trying to sort it for our next home game.

Apologies,

James

24^th Oct 21

Hello Chess Players,

With the league running fewer chess events this season, no team knock-out or individual knock-out competition's and fewer league games, we need to run our own events.

This season I am running two club tournaments which will take us up to the end of May 2022.

The main tournament will be the South Birmingham Chess Club Championship.

I have arranged for it to be graded and It will be a seven round swiss event.

It is open to everybody but because it is graded, all players who enter must have at least ECF Bronze membership.

Games will be played at standard play time which will be 80 minutes plus 10 second increments.

There will be four weeks between each round and players must arrange and complete their game in that period.

The club championship trophy will be awarded to the winner plus other prizes.

It is free to enter.

A second tournament is being run for the benefit of members who do not have a grade or whose grade is under 1600 in the September list.

It is free to enter and there is no need for ECF membership because it is not graded.

This will be a Rapid Play tournament and you can play against each player twice, once with white and once with black

The time limit is 20 minutes plus 10 second increments (setting 18), so each game will not be more than 60 minutes.

One advantage is that players who work late can still get two games played if they get to the club by 8.15 p.m.

It will be good practice for anyone who wants to play in the summer league which starts in June and anyone who plays in one day tournaments.

It is advisable to pre-arrange to play someone, contact details are available from the Tournament Secretary.

A trophy will be awarded to the winner.

Please let me know if you want to enter either tournament or even both.

Best wishes,

Terry

20^th Oct 21

League Champions Alpha-1 starts the defence of the Crown at the Seaside. Match Report from Tal.

All,

Having given the Bees a good run for their money last week, the full-strength Seasiders reconvened last night to take a crack at the Alpha Dogs, who were missing Pelle Larsen (replaced by Neil Clarke) but were otherwise at full strength:

	Seasiders			Alpha-1
1	Emanuel, John (W)	1945	vs	Pitcher, John	2260
2	Smyth, Martin (B)	1938	vs	Swindells, Jonathan	2238
3	Whitmore, Darren (W)	1930	vs	Besedin, Pavel	2125
4	Dunn, David (B)	1923	vs	Duncan, Patrick	2118
5	Thomson, David (W)	1908	vs	Hurney, Kevin	2075
6	Lane, Tim (B)	1885	vs	Clarke, Neil	1953

To counter the noise pollution from the ballroom the match took place in the Local History room at the front of the building on the first floor. The good news is that it’s impossible to hear the brass band from this location. The bad news is that the room can only just accommodate six boards, which makes journalistic endeavour problematic. Anyway, here’s what I saw.

Clarke vs Lane was a London System vs Dutch set-up which soon reached dynamic equality. Neil went for a thematic queen-side pawn break that, unfortunately, contained a piece-losing hole. A couple of not-very-mobile passed pawns were insufficient compensation and Neil threw in the towel.

The other five games went on late into the evening, with the top three boards all going to the A team in relatively close succession. The layout of the room made the top two boards invisible to me, but Whitmore vs Besedin looked even for a long time until Pavel worked up a mating attack late in the evening. At this point it was 3-1 to the A team, with just a draw needed to secure the match.

Duncan vs Dunn had opened with Potter’s Folly (1. b3), much loved by your correspondent, with David replying 1. … e5, 2. Bb2 Nc6, 3. e3 Nf6, 4. Nf3 e4, 5. Nd4 Nxd4, 6. Bxd4. David lost a pawn and all the rest of the minor pieces came off, eventually followed by the rooks, leaving (I think) Q+6P vs Q+5P. David managed to keep his queen very active and, in the end, even got his pawn back. By this time Patrick had less than a minute on his clock (ten-second increments were being added) and David had two minutes or so. When a repetition finally occurred, both players looked happy to agree a draw.

I mentioned that ten-second increments were being added. This was not the case on board 5, Thomson vs Hurney (1. d4 g6, 2. Bf4 Bg7) where the clock had been set to a flat 80 minutes each. Luckily I noticed this before it became an issue and, even more luckily, Muhammed Isik had the requisite knowledge both to add on the 300-odd seconds of missed increments (for the moves played up to this point) and to activate the increments for the rest of the game. As for the game itself, Kevin was pressing for a win in a B+Ps ending, but Dave was able to keep all the black king’s entry squares covered. Unfortunately I turned away from the board at a crucial juncture and, when I looked back, something had gone (from Kev’s point of view) horribly wrong and Dave was about to promote a pawn. Resignation followed, but the A team still managed to creep over the finishing line by 3.5 to 2.5.

Board	Home	Seaside	2½-3½	Alpha-1	Away
1(W)	1945	Emanuel, John (W)	0-1	Pitcher, John	2260
2(B)	1938	Smyth, Martin (B)	0-1	Swindells, Jonathan	2238
3(W)	1930	Whitmore, Darren (W)	0-1	Besedin, Pavel	2125
4(B)	1923	Dunn, David (B)	½ - ½	Duncan, Patrick	2118
5(W)	1908	Thomson, David (W)	1-0	Hurney, Kevin	2075
6(B)	1885	Lane, Tim (B)	1-0	Clarke, Neil	1953

Cheers,

Tim.

18^th Oct

SBCC Div 4 played their second Monday home game, this time to Solihull B, using the same players as the week before, Match report from Tricky

Hello Chess Players,

On Wednesday, whilst Victor Sylvester and the Tiguana big Brass Band where playing downstairs, we located a noise-free room on the landing where we could play our division four fixture.

After rearranging the tables our team were all set for the match. We were playing against Solihull 'B' who had won their first two matches and were top of the division with four points.

Soon after the start of the match, Muhammed (The Horologist) playing on board three quickly dismissed his opponent and opened our account with a win.

On board one Derek (Domino) blunted this opponent's attack by swopping most of the pieces and agreeing a draw.

On boards two and four our players were under a lot of pressure for the first half of the game and then the situation changed.

On board two Chris (Saint) put his opponent under a lot of pressure with an attack which led to his opponent getting into time trouble.

His opponent could only avoid defeat by playing for a perpetual check. To avoid the perpetual check, Chris unfortunately blundered and lost a rook thus giving the game to his opponent.

On board four Paul (Nurse) had managed to go a piece up and was forcing the exchange of pieces. Eventually, his opponent only had the king left on the board and Nurse had a rook and bishop.

Mate soon followed and the match was ours.

Well done team.

Terry.

Board	Home	South Birmingham	2½ - 1½	Coleshill	Away
1 (W)	1578	Stockhall, Derek A	½ - ½	Silverman, Paul	1525
2 (B)	1525	Moore, Chris	0 - 1	Mitchell, George	1488
3 (W)	1468	Isik, Muhammed Oguz	1 - 0	Reece, Trevor	1350
4 (B)	1510	Heeney, Paul	1 - 0	Panchev, Marten	0000

14^th Oct

SBCC Div 5 made it 4 days in a row a SBCC team had played, their fixture was away to Shirley Wythall, Match report from Terry Walker, aka Tricky.

Hello chess players,

Last Thursday saw our division 5 team travel to Shirley/Wythall to play in their first ever league match.

The first obstacle that we encountered was on the Alcester Road at the Maypole Island where there had been an accident and all the traffic was being turned back and car drivers were left to their own means to find another route. Using my initiative, I followed the majority of the other cars

that had been turned back. This proved the right thing to do because Silver Street was soon on our radar and we were only five minutes late at the venue.

The only indication that I had of the strength of the players in the team was on the results in the Olton match. Our opponents were all experienced league players and probably twice the age of our team. Our advantage was youth and enthusiasm! The first to finish was Sebastian on board 3, who won a rook quite early in the game and soon converted the position to win our first point 1-0.

Claudiu playing on board 1 won the exchange and after multiple exchanges converted his advantage to a win 2-0.

On board 3 Bruno had a terrific attack and what looked like a easy win. The opportunity came to fork the king and queen and finish his opponent off, but playing at rapid play speed another move was played and his opponent escaped. The game went slowly downhill from then onwards. Finding some resourceful moves after reverting to standard speed, Bruno was able to counter-attack and eventually won. As Mr Shakespear would say "All's well that ends well" 3-0. Our 'Anchor Man' on board 4 was Matthew who combined both attacking and positional play. He took control of the centre, gave his opponent doubled isolated pawns and created a passed pawn on the “a” file. Matthew then set about exchanging the pieces and left himself with a favourable rook and pawns ending. Following the teachings of Nimzovich, (passed pawns have a lust to expand), he pushed his a pawn as far as a6 and manoeuvred his king to winning position and his opponent resigned 4-0.

Well done team.

Terry.

Board	Home	Shirley & Wythall	0 - 4	South Birmingham	Away
1 (W)	1540	Cotterell, David M	0 - 1	Vaduva, Iulian	0000
2 (B)	1495	Ball, Roger	0 - 1	Dos Santos Silva, Bruno Alexandre	0000
3 (W)	1443	Knee, Barry	0 - 1	Tudor, Sebastian	0000
4 (B)	0000	Foster, Nigel	0 - 1	McHugh, Matthew	0000

13^th Oct 21

With three SBCC teams again in BDCL Div 1, Wednesday at MASC saw the first fixture between them, Bees Vs Seaside.. The thing you notice about these fixtures is the stronger team don’t use players from the opposition if they are Players short, This quite often makes for a more even match and there’s been many a time when the B has beat the A or the C has beat the B. Match report from Tim lane, aka TAL.

Ladies & Gents,

The B and C teams kicked off their Division 1 season for 2021-22 at MASC last night.

The teams lined up like this, with the Bees drafting in two reserves – Mark and Milenko – and the Seasiders being at full strength:

	Bees		Seasiders
1(W)	Szelc, Adam	2095	Emanuel, John L	1945
2(B)	Hazlehurst, Cory S	2080	Smyth, Martin D	1938
3(W)	Mycroft, Richard	2028	Whitmore, Darren H	1930
4(B)	Clarke, Neil	1953	Dunn, David	1923
5(W)	Drugan, Mark A	1788	Thomson, David	1908
6(B)	Walner, Milenko (Mike)	1735	Lane, Tim A	1885

Now, I would love to give you the usual blow-by-blow account of the progress of the match but, sadly, this is not possible as my game with Milenko demanded my full attention from 7.30 until 10.30. So here’s what I noticed.

First to finish, I think, was Drugan vs Thomson, which started as either a Closed Sicilian or a Pirc Defence and resolved into a late middlegame with Q+R+5P each. It seemed to remain pretty level throughout and eventually a draw was agreed, though in later analysis it turned out that David had missed a good opportunity to install his rook on the seventh rank.

Smyth vs Hazlehurst was a Queen’s Indian or a Bogo-Indian which looked stodgy and even for the first 90 minutes or so, but the next time I passed the board there had been an outbreak of tactics and I couldn’t tell who was on top. Anyway, eventually I heard Martin throw in the towel.

I didn’t see much of Dunn vs Clarke but David lost a piece in the middle of the evening. There was some compensation, but not enough, and eventually the Bees won that one too.

Mycroft vs Whitmore started 1. e4 c5, 2. b4 cxb4, 3. a3. An original position ensued, and eventually resolved into a R+Ps ending, which was drawn.

Lane vs Walner was an English in which Mike used underhand tactics in the form of opening preparation. This worked out well and he got a good position, but I slowly wriggled my way back into the game. The position was close to even until very near the end of the evening, but eventually Mike cracked when we both had fewer than five minutes left on the clock.

Szelc vs Emanuel was mostly unseen by me, but there was some fun near the end when Adam made an illegal move with both players in serious time trouble. The penalty for this is (supposed to be) that the opponent gets two minutes added to their clock, but I don’t think there was anybody in the room who knew how to do this – something that captains should learn, maybe. Eventually the game went on and reached a N+Ps ending which was drawn.

Board	Home	Bees		Seasiders	Away
1(W)	2095	Szelc, Adam	½ - ½	Emanuel, John L	1945
2(B)	2080	Hazlehurst, Cory S	1 – 0	Smyth, Martin D	1938
3(W)	2028	Mycroft, Richard	½ - ½	Whitmore, Darren H	1930
4(B)	1953	Clarke, Neil	1 – 0	Dunn, David	1923
5(W)	1788	Drugan, Mark A	½ - ½	Thomson, David	1908
6(B)	1735	Walner, Milenko (Mike)	0 – 1	Lane, Tim A	1885

Next week the Seasiders have an even tougher evening ahead of them when they play the A team.

Cheers,

Tim.

12^th Oct 21

SBCC Div 2 first match was Tuesday away at Olton and some pairings were a rerun of the friendly match the week before so a close match was likely, Match Report from Matt Little, aka 2 Cars.

Tuesday night saw our first outing for the div 2 side… I was honoured to play with the Dicen sisters.. Terry.. Rob and Nat.

I arrived late and one of the Reynolds kindly started my clock for me lol… but I knew his move on the clock wouldn’t throw me

We out graded them on every board and Terry had told me he was hoping for a mid table finish this season, with some tough teams ahead.. so I expected to spank them like we did the week before.. however it wasn’t to be.

Rob finished first in a very equal game, they agreed a draw early. I didn’t see the opening but a black draw was decent. 0.5 - 0.5

I had fun with an ungraded player, although he wasn’t battle hardened he played some good moves, just not enough, and by move 13 I was an exchange up and he let me play the same trick twice.. Nh5 to g6… pure comedy.. 1.5 - 0.5 to us. It seemed like an hour before the next match finished… Terry who had played his solid brand of positional chess was locked in a very even end game and they agreed a draw with seemingly no ideas on either side… 2-1 to us.

Nat played the reti on board 2.. the position got so weird you couldn’t just look at the board and understand it… he was well up on the clock and his fatal decision was not exchanging queens, wanting to leave material on the board… but the queen was too strong and eventual Nat missed a trick and gave away a winning position. 2-2

Imogen on board 1 was next, another even position like Rob and Terry’s that ended in a draw.. 2.5 - 2.5 I didn’t really see the game..

Elis our superstar was on board three… it was all on her… she was never in trouble and got into the end game a pawn up… it was looking good… but he found a move that exchanged queens and Elis had to settle for a draw… 3-3 match

It felt like everyone was playing a bit cagey… so I’ll leave you with a quote from G. Kasparov…

“I used to attack because it was the only thing I knew. Now I attack because I know it works best.”

🚗🚗

Board	Home	Olton	3 - 3	South Birmingham	Away
1 (W)	1848	Hope, Gary	½ - ½	Dicen, Imogen	1900
2 (B)	1765	Reynolds, Robert	1 - 0	Kasafir, Nathanael	1833
3 (W)	1728	Liszewski, Richard	½ - ½	Dicen, Elis D	1810
4 (B)	1728	Cottom, Andrew	½ - ½	Walker, Terry W	1810
5 (W)	1728	Allen, Kenneth E	½ - ½	Glass, Robert	1758
6 (B)	0000	Hughes , Sam	0 - 1	Little, Matthew	1675

11^th Oct 21

SBCC Div 4 are first at the Blocks with a Monday home game to Coleshill, three Seasoned players with a new comer Muhammed Isik win the four board match 2½ - 1½ and get the SBCC ball rolling.

Board	Home	South Birmingham	2½ - 1½	Coleshill	Away
1 (W)	1578	Stockhall, Derek A	1 - 0	Vanes, Thomas	1495
2 (B)	1525	Moore, Chris	0 - 1	Bettam, Ray	1480
3 (W)	1510	Heeney, Paul	½ - ½	Mills, Kieran	1345
4 (B)	1468	Isik, Muhammed Oguz	1 - 0	Green, Des J	1113

6^th Oct 21

Team Registrations and fixtures are made just one thing left before the season starts …

The Olton Annual “friendly” match which was played at MASC over 20 Boards. The match details can be found here Pre-Season-Friendly-Match (southbirminghamchess.club)

But more important was the fact we are all back playing over the board……

kjpeidicofodikkm

30^th Aug 21

The BDCL OTB (over the board) League starts again in October, currently 50 team entries are in with around another 10 expected…..

South Birmingham Chess Club has again entered 7 Teams …. This requires 40 active Players ……get ready everyone make sure you have got your ECF membership sorted…

This years Simultaneous Display is by one of our top players J.P. Aka John Pitcher ……. and will take Place Wednesday 22^nd September 2021

I believe John has been in all of the nine SBCC teams that have won the BDCL Championship Title.

The Annual “Friendly” Match with Olton over 20 Boards has also been arranged to take Place at our place (MASC) Wednesday 6^th October 2021
Tricky will be taking Names…..

30^th July

Curry Night back at the Diwan Balti Restaurant,

Druge, Dazzler, De Molly, Tricky. Raffa, Decimator, Tal, Diamond, Brush, Domino, Hitman photo by Kitty

2^nd June 21

18 players at the club this week including Kitty and four new faces, the Web site is the main answer when we ask how they found out about us.

28^th May 21

Following escalating Pricing year on year by the previous Web supplier “Host Papa” (Canadian), we have changed Supplier……. and domain name.

Instead of southbirminghamchessclub.com we are now southbirminghamchess.club and our Web host is now Zeus IT (Brum, Sheldon)…..
Zeus IT also hosts the BDCL site as well as Olton Chess club, they have been very reliable and I can recommend them to any club looking to re-house at a reasonable price.

24^th May 21

The BDCL Voted in Favour of concluding the 2019-20 season by a Points per game Calculation, The Match points won are divided by games played to give the teams a calculated Match performance……

As a result of this, Alpha-1 who was top of the Table at the time play was suspended with just one match left to play….. Still remain in top spot on Performance and therefore the records will now show

South Birmingham Champions of the League for a Ninth time…………….

200020062007200820092010201220152020

Well done Alpha -1 ….. All SB Final standings for 2019-20 can be found in the SB Archive.

The BDCL League is also making plans to start a new Season in October 2021…….fingers crossed.

19^th May

Moseley All Service Club re-opened this week after seven months of closure, TEN players turned up to play across the board tonight and enjoyed a bit of normality…..

25^th March 21

Its now one year since competitive over the Board Chess has taken place, Meanwhile South Birmingham continue to enter teams online…. Captain 2 Cars believes we can win this

and although work commitments prevent a regular Bd 1 we have good news that the Dicen Duo are available………. Scintillating is the chosen team name, and they do not disappoint…

Winning the first Twelve of 14 matches to run away with the Division Title…… We are unsure what the future brings but hope is on the horizon for a return to the Club Venue MASC……..

Team	Play	Won	Draw	Lost	For	Against	Points
South Birmingham 1	14	12	0	2	39½	16½	30
Isle of Wight 1	14	7	2	5	31	25	20
Kidderminster 1	14	7	2	5	31	25	20
Longbridge 2	14	6	3	5	29½	26½	19
Solihull 2	14	7	1	6	28½	27½	17
Mutual Circle 1	14	4	3	7	25	31	13
Worcester 2	14	4	2	8	22	34	12
Stourbridge 1	14	0	5	9	17½	38½	5

11^th Feb. 21

After 10 matches Elisiltalmansin finished a very respectable second winning 11 drawing 4 with 50½ boards for and 29½ against 34 points

Team	Play	Won	Draw	Lost	For	Against	Diff	Points
Warwick University 1	20	14	3	3	53½	26½	27	39
South Birmingham 1	20	11	5	4	50½	29½	21	34
Stourbridge 1	20	13	1	6	44½	35½	9	33
Mutual Circle 1	20	9	5	6	42½	37½	5	30
Lichfield 1	20	7	6	7	39	41	-2	25
Isle of Wight 1	20	8	3	9	39	41	-2	24
Kidderminster 1	20	9	1	10	40	40	0	23
Longbridge 2	20	8	2	10	36	44	-8	21
Sutton Coldfield 2	20	6	5	9	34	46	-12	20
Solihull 2	20	1	9	10	33	47	-14	12
Worcester 2	20	2	4	14	28	52	-24	8

12^th Nov 20

As the Pandemic Continues to halt Over the Board play, South Birmingham again enter the online West Midlands autumn League Division 2 …..

Captain Matt Little rallies the team and that secret West Midlands team you never knew were so local “Isle of White” are the first victims to Elisiltalmansin (the name derived is the first three letters of each players online handle)

8^th Oct 20

Tonight the The West Midlands Area Summer league Finished as below..........nothing to Bragg about this time ...... but some good entertainment was dished out for the game watchers.
The Bees were doing okay until the Clubs pulled in the Grand Masters.......which took it to another level, well done and thanks to all who took part and to Matt 2 Cars on his first captaincy.

Over the course of the spring and Summer Leagues it has become apparent that the regular online game is not popular with all club members with less than a third taking part.

Players seem happier to commit to one off tournaments rather than a series of Matches; we wait to see what come next.

Colour	Board	Warwick University Alumni	Grade		South Birmingham 1	Grade
B	1	Daskalov, Dimiter	000	1 - 0	Pitcher, John	220R
W	2	Goodall, Jaspar	116R	0 - 1	Hazlehurst, Cory S	180R
B	3	Coldwell, Matthew	112D	1 - 0	Flynn, David	155A
W	4	Huffer, Jack	115R	½ - ½	Walsh, Marcus	171B
B	5	Daskalov, Dimiter	000	½ - ½	Pitcher, John	220R
W	6	Goodall, Jaspar	116R	0 - 1	Hazlehurst, Cory S	180R
B	7	Coldwell, Matthew	112D	1 - 0	Flynn, David	155A
W	8	Huffer, Jack	115R	0 - 1	Walsh, Marcus	171B

Colour	Board	South Birmingham 2	Grade		Redditch	Grade
B	1	Mycroft, Richard	177C	0 - 1	Lalic, Bogdan	243R
W	2	Lane, Tim A	162R	0 - 1	Evans, Harry G	169R
B	3	Clarke, Neil	165R	½ - ½	Towers, Nigel S	149R
W	4	Dicen, Elis Denele	148R	1 - 0	Russell, Scott	126R
B	5	Mycroft, Richard	177C	0 - 1	Lalic, Bogdan	243R
W	6	Lane, Tim A	162R	1 - 0	Evans, Harry G	169R
B	7	Clarke, Neil	165R	0 - 1	Towers, Nigel S	149R
W	8	Dicen, Elis Denele	148R	0 - 1	Russell, Scott	126R

Team	Play	Won	Draw	Lost	For	Against	Points
Sutton Coldfield 1	14	9	3	2	34½	21½	26
Solihull 1	14	6	3	5	29	25	19
Greenlands 1	14	5	5	4	27½	28½	18
Redditch	14	6	3	5	27½	28½	18
South Birmingham 2	14	6	2	6	26½	29½	17
South Birmingham 1	14	5	2	7	26½	29½	13
Worcester 1	14	3	5	6	25	29	13
Warwick University Alumni	14	3	3	8	25½	30½	11

The Answer to the 3 moves mate, 1/10: Rf1. (Threatening mate Rh1.)-Kh6. (is forced anything else is mate): Rxg6+.

1^st Oct 20

Tonight Our two teams were in action in their penultimate matches
The A Team took on Worcester who the Bees had previously beaten
and the Bees took on Greenlands who had previously beaten the A Team
I found great entertainment toggling between all the Bees games plus JP's and Pelles games, You can find a lot out when doing this... Pelle Liked to torture his opponent
When a mate in 1 arises he liked to make it last four while the opponents pawn gets nearer a nearer to the eight rank...............
JP on the other hand was in a more generous mood by the second game having dealt with a Pawn storm seemed to let the last one off and lost knight and Rook while the opponent Queened, Very rare sight...
Elis on the other hand seems to glide through busy boards after the Opponents King using the Horwitz defence as Black and the London System in the second game as white 2 great wins .....
Neil Diamond won a very fast first game against Stephen Woodhouse.... it was more like a blitz than a rapid However in the Second game a lot of play was around hanging on to a piece with both sides attacking every piece at once .. which ended in a crazy entertaining draw ...
Although Mr TAL never got anything.... he now knows there was a tricky to spot mate in three in his second game as white.....This is even harder when in time trouble; his opponent still had 12 minutes after 79 moves!?? fast thinker..

Can you find the Mate in 3 for white to move in less than a minute……?

Tim_A_Lane_vs_spurs10_2020.10.01.pgn Mate in 3.bmp
The A team replicated The bees 5 - 3 win over Worcester While the Buzzing Bees Took Hitman's Greenland’s apart 5 - 3 (Alright Kev?) Okay their GM Arkell just happened to be missing ... Obviously must of knew Pythagoras was Waiting
Great Play Rich watched a lot of the games against my understudy... I liked the forced draw at the end of game two when he was gunning for revenge.....
The Win means The A team cannot catch the Buzzing Bees and should the Bees beat Redditch a second place maybe possible as second place Solihull now without Nigel play leaders Sutton and third Place Greenland’s have finished.....
Nigel Bryne as all who knew him will know, was a great bloke, good player and would always offer to get you a drink after the game win or lose........ His sudden death just shows you never know what you have left......
RIP Nigel $

Team	Play	Won	Draw	Lost	For	Against	Points
Sutton Coldfield 1	12	7	3	2	29	19	21
Solihull 1	12	6	3	3	26½	19½	19
Greenlands 1	14	5	5	4	27½	28½	18
South Birmingham 2	12	6	2	4	24	24	17
Worcester 1	14	3	5	6	25	29	13
Redditch	12	4	3	5	22	26	13
South Birmingham 1	12	4	2	6	22½	25½	11
Warwick University Alumni	12	2	3	7	21½	26½	9

Colour	Board	South B’ham 1	Grade		Worcester 1	Grade
B	1	Pitcher, John	220R	1 - 0	Mellor, Stephen D	181C
W	2	Hazlehurst, Cory S	180R	1 - 0	Holmes, Matthew A	144R
B	3	Walsh, Marcus	171B	0 - 1	Kitson, Peter R	179D
W	4	Larsen, Pelle O	201F	1 - 0	Sutton, Rob	122E
W	5	Pitcher, John	220R	0 - 1	Mellor, Stephen D	181C
B	6	Hazlehurst, Cory S	180R	1 - 0	Holmes, Matthew A	144R
W	7	Walsh, Marcus	171B	0 - 1	Kitson, Peter R	179D
B	8	Larsen, Pelle O	201F	1 - 0	Sutton, Rob	122E

Colour	Board	Greenlands 1	Grade		South B’ham 2	Grade
B	1	Hurney, Kevin	180R	0 - 1	Mycroft, Richard	177C
W	2	Stern, Robert C	160R	1 - 0	Lane, Tim A	162R
B	3	Woodhouse, Stephen	159B	0 - 1	Clarke, Neil	165R
W	4	Ellis, Ian	134C	0 - 1	Dicen, Elis Denele	148R
B	5	Hurney, Kevin	180R	½ - ½	Mycroft, Richard	177C
W	6	Stern, Robert C	160R	1 - 0	Lane, Tim A	162R
B	7	Woodhouse, Stephen	159B	½ - ½	Clarke, Neil	165R
W	8	Ellis, Ian	134C	0 - 1	Dicen, Elis Denele	148R

In other news ....which some of you will know ....For the Seventh week Chess was played at MASC two less players than last week partly due to the rain but look who turned up again....... Yes Rafael..........
the normal format is 10 mins no increment winner stays on the loser replaces the next loser ....so guess why I'm taking the Picture...... The Bar downstairs was not very busy but the front room had 15 or more playing Bingo......
What I will say is with all the pubs and Clubs turning out at the same time .. it is quite busy on the main street at 10.00 glad we were not walking or waiting for a bus.......... something else they haven't thought through....
... keep the Faith .. Please pay the subs ... Support the Club when you can .....Do not put yourself at risk IF you do not feel safe....... we shall see what next week brings
20200923_201725 20200923_201705

23^rd September 20

OTB

It’s now over Six months since all league chess was suspended and as I write this the current situation shows it’s not going to resume any time soon,

I can report some Over the Board casual chess has taken place in a few clubs, with ours being one of them, however how long this continues will depend if the Clubs stay open and what restrictions exist…

12^th August 20

Curry Night at the Club

In support of the MASC and the current climate we decided to hold a curry night at the club with the Diwan Balti Restaurant supplying all the food.

Well done to Tricky Walker for organizing 52 Items of food and the Diwan for service and getting it all correct This Picture as usual was taken by The Brush (aka Joe Kadar)

IMG_20200812_200411251

25^th June 20

Online Champions

Pithers Woodpushers Finish Open Champions of the WMA Spring League, it’s been said results are being submitted for ECF grading……….

Not to be out done Tals talent Squad 560 team finish Second and are promoted to the open section

Both teams are entered in the Follow up West Midlands Area Summer League also played on Chess.com

http://ecflms.org.uk/lms/node/61659/teams http://southbirminghamchessclub.com/SBCC-Summer-2020.htm

4^th June 20

Pubs and Social Clubs re-open.. Public are advised to try and keep a social distance where possible

April 20

WMA Online

South Birmingham enters the online, West Midlands Area Spring League played on Chess.com with a team in each section, Open and 560.

John Pitcher Captains the Open and Tim Lane Captains the 560max rules are a copy of the BDCL summer League with games set at 15mins+10sec per move

March / April 20

Online

Neil Clark establishes South Birmingham Teams on the two online platforms lichess and Chess.com also a What’s App group. Diamond Geezer

Sunday 15^th March 20

Pause

Leagues have suspended Over the Board (OTB) chess following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic…….

Social clubs and Pubs have also been closed…..

Wed 4^th March 20

Alpha 1 Played their penultimate Match at Home in a very busy club room against Shirley & Wythall, a defeat would almost hand the Title to either Shirley or Sutton who have each other to Play

A win would make us favourites and a draw would also keep us in a good place with one still to play Captain Hitman reports

Hi All,

Last night saw a huge Championship encounter between the main 2 Challengers, ourselves and Shirley & Wythall. They were at full strength and we were stronger but without Jon Swindells whom is on Paternity Leave.

The main boards for us were on 1, 5 and 6 where we needed a good score as we out-graded them substantially whilst the other boards were evenly matched. We scored 21/2 out of 3 on these boards whilst only scoring 1/2 out of 3 on boards 2, 3 and 4. Interesting bystanders were Henrik Stepanyan of Sutton Coldfield and Gordon Christie of Shirley....A draw in this match would favour us who would then win the league by beating Bushbury in 2 weeks.

I didn't take a lot in of other games but Adam Szelc 189 drew quickly against S. Briggs 184 with black in a French defence in which they both had 2 rooks, minor piece and 6 pawns. 1/2-1/2

Richard Mycroft 178 then drew with black against J. Dale 153 in a Kings Indian Samisch I believe... 1-1 Pavel Besedin 188 was under constant pressure against D. Mason 192 in a Pirc Austrian Attack in which his opponent played f5 with pawns on g4 and e4 and I believe Pavel lost a piece from what I've been told....... 1-2 Yours truly 180 was always on top against K. Ingram 154 in a Petroff Defence which was a 3 Knights...I often make things up at the board and avoided main theory and by move 8 my opponent was losing. I never relinquished the advantage and the game is below...Nice to play 43.Qxg5!! at the end.....this levelled the score… 2-2 Pelle Larsen 2141 was involved in an English against I. Galloway 193 and his opponent opened the h-file and won the game with an unstoppable attack by the queen on f3 and a rook on the h-file..... 2-3 About 10 people or more were watching the last game of John Pitcher 212 against P. Purcell 196 and John played a Sicilian Maroczy bind position and was an exchange up in the ending but not many pawns left which gave hope to Shirley. John sacrificed the exchange back to get an unstoppable passed pawn.........3-3

So, we need a win to win the league outright against Bushbury.... Let's finish the job off and add another Championship title to our collection.....

Hitman

❶	P	W	D	L	Pts	SBA	SC	Sol	SW	SBB	Olt	WsK	SBC	Hal	WQ	Wtn	Bsh	Lch
South Birmingham-A	11	7	2	2	16	18	3½	2	3	2	3	3½	5½	4	4½	4½		5½
Sutton Coldfield	11	7	1	3	15	2½	17	3½		1½	3½	3½	3	4	5	4	2	4½
Solihull	12	7	1	4	15	4	2½	15	1½	1½	4	2	3	3½	4½	3½	4	4
Shirley & Wythall	11	6	1	4	13	3		4½	15	2½	2½	2	4	2½	5	3	5	3½
South Birmingham-B	10	6	0	4	12	4	4½	4½	3½	16	2		2½	2½	5	2		3½
Olton	11	5	2	3	12	3	2½	2	3½	4	14	3½	3		2½	2½	4	4
Walsall Kipping	10	5	1	4	11	2½	2½	4	4		2½	15		2	3	4	5	5½
South Birmingham-C	10	3	4	3	10	½	3	3	2	3½	3		14	2		4	3½	3
Halesowen	10	4	1	5	9	2	2	2½	3½	3½		4	4	13	2½	2	3
Warley Quinborne	10	4	1	5	9	1½	1	1½	1	1	3½	3		3½	13		5	5
Wolverhampton	10	4	0	6	8	1½	2	2½	2	4	3½	2	2	4		12	4
Bushbury	9	1	1	7	3		4	2	1		2	1	2½	3	1	2	9
Lichfield	9	0	1	8	1	½	1½	2	2½	2½	2	½	3		1			7
						Across for - Down against

13 February 2020, Tim Lane wrote:

Seaside

Chess players,

S&W put out a strong side for their visit to MASC last night, with the teams lining up like this (January grades):

1. Malik, Faraz (173) vs Mason, Donald J (192)

2. Smyth, Martin D (168) vs Galloway, Iain A (193)

3. Dunn, David (163) vs Purcell, Philip (196)

4. Ralph, Sean (162) vs Briggs, Steven (184)

5. Lane, Tim A (152) vs Ingram, Keith R (154)

6. Kasafir, Nathanael (u/g) vs Dale, Jonathan (153)

Out graded by, on average, around 20 points/board (counting Nat as a 150) it was always going to be a tough night, and so it proved…

Faraz (out graded by 19 points) got a good half-point in a tactical melee with Don Mason – Don and Keith Ingram were analysing the game for a long time afterwards and, while the visiting player had many attacking options, Faraz had plenty of resources too, so a draw was probably a fair result.

Martin (25 points) also drew, but I saw nothing of this game.

On Board 3, David had the biggest grading gap to overcome – 33 points. This was the last game to finish, but David was unable to hang on.

Sean (22 points) played the Scandinavian against Steve Briggs and an exchange was won/sacrificed in an a3xBb4, Qa5xRa1 sequence. White followed up with Na2 and Sean’s queen was incarcerated but not lost. After that I lost the thread of what was happening, but White eventually won.

On Board 5 the grading discrepancy was a mere two points, but I still managed to get into trouble against Keith Ingram and eventually lost a pawn and went into a B+2N+5P vs B+2N+6P ending. Keith swapped both pairs of knights off but then found he couldn’t stop my king from blockading the extra pawn, so I escaped with a lucky draw.

On Board 6 Nat played an excellent game against Jonathan Dale, shuffling around on the back three ranks until white over-extended himself, and then launching a counter-attack. At one point I thought we might be close to a full point on this board, but eventually it fizzled out into a draw.

So we gave them a good run for their money but eventually lost 4-2.

The Seasiders have three matches left, all in March, against Bushbury, Warley Quinborne and Walsall Kipping. The first two teams are near the bottom of the division, and a point or two from those matches should suffice to ensure Division One survival.

Cheers,

Tim.

13^th Feb 20

3B in Safe Hands
Captain $ingerman and his band of Peasants went out and did the Business tonight Taking a respectable Mutual Team apart............
Quality Draws form the Druge & Brush and Great wins from Killa and Two Cars made this a great Last ride for Niacin B3
Two cars even opened with the Teams signature b3.. to win another Classic Miniature. Also Special thanks to T.C. for helping Big time to get
Players to Matches, and Kitty, Nurse and Miles for Standing In. sorry I could not offer more but such is the togetherness of the band.
I would like to thank the Loyalty and comradeship of the team and the willingness to turn out for the Matches........
As one of the Lowest graded teams we did what we needed to do and had some fun along the way..........
Below for what its worth is the Seasons Record for the Team.......... Until the Next time
Captain $ingerman

A great win by the team and now we turn our attention to the tougher test of Walsall Kipping next week....

HITMAN

30^th Jan 20

Dudley 1

We hosted Warley Q in the Dudley league last night. we had a good team with a rejuvenated Hitman on 1, Darren (AKA Chopper) on 2, me (AKA Diamond) on 3 & TAL on 4.

Chopper played a gem in an english defence / steinitz french variant exploiting a small error from his opponent to blow open the game and blow him off the board.

I was playing a stodgy game - better but no obvious way through and was offered a draw. a quick look at Hitman being much better and a draw was an east choice.

TAL had a long but inevitable looking draw v Fahy in an exchange french so 2-1

Hitman at this point was about 3 pawns and an exchange up v smith. took a while for him to resign but he did and Hitman, back in the 180s in the new list has risen like Rocky from the canvas in Rocky iv. Smith was heard to say later in a slightly russian accent "he is made of iron"..... come on the Dudley first team! top of league I hope!

Diamond

Dudley 2

Also in the Dudley League Tonight in January order… Killa 127…. Top cat 127.... $ingerman… 118 ... & Kitty… 118... Played Halos for the battle of the Lighthouse,
we arrived together Me on the Bike the other three in Top cats Merc...
They Played 4 Div 4 players in January Grade Order T. Stokes 140..., Paul Evans 136.... Peter Banks 120.... Don Curry 116.....
We also won 1½ - 2½ with T.C. calling his game a classical miniature 0 - 1 mine was a 72 move Draw buster he said do you want a draw I can’t see you breaking through I said we will see....we did 0 - 2
Killa took the draw to win the Match well played that man .........I tossed the card to Don and Kitty and said cheekily, Your game don't matter knowing it was going Pear shaped......and we retired to the Bar
Champions of the Flashing Light Building, Kitty Joined us a little later mumbling under is breath unrepeatable words like All this way for _ _ _ _ all....... Purr Purr Pussy.

$ingerman

From TC

Well, I was happy to mate on move 21 against a higher rated opponent... 😂

Activity... I blasted 2 pawns for this position, I know he didn’t play well.. This is where I found the winning move

6^th Jan 20

Shropshire congress, SB Winners Again

The 2020 Shropshire Congress was again staged at the Wreking Housing Centre, Telford; This Year SB Players took top Prize in two Sections

TAL (AKA Tim A Lane), a regular supporter of the congress won the Major U170 Section, While Yours Truly (AKA $ingerman), Won the Intermediate U135 Section.

I have to say the three days travelling always makes me question is it worth it? I got £225 for playing 5 games what do you think?

TAL 2020 $ingerman 2020 Killa 2017 Speedy 2015 Physics 2015

21^st Dec 19

Christmas report

As Christmas approaches one can look at how the teams are doing and get a clearer picture of what is possible and what is not,

Div 5 stumbled along and find themselves not too far away from the top of the table, I say stumbled because a couple of young prospects which we had high hopes of have so far failed to put in an appearance, and a couple of last season’s regulars are also struggling to get out, Transport to away games is also problematic. A combination of all these things contributed to a cup tie default at Sutton. However no one is running away with this division and there is still chances of something if we can get the bodies to matches.

The Div 4 team have benefited from the return of an ex player Nat who seems to be in a rich vein of form despite many years of inactivity, the top three boards are giving all a run for their money, unfortunately the top of this division has two teams that are running away with it and it looks like a top two place has already passed.

Having two teams in Div 3 shows quite a gulf between them, the 3A Tigers have only lost to the top team Rushall and are close on their heels in second place, another Victory from the remaining games will virtually give Promotion back to

Div 2

B3 Niacin on the other hand have played the most games and struggled to get the points and will need to get a couple more from the last two fixtures if they are to stave off the chasing pack.

The trinity in Div 1 has different agendas, The Seaside is all about surviving and doing the best they can, and 8pts from 9 games could already be enough to have achieved that task, The Killer Bees are law unto themselves and will be looking to sting anyone they can, they already got Alpha 1 and with three Matches left sit comfortably in mid table looking for another target. Alpha 1 have lost two and drew 1 but surprisingly this season find that’s still better than the rest and it’s still all to play for in the league, They have also got to the Final of the Homer trophy where a very strong Sutton 2 await with a 2½ handicap start,

Dudley teams have yet to lose with all three teams sitting top of their Divisions lets keep it going

$ingerman

21^st July 19

Summer League 2019

South Birmingham entered 1 team in each of the four sections of the Birmingham & District Summer League Rapid Play

The summer league is the first event of the new season with Trophies being awarded at the following years AGM,

From the Tables below you can see we have done well again winning two and Runners up in the other two

Special Mention go’s to JP who finished on 100% with 12 wins in the Open section.

Open	P	W	D	L	F	A	Pen	Bns	Pts	560 Max	P	W	D	L	F	A	Pen	Bns	Pts
South Birmingham	16	12	2	2	45½	18½	0	7	33	Wolverhampton	12	7	4	1	28½	19½	0	3	22
West Bromwich	16	11	2	3	38½	25½	0	6	30	South Birmingham	12	7	3	2	29	19	0	4	21
Mutual Circle	16	8	2	6	35½	28½	0	3	22	Sutton Coldfield	12	7	2	3	27½	20½	0	4	20
Wolverhampton	16	8	3	5	34½	29½	0	3	22	Redditch	12	4	4	4	24	24	0	2	16
Redditch	16	8	1	7	36	28	0	4	21	Shirley & Wythall	12	3	2	7	22½	25½	0	2	10
Sutton Coldfield	16	5	4	7	27½	36½	0	0	16	Warley Quinborne	12	2	3	7	18	30	0	0	8
Warley Quinborne	16	5	1	10	25½	38½	0	3	14	Greenlands	12	0	6	6	18½	29½	0	0	6
Shirley & Wythall	16	3	2	11	24½	39½	0	0	9
Solihull	16	3	1	12	20½	43½	0	0	7

480 Max	P	W	D	L	F	A	Pen	Bns	Pts	400 Max	P	W	D	L	F	A	Pen	Bns	Pts
South Birmingham	14	9	4	1	34½	20½	0	6	28	Greenlands	14	10	3	1	38	17	0	7	30
Oscott	14	6	5	3	28½	27½	0	5	22	South Birmingham	14	8	3	3	36	20	0	5	24
Rushall	14	7	2	5	33	23	0	4	20	Rushall	14	8	2	2	34	22	0	3	22
Solihull	14	6	4	4	29	27	0	3	20	Shirley & Wythall	14	5	2	7	26	29	0	2	14
Sutton Coldfield	14	6	3	5	32	24	0	3	18	Redditch	14	5	2	7	23	32	1	2	14
Shirley & Wythall	14	4	2	8	24½	31½	0	1	11	Solihull	14	5	1	8	21	34	0	2	13
Westminster	14	3	4	7	21½	33½	1	2	10	Westminster	14	2	4	8	22	34	0	1	9
Wolverhampton	14	1	4	9	20	36	0	0	6	Warley Quinborne	14	2	5	7	22	34	2	0	7

Following the new trend set last Christmas SBCC offered two end of season Curry nights. The Traditionalists.. Pub then Late Curry or the Peasants Revolt, Early Curry 7.30

Not to miss out some attended both and a good time was had by all,

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