Chess Club AGM - 8th May 2025
Put it in your diary! Get your thinking caps on for ideas on how to make our club even better - attract more members, make club nights more accessible for new members etc.ECF Membership
If you're serious about your chess I'd strongly recommend members to join the ECF. This allows your club competition games to be submitted to ECF which allows you to get an official grading. ECF membership also means you can enter any ECF rated tournament for a year without incurring additional fees. There are several tournaments held each year in Devon (and elsewhere!) and of course there are inter-club competitions run by the DCCA.The ECF Calendar of events is here: ECF event calendarr
For further details see ECF
Our club on Lichess
We recently created a presence for our club on Lichess - the link is here: https://lichess.org/team/barnstaple-chess-club In order to join the "team" you'll need to have your own account on Lichess and ensure you're logged in. You should then be able to see a "Join Team" button on that page. Click to join and wait for your request to be accepted (may take a few hours).Note: Access to the teams functionality on Lichess is only available in a browser (not the Lichess app). Teams functionality is under the Community menu.
If we get enough interest in this We could arrange our own online tournaments Time limits can be configured, so we could play blitz, rapid or classical time formats. Maybe we could play blitz tournaments on a regular basis (weekly? monthly?). Arena tournaments can be configured to run for a predefined period (e.g. 1 hour) at a fixed time (e.g. 7pm every Wednesday). During this period you can play as many (or as few) games as you want - the more games you win the higher your tournament score. We can set the schedule for our tournaments to meet our needs.
I'm no expert on this! I have played (once) in an online tournament and it was great fun! If anyone has more experience of Lichess tournaments, or any other ideas to improve participation please let me know: peteworthington@gmail.com
Winter Competitions 2024/2025
The winter competitions latest results are: hereDCCA 2024/25 Programme of One-day Events
Sun 15 Dec 2024 - DCCA NEWMAN (Rapidplay) hosted by SEATON (Venue: Axmouth Village Hall) [4 boards, with total team rating < 7300 in the ECF November 2024 Rapidplay rating list]
Sat 8 Feb 2025 - DCCA MOYLE hosted by NEWTON ABBOT (Venue: The Courtenay Centre) [4 boards, with total team rating < 6100 and each individual player rating < 1800]
Sun 16 Feb 2025 - DCCA TEAM QUICKPLAY hosted by EXETER (Venue: Clyst St Mary Village Hall) [4 boards, with trophies for best team, best U7300 team, and best U6200 team - full details will be circulated separately]
Sun 16 Mar 2025 - DCCA SCHOFIELD hosted by BARNSTAPLE (Venue: Alverdiscott Community Hall. [4 boards, with total team rating < 6850 and each individual player rating < 1975]
Sat 12 Apr 2025 - DCCA MAMHEAD hosted by NEWTON ABBOT (Venue: The Courtenay Centre) [4 boards, with total team rating < 7600]
Sun 18 May 2025 - DCCA BEMRIDGE hosted by EXETER (Venue: Clyst St Mary Village Hall) [6 boards, with no rating limit]
Sun 22 Jun 2025 - DCCA PETER ROOKE hosted by EXETER (Venue: Clyst St Mary Village Hall) [8 boards, with total team rating < 14000]
Note: In each case, the ECF rating list published one month before the event will be used - e.g. an event in February will use the January rating list. For the Newman (and Team Quickplay) events, a player's Rapidplay rating will be used where available. Within a team, players can play out of grading order by up to 50 rating points.