Heywood Chess Club

Welcome to the Heywood Chess Club website!   

last updated 26th November 2021

We had a normal club night on the 24th but the turnout was very sparse, only 4 of our members with a new recruit making up the 5! The club needs to keep going through these trying times and it would be a shame to lose our venue because we are not making full use of it, the club needs all our support please do come along and maybe have a few friendly games with a few beers if you fancy. Next week the 1st December our 2nd team have a tough match at home to Stockport, please come and show your support.

Our first team were in action last week against a strong team from Great Lever and we managed to win  by 3 - 2! Captain's match report next: 

Non playing captain Steve Flaherty once again proved that Alan Hansen's notion that you win nothing with kids was wrong. Our three players aged 11, 14, and 14 delivered the goods! Our slightly less youthful board 1, Martyn Hamer (2125 grade), knew he was in for a tough evening against the formidable veteran Mike Surtees (2118). Their game was too high faluting for Steve to work out what was going on but in the end Mike got the better of our man. So 1-0 to Great Lever. Meanwhile on Board 3 our even less youthful Dave Almond (age NK but his grade is 1713) got to an opposite coloured bishops ending against Chris Jardine (1825) and knew he had a draw. It took his opponent another hour to accept that indeed the game was a draw. On Board 2, 14 year old Kyle(1907) was up against Jon Lonsdale (1923) and agreed a draw which proved to be vital in the end. So 1-2 to Great Lever. 14 year old Tarini (1720) had a queen and a bishop v two rooks against Mike Connor (1668) and tore open Mike's kingside. He resigned and now the match was 2-2! Everything now depended on 11 year old Thisumi. (1705). She is not the number 2 under 11 girl in England for nothing you know ! Playing Mick Carroll (1668) she has continued the fine Jayawarna tradition of hovering her hand over a piece before making a move. With everyone watching, both players kept getting down to seconds on the clock. No one knows how many moves were made but it must have been 100 plus. Mick defended well and from 2 pawns down found some counter play and both players queened their pawns. The problem for Mike was that he had to avoid swapping off the queens as that would have left Thisumi with a passed pawn. And the problem with that is you need thinking time and the problem was that he eventually made a move which must have been a fraction of a second after his time ran out. A win for Thisumi who is now awarded 'Hero of Heywood Chess Club' status!

Steve Flaherty

Our 2nd team were away at Chorlton on Tuesday 16th Nov and they faced a strong team being out graded on all boards, the final score was 3.5 - 1.5, match report below.

I was first to finish on board 4 and managed to get the better of Howard Hughes being a whole rook up in the end game. Tony was next to finish after being in a level position but finally got squeezed out, so 1 - 1. Next was Con on top board, his opponent arrived 25 mins late but managed to force Con into a corner and the end followed shortly after. So now 1- 2 down and it looked like Donna was winning v Phil Bennett but the game ended in a draw so 1.5 - 2.5 and we needed the win on board 3 from Ian, but hes was apawn down in the end game and his opponent made it count and won the game, so the final score 3.5 - 1.5.

Pete Hurn

We are playing a shortened  season from October to December this is mainly due to the lack of available players and the worry about the dreaded covid problems? So we have entered just 2 teams in the MCF leagues, 1 in Div 2 and the 2nd in Div 4. Because of our OTB activities I plan to postpone the online weekly swiss for now.

Below you will find up to date links for our on line activites and contacts for other usefull web sites.

1. Our latest OTB fixtures This is our fixture list for both Heywood 1 and Heywood 2, playing in the MCF Div 2 and Div 4. 

2. Click on this to go to our on line team on lichess This is our Lichess on line club. You can access our tournaments from the club home page. 

As of 20th April 2021 we now have a new Facebook group created so that you can keep up to date with all the information being shared by the members of the chess club. 

Please do consider joining us on Social Media and stay in touch!!

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1844521119044248

See you there! 

We also have a whats app group which is open to all for chess and general chat please request the join link  Here