Newcastle Chess Festival Events

Newcastle Chess Festival

There are 2 public events on Tuesday 13 February that everyone is invited to:

1) Grandmaster Simultaneous Display, with Northumberland’s very own GM Danny Gormally.

Tuesday February 13, 11am-1pm, at the Cafe in Newcastle City Library.

This very nice venue is now confirmed, thanks particularly to Newcastle City Library for hosting this fantastic event!

Participation is open to everyone, so why not come along and play against the reigning English Rapidplay Champion?

To play is free, but donations of £5 are welcome, with all proceeds going to help with the Northumbria Chess Masters, which starts the very next day, Wed 14 February, at The Chillingham Arms: http://foresthallchess.org.uk/7-gms-12-ims-northumbria-masters/

 

2) Grandmaster Coaching: An Evening with Russian GM Alexander Raetsky.

Tuesday February 13, 7pm-10pm, Forest Hall Ex-Servicemen’s Institute, 26 Crescent Way North, Forest Hall NE12 9AR.

Open to players of all ages and abilities. Cost: £10 per person (£7 for Under 18s, Senior Citizens, students, unwaged.)
Improve your game with highly experienced Russian Grandmaster, FIDE Trainer and chess author Alexander Raetsky.

To book your place in the GM Simul and GM Coaching, please contact Tim Wall at:

Email: [email protected]
Tel: 0750 372 2366

Please note: These events are not organized by the NJCA

Northumberland at the Terafinal

The TERAFINAL, the final stage of this year’s UK Chess Challenge took place in Daventry on the weekend, 12th and 13th, August. No, I wasn’t there but found I was able to follow it all on my computer with Chess24 for the live games in the Terafinal and the results, with all the game scores, for the Challengers Tournaments, using chess-results.com.

Yichen Han, still officially an Under-9, scored a splendid 4½ out of 6, in the Terafinal itself. All but one of his opponents were older than he was, some by a considerable margin, so this was a fantastic result. By my calculations, though only 4th= overall, he should have won the prize for best Under-11 as well as best Under-9.

Also in this section Zheming Zhang scored 4/6. He suffered a bad loss in Round 3, when his opponent playing an unusual gambit, scored with a very strong K-side attack. After this he was never really in contention for one of the big prizes.

There were two Challengers tournaments; James Moreby, the top rated player in Challengers A, was never seriously challenged. On 5/5 he was able to agree a very soft draw in ten moves to take the money. He was probably in a winning position when he offered the draw. 5½/6 won him the competition by a full point.

Hanif Zaman, at 18 one of the old men in this tournament, scored half marks. He might have hoped for more than 3/6 but it was probably a fair result. Sai Chinmayee Kumaar was possibly a bit overawed in this competition. 2/6 is a fair enough score at her age, but she will probably be a little disappointed not to have done better

In the Challengers B tournament, Max Turner was, like James, the highest graded player. He went through the tournament undefeated, but simply drew too many games. 4½/6 gave him a share of fourth place.

All the games in this event are available to play through on chess-results.com. Go to the website, click on ENG for the list of English tournaments. Then go to the tournament that concerns you and click where it says ‘there are … games available for download’.