We are live!
We now have a Taunton Chess Club online shop to order t-shirts, polo shirts, hoodies and caps with the Taunton Chess Logo. Junior and adult sizes available.
A big thank you to our club member / logo designer, Sophia Wainwright and to Stud Sports / Macron SW for helping us create the online shop.
Items can be bought online for delivery to your home and you can even personalise them for an additional price. Head over to the menu tab “club clothing” to place your order.
When:
CANCELLED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE
Where:
St Michaels Church
Pitts Close
Galmington
Taunton
TA1 4TP
Cost:
£2 per session to help with additional costs.
(This charge still applies if you are a club member)
The sessions will be led by Chris & Niall who are both DBS checked, and Niall is the clubs safeguarding officer.
All equipment will be provided just bring yourself along and maybe a notebook and pen if you want to make a note of any tips you may pick up!
Can we also ask you to fill out the form below and return to either tauntonchessclub@gmail.com or hand to Chris and Niall on Tuesday.
Taunton Chess Club junior form
We look forward to seeing you there.
On Tuesday the 27th of September we held a simultaneous round at the club. We had 15 members who were brave enough to come up against Hugo Fowler, a 2000 rated player who kindly volunteered his time to do this for us.
It also gave our Junior players some experience of playing against a very high graded player; teaching them patience as it took 15 minutes for Hugo’s rotation to complete.
Ultimately Hugo was able to keep his street cred in order and ended up winning 10 games and 5 draws. Unfortunately for the club we had no victors but it was enjoyable to see the whole club participate.
This is the first time the club has held a simultaneous event and although we were short on time I think it was very successful and we hope to invite another high rated player to do it again in the future. Other activities to look forward to are a rapid tournaments and dobble chess. See you at the next event!
Fixtures for the SCCA League Division 3 West have now been posted for 2022/23 at the following link:
Our team captains, David and Chris are currently arranging the teams and will be in touch soon. A smaller version of the fixtures will also be made available on the club notice board so you can stick it to your fridge at home and never miss a game!
Click here to download a copy of the fixtures for yourselves.
Click (awaiting link) to see Somerset League Division 3 results so far.
(Captain – David Graham)
| DATE | DAY | HOME | AWAY | RESULT | |
| 13 Oct 22 | Thurs | Weston-S-M | v | Taunton Bishops | 1½ – 2½ |
| 25 Oct 22 | Tues | Taunton Bishops | v | Sedgemoor | match postponed |
| 08 Nov 22 | Tues | Taunton Knights | v | Taunton Bishops | ½ – 3½ |
| 23 Nov 22 | Wed | Wellington | v | Taunton Bishops | 2 – 2 |
| 07 Dec 22 | Wed | Yeovil | v | Taunton Bishops | 1½ – 2½ |
| 09 Jan 23 | Mon | Sedgemoor | v | Taunton Bishops | 1½ – 2½ |
| 24 Jan 23 | Tues | Taunton Bishops | v | Weston-S-M | 2½ – 1½ |
| 07 Feb 23 | Tues | Taunton Bishops | v | Yeovil | |
| 21 Feb 23 | Tues | Taunton Bishops | v | Taunton Knights | |
| 07 Mar 23 | Wed | Taunton Bishops | v | Wellington |
(Captain – Chris Greenaway)
Division Three – Taunton Bishops – David Graham
Division Three – Taunton Knights – Chris Greenaway
The ECF is pleased to confirm that this years UK Blitz Championships will go ahead, with regional qualifier events on 3rd of 4th September or in some cases the weekend before or after. The finals will then be on 3rd December at a midlands location to be confirmed.
Regional qualifying events
There will be eight regional one-day qualifier events at locations across the country as follows —
England
London – Saturday 3rd September – St Luke’s Church, Kidderpore Ave, Golders Green NW3 7SU
Midlands – Saturday 3rd September – Holiday Inn, 212 Abbey End, Kenilworth CV8 1ED
North West – Sunday 4th September – Ukrainian Social Club, 99 Castle Street, Bolton BL2 1JP
South West – Saturday 10th September – Polish Community Centre Whitbourne Avenue, Swindon, Wiltshire SN3 2JX
North East – Sunday 11th September –The Parks Leisure Centre, Howdon Road, North Shields NE29 6TL
To learn more and enter please click here
The club maybe closed for the summer but the Juniors are still playing their chess.
Today was the Delancey UK Chess Challenge Megafinals which were held at Taunton School. The Delancey Uk Chess Challenge is the worlds largest junior chess competition which has been running since 1996 and over 1 million children have competed in the competition since it began.
What better day to have a tournament with the sun shining enabling parents to sit out on the grass as they waited for the result of each game.
Each junior played 6 games throughout the day and the top boy and girl from each section received trophies and medals for second and third place. All those receiving an award qualify for the gigafinal and all players scoring a minimum of 4/6 points qualify for the gigafinal. In addition; U-7s, U-9s and U-11s scoring a minimum of 3.5/6 qualify for the Gigafinal.
I am pleased to say that our juniors did us proud today with them all taking home an award and qualifying for the gigafinals for their age group. Congratulations to both Josh and Adri for winning their age group.
Well done!! 1st place – trophy / 2nd place – purple silver medal / 3rd place – chequered bronze medal. (It seems, by accident, the teams colours were green and blue today!).
Well another year has gone by and who’d had thought just over a year ago that we would be back to playing over the board chess. Thank you to all who have returned and to those who have joined us this past year, and we also miss those who haven’t yet been able to attend but aren’t far from our thoughts. The club has gone from strength to strength this year and it is exciting to see it grow.
Meanwhile, sadly we will be closing for the summer months and this week, 31 May 2022, will be our last club night. We will reopen on the 6th September 2022 and I’m sure David or Chris will be in touch as they start to form their teams for the Somerset League games that will be starting up again. Remember, if you want to be a part of a team you must have an ECF membership which will be due for renewal in September.
For those who can’t cope with a break and must play chess all summer, we have an open invitation to join the Wellington Club during the summer months. They meet on a Wednesday night at 19:30 at Chelston Chapel. The club is free and they ask you to contribute to the courtesy jar for refreshments. You can also follow them on their new facebook page https://www.facebook.com/wellingtonchessuk .
Directions to Chelston Chapel
Coming from the M5, Junction 26, take the road towards Wellington. At the next roundabout (the Skylark pub roundabout) take the last (4th) exit signposted towards Taunton. Go past the row of houses and about 300 yards on the right just after the motorhome place, is a blue sign that reads Chelston Chapel. Turn into that lane on the right and you will come to the chapel about 100 yards down the lane. Parking is available.
Coming from Taunton, take the Wellington A38 road, continue past Rumwell Farm shop, Sheppy’s, Blackdown garden centre and just before the motorhome place on the left take the lane off to the left and you will find the chapel about 100 yards down the lane. Unfortunately you will have your back to the Chelston Chapel sign but you will see it as you turn. If you miss it and you get to the roundabout, just go around and come back and you will see it on our return. 
We trust that you will have a wonderful summer and we look forward to seeing you again either at the Wellington club or on our return in September.
Tonight we celebrated achievements and finished our rapid tournament from last week.
First of all, we took time to honour Mike Ward who has given many many years of service to Taunton Chess Club. Mike will be stepping down as the club chairman and tournament organiser, but his contribution is more than that. He is known as the guru of chess rules, if you don’t know; you ask Mike as he knows the rule book so well. Fortunately Mike is not leaving us, he will still be around for a long time pushing his queen and pawns around the chess board. We want to say a big thank you to you for all that you have done and we hope that we continue to build on the foundations you have laid.
We continued the Rapid Tournament from last week. Poor Chris had a big task on his hands this week as the computer software was down and so it was a paper and pen exercise to arrange matches between rounds. At the end of round 6 we thought that we could almost predict the winner but we were proved wrong in round 7 when Arnold and Simon drew their games forcing a 4 way draw with 4 players (Arnold, Frey, Niall & Simon) on 5.5 points. We then drew lots to see who would play each other for a 5 minutes rapid semi final. Frey and Arnold battled it out on one board and Niall and Simon on the other. This was followed by a grand final between Arnold and Niall. See below to see who was victorious.
WInner – Niall
2nd Place – Arnold
Semi-Finalists, Minor Winner & Runner-up
Junior Players
A big thank you to Chris for organising the event and I’m sure we will keep it in the diary for next year.
Major & Minor Club Tournament
We also took the opportunity to present our annual Minor and Major trophies. Throughout the year, members are placed in a club tournament according to their grade and they play each other all year round. At the end, the successful winner gets their name added to the trophy and then they have to find a shelf at home to admire it for a year. A big congratulations to this year winners:
Major Tournament – Arnold Acibar
Minor Tournament – Nathanael Tretheway
Here are some pictures from the tournament. Taunton Chess club will be open for 3 more weeks before closing for the season until September. If you are interested in chess and would like to try the club out, please come along and like our facebook page to keep up with news of when we will reopen.
