Horfield & Redland Chess Club

W G Grace. The man who pretty much single-handedly created modern cricket. Certainly the nexus of rising living standards and leisure time, the Victorian mania for codification, and their desire for heroes who embodied the zeitgeist meant he was the right man at the right time. But he was worthy of his status, he was …

Continue reading "Match Report: Downend vs Horfield (29 March): KO’d in the Cup"

The onward march of the B team continued with a comprehensive win against Cabot. We started the match 1-0 and very (very) quickly went 2-0 up. Stuart got into a pickle in the opening against James on board 5 and after five moves (1.e4 e5 2.c3 Nf6 3.Nf3 Nxe4 4.Nxe5 Qe7 5.Nf3 Nxc3+) the game …

Continue reading "Match Reports: B and D teams in glorious action (21 March)"

A fast paced match at the Folk centre on Thursday. James and Freddie were first to finish on board six, James lost a piece early, didn’t recover and it was done. On board 4 Scott levelled the match by winning against Chris. Black had launched a speculative knight expedition followed by a queen check causing …

Continue reading "Match Report: Horfield C vs South Bristol B (16 March): Honours even"

You take them into you house, you provide them with a roof over their heads, provide them succour and charity like Pero, and yet, and yet, it turns out like this. Needing a win to keep our outside title chances alive we were without Callum and Peter but still had a healthy grading advantage. However …

Continue reading "Match Report: Horfield A vs Grendel A (14 March): Sigh"

Snow had turned to rain but it was still bad enough in Wiltshire for Downend to be without the services of Mr Williams. This meant we had an even clearer grading advantage across all the boards but everyone knows Downend battle and it would have been foolish to take anything for granted. The match as …

Continue reading "Match Report: Horfield B vs Downend C (8 March): One step closer"

The end of our remote hopes of finishing top two. Clifton arrived with a team strong enough to be near the top of division 2 let alone division 3 and we did reasonably well to get any points at all. Mark and I played an even opening into a closed middle game where the contest …

Continue reading "Match Report: Horfield C vs Clifton B (7 March): Outclassed"

A rare defeat for the D team. Joaquim got us off to a great start on board two where he was pleased with the position out of the opening. He then lined up bishop and queen against white’s king which had castled long side and then used his pawns to kick away the defending pieces to …

Continue reading "Match Report: Horfield D fall to University C (2 March)"

With the Downend A battleship sweeping past the plucky, but out-gunned, Clevedon on Monday we had to get a win against Clifton at the tennis club to have any chance of staying in the title race. The match against Clifton, also still in the title race, and with two IMs, was likely to be a …

Continue reading "Match Report: Horfield A vs Clifton A (28 February): Serving up a victory"

We didn't make it easy for ourselves but another step towards promotion. The evening didn’t start well on boards 4 and 5. On board 5 Nigel made his life difficult by trying to make something out of an even position and castled long-side against Hayden, but it looked like black had the better prospects of …

Continue reading "Match Report: Horfield B vs Thornbury (23 February): Winning the hard way"