Gambit Chess Club

Close on the heels of Gambit 3 becoming 3rd division champions, our 4th team has won promotion from division 4 (subject to confirmation by the LMC in July).

13 Gambiteers played in the Notts congress on 21st – 22nd April, and 2 helped control the event. Steve Hunter won the major with 4.5/5. Mick Harper won the intermediate, also with 4.5/5, with Graham Gibson joint 2nd.

The ECF Council last weekend voted to abolish the 85% test (see below). If you are not an ECF member next season it’ll cost you £2 for each game you play in the league.

Congratulations to Gambit 3 who beat Ashfield 3 3-2 to ensure promotion from division 3.

The ECF has decided to publish grades twice a year. All league and county matches between Jan and May will be graded using our new grades (however eligibility for the county teams is still determined by your August 2011 grade). A great new feature on the ecf grading site http://www.ecfgrading.org.uk/ is that all your graded games are now listed.

Andrew’s grade has improved the most, up 12 points to 93 and John S has a more realistic grade of 174 compared to his previous 165. Keith and Drag have suffered the largest drops in grade, down by 10 & 9 points respectively.

Derek won the Christmas 10 player all play all 5 min pp comp, beating Tim in a playoff after they both scored 7/9. Derek managed to unravel from a cramped position to gain an slight advantage and Tim, trying to defend, placed his queen on a square attacked by Derek’s knight. Drag could have been in a 3 way playoff but was smashed off the board by Andrew in the final round.

The ECF AGM on Sat 15th Oct voted to introduce a membership scheme based on level of activity, starting in Sep 2012. ’Bronze’ for those who just play in the league and/or for the county, ‘silver’ for players who play in congresses, ‘gold’ for players who entry FIDE rated events. Anyone entering a congress who isn’t an ECF member will be charged a £6 game fee on top of the entry fee (currently, players pay £2.90 in game fee as part of their entry fee for a 5 round congress). ’Bronze’ members will be charged £6 for just the first time they enter a congress in any season and will be upgraded to ‘silver’ as a result. Non ECF members will incur a game fee charge for each league game they play, see below.

The exact membership fee for each level won’t be known until the ECF Council meeting next April but the expectation is £12 for ‘bronze’, £18 for ‘silver’ & £27 for ‘gold’.

The impact on NCA clubs and players? League fees should drop from £50 to about £10 per team as £40.60 of the £50 entry fee is game fee. Most clubs will opt to collect ECF membership fees from their players, passing on the money to the NCA who will pay the ECF. Some clubs may chose not to, so their players might have to join directly via the ECF, or possibly the NCA (tbc). Clubs will have to review their membership subs as a result.

Most players will become members but those who play very few games in a season may choose to pay game fee instead. If at least 85% of NCA league players are ECF members the game fee for non members will be £1, otherwise it will be £2. This is a deliberate policy by the ECF to ‘encourage’ players to become members.

The annual CWANG challenge took place on 14th July at the Horse ‘n’ Groom. We had a poor start scoring just 3/10 in round 1 and Ashfield scored an amazing 10/10. They went on to win with 31.5/40. The final scores were: Ashfield  31.5, Gambit 20, Nomads 19.5, W Bridgford 15.5 & Central 13.5
Brian was our best performer with 3/4 while Alan, Peter and John S scored 2.5

John Swain, Brian Hayward & Drag Sudar helped Notts beat Devon 8.5 – 7.5 to win the 2011 ECF U180 county championship at Leicester on 2nd July. All three of us drew our games.