24th Yarm Team Chess Championships: Results

There will not be many chess tournaments anywhere in the world that can make it to 24 years and even fewer would have had the BBC's The One Show crew filming on the day. Yet both of these aspects became a reality at Yarm School yesterday.

Our latest tournament featured 30 teams - five more than last year - with a total of 120 children.

Tournaments do not appear out of thin air and it is important to acknowledge the help and hard work of numerous people who supported the event, from the children themselves to parents, teachers and the dedicated staff of Yarm School.

Weeks of frantic activity were also required to set up the filming, which included a day at Park End Primary one day before the tournament.

With so much pre-tournament preparation taking up copious amounts of time and energy it was a relief to finally begin the first round of the tournament - and to let the children demonstrate their growing skills over the chess board.

Five tough rounds later, it was time to present the trophies, medals, books and certificates.

Thank you to everyone who helped to make the tournament such a great success.

Tune in to The One Show this week (possibly Thursday but we are not yet sure of the day) and see if you can spot yourself!

Here are the results and a gallery will follow tomorrow.

Under-9s

1st: Yarm A, 14.5 points

2nd: Whale Hill A, 13.5

3rd: Whale Hill B, 9

8: Yarm C, Yarm B

7: Whale Hill C

Under-11s

1st: Yarm A, 19 points

2nd: Yarm B 14

3rd: Ings Farm A, 13

Westgarth B, 12

Westgarth A, Westgarth C, 11

Stockton Library A, Stockton Library B, Thornaby Library, Yarm C, Ings Farm B, all 10.5

Billingham South, Whale Hill A, 9

Park End, Broadway A, Yarm D, 8

Yarm E, 7.5

Whale Hill C, 6

Broadway B, 5

The Links, 4.5


Over-11s

The Over-11 teams were named after World Chess Champions.

1st: Steinitz, 14.5 points

Gautam Sathyamurthy, Michael Darcy and Luke Nargol

2nd: Capablanca, 13.5 

Crispin Roundtree, Yusuf Syed and Mohammed Sanaulla

3rd: Alekhine, 7.5 

Shrish Nair, Alice Sturman, Aishani Paul and Keya Shah


All photographs in this report are © Johannes Grundmann.

English Chess Federation Book of the Year 2018

English Chess Federation
Book of the Year 2018

The quality of many of the books received this year was high, but not all made it to the shortlist. Similarly, the selection of the winner from the shortlist proved extremely difficult, as all four of the candidates were not only of high quality but also contrasting subject matter – Alekhine’s Odessa Secrets; a very good book on the Carlsen v Karjakin World Championship; and Small Steps to Giant Improvements, a study on pawns which had a remarkable, positive effect on the writer’s (Shankland) playing career. The winner stood out for its original approach and quality of writing.

The winner

Under the Surface

Jan Markos

Quality Chess pp285 Hardback £23.99

The author, GM Jan Markos, is a distinguished Slovakian academic working in the field of critical decision making and brings to his chess book the influence of his background. This is shown in the chapter titles of Part 1 – About the Laws of the Chess Board: Three Faces of a Piece; Hierarchy on the Board; Infection; Policemen of the Chess Board. Under the Surface is not a traditional chess text book, but rather a travelogue covering a wide variety of chess subjects, with insightful references and analogies to life away from the chess board. One example – the famous Mischel marshmallow experiment with children (read the book to find out what it was) is shown to be applicable to chess playing!

Markos is also a GM, so the chess examples from his own and contemporary master play are serious and relevant to the narration. ‘The Secret Life of Rooks’ is an exemplary explanation of their characteristics and the best way to use them. Chapter 10 features ‘Anatoly Karpov’s Billiard Balls’, where Markos is stimulated to find a feature of bishop play not previously mentioned in text books.

Apart from chess positions and playing, other subjects are covered including ‘Quality and Style’ and ‘Searching for Beauty’, the latter discussing a survey he undertook on a Czech chess web site.

One of the most interesting sections is Part 6 ‘About Computers’. A chapter shows computer limitations, another shows how computers can create original strategies, a third the potentially misleading effects of computer-based statistics. An extremely stimulating chapter is titled ‘The Magician from Brno’, who turns out to be the world No.1 in the International Correspondence Chess Federation. And how does he win correspondence games when all players use powerful computers? By using human judgement and intuition in conjunction with his computers – an encouraging conclusion!

Quality Chess deserve recognition for persuading Markos to write ‘Under the Surface’, and producing the resulting book to a very high standard. All in all an original, fascinating and very worthy winner of the 2018 Book of the Year.

Ray Edwards, Julian Farrand & Sean Marsh, 8th October 2018

Tour of Scotland, Part Four: Edinburgh Training Day

The fourth and final day of the record-breaking Tour of Scotland took me back to where Project Scotland began, exactly one year earlier - Edinburgh!

My initial visit to Edinburgh was followed by an extended stay in April and here we were, back again for me.

Richard Payne, the mastermind behind the innovative idea of attaching a CSC Training Day to a junior tournament, helped me to set up this new tour date.

I am always guaranteed a warm welcome in Edinburgh and once again I was met by an excellent group of delegates, all of whom fully entered into the spirit of the day.

We had a core group which was added to throughout the day, partly by parents of the children playing in the junior tournament.

The original intention was to have two sessions, featuring different delegates, but the morning group was eager for more and extended their stay across both sessions.

As usual, everyone worked hard on numerous tasks and we had plenty of very insightful conversations along the way.

We had special guests too, including my very good friends David Stewart and Dennis Anderson.

Dennis, who created the Chess in Park project in Edinburgh, has featured on this blog before (can anyone find his hat?).

Suddenly the ambitious tour was at an end. It should be quite clear from the four blog posts that we achieved a great deal.

I was left with an overwhelming desire to return to the Isle of Arran, Glasgow and Edinburgh to reconnect with all the wonderful people with whom I had worked and to see just how much we can achieve next time.

Thank you, Edinburgh!

Tour of Scotland, Part Three: Glasgow Training Day

Following my day on the Isle of Arran and a day taking chess out into the Glasgow community, it was now time to deliver Glasgow's first-ever CSC Training Day.

Colin Paterson was once again instrumental in helping me to set up this historic day and, just as in my previous two days of the tour, everyone was extremely welcoming and friendly. The first person I met on the morning was club contact John McIntyre and his smiling 'hello' set the standard for the rest of the day.

Chess and bridge are often linked and the premises and facilities provided by the St. Andrew Bridge Club proved to be excellent (in fact they would put most chess clubs to shame).

Having acquired my statutory mug of tea, we were all ready to start.

Some of the delegates for this training day came from far and wide and others were more local. Our core group was joined by several other people who dropped in for various parts of the day, which was great. There was also a junior tournament going on in the room downstairs, with 32 participants, making it a real festival of chess.

Speaking of juniors, for the first time ever we had two 14-year-olds on the course, who are already wanting to put something back into the chess community. Who could fail to be inspired by such examples?

Among our special guest there was Mike McCafferty who gave an excellent summary of his Topple the King chess variant (to be covered properly in a future blog post) and the legendary Andrew MacQueen, who shadowed me on Teesside several times early this year.

One of the most remarkable aspects of the day was the range in ages. In the above photograph there is a difference of 62 years, which must surely be another record for our training days.

What a fabulous set of delegates! As usual, I didn't want the day to end and felt quite sad when it did. There was, however, one more training day to come before the Tour of Scotland was over...

Thank you, Glasgow!

Tour of Scotland, Part Two: The Glasgow Community

Following on directly from the excellent day on the Isle of Arran, Friday brought a packed day taking chess into the Glasgow community.

The indefatigable Colin Paterson and I first met at the inaugural Edinburgh Training Day almost exactly one year ago, and again at the London Training Day at the 2017 Chess Classic. He and I had discussed the possibility of running a training day in Glasgow and as the Isle of Arran plan emerged it made good sense to put together the tour of Scotland and to see exactly what could be achieved in a four-day spell of intense activity.

This was my first time in Glasgow and Colin guided me all across the city as we endeavoured to set up chess activity in three community bases.

First up was the Govanhill Baths Community Hub. Govanhill Baths, the last surviving Edwardian bathhouse in the city, is a real community hub, offering many more activities in addition to swimming and fully embracing the message of 'Unity in Diversity.'

It has had its battles with closure over the years (the usual case of the community suffering because of financial matters) and this all came to a head in 2001, when an initially peaceful protest against closure turned into aggression, with pineapples famously among the objects used as missiles.

The future of Govanhill Baths is much brighter these days and a refurbishment plan is imminent.

Colin and I presented CSC boards and sets to Joanne of Govanhill Baths

Colin had a fantastic range of chess sets - such as this magnificent
Indian one - which he unveiled throughout the day

It was so good to meet - and play - people of the local community, all of whom shared a great passion for chess and a strong desire to increase the activity of the game across Glasgow.

I was delighted to meet Mike McCafferty, creator of chess dice variant Topple the King. I had been wanting to discuss the game with Mike for a couple of years and we finally had the chance to do so. There will be more on Topple the King in a future blog post.

Meanwhile, Colin and I were soon on our way to Baillieston Library to set up chess sessions there.

A very welcome sight!

Presenting the CSC sets to Susan of the library 

Another of Colin's chess sets; Mongolian, this time!

Playing Alexander, staff member of John Mason MSP SNP
Photo © Colin Paterson

Photo © Colin Paterson

Full concentration in my games against Michael
Photo © Colin Paterson

Colin and I spent a couple of hours at the library and we enjoyed many games with members of the community. The library is very proactive and I am sure the chess sessions will take off there.

Then it was to the community hub at The Courtyard, Watercommon, where we presented CSC sets and encountered chess opponents from five-year-olds to adults, including Paul Sweeney, Labour MP.

Paul Sweeney MP (left) in action
Photo © Colin Paterson 

Photo © Colin Paterson 

Photo © Colin Paterson 

Another of Colin's chess sets  - this time a Lewis

Thank you, Watercommon!

What a fabulous day of community action! Huge thanks to Colin for all of his very hard work and assistance and to everyone I met, talked to and played throughout the day as we delivered chess across the magnificent city of Glasgow.

We had already achieved so much but we were only halfway through the tour...