Suffolk Chess

Bury Knights Junior Chess Club now has its own Facebook page.   It's only five days old, but has already received 35 'likes'.

Other than Felixstowe and Bury St Edmunds, are there any other Suffolk chess clubs with a presence on Facebook?

Yesterday (8 November) was Alan Merry's 18th birthday.   Alan joined the Bury Knights Junior Chess Club shortly before his 8th birthday.   By May 2005, he was the club's second-highest rated member, at 1200.   Now, at 2348, he is on the verge of becoming an International Master (just needs another 52 rating points) and already possesses a Grandmaster norm.

He remains a 'Junior' for the rest of the English chess season, but for FIDE purposes, his junior status ceases at the end of this calendar year.

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In Sochi today, Magnus Carlsen took a giant step towards retaining his World Champion title, with a convincing win over Vishy Anand.   In typical Carlsen fashion, he conjured up an attack when none seemed likely.   In fact, his a4, Ra3, Rg3 combination may well be an antidote to the Berlin Defence of the Ruy Lopez.   You can view the annotated game here.

The World Championship match between challenger Vishy Anand and current World Champion Magnus Carlsen got underway this afternoon.   Anand had the white pieces and the result was a reasonably interesting draw after 48 moves.   Although the game never swayed decisively either way, at the end Anand was forced to bale out with a perpetual.

You can play through this game, as well as watching future games live, on chess24.com, although that site seems very slow to load up at times.

Perhaps a better bet is ChessBomb.   Both sites show the current Stockfish evaluations.   The next game starts at midday (GMT) Sunday.

The Bury Knights Junior Chess Club will be fielding a team in the Junior 4NCL at Hinckley, on 22/23 November.   This will be the first time that a junior team from Suffolk has played in this competition.   The event is held over five rounds, with three games on Saturday and two on Sunday.   All games are submitted for ECF grading.

The Bury squad includes regular league players Alex Sheerin, Anita Somton and Emilia Jewell, as well as up-and-coming youngsters, brothers Alan and Adam John.   For each round, a team of four is required.   The team manager is Boby Sebastian, father of Alan and Adam and the current Chairman of the Club.

The squad was unable to play in the first round of matches in October, but expects to be able to field a team in the third round in January.

Following this evening's match between two Bury St Edmunds teams, which resulted in a 4 - 0 whitewash ('C' beating 'A'), the current league table has a very unbalanced look.   Whilst Bury St Edmunds A have played five matches - and lost them all - current League Champions Manningtree A have only played two matches - and won both.   Here's the table:

Team	Played	Won	Drawn	Lost	Points
Ipswich C	4	3	0	1	10½
Ipswich A	3	3	0	0	9½
Bury St Edmunds C	3	2	0	1	8
Manningtree A	2	2	0	0	6½
Ipswich B	3	1	0	2	5
Bury St Edmunds B	4	1	0	3	4½
Bury St Edmunds A	5	0	0	5	3

With six matches to be played by each team before Christmas, it's going to be a hectic period for the likes of Manningtree and the others who have only played three matches.

The best individual performance so far is by Steve Gregory, who has won all three games.   At the other end of the individual table, Ed Player has surprisingly lost all five games!

The popular Woodbridge Junior Open tournament takes place at Woodbridge School on Sunday 23 November.   This is their 14th tournament, which started back in 2001.   International Master Adam Hunt has taught chess at the school for the past ten years.

The tournament features sections for six different age-groups: Under 8, Under 10, Under 12, Under 14, Under 16 and Under 18.   There is also an Open section for stronger juniors, which adults can enter, as well as a free-to-enter section specifically for parents of children who are playing.

The event is a qualifying tournament for the prestigious London Junior Chess Championships, which take place in December.   Scores of 4/6 at Woodbridge are required to qualify for the Under 8 Final in London, and 4½/6 for the Under 10 and Under 12 Major Finals (or 3½/6 for the Minor Finals).   No qualifying score is required for the u14, u16 and u18 sections.

Age-group qualification relates to age as at 31 August 2014.

Entry fees range from £10.00 (Under 8), to £15.00 (Open).

You can download the entry form here.

If you played in this year's Bury St Edmunds Congress, you may be interested in a 12-page booklet, featuring cross-tables for each section, as well as several photos and a list of prize-winners.

Copies have already been sent to all entrants who are on email, but anyone can purchase a printed copy (A4 size on A3 paper) for £2.00 including postage.   Use the Congress website to pay.

Over 25% of the entrants won a prize (41 / 162).   A total prize fund of £2,426.50 was paid out.

Here's the full list:

Open (total = £1100.00)

Prize	Name	Club	Amount
1st	Matthew Sadler	SG Amersfoort	£500.00
2nd=	Gediminas Sarakauskas	Guildford	£150.00
	Adam Taylor	Manningtree	£150.00
	David Spence	Anglian Avengers	£150.00
u190=	Gerald Moore	Broadland	£25.00
	Ian Wallis	Ipswich	£25.00
u175	Chris Davison	4NCL Iceni	£50.00
Junior	David Redman	Cambridge City	£40.00
Best win	Gerald Moore	Broadland	£10.00

Major (total = £549.00)

Prize	Name	Club	Amount
1st=	Richard Lamont	Bury St Edmunds/Stowmarket	£187.50
	John Daugman	Cambridge City	£187.50
3rd=	Julian Ray	Royston	£26.00
	Mark Szymanski	Ely	£26.00
	Ed Kirkham	Adastral Park	£26.00
	Kevin Greenacre	Ipswich	£26.00
u155=	Patrick Ribbands	Linton	£20.00
	Ole Bay-Petersen	Cambridge City	£20.00
Junior	Cassie Graham	Worthing	£20.00
Best win	Colin Roberts	Bury St Edmunds	£10.00

Intermediate (total = £437.50)

Prize	Name	Club	Amount
1st	Stephen Moss	Surbiton/Kingston	£200.00
2nd=	Les Jones	Ipswich	£23.00
	John Dolamore	Norwich Dons	£23.00
	Richard Green	King's Lynn	£23.00
	Tristian See	Cambridge City	£23.00
	Ian Burridge	Newark	£23.00
	Mark Nettleton	Lowestoft	£23.00
	Terry Brown	Brighton	£23.00
	Richard Fenner	Suffolk	£11.50
u131	Elliot Cocks	Chelmsford	£20.00
u121	John Bradley	Dunmow	£20.00
Junior	William Sait	Bury St Edmunds	£15.00
Best win	Tristian See	Cambridge City	£10.00

Minor (total = £340.00)

Prize	Name	Club	Amount
1st	Marek Biernacki	Sutton Coldfield	£150.00
2nd=	Peter Ellis	Rolls Royce Derby	£26.00
	William Bradley	Wymondham	£26.00
	John McKeon	Milton Keynes	£26.00
	Adam Hirst	Bishop's Stortford	£26.00
	Vicky Allen	Stowmarket	£26.00
u100	Oscar Selby	Westminster	£15.00
u60	Alan John	Bury St Edmunds	£15.00
Junior	Jeff Tomy	Watford	£10.00
Junior u60	Preethi Saravanan	Lowestoft	£10.00
Best win	Adam John	Bury St Edmunds	£10.00

As from January 2015 there will be a number of changes to the calculation of ECF grades.

The ECF Grading Team has decided to address two major issues of concern:

A.   The harmful effect of incorrectly reported dates.   These occur chiefly, but not exclusively, in club championships where very often a single arbitrary date is assigned to every game in the competition.   This places undue weight on the precise dates of games played around the 30-game cut-off point.   The order in which two games were played can make a difference of 3 points or more to the player’s grade two years later.

B.   The need to indicate the strength of players as early as possible, noting that a grade for ungraded players is already visible by referring to the games listed in their opponent’s database record.

In consequence there will be three changes introduced in the January 2015 grading list:

1.   At present, category A grades are calculated by averaging the grading points from the most recent 30 games.   Starting in January the averaging will be over all games in the previous two grading periods.   This change will mean that category X will become redundant.

2.   At present, grades in categories lower than A are calculated over the most recent 30 games, assuming that the player has played more than 30 games in the last three years.   In January the calculation method will revert to the system used until January 2011.   There will no longer be a cut-off point part-way through a grading period.   Instead, the system will take as many games from each prior period as it needs in order to make 30 games, but they will use grading points for the average per game for the earliest period used.

3.   There will be a new grade category F, requiring only five games in the last 36 months (including at least one in the most recent period).   Category F grades will be published like any other grade, but they will not be used in future calculations.

A further benefit of (1) and (2) is that they are expected to reduce 'stretch' in the system.   Testing suggests that they are neither inflationary nor deflationary.

Change (3) will increase the number of players with published grades (currently less than 12,000) to an estimated 13,600 or more.   However, some concern has been expressed by congress organisers that a grade calculated from just five games may create a highly inaccurate representation of the player's ability.   This can be reflected in graded sections and grading prizes.

The World Championship match between World Champion Magnus Carlsen and Challenger Vishy Anand takes place in Sochi, Russia from 7 to 28 November.

The official website can be accessed here.   Photos of the event will be posted here.