It's the Blitz!

So we, and when I say we I mean Kevin, decided to have an internal blitz competition.

Shall we just say that blitz isn't my forte. I did however manage to get a non-consensual draw which is an achievement in itself in a 5 minute game.

The format was a Swiss tournament, This generally works best when you have a whole load of people in an event. This didn't however phase Kevin in the slightest and he proceeded to arrange the draws for each round. It got a little messy in later rounds but eventually it was worked out. Especially once the draw was wrangled so that Steve wasn't playing three games simultaneously.

After some truly awful playing by all involved, (hint: when you fork the king and the queen, take the king) Pete managed to win on the evening. I think it's fair to include Pete when I say that this surprised everyone.

Although possibly not the bar staff.

Or the ladies darts team.

Well we have a few rounds left of our summer tournament before the proper league season starts so maybe I shall post some more. Or maybe I will wait til 2017....

Jer

Another season is coming!

Hello folks, Graham here.

I was at a League Management meeting the other night. It's the Summer one, where all the doings for the new season are decided, so I thought I'd update everyone...er, at least everyone who reads this blog, which may well just be me.

As predicted, division 5 has disappeared. Division 4 will have ten teams, including three from Downend! Bristol Grammar School will not be there, but they will be replaced by a team of juniors under the baton of Pete Saunders, to be called Pete's Potentials. Here in simple Yate, we will just have to call them Pete's Potatoes...
Teams will be asked (it's not compulsory, but it's considered polite) to play with a shorter time limit in the matches against the juniors, 65 mins. on the clock instead of the usual 90. We may give Mike "Father Time" Bradford the evening off.
Despite my efforts, the A team will be back in division 3. This will have nine teams.
Clifton chess club have been chucked out of the Polish church, and have gone back to one of their (many) previous venues, the Polish club! They have also changed nights to Wednesdays.
I hope it's not going to be a problem, but division 3 has four teams which play on a Thursday, namely Bath University, Harambee, Patchway and South Bristol.
Richard Lobb has told me he is giving up chess. It is sad to lose one of the longest standing and most stalwart members of the club, but it can't be helped. I have to say, this is not the first time, so we can hope that he may reappear anyway. This leaves us with a team of 6 and a team of 4, and ten players to 'choose' from, assuming everyone else is coming back. I've heard from most, but not all. There will inevitably have to be some movement between the teams, but I'm waiting to see the new grades before deciding who will do what (and to whom). Most likely Mike or James will be registered for the A team, and be able to play down. I will probably chuck in Kevin Langmaid as well. He can only play on Wednesdays, which means potentially three matches during the season.
The cup draws came out as follows. Amazingly, we didn't get drawn out in the preliminary round of the Minor KO this year. I think this is the first time, certainly for a while. So in the first round, which is also the quarter final, we are at home to Downend. I seem to remember that happened last year.
There are 8 teams in the 'proper' KO, so no need for preliminaries. That's the good news. The other news is that we are away to Horfield. Oh well...

Finally the teams in our respective divisions are as follows-

Divison 3 - Bath University, Cabot, Clifton D, Downend C, Harambee, Keynsham B, Patchway, South Bristol B, Yate A.

Division 4 - Clifton E, Downend D, Downend E, Downend F, Hanham B, Horfield D, Nailsea, University B, Pete's Potatoes, Yate B.

Fixtures, grades etc. will be published soon.

Update

Having started this blog, Jeremy now seems to have lost interest, so I thought I'd chuck in my tuppenceworth.
We won a cup match!! Last week, in the Minor knock out, we slaughtered Downend 3.5 - 2.5, and will now play Horfield (away again!) in the next round, which is also the quarter final.
The clubs first ever season in divison 2 has got off to a rather shaky start (played 2, lost 2),but are we downhearted? Answers on a postcard please...
The B team also lost their first game of the season, but the good news is we've got the away trip to Nailsea out of the way! Next up is Horfield D, or possibly Harambee, as I may call the Horfield match off again, due to a lack of players.
If I remember, I'll put something else on here, perhaps before the end of the season...

We didn't do too well against Grendel although I won. At least thats my memory of the game.
As tends to happen, many people were unavailable and we didn't have a full side. Luckily, diamond Dave H showed up to chill and spectate so we grabbed him to play. He won. There's no stopping the man since he's retired.

It was a bit of a disaster with the Keynsham match. At 8pm on Tuesday night the grand total of confirmed players were me and Smiling boy. Faced with the prospect of a 5-1 defeat, (SBW wasn't going to win realistically) I had to call Keynsham and rearrange/forfeit. A little later I get a tect from Mr L saying he can make it. To make matters worse, Andy H had been working away and turned up for the game anyway. We could have put a side out after all! It's enough to make you tear your hair out. Perhaps you can tell I've been doing this for too long.

On another note, I can see nobody else has made a post on this site although SBW has made a valiant effort. The trick is to look at the top right of your screen where it says "sign in". Using the the user name and password I send out, you then click on "make new post".

Well we had a cup match against Grendel this week. I wasn't there because I don't do Mondays. As a result, we lost. Yes it was obviously as a direct consequence.

Tonight (Tuesday) it was pretty quiet. Graham and I showed up as we thought a new player might make an appearance. As it happened he didn't and we had a couple of games while we watched the football. As you were no doubt wondering, Liverpool showed why you don't need to worry about which defenders you pick when you spend £25M on a striker.

The 'B' team have a home match next week so I may stroll along and see what's happening. The 'B' team are like the 'A' team except if you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, they pay you to come along.

Jer

So.

A new season and some more posts

The A team had our second match tonight. In the first match we played another club who's name I have forgotten and we won 4-2. I say I've forgotten the name but obviously I remember the names of all the clubs, I just cant remember which one it was. This is partly because I've misplaced my fixture book already but mainly because I cant be bothered to looking it up on the http://www.chessit.co.uk/ website. Anyway, for reasons known best to them, they turned up with 4 people. I got a draw.

In tonight's match we played Clifton C. After a few years in the league you get to recognise everyone but to this day I still have no idea which teams most people play for. Including some of the Yate players.

Before we started the match, the Clifton captain had an extra player show up and had to adjust the team. He said he was new at the captain thing and did I mind. I think I can speak for the whole team in saying that we're just happy to have someone sitting opposite and if we beat them, well then it gives us a sense of enormous well-being and then we're happy for the rest of the day safe in the knowledge there will always be a bit of our hearts devoted to it.

Sorry, I came over all Blur there.

My opponent asked me if I'd played in the league before. I was shocked. Surely my stunning good looks had been noticed before.

Anyway, Andy H got a draw on board 1, Smiling Boy Woodruff got a draw on board 2, I won on 3, Avi lost on 4 and Graham and Richard lost on 5 and 6 respectively. I cant help thinking Avi may have done better if he'd turned up. I can't help thinking Avi would have turned up if I'd called to remind him. Oops.

I should mention that my game was a bit of a war of attrition. In the end I went a bishop up though a flawed sacrifice. Hint: Its only a sacrifice if you get something for it. In the end, I won because I blew it marginally less than my opponent did as he failed to spot his mate in 2. I did and possibly everyone else did. I may have been a little theatrical at this point...

Time to spread the account and password details about. Maybe someone else will post.

Jer

Its been a little rough over the last few matches trying to get people to show up. For the last couple of games I've only been able to get four people to play. Hopefully things will improve soon.

Last week we played against Horfield. I got a lift with Peter as planned and that's where it may have started to go wrong. Headed along the ring road Peter says "its near Filton right?".

The main problem was that although I could recognise the venue, I couldn't remember whether it was on Whiteladies Road or Gloucester Road. When FIlton was mentioned I assumed that it was Gloucester Road so instead of going down the M32 we took the "quieter" route towards Filton.

There was a lot of traffic around the Filton area. A LOT of traffic. It may have been something to do with the Rovers match that night.

While we were waiting in a big queue of cars, I thought I'd take a look in the fixture books and discovered that it was Whiteladies Road. After a swift detour through the ever narrowing alleyways of Cotham, we arrived in recognisable territory and eventually made it just after 8pm.

Thankfully, the Horfield players allowed us to play our games. As Richard and Avi had arrived on time, or at least in Avi's case, on time-ish, they had assumed that we would have a full team and chose their boards according to their normal positions. I had resigned myself to playing on 1 but I doubt Peter was expecting to play 2. As it happened, Peter played a cracking game and won against an opponent graded a lot higher. Richard also won and even I was having a good game against a much better opponent. Right up until I got stuffed.

Tonight the 'B' team have a re-arranged match against someone.

I shall go and heckle.

Jer