Dear Club Member,

In light of the escalating situation regarding the Covid-19 virus, the Club Council have reached the difficult decision to close Edinburgh Chess Club from close of play on Monday 16th March.  The health and safety of our members is our primary concern.  Chess events are being cancelled nationally, and the game does not lend itself to social distancing.

Council will be considering ways in which we can remain a community through online informal chess events.  I will remain in touch.

Best regards,

Neil Berry
Club President

Unfortunately we lost our game against Edinburgh University 2. The final result was 4-2.  This means that we will finish 4th in the league and will not be promoted.

However we did have a small gem played by Indrek who had a fun game playing the von Hennig-Schara Gambit – see the club’s Facebook page for the game!

Full result:
McGillivray 0.5-0.5 Donitova
Reiland 1-0 Hand
Brejter 0-1 Angeletos Chrysaitis
Whittaker 0.5-0.5 Lyakh
Armitage 0-1 Bao
Platts 0-1 Knak

[Report by Calum McGillivray, team captain]

In preparation for the club’s 200th anniversary in 2002 the sub-committee, chaired by Raj Bhopal, carried out a deep dive last night into the club’s archive and records.

The session was led by curators Ian Whittaker and David Archibald.  They first gave an outline of the types of material held by the club:

Examples were shown of the approach being taken cataloguing the library, magazines, digital media etc.

The group then made a deep dive into the cupboards!

David showing some of the published material
Deep dive by Raj and Alastair

We won our match against Bank of Scotland 2 Thursday night 5 – 1, This means that we still have a chance of being promoted to Division 1 and, possibly, even winning Division 2 this year. We will need a win in our next match in order to do that!

Full board results:

McGillivray 0.5-0.5 Stewart
Reiland 1-0 Russell
Brejter 1-0 Forbes
Whittaker 0.5-0.5 Murray
Sinha 1-0 Prestage
Robertson 1-0 Powell

[Report by Calum McGillivray, team captain]