The 2023 Graeme Thomson Memorial was held on Sunday 30th July. The event raised a total of £156 for Macmillan Cancer Support. Thanks to all those who donated.  

The Open was won by Oliver Stubbs with impressive 5.5 points ahead of top seed IM James Cobb, veteran USA international Jim Sherwin and Colin Davis.

Board 1 matches archive.  

Full results are on the Chess-Results server (link below).

Open Results

On 13 June Chris played against 14 players (6 juniors).

Several Clifton club members played at the tournament.

IM Chris Beaumont is the Bristol Champion 22/23 with an impressive score of 4.5 out of 5 games.
Tom Weale won the U1600 section with 4.5 points out of 5 games.

Please read the detailed report here.

We regret to report the death of Professor Michael Furmston who was a member of the club for several years early in the millennium while he was at Bristol University. He played correspondence chess and continued to work into his late 80s.

Here is a link to an article regarding his long and distinguished academic career: https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/news/2020-07-09-michael-furmson-1933-2020

And a link to the Varsity match a mere 64 years ago: https://www.saund.co.uk/britbase/pgn/195603vars-viewer.html

Due to the pandemic the Bristol and District Chess League was suspended in March. The League has decided that it would be impractical to restart the League and all divisions would be decided on the basis of the average match points gained over the matches completed (teams having completed a different number of matches depending on when their fixtures fell).

The result is that Clifton A are Champions by the smallest of margins from Clifton B (1.56 per match as against 1.54). The B team had actually dropped less points but had played fewer matches.

The League has no plans to start the new season as it is difficult to reconcile over the board chess with social distancing. We will have to see how the pandemic resolves itself.

The 2019 Graeme Thomson Memorial was held on Sunday 2nd June. The event raised a total of £138 for Macmillan Cancer Support. Thanks to all those who donated.  

The Open was won by veteran USA international Jim Sherwin, ahead of top seed Greg Tooczek, currently from Cardiff, and Leon Burnett from Manningtree.  

Joint winners of the Major were Tim Jones of Cabot and Andrew Munn of Downend. Full results are on the Chess-Results server (links below)  

Open Results

Major Results

Bristol & Clifton’s A team made sure of the First Division Championship with a round to spare by beating nearest rivals Bath 4-2. After a slow start to the campaign we won 7 and drew 2 matches in the second half of the season to overhaul the various teams that were ahead of us in the first half.  

We hope to continue our good form when the new season starts in September. The club will be shut over the Summer but we are interested in hearing from potential new members at any time”

We’ve had very mixed results against our B team over the years, to the extent that losses to them have cost us the title in the past, so this was a welcome banana skin avoided.

I was first to finish, largely because Manuel played very fast. He played a Schlechter Slav, but quite a passive version, and I greedily took lots of space in the centre, planting a knight on d6. In trying to swap it off Manuel missed a tactic that won me the exchange, but more importantly left his kingside pretty undefended. I crashed through, finishing with a completely unnecessary but satisfying queen sac.

Dunc won next. After playing some Hippo type rubbish he looked a bit worse, but gradually got his pieces to good squares, and won the exchange. He was dominating the centre of the board, and when Tomas tried to counter attack on the kingside it just made things worse. It didn’t last long after that.

Unbelievably, Gareth had exactly the same opening line for the third game running. It’s not that popular a line, so maybe his opponents are colluding? He’d at least looked it up after last week’s debacle and was looking pretty confident. Anton was playing normal-looking moves, but missed a tactic that won Gareth a piece. In compensation he had some scary looking queenside pawns, but Gareth kept them under control, and Anton resigned when he ran out of pieces.

Meanwhile, David was happily hacking on the white side of a London. He did everything right apart from one thing: for some reason he decided to castle queenside. He won some material, but his king started looking very lonely indeed, as James’ pieces starting pointing that way. Davis sacced the exchange back, leaving him three pawns for a piece, and an odd position ensued where it looked like a repetition might be the best for both sides. Instead James allowed a mate in one. Oops.

Igor and Robert had a closed Sicilian, with Igor having a normal slight advantage. That persisted into an endgame, and I assumed a long grind was on the cards. Igor had other ideas, ripping open the position and catching Robert’s king in a bishop/rook/pawn crossfire. Quite impressive, and fun to watch.

On top board the two IMs were playing a different brand of chess altogether. Answering an English with an early h5, James blocked the position, and he and Chris were jockeying for good squares for their bits. It looked to me that James was getting the upper hand, but a surprising late castling by Chris made it very tricky. Then a desirable but flawed central pawn push allowed Chris some tactics, and that was that.

Can’t complain about winning 5-1, so I won’t. The match finished fairly early, so there was a time for a couple (more) social beers afterwards. Which was nice.

John