Seasons greetings to all our chess-players and members. As Christmas is over and we start looking forward to the New Year, our Captains have put together a brief summary of our Club's perfomance so far this season in all the leagues and competitions so that you can see what we've been up to:

In the Bury League Div 1, Linton are once again setting the pace. Cambridge City has been hit by the absence of some key players from last season and strong competition from the newly strengthened Bury teams. Nevertheless, the Choristers have made a solid start to the season, being the only team that hasn't lost to Linton (!) and are placed in a respectable 2nd place. They are fighting off competition from Bury Scorpions and Ely, and will need a big improvement if they wish to challenge Linton A for the top spot. The best performance coming from Richard Tozer on board 1, scoring 3 out of 4 (but missed-out on Linton A), and Ashley Stuart - currently unbeaten in Div 1.

The Academicals are currently battling it out at the other end of the Div 1. Most of our players are perfoming close to their grade, and we've had some good indiviual games. But we're lacking strength, and instead of winning the occasional match and picking-up bonus points, we're having to be satisfied one solitary win and a series of narrow defeats.

The Oddfellows started the season with a bang, defeating the strong Bury Scarabs, and ended with a whimper - being wiped out by Ely. With only one win and five defeats, we're now at the bottom of Division 1. Some of us have found it hard to adjust to being outrated in nearly every single game. Not so Simon Doherty, who tends to do best when facing very strong opponents. Though only able to play in 4 matches, Simon defeated Ed Player (again!), and drew against Tozer, Mike Taylor and Kevin Clarke - an impressive performance. Richard Newman has also brought in a respectable haul of points, while David and Ole are hoping to do well next year!

In Div 2, the Examiners have got off to a flying start, winning their first three matches and scoring 13½ points out of a possible 15. A loss, a draw and win in our remaining matches have been sufficient to stay ahead of the chasing field, and the Examiners lead Div 2 by 3½ points from Bury Vipers. Team regulars Joe Brown, Michele Liguori, Alan Norman and Ed Kernohan all have positive scores, as did Alan Bailey in his three games with us before his transfer to the Bollards.

The Bollards have been in the runner-up spot to the Examiners for most of the first half of the season but have recently dropped to third behind Bury Vipers, the only non-Cambridge team in the top four! The best performance was from Ian Dickson who started with 4 wins and still appears in second place in the player-of-the-year for the division.

Under their new Captain, the Dons have got off to a solid start with 2 wins, 2 draws and 2 losses and are currently sitting mid-table. Our best players were Daniel with 2½ / 5 and Tim with 3 / 4.

In the Div 3, the Gowns are doing well with four wins and two losses and are in second place. The team was glad to welcome David Rokhinson and Paul Rogers to the league. Both players put in strong performances against higher-graded opponents, as has Alvin. Lee has been the top scorer for the Gowns so far this season and has helped-out running the team too!

All Captains express their thanks to the players who have made guest appearances for our other teams.

In the Roger Goldsmith, the Cambridge Masters drew with the Cambridge Players, but were narrowly defeated by a stronger team from Linton.

In the Cambridgeshire League Div 1, our team had a mixed first half: we won against New England, drew with St Neots, but lost to Peterborough, Warboys and the new team from the extreme south of the county, Royston.

The Team 550 competition is a grade-limited contest in the Cambs League. Stephen Pride's team has only played once so far, again losing to Royston. Patrick's team has also only played one match in which we lost to Ely/Warboys.

The Fenland Cup fixtures haven't started yet, but Ola's ambition will be to retain the trophy for the club this season.

It's not easy to report on Univ league Div 1 yet due to the number of matches which are only partially completed. City 1 have several matches still to play while City 2 have only managed to complete one match so far, and that was against City 1! City 2 have done well in the games that we've managed to play, and both teams will hopefully have more match results to report in the New Year!

Paul Redman has started a new venture for the junior club and entered a team of juniors (City 3) into the college league, ably aided by parent power when required (only once so far). The games are rapidplay in Div 3, but even we were surprised that our first victory took less than 2 minutes. We have played 3 matches so far and won twice with no injury problems to date! We defeated Churchill II and Downing 4-1, but Pembroke managed to inflict our only defeat of the season, 2-3. We've also reached the 3rd round (or the final 5) of the Plate competition without touching a chess piece! Our junior squad is: David Redman, Ilya Altschuler, Om Menon, Akito Oyama, Matthew Beale, Tarun Shah and Oliver Hsieh. Many thanks to the parents for their enthusiasm and assistance this term.

In the EACU Club Championship, there were just 6 players from our club who made up half a joint team with Sudbury in the Open, and a full team in the Club 600. Final table for the Open: Linton 5, Sudbury 3, MKOU 2½, Cambridge City 1½.

Linton retaining the Open was never really in doubt after they scored 4 points in the morning.

In the Club 600, Cambridge were just ahead at lunch on 2½ points, but there were 4 teams on 2 points. Cambridge then secured two fairly early wins in the afternoon to put them well on the way to victory - perhaps needing only half-a-point from 2 games which both looked fairly level at that point. It was settled when Colin Byrne won his game to give him 2 out of 2 on the day against higher graded players. It was really that performance which secured the victory for Cambridge City.

Final table for the Cambridge 600: Cambridge City 5½, Royston 4½, Bury St. Edmunds 4, New England 4, Leighton Buzzard 3, Northampton 3.

Congratulations to all our teams, and well done and thank you to all of our Captains for all their hard work and giving some of their free time to enable us to play in all these competitions. If you are interested in joining any of the teams or competitions, please ask!

A happy New Year to you all and may 2010 be even more successful!

Philip Fallon
President Cambridge City Chess Club