Th Nottinghamshire Primary Schools Chess Association provides lessons at Nottingham High School. The first session takes place on Saturday 12th October. For for more information please see https://nottsprimarychess.uk/, or email.

The latest edition of the Newsletter has been issued and is available at  Junior Newsletter August 2022

Simon Scott

The latest edition of the Junior Newsletter is now available on the Juniors page. It includes details of several upcoming events suitable for Juniors. We are also looking for views on the format for our County Championship later this year. Please take a look on the competitions page

The East Midlands Regional Final will be held at Nottingham High School on Saturday, May 21^st. There are numerous age-group sections from under 20 down to under 8. Each will be five rounds of Rapidplay (25 mins + 10 sec/move) starting at 10:00 and finishing 17:45. Entry Fee £15. The top boy and the top girl in each age category will qualify from the Regional Final to the National Finals. Prizes: trophies and books. Full details and entry form can be viewed here

On 26th February, our Notts u1450 juniors hosted Leicestershire u1450 for a winner takes all clash at Bramcote. A good natured and well fought match, prefaced with Leicestershire’s captain and a couple of their players kindly helping us with setting up some of the tables and boards. As the match started, it quickly looked like a lot of the games were going to be close. A win from Benji on debut and a quick victory for Eldars matched two wins from Leics: 2-2. Forty minutes or so later and fine wins from Maxim and Dean enabled us to keep pace with our opponents: 4-4. Most of the games that we were being defeated in looked tight, so we were a bit disappointed not to be able to keep our noses in front. Maybe the away team had the same feeling.  Quickly, 4 all became 4.5 all, as Frank Richmond secured a creditable and interesting draw with Leicestershire’s captain Neil. Entering the third hour of play, and with the players enjoying tea, coffee and biscuits, we traded wins again – in two bishop endgames this time – so the match would go down to the wire. Score: 5.5 – 5.5. Thus after about three hours of play, it was all, fairly or unfairly, down to board nine. Poppy Dawson Best, who had been playing excellently throughout, was a pawn to the good in a rook and opposite coloured bishop endgame. Both players were also down to their last fifteen minutes, leaving the game enticingly poised. After much manoeuvring, her experienced opponent found a clever way to get a pawn through to promote and managed to finish the game with only about 2 minutes left on his clock. We wish Leicestershire u1450, and of course Nottinghamshire U1450 who won the qualifying group, well in the next stages. The full results are available here Results Tim Walker