Venue for the 2025/26 Season and onwards
Crowthorne Chess Club has a new venue for matches and junior chess on Wednesdays. As from September 2025 we play in the Morgan Centre, which is located in Wellington Road just off Crowthorne High Street.
Full location details and directions are in the About Us page.
Social chess continues as normal in the Pinewood Cafe on Thursdays.
Junior Club 23rd Sept
A reminder that tonight’s Junior Club will take place at the Morgan Centre. If you are unfamiliar with this venue, please see the About Us page for details.
Update: The Morgan Centre will remain the venue till at least the end of October.
Club Pre-Season Rapidplay Warmup
Congratulations to Richard on winning the rapidplay with a perfect score of 5 out of 5! Congrats also to David on coming second with 4/5, edging out Colin by having a better tie-break. Here is the final cross table:
Many thanks to John Upham for supplying the book prizes.
Full details of the tournament can be found on chess-results
Season Warmup Rapidplay
On Wednesday evening (September 16) we will hold a Rapidplay event for club members. We will use the Baptist Church again, returning to the Morgan Centre on subsequent Wednesdays.
The Rapidplay will start at 7:30.
New season starting soon!
The 2026/27 season is nearly upon us. Our first Wednesday meet-up for junior chess will be on Wednesday, September 9.
The Junior Club will meet at the Crowthorne Baptist Church in the High Street. For parking use either the Morgan Centre car park, or the one in Heath Hill Road by the surgery (both car parks are free).
Khyber Cup 2026
The Khyber Cup 2026 was held on Saturday 27th June, hosted by yours truly (Jonathan), with lunch at the Crooked Billet.
The Khyber Cup is always hostage to the unpredictable English summer weather. In most years this has us tracking whether a rainy day is forecast, which would force a postponement, or on the day looking at the clouds before deciding whether to play the next round indoors or out. But this year it was different. Following a full week of 30C temperatures, and 34C or more the last three days, the fear was we might have to postpone due to excessive heat. Fortunately, a combination of a relatively cool 29C, a shady garden, and Bob’s marquee, meant we were treated to a warm and fine day for outdoor chess.
The Khyber chess this year was even more unpredictable than the weather, with several games going completely against expectations: Nick repeated his surprise win from last year’s Khyber; Tim won against the odds (then equally unexpectedly lost the next round); and I threw away my queen for absolutely no reason (and Ashton – Stockfish says I would otherwise have had a won pawn ending).
After 5 rounds two players shared the top score of 4 points, both unbeaten: Matthew Palmer, who recently finished his A-levels, and Colin, who finished his A-levels less recently. Congratulations to both players, who will soon see their names on the John Purkis Khyber Cup shield, 4th time for Colin, 1st time for Matthew.
Close runners up on 3.5 points were Jim, Peter and Ashton, congratulations to them too. Thank you to Christine for her admirable handling the Swiss pairings, John for loaning out much of the garden furniture, Bob for the use of his marquee and its efficient assembly and disassembly, and everyone for playing.
…and many thanks to our Club Secretary, Jonathan Welton, not only for hosting the event but also for organising it!
4NCL 2025/26 Season
The 4NCL finished last month, with the two Crowthorne Teams having varying fortunes.
Crowthorne A, which struggled to get its strongest team out consistently, was relegated from the strong Division 2 (four teams out of 12 are relegated – it is not so easy to stay in Div 2!). Still, the team remained competitive with 7 of the 11 matches being decided by the odd game (or drawn).
Crowthorne B, in Division 4, was setup to give club members the opportunity to play in the 4NCL. The team was usually outrated in their matches. We are grateful to the Captain, Tim Chapman, for this report:
We had 11 club members who played for the 4NCL B team in the 25/26 season. I would like to thank everyone who played and everyone made a positive contribution to the team.
I would like to highlight a few special contributions:
The team is always looking for new players, so we welcome Vickie Lin joining the squad this year.
Christine Coates played in 10 of the 11 rounds and her score of 4 tied for the most number of points scored for the team. William Purle was the other player who scored 4 points (from 9 games) and his attacking style led to some exciting games.
We were helped by 2 players from other clubs and in particular Jonathan Young’s score of 3.5 out of 7 games was very impressive against an opposition who rated an average of 70 points above his rating.
The highest percentage score of 75% was achieved by Harvey Duckers, Ken Coates and David Purle.
The player who scored the largest increase in rating points was Scott Leadbetter who scored 2 out of 3 against an opposition rated on average 38 points above his rating.
Finally, I would like to thank Matthew McKean who helped a lot providing transport, booking accommodation and recruiting extra players
All 4NCL tables, match results and games can be found on the 4NCL website
Club Championship Final
We have a new club champion!
Congratulations to Peter Tart on becoming champion after his win in the Final against Harvey Duckers on Wednesday.
Peter has kindly provided annotations to the game:
Nulan wins the Autumn Junior Tournament!
Congratulations to Nulan Aluthwaththa for winning the club’s internal Junior Autumn Rapidplay Tournament. He scored an impressive 7 points from his 7 games, 3 points ahead of his nearest rival Oniesh Raje.
Well done to everyone who played in tournament, which was played in a good competitive and friendly spirit.
The tournament table can be found in the Junior Club page.
Christmas Speed Handicap 2025 – As it Happened
It hardly seems necessary to write up what happened at last night’s Speed Handicap, since the majority of the adult membership were present. But, for the benefit of those who couldn’t make it and for posterity:
The 38th Speed Handicap was held on Friday 12th December in the Pinewood Centre Bar & Cafe. For several weeks it looked as though our booking might be gazumped, but it was finally confirmed just a fortnight before the event. I was concerned attendance might suffer because of the short notice, but on the night we had a highly respectable 20 players. No juniors this time (except for David Purle and Matthew Palmer, who we regard as honorary adults), and I suppose the late notice could have contributed to their absence.
We played the group stage with three groups, with all games being 10 minutes. The winners of these groups were:
• WIlliam (with Nick then Jonathan on the same number of points),
• Matthew Palmer (with a clear 1.5 points lead), and
• Mat (with Dave Herring on equal points).
Having 20 attendees allowed us to give everyone an extra game in the knockout phase, starting with a round of 16 for the trophy, and straight in to the semi-final stage for the bottle of wine. The latter was “won” by Ian, who planned to finish the wine before the day’s end.
The Trophy side of the knockout led to a final between Nick (after knocking out Colin, Ganesh and Harriet) and Matthew Palmer (who knocked out Ken, David and Mat). The final game was a swashbuckling affair, with Nick throwing every piece into a sacrificial attack. But Matthew, a very capable tactician, saw and avoided all the pitfalls to leave himself with a very comfortable endgame advantage, which he duly converted. Over the course of the evening, Matthew scored 9.5 from 10 games.
Congratulations to Matthew, whose name will appear on the trophy very soon.
On the all-important (but non-existent) award for the most outlandish Christmas costume, there were several Christmas jumpers on display worthy of Val Doonican, but the prize would have to go to Ashton, who was brave enough to wear a floppy “Gail’s” Santa hat.
As usual, many thanks to Jonathan, our Club Secretary, for the above write-up and for organising and running the tournament so adeptly.
Success for Vickie and David at the Hampshire Junior Open
Congratulations to Crowthorne Chess Club members Vickie Lin and David Purle for their performances at the Hampshire Junior Open!
The event was held last Sunday, 16th November, in Winchester. Vickie won the U18 section scoring 5 out of 6 and beat two others with the same score on tie-break. This result is all the more remarkable considering that Vickie could have played in the U14 section!
David Purle played in the U14 section, coming 2nd out of 16.
Full results can be found on www.chess-results.com (search for Hampshire Junior Open 2025).
