Dear club members

On 22 January 2019 the club innovated (at least in modern times) by playing an odds competition. There were two teams comprising of the stronger four players, and the less strong four players. The stronger player gave up one pawn for every hundred point difference in their grading compared to the the less strong player. A maximum of seven pawns or their equivalent could be removed from the board. In one game the stronger player chose the material to be given up and in the other game the opponent chose the material.

There were substantial differences between the opponents in grading. Under normal circumstances, we might have expected the result to be a resounding win for the stronger players, perhaps 7:1 or thereabouts.

However, the result was 3.5-4.5  i.e. the stronger players lost. It was an interesting and fun evening. The result indicated that the odds we chose were roughly right for allowing unequal battle between two dissimilar players. In many ways, this resembled the handicapping system in golf where players of different abilities can compete more or less equally, thus maintaining the sense of competition.

Raj Bhopal

The club recently played host to this event which raised money for a very worthwhile charity.

A report on it can be read on the Chess Scotland website and the full grading results can also be found there.

A big change to the schedule on 20th Nov. Instead of the planned 10 second buzzer lightning event (which will be rescheduled) we are extremely fortunate to have a visit from the Israeli GM Emil Sutovsky , who will give a 2 hour talk.

He is renowned as a ferocious attacking player so his talk is sure to be hugely entertaining.  If you aren’t familiar with his play then check out his win against English GM Danny Gormally at the Gibraltar Chess Festival in 2005.

Among his notable successes: he was World Junior Champion in 1996, won the Hoogeveen Tournament in 1997, won the Aeroflot Open in Moscow in 2005, won the gold medal for the best individual performance on board two at the 2010 Olympiad,  and won the Biel Masters as recently as 2015. He has been the president of the Association of Chess Professionals since 2012.

There will also be a short talk at the start of the evening by new FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich.

Please arrive for a 7.30 pm start.

We’re delighted to announce that we’ve received a cheque for £1000 from the Post Office’s CommonUnity competition to help us to support junior and senior chess activities. Our sincere thanks to Lynsey Shovlin for spotting the competition and entering us into it – an excellent piece of initiative!

And of course our thanks to the Post Office – one of the few organisations that are even older than us 😉

We’ll be considering how best to use the prize for maximum benefit in the near future.

#commonunity