Heywood Chess Club

Welcome to the Heywood Chess Club website!   

last updated 20th January 2022

The new Manchester Chess Federation online league began last Monday, 17th January. Heywood have one team entered in what is a single division league of 14 teams. We were one of 7 teams who won. And we had the closest of the matches played narrowly beating East Cheshire 1 team 4.5-3.5 who considerably out graded us on all boards. 

The format is you play your opponent twice on the night, once with the white pieces and once with the black pieces. And you cannot dawdle because the rate of play is all moves in 15 minutes and 10 seconds extra for every move made. In other words it can get down to a few seconds left on the players' clocks. In the first four matches of the evening we came out 2.5-1.5 . Steve Flaherty got off to an easy win which then gave captain Steve a chance to watch on line how the rest of the team were doing. Tarini got what proved to be a crucial draw and John a fine win on Board 1. Thisumi (number 2 girl under 13 year old in England) just missed out in a tricky game. 

After the briefest of pauses the colours were reversed. Steve's opponent played much better this time round but came under time pressure and made a mistake. That made it 3.5-1.5 and just one point needed from the last three games. However John blundered a rook away and Thisumi again missed out to make the score 3.5-3.5. Big sister then played a tremendously exciting game with both players getting down to a few seconds on their clocks before building up their thinking time with some quick moves. Tarini managed to queen her pawn and then found the winning check forcing her opponent to exchange queens. Her nerveless play made her the heroine of the hour and victory for Heywood by the narrowest of margins. her game is well worth seeing on Lichess. Look for RookNN. 

It means that we play another winning team on 31st January with the chances it may be Great Lever or even the mighty CCC1 team. We will have four new players playing for us that evening namely Tony Jinks, Peter Hurn, Bill Walton and Donna Chadwick giving it a go.

We had our normal club night on Wednesday with 2 club matches in round 3 being played. Con Carey was beaten by Dave Almond and Steve Flaherty beat Donna Chadwick. Steve Flaherty is now the tournament leader with Bill Walton a close 2nd. Tony Jinks, John Pickersgill and Ben White all played friendlies. Below is a picture of Dave against Con in mid game. 

Below you will find up to date links for our on line activites and contacts for other usefull web sites.

1. Our latest OTB and On Line fixtures This is our fixture list for both Heywood OTB and on line in the MCF winter league. 

2. Click on this to go to our on line team on lichess This is our Lichess on line club. You can access our tournaments from the club home page. 

As of 20th April 2021 we now have a new Facebook group created so that you can keep up to date with all the information being shared by the members of the chess club. 

Please do consider joining us on Social Media and stay in touch!!

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1844521119044248

See you there! 

We also have a whats app group which is open to all for chess and general chat please request the join link  Here