It was great to see and welcome 29 enthusiastic chess juniors at the club on Saturday morning.
We welcomed 5 newcomers to the chess club in the second session namely James, Monty, Holly, Oakley and Koco all with their own good reasons for wanting to learn or improve their chess skills. Chess is fun and to win other family members at chess seems to be top of the agenda !
I hope that the newcomers enjoyed their first taster of the club activities and we would be delighted to see them return as regulars.
A happy birthday to Zayaan and appreciation to him and dad for donating the box of celebrations that did the rounds at the club. .
After Tony’s successful campaign at the Dorchester Closed Chess Congress (having taken first prize in the Minor section) the morning format of chess puzzles for the first session advanced group returned. The puzzles are not easy to solve even by our coaches but the agility of the young minds to solve the problems is always impressive.
The third round of the Chess Ladder matches are now showing a much clearer picture of positions. In the first session Advanced Group Nathanial has to date won all three of his matches with Peter on a very close 2.5 points.
In the first session of the Intermediate & Beginner’s Pavina has achieved an unrivalled straight three wins and Paul who has previously worked with Pavina has described her chess as having moved to the “next level”. Eric took 8 players in the advanced session & had a fun, competitive chess 960 game with 2 teams on the demo board. All contributed & did well.
In the second session group , Zayaan following the same trend as the other chess ladder leader’s also has achieved three wins out of three matches that he has played. Arthur was coming up close on his third match but at the last hurdle got checkmated by Carlo !
Steve continued developing the chess beginners namely Kit, Vincent, Koco and Mariella who are coming along nicely in their chess development.
Paul rehearsed the Alekhine defence (e4 Nf6) with Nicolas, Pavina and Markas adding a different layer of chess theory for the juniors.
I spent time on the tricky moves of the knight pieces with Nirvan and Jacob to assist in pattern recognition. Whilst both Nirvan and Jacob already have a good grasp of chess fundamentals , even the more seasoned chess players can get caught out with a fork from the knight ! I welcomed in Holly, Oakley and James with an initial assessment of the level of chess knowledge and skills. They can expect to move on in their next session to focus on pawn structures and chess tactics.
Martin went through the game ‘Glucksberg v Najdorf – The Polish Immortal’, which resulted in an amazing checkmate, with the much enlarged second session advanced group – https://www.bournemouthjuniorchess.com/games/
As always thanks to our coaches Tony/Martin/Azhar/Paul/Eric for coming along to provide personal support to the juniors ensuring that the juniors keep learning and developing their chess skills and tactics.
The Bournemouth Chess Club will return next Saturday as usual on the 8th February 2025 at 10 am and 11.30 am sessions.
Report by Azhar.
You can download the mobile chess app ‘Analyze This’ from the App Store for Apple or for Android on Google Play
Here are some really good external links –
TATA STEEL CHESS LIVE – https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAwlxGCJB4NfnlHFnV1iEhFByKZrnfUp1
https://www.youtube.com/@PowerPlayChess
https://www.youtube.com/@agadmator
Play chess online – https://www.chess.com/play/online or https://lichess.org/