Tactic

Call yourself a chess player?

You couldn’t even find a fork.

Teesside Megafinal: 74 Places Remain

We have now crossed the halfway mark for our Megafinal entries.

74 of the original 150 remain.

No more places will be created once they have all gone, so now is a good time to act if you would like to take part in our biggest tournament of the year.

All of the relevant information is still on this page.

Teesside Megafinal: Almost Halfway There

We are almost halfway to being sold out of Teesside Megafinal places.
77 remain.

All of the CSC Teesside schools have the details and they should have forwarded them to their respective pupils by now.

Here is a link to the entry page for anyone who has not yet had the information.

Once the remaining places have sold out, the entries will lock and it will be impossible to enter.

Book soon, or risk missing out!

Training Day Tour 2022-23: New Online Day

Today's CSC online Training Day was a great success, featuring an excellent set of delegates fro all across the United Kingdom.

Catherine Lloyd was my assistant for the day and Chris Fegan called in to make his customary opening remarks.

By strange coincidence, three of the delegates are former pupils of mine from back in the 1990s. All three are now very keen to put something back into chess, which is wonderful.

As usual, we worked on many aspects of working in schools and communities, including putting some of the delegates to work on our standard mini-games (via the Acorn Chess programme).

Thank you, everyone, for an excellent!

Keep an eye on this page for forthcoming tour dates.

Chess at Bishopton PRU

Bishopton PRU on Teesside is a complex Pupil Referral Unit offering educational provision to KS3 and KS4 pupils who are at risk of exclusion, permanent exclusion from school or those not attending mainstream school for other reasons such as illness (physical and/or psychological).

We recently delivered a trial chess day at Bishopton and the pupils are now putting their brand-new CSC chess sets and boards to very good use.

Yarm Preparatory School: Delancey UK Schools' Chess Challenge

Yesterday's UK Chess Challenge tournament attracted a large entry, with players all the way from Year 2 to Year 6.

All of the children were on fine form and every one of the main titles was strongly contested.

For many of our players, the Delancey UK Schools' Chess Challenge was their first tournament experience. The Year 2s have only just mastered the basic moves of the pieces, but they all played well throughout their tournament deubt.

Jayden Wang won all his games and comfortably earned the Best Boy title. Zoyaa Soni played very well too and is the new Year 2 Best Girl.

The Year 3 was very closely contested. Dara Jafari, Paari Muthukrishnan and Hugo Kelly all shared the Best Boy title and Scarlett Yang earned the Best Girl title.

Henry Stanely dominated the Year 4 section, with seven wins from seven games. This was more than enough to earn him the Best Boy title. Manha Abdullah had a great day too and she is the Year 4 Best Girl.

The Year 5 section very strong and perhaps the closest of all of the day's contests. Can Sezen eventually battled his way through to the Best Boy title and the Best Girl title was shared by Lolwa Soliman and Kaira Nalawade.

Monty Van Niekerk was on great form and powered his way to the title of Best Boy in the Year 6 section. Nikita Suryadevara and Anjali Ramisetty shared the Best Girl title.

Well played, everyone, whether or not you became a champion on this particular occasion. All of our players and staff helped to make it a fabulous festival of chess.

In former years, players had to achieve a certain number of points to qualify for the prestigious Megafinal stage of the competition. This year, entry is open to ALL chess players.

The Megafinal will be at Yarm Senior School on Sunday 30 April, in the magnificent Princess Alexandra Auditorium. It will provide an excellent opportunity for our players to test their skills against children from other schools. Numbers are strictly limited, so remember - book early!

World Rook Day

Following on from yesterday's highly successful World Book Day, today has been confirmed as World Rook Day.

Pupils don't have to dress up. Instead, they must simply try very hard to move the rooks correctly in their games, in order to help maintain a healthy level for the blood pressure of their tutors.

Don't forget: Rooks cannot jump over other pieces.

We even have a brand new slogan for the day, which we are hoping will help children remember how the rook moves:

'Keep it orthogonal, man!'

Happy World Rook Day, everyone!