Since the club was first founded in 1887, new Tournaments have been introduced on only rare and special occasions. One such special occasion took place earlier this week (Monday the 20^th March 2023) at the clubs Bradstow Mill, Broadstairs venue.

The club was welcoming home Robert (Bob) Page who had relocated away from Broadstairs to be nearer his family and grandchildren during the pandemic, and as such the club never really had the chance to say goodbye.

The Robert Page Rapid Play Championship 2023 Tournament and welcoming back home was a way of more formally acknowledging Bob’s great service to Broadstairs Chess Club where he served as Club Secretary for 25 years.

It was great to meet up with Bob, the current Kent Individual Major Champion and two other current champions Manoj Natarajan (Kent Individual Intermediate Champion) and John Couzens (Kent Individual Minor Champion), who all enthusiastically took part in the tournament along with 16 other participants.

The joint winners were Manoj and Ian with 5 points out of 6, and the top 7 players are listed in the table. There were particularly notable performances from Bob Cronin (4.5) and Nik (4). Young Bayley more than held his own against players 6 times his age.

We are looking forward to continuing the tournament in future years to come and again welcoming Bob back home.

Broadstairs chess club meet on a Monday evenings from 7.30pm until 11.00pm at Bradstow Mill and enters teams into the Thanet and East Kent League. If you are a chess enthusiast of any age why not pop along and say hello. Contact details andrewflood042@gmail.com

Broadstairs first home match in the Steele Cup gave Broadstairs an early opportunity to turn around the convincing result and win by Bridge in the Millar Cup less than a week ago.

Michael Jenkinson on Board 4 was again the first game to finish, but this time it was a win for the home team to go 1 – 0  up.

Board 1 result went with the players’ ratings with George Hollands securing a win against Chris Stampe to level the match at 1 – 1.

Both boards 2 and 3 saw the initial positions favour Bridge, whilst Paul Carfrae opening with white was not ideal, Andrew Flood on Board 3 with the black pieces, although going two pawns up quickly, found his pieces in an awful position. Paul strengthened his position and secured a point to guarantee at least the draw for Broadstairs.

Black on Board 3 fought back to even up the position with 6 Pawns and a Knight facing White’s 6 Pawns and a Bishop and having the time advantage. White offered a draw, which was accepted to secure a Broadstairs win by 2½ – 1½

This position was reached yesterday, playing with the  Black pieces was the talented youngster Eli Gallamoy. Eli’s opponent has  pushed his pawn to d4, with the intention of d5 forking Knight and Bishop; Can you find the destructive attack unleashed by Black?

Black to Play

Broadstairs first match of the season commenced with a short trip to nearby Margate. Past seasons always resulted in a close match and Thursday night proved no exception.

The League’s new time control meant that the match finished a little earlier than normal just after  10.00 pm.

The games on all 4 Boards were close , a tactical positional game was taking place on Board 3 with no exchange of pieces until around mover fourteen. A blunder in a constrained position resulted in the loss of a pawn and then a Knight fork on the Queen and King and a black resignation and an early point for Broadstairs.

Broadstairs were out-rated on Board 1 where Peter McGill was improving his position going one and then two pawns up, and finally developing a winning position to square the match at 1 – 1.

In the remaining games Broadstairs (B2) with Dominic Blundell playing black was a pawn up and Paul Verrall (B4) with black was struggling in what was fast becoming a lost game. On Board 4 Margate (Roy McAloney) advanced his pawn to convert it into a Queen and Paul had to sacrifice his Queen for some minor pieces as white sought to get checkmate. Like Monty Python’s black knight Paul was battling on, and miraculously turned the game around pinning his opponents white Queen against his white King forcing an exchange of the Queen for his rook followed by a Rook and King fork with his Knight to capture his opponents, Rook. With some clever manoeuvres Paul was converting his own pawn to Queen upon which his opponent resigned, and so an almost certain lost game was won and Broadstairs were 2 – 1 up.

Attention then turned to the final game on Board 2 where Dominic (Broadstairs) remained a pawn up with the only other pieces on the board being the Kings and Queens. Colin Gregory’s (Margate) m offered up his Queen for exchange, which unfortunately Dominic accepted, which resulted in the white King and Margate having the advantage of the tempo and a more centralised position enabling the King to take the two black central pawns and soon after black resigned.

The result was a 2 – 2 draw and another close match between Broadstairs and Margate.

The Goodall Tournament kicked off last night with some very exciting chess. There were many close battles and eventually Dominic, Ian, Manoj, both Pauls and Reg all scored wins.

Here is a position from the tough fight between Steven and Paul Verrall

Black (Paul) to play, can you find the unusual finish?

Show Solution