As one great competition starts, another ends.
No, we’re not talking about the Prem and the World Cup. Here, we’re all about chess leagues and our new summer event.
So let’s take a moment to reflect on 2017-18 in this review of the season before the Summer Chess League begins.
As usual, Battersea Chess Club was busy, busy, busy over the 2017/18 season and we had some notable successes – but it wasn’t all plain-sailing.
We’ve had stellar performances and relegation dogfights, individual glory and moments we’d all like to forget.
And through it all we even managed to survive an entire season without having (to my knowledge) a run-in with another club.
In total, we have fielded an impressive 8 teams across the 6-division London Chess League and the 3-division Central London Chess League playing more than 600 graded games. And that’s just the beginning.
In November we put on a blitz event with chess learning site Chessable, IM John Bartholomew and IM Christof Sielecki and featured in this slick video:
We’ve also hosted our own tournaments, such as the Contest of Kings, the Team Rapids and the Rookie Rapids, won by our England junior Denis Dupuis.
My personal favourite tournament was the world championship-style match-play epic Beckett-Hill which is still unresolved after Chris Beckett and Ali Hill finished locked on 3 all. That will now go to a rapid-play play-off.
But wasn’t all serious.
For many, the best event was the Hand & Brain and Chess Who? night, or perhaps the Latvian Night, inspired by a visit from the founder of the Riga Chess Club and won by Midhun Unnikrishnan.
Both were brilliant.
Rounding off the season we also had a visit from GM Danny Gormally, a fellow south Londoner although he insists on living up north, who played a hugely-impressive simul in which he basically destroyed everyone.
While all this has been going on our traditional internal tournaments – the Club Championship, Rapid-Play, and Barrow – have also been taking place.
Unsurprisingly, they still aren’t finished. It was, after all, only at this year’s AGM that new top dog Aldo Camilleri was awarded the trophy for winning last year’s championship.
Under Way
In October we had the long-anticipated first London League match between two of our sides. The Battle of Battersea, we called it.
Malcolm Dancy‘s Battersea 2 and Battersea 3, captained by Tim Wells, duked it out over 1o boards in their first match as they were in the same division.
It was also the first LCL match held at the Labour Club after we managed to persuade the burghers of the league to let us far away people in Zone 2 play host.
All summer we had been talking about it, and it certainly lived up to its advance billing, with hard-fought games up and down the boards.
Paul gave a board by board run-down of the match you can find here. But the highlight was a very nice win by our chairman Alan Palmer. More about that one here.
Malcolm’s team went on to finish mid-table with 6 wins and 6 loses, and for one of his masterpieces he scooped the Game of the Year. More on that in a separate post.
Tim’s team, promoted the year before, fought hard but went back down. They were, after all, heavily outgraded in most matches.
Two-way
We didn’t just have one Battersea derby though – we had two.
In January, Paul Stokes‘s CCL 1 team took on Emil Todorow‘s CLL2 team in the Central London League.
Emil’s team, which had been promoted the previous season, were rooted to the bottom and stayed there are a 4-1 loss.
But there it wasn’t all bad for Emil’s team, as we shall see.
Howard’s Way
Perhaps the most unexpected success was provided by Howard Groves and his new development team in CLL3, which was formed with strict instructions to stay there.
Howard’s team started very early – the CLL starts a bit before the LL – back in September with a win over recently relegated TfL. Outgraded on every board at TfL’s dimly-lit Grade 1 listed venue, Howard’s team derailed them.
“The celebratory drinks in the pub tasted very sweet, I can tell you!” said Howard.
From that point on Battersea CLL3, as we refer to them, were like a runaway train.
In fact, Howard got so worried they might with the division and get promoted – which was NOT the plan – he dutifully made sure he didn’t win a single game.
Eventually, thanks to Howard’s efforts, they hit the buffers and finished second. Phew, yet another team in division 1 would not have been good!
My Way
My team, Battersea MI as we’re known, play in the London League’s Minor division, which is for under 125 players.
Unfortunately we had a stinker of a season and finished only 2nd. Given we were the reigning champions and have barely lost a game for the previous three seasons that was a disappointment.
And but for a freak season from Morley College who steamrollered everyone, we would have retained our trophy.
I’m still annoyed I accepted a tame draw against them all the way back in October. What a muppet.
High way
Another team that didn’t live up to expectations was Arnold Hunt‘s Battersea MA team in the London League’s Major division.
They struggled all year and finished bottom of the league but, thankfully, there is no relegation in division 5.
No Way!
The historic moment of the year came when GM David Howell – yes, a 2700-rated GM – turned out for Emil’s strugglers to help them stave off relegation in the final match of the season.
And that wasn’t all – on a balmy night in Pimlico we had GM Simon Williams and IM Gavin Wall also in the team making this by far the strongest side the club has ever put out.
And it did the trick, despite being outgraded for most of the season Emil’s team, also promoted the previous year, survived.
The question is though, can GM David do it on cold November night at the Citadines?
We hope so.
Showing the way
All the above is nothing compared to the achievements of the first team this season.
Having only been promoted back to division 1 two years ago for the first time in… well, living memory, Chris’s underdogs had a brilliant season.
Expecting to be battling for survival, our first team actually topped the division for much of the year (although mainly because the invincible Wood Green had games in hand) racking up 6 wins.
In a top division this strong, that is no mean feat. Chris’s team were eventually pipped to 3rd on game points by Cavendish.
No wonder Chris was awarded Captain of the Season at the club AGM.
Dare we dream about a higher finish next year? With strong new players like Adam Taylor, Bao Nghia Dong and Viktor Stoyanov we may be able to.
Way to go
As for individual successes, there were many. It’s not easy keeping abreast of what everyone’s up to at the weekend, so if you had a success that’s not mentioned don’t take it personally.
But we do know our players shone at:
- the London Chess Classic
- the Frome Congress
- at the Portugal Open in Lisbon
- the Central London Congress
- the 4NCL Congress
Denis Dupuis represented England Juniors in the Boys U9 section at the World Junior Chess Championships in Albania, scoring 4.5/9. We have high hopes for him.
Next week he’s at the World Cadets in Belarus.
Bill Drennan also celebrated an impressive 30 years service at the club.
As for our Player of the Season, that was easy. Ali Hill ended the season with +9 score having played 21 games.
Way forward
We’ve seen plenty of new faces and the club and our membership has now hit 57 – up an incredible 60 per cent on last year.
Our treasurer Adrian Somerfield has also reported that our finances – which looked perilous a year ago – have stabilised.
We are ordering new chess sets and clocks and planning new events. We may even enter a new league.
And we have the Summer Chess League to look forward to which will see more than 100 players at the club over what used to be a quiet period. But not anymore, not at Battersea.
So well done everyone.
Now let’s make 2018/19 even better.
