News

Date:05/03/2026  Queens go close at Redcar!

Redcar B 3-1 Thornaby Queens
Helen Marsay 0-1 Eva Harris
Morgan Bennett 1-0 Shanaya Chauhan
Joseph Scrafton 1-0 Holly Tweddle
Zachary Thornton 1-0 Oakley Richmond

We didn't quite manage to get the point we needed for promotion - one win in the end (me). With 6 players from the normal squad unavailable for this one, Oakley made her Queens debut (she has played regularly for the Falcons this season) and Holly Tweddle came in from our library sessions to complete the team. Holly learnt to play with Chris at the Village Primary School in the Summer and despite being only 8, she's already one of the top 2 players in her school and a great prospect for the future.

Oakley and Zachary were evenly matched most of the way through, but Zachary just came out on top at the end. Holly did well against Joseph. He helped her through the game a bit and it was all very friendly.

I think Shanaya was down on material from the early middlegame, her opponent played the London. it looked like she played pretty well but her opponent soon gained a positional advantage with his queen cornering her king. She fought very well, when I looked at her board at the end she had managed to find an escape route, but eventually it was a queen and rook mate.

My opponent was actually around 10 minutes late, so the clocks started and she had that disadvantage, and she ended up losing on time. I was still up by a lot of material, so I'm sure I would have won anyways. I did manage to trap her queen at one point, but she made a few sacrifices and I unfortunately missed the opportunity to win her queen, although it did win me that material advantage - I was two rooks, a bishop, a knight, and a few pawns up by the end. I also had 35 minutes left on my clock at the end - I think I was moving too quickly, maybe that's why I missed it.

A shame, but it looked like everyone enjoyed the match! I had a good chat with Holly at the beginning and she was definitely very excited to be playing in a league match.

Eva

Still a great season for the team. The main 4 players (Eva, Shanaya, Freya and Isabelle) have done well and all have very competitive percentages in the division. Holly will get a lot out of the experience and that’s more important in the long run. Nice for Oakley to get a game for the Queens as well after playing for other teams this season.

Another positive, Eva is clearly the top player in the E division this season, 4 out of 5 on board 1 is the best anyone in the division managed on there!

Chris

Date:04/03/2026  Dynasties Romp to Victory!

Billingham Dominators 0-4 Thornaby Dynasties
Michael Joynes 0-1 Sam Stevenson
Bernie Callaghan 0-1 James Mann
Graham Bartram 0-1 Geoff Mann
Sean Cooke 0-1 Nate Broadbent

The Dynasties are up to 2nd with their title challenge still intact.

The happiest man tonight was Richard who happily turned up and saw we had a full team and enjoyed his night off. On paper we outranked them on all boards but chess isn’t played on paper. I managed to field what is our strongest team ranking wise with Nate making his debut.

First finished was James in about 20 minutes. He managed to get up a bishop and then traded nicely. He promoted to take his rooks and then after trapping his queen Bernie resigned.

I was next finished. I played a bishop to take his knight and won a free pawn. I started to remade off the. He brought his queen out and with my bishop trapping him I took a rook and queen for a bishop and queen. I then started eating pawns before threatening mate Graham resigned.

Next done was Nate. I didn’t see how his game went but when I kept looking over he was always up a piece and again Sean resigned.

Sam was last to finish. Methodically taking and swapping he was up a rook and when promoting a pawn Michael resigned.

Good to get back to winning ways again and this will best our “goal” difference. Up next is the Dragoons before finishing off at home against Darlington. Player of the match was definitely Nate on debut!

Geoff

Date:04/03/2026  Bombers held at Billingham!

Billingham Synthonia Belasis 2-2 Thornaby Bombers
Darren Donnison 0-1 Dominic Leigh
Paul Frank 1-0 Steve Rodgers
Gary Leighton 0-1 Mike Creaney
Brian Whitaker 1-0 Joe McGinnis

Comments from all 4 players this time:

Mike) Perhaps we should have done better on ratings, but that is seldom how it pans out. I had a fairly comfortable night winning a weak c6 pawn leaving me with a passed d pawn, I was able to convert to a favourable Rook ending and despite my opponents efforts the protected passed pawn on reaching the seventh forced resignation albeit on move 51 never in doubt though. I could comment on the other games but I think that they'd rather give their own accurate assessment.

Steve) Another disaster to add to my catalogue of self inflicted defeats this season! Debuting a new opening on move five I swerved off piste as I believed my opponents chosen set up allowed me to win a piece. It didn’t! However in the misguided attempt to win a piece I over extended my central pawns and spent the rest of the game in desperate defence. My opponent played very solid chess and despite my best efforts he sailed serenely to victory.

Dom) Lichess gave me 97% accuracy, but this seems a bit generous as I mishandled the opening - missing a couple of chances for an advantage and ending up with a pretty symmetrical 0.0 position. Fortunately I was able to pick up a pawn in the middlegame. Shortly after I was 2 pawns up after a nice tactic. I had 4 minutes left when my opponent resigned as checkmate was inevitable as my centralised queen combined with a rook on the 7th rank against an exposed king. Certainly wouldn't give a 97% rating to my time management in this one though!

Joe) I had an intriguing battle with Brian - one of the most interesting and potentially dramatic games I've ever played! Towards the end, I thought I saw a spectacular combination which would have involved me playing Bxe4 - exposing g7 to the mate threat, but pinning his queen against his king so he couldn't play it. If he played Qxe4 (the bishop being unprotected), I had Qh3 mate. Unfortunately this required clearing some other pieces out of the way first, and I didn't spot that these exchanges left him with a knight covering h3. If I had recognised this one move earlier, I was still up 2.5 or so, but I didn't, and ended up down 2.5 and down a piece. His king was still very exposed, but he was able to swap off knights and queens so I was left without enough firepower to exploit this. The rooks soon followed, and an endgame with bishop and 4 pawns v 5 pawns was only going to go one way, though he had to find the only correct move twice in a row.

Date:03/03/2026  Juniors go 2nd!

Thornaby Dragoons 1-3 Thornaby Juniors
Neil Sotheby 0-1 Faruk Serin
James Tones 0-1 Eva Harris
Sachin Saggar 0-1 Shanaya Chauhan
George Butterworth 1-0 Isaac Machin

George and Isaac played a speed game which ended in checkmate to George after just 15 moves. Both need to learn to slow down if they want to advance beyond D division level.

Sachin and Shanaya was a good competitive game, but Sachin blundered a piece. Shanaya goes from strength to strength!

Neil went for a very aggressive Greek gift sacrifice against Faruk. It made it interesting, but unfortunately later in the game he followed it with a plain gift!

Eva was ahead very early. A mistake in the opening from James allowed her to go 2 pawns up before move 10.

The Juniors go 2nd in the table.

Chris

Date:03/03/2026  Tough night for Chipmunks!

Thornaby Chipmunks 0.5-3.5 Middlesbrough Knights
Tashil Lankapura 0-1 Paul Perrett
Joseph Machin 0-1 Nikhil Bhandari
Rhys Orton 0.5-0.5 Brian Myers
Josh Clements 0-1 Jake Pearson

The Chipmunks have defied the odds several times this season and with their board 4 higher rated than our board 1, they would have had to again in this one. It was not to be this time, a fairly ruthless display from Middlesbrough and it was all done well before 9pm.

2 of the fastest players in the league clashed on board 1. It was decided when Tashil blundered a piece against Paul. Josh found Jake too strong. Joseph was even for a while, but at the end he felt he played too passively in his game.

Rhys was last finished. There was probably still a bit of play in this one, but with the match score at 3-0, both players decided they were happy with the draw. It avoided the whitewash for us and it means Rhys gets to be the Facebook photo!

The Chipmunks remain in 5th and can still get a good finish this season.

Chris

Date:02/03/2026  Swifts into Final!

Middlesbrough Rooks 10-14.5 Thornaby Swifts
Nic Tavoularis (4) - Santiago Palencia (2)
Paul Perrett (2.5) - Josh Clements (1.5)
Brian Myers (1.5) - Jayden Wang (1.5)
Jake Pearson (2) - Iain Mellis (1)

A great semi-final win in the Tom Wise Cup for our rapid specialists on the Thornaby Swifts team. The rating difference saw us given an 8.5 start on the handicap.

Middlesbrough knew they were in for a fight when the first round of fixtures were tied with only Nic winning. Jayden and Josh drew and Iain beat Jake. Santiago was actually ahead against Nic, but a blunder at the end cost him it.

Santiago picked up a point against Brian in the 2nd round, winning on time. Middlesbrough completed a clean sweep in round 3 which meant we needed 1.5 in the last set of fixtures to progress.

A fabulous last round for the team saw Santiago beat Jake, Jayden beat Paul after Paul blundered a piece and Josh beat Brian.

A great result for our team, thanks to Iain for being the captain on the night. The Swifts play the winners of Great Ayton A V Thornaby Aces in the final.

Chris

Date:02/03/2026  Challengers stay in Contention!

Hartlepool C 1-3 Thornaby Challengers
Michael Smalley 0-1 Chris Swales
Peter Harker 0-1 Stephen Ollis
Ashton Woodward 0-1 Phil Wales
John Marsden 1-0 Osman Yari

When I saw their line up, I felt like we matched up pretty evenly on all 4 boards and I wouldn't have been surprised by any result on any board in this one to be honest. Reflected in the overall rating difference which was a tiny +25 in their favour.

Osman was making his debut at this level. He played a good game and was the exchange up going into the endgame. Unfortunately as he advanced his king forward with a natural looking move, he missed a clever trap from John and his king got mated in the middle of the board. Overall, it was a good sign that Osman can play well at this level though.

Stephen finished next. A Greek gift sacrifice from Peter complicated the position, but although he got a nice king side attack, Stephen got his pieces active and managed to defend it.

Phil always seemed to be doing well to me, he slowly got a bigger and bigger advantage as the game went on. Ashton resigned with Phil's 2 rooks and queen bearing down on his king with only a rook for defence, I'm pretty sure it was forced mate.

Me and Michael had an even game for quite a while. I managed to get a pawn up, but not sure I could hold it and it certainly didn't look like a winning advantage. A mistake from Michael where he tried to chase my queen with his rook allowed me to swap off my queen for 2 rooks and also win his bishop a couple of moves later. So the endgame was a queen and 4 pawns against 2 rooks, a bishop and 5 pawns. Michael did make me sweat a bit at one point. There were perpetual check options, but I realised his king was moving into a position where mate was a possibility. I defended the threats and eventually the 3 pieces were too much.

A good win that keeps us in 2nd place in the B division table, we're very much in promotion contention with 4 matches to go.

Chris

Date:28/02/2026  Coco inspires Peter Win!

Newcastle Dragons 3-1 Thornaby
Andrew Burnett FM (2271) 1-0 Dominic Leigh (1779)
John Awesome (1839) 1-0 Stephen Rodgers (1720)
Tyler Sweeney (1752) 0-1 Peter Harker (1686)
Daniel Atcheson (1600) 1-0 Stephen Ollis (1610)

The tricky journey into Durham was an omen for a difficult day's chess, as we were stuck in a 20 minute queue to get into a car park that was bursting at the seams. Apparently there was a Fire and Ice sculpture event going on rather than people flocking to Durham's Clayport Library to watch round 2 of the North East Chess League!

The two Steves and I were greeted at the library by Peter Harker and his adorable chihuahua Coco, who kindly consented to being our team mascot for the day.

Peter - clearly inspired by Coco's presence - got us off to a cracking start, winning an excellent game against a higher-rated opponent. At one point I saw he was a piece up and shortly after the game was finished and we were 1-0 ahead.

Things proved trickier for the rest of us. Steve Ollis' game looked fairly even and he also had a time advantage, but things turned against him - leaving the score at 1-1.

As expected I was playing a FIDE master and I daringly went in for a very double-edged line of the King's Indian. My king was stuck in the centre, but the queens were traded. This led to an endgame where I had a weak pawn on d5, but also some play down the c-file and also a pawn majority on the queenside. He was able to create connected passed pawns on the kingside. At a crucial point when I was low on time I decided to march forward with my king in the hopes of supporting a passed pawn on the queenside, but this plan proved too slow as his connected pawns stormed down the board. Instead I should have kept my king close to the pawns in the hope of creating a blockade. My opponent generously admitted that I'd played well above my rating and might have been better at one point as he took some risks to go for the win.

This left Steve Rodgers' game left to finish. His opponent had arrived late, but managed to play quickly and solidly enough. The critical moment came when Steve lost a pawn on the queenside. There was some hope that Steve might be able to generate some play against his opponent's king which had castled that way, but it proved insufficient and Steve ended up losing on time.

Overall a respectable showing for the team given we were out-rated on 3 of the boards and by nearly 700 points across the 4 boards put together. It felt like we might nick something after Peter's win. The Steve's were both doing ok for a while and I was giving the FM a bit of a scare, but it wasn't to be. The next round is in April in Newcastle when we play Leam Lane.

Dom

Date:28/02/2026  3 way tie in library Rapidplay!

A high standard field took part in this month's library rapidplay. Literally half the players were either current or former Teesside age group champions! With so many good players, 5/5 was likely to be difficult and so it proved. There was a 3 way tie and it was all very close at the end with 8 players within 1 point of each other. Jayden defeated Sagar in round 2 to open the event up. Sagar had a very good attack going on the king side, but Jayden found the right moves to defend and broke through when Sagar was down to less than a minute.

Tashil was the only player on 4/4 going into the last round, but he lost to Sagar. Josh defeated Zhuoyi on board 2 to join Tashil and Sagar on 4/5. The 3 players shared the £20 1st prize!

The girls title also went down to the last round. Favourite Freya surprisingly lost to Noah and that meant Shivaee's win gave her the title and £10. There were also age group prizes for Jayden, Matthew and Caleb.

Leading standings:
1) Sagar Patil 4
Tashil Lankapura 4
Josh Clements 4
4) Sam Stevenson 3.5
Jayden Wang 3.5 (age group prize)
6) Zhuoyi Lin 3
Tim Hind 3
Clair Hartill 3
9) Caleb Lee 2.5 (best amateur!)
Matthew Hartill 2.5 (age group prize)
10) Joseph Hartill 2
Kris Iyer 2
Shivaee Nalawade 2 (Best girl)
Noah Lee 2

Date:25/02/2026  Club Championship 5th Round Draw!

The draw for the 5th round of the Club Championship has been made. After round 4, Maurice leads the way on 4 out of 4, with a chasing pack of 6 players on 3 points just behind. Mike has his chance to catch up this time.

There are several sub-competitions:
Ajay, Tashil and Jayden lead the Junior champion standings with 3 out of 4.
Neil and Jayden lead the Under 1400 standings, also with 3 out of 4.
Eva, Sarah and Clair lead the Ladies champion standings with 2 out of 4.

Full results and standings are here on the website:
http://www.thornabychessclub.co.uk/ClubChampionship.htm

Chris

Date:24/02/2026  Cavaliers go Top!

Thornaby Comets 0-4 Thornaby Cavaliers
Stephen Ollis 0-1 Santiago Palencia
Maurice Olum 0-1 Joe McGinnis
Alan Stockley 0-1 Osman Yari
James Tones 0-1 Toefl Lankapura

Unfortunately, it wasn’t our night this time. We were up against a very solid Cavaliers team losing 4-0. I went through to the bar to play a couple of quick friendlies and when I came back an hour later Steve and James had already lost their games. Steve missed a simple tactic which he'd seen, but miscalculated. Santiago is still 100% with 7/7 in the C division! James ended up 2 rooks vs a knight and a queen, but the board was closed and favoured the knight. He ended up in a mating net with his rooks struggling to get into the game.

Alan was in a complicated game with Osman and Maurice was searching for a way through Joe’s solid defence. Alan's end game had him with five pawns to Osman’s four pawns and a bishop. Alan's pawn push, supported by the King, down the Queenside was blocked by the bishop leaving Osman able to covert on the opposite side and Alan resigned. A first C division game for Osman and he looked comfortable at this level.

Maurice had his Queen and both rooks stacked on the g file and tried a bishop sacrifice which would have finished with a checkmate. Joe didn’t fall for it and Maurice never recovered.

We have lost our first place in the league to the Cavaliers but with all the teams around us unexpectantly dropping points, we are still in a strong position in 2nd place.

Malcolm

Date:24/02/2026  Excellent win for Cadets!

Thornaby Cadets 3-1 Hartlepool D
Rhys Orton 0.5-0.5 Alex Kalyviotis
Josh Clements 1-0 Mark Priest
Jayden Wang 1-0 John Marsden
Zhuoyi Lin 0.5-0.5 Will Greig

An excellent win for the Cadets that benefits our other teams as well. Hartlepool D are in 3rd in the C division behind the Cavaliers and the Comets!

Zhuoyi was first finished. He was initially on top, but things started to even out and with other boards looking good, he decided to take a draw.

Jayden had a pretty convincing win on board 3. He first went a pawn up getting the a-file pawn with his knight and was eventually 4 pawns up. Once the queens were off, the endgame was straightforward. Jayden leads the way in the C division top scorer list with 6.5pts from 8 games. An impressive achievement for someone who is still in single figures age!

Rhys was a pawn down, but played solidly to hold the position and get a draw. Alex is doing well on board 5 in the A division this season, so an excellent result for Rhys.

Josh went into the endgame a pawn up, but it looked to be heading for a draw as a king appeared to be tied up. Josh pushed on though and managed to engineer a win despite queening 2nd, partly because his opponent was getting into time trouble.

An excellent win that lifts the Cadets to 6th. This division is so close though that they are actually only 2 points off 2nd!

Chris

Date:23/02/2026  Shanaya Qualifies for National Youth Final!

Last Saturday, Shanaya travelled to Loughborough to take part in the EJCOA Leicestershire Zonal qualifier for the National Youth Championships. She finished with 4/5 and was the top girl meaning she qualifies for the final in June.

Date:19/02/2026  Destroyers finish with a win!

Redcar B 1.5-2.5 Thornaby Destroyers
Kian Simpson 1-0 Tim Hind
Helen Marsay 0.5-0.5 Charles Hind
Joseph Scrafton 0-1 Jake Taylor
Sonny Brodrick 0-1 Kevin Runam

There was an event going on in the next room, so it was quite loud for this match. No fault of Redcar chess club.

I finished first losing after a very aggressive game from Kian Simpson. Not my best game ever, I think I made every bad move it was possible to make!

Next was Jake v Joseph Scrafton. Age and accuracy won Jake the game against an inexperienced, but decent young player who has a bright future ahead of him.

Third up was a very back and forth game. Kevin looking odds on to win after taking Sonny's queen at the cost of a rook, however Sonny managed to bring the game back and chipped away at Kevin's pieces. Eventually Kevin got back into pole position and managed to get the win.

Finally a very even game between Helen and Charles. There was nothing to separate them all the way, and they eventually agreed to a draw.

A good win to finish the season for the Destroyers! We ended the season 4th in the E division table.

Tim

Date:17/02/2026  Veterans finish unbeaten!

Thornaby Falcons 1-3 Thornaby Veterans
Sachin Saggar 1-0 Janos Mehes
Kabir Rao 0-1 Ian Swales
Oakley Richmond 0-1 Nick Tadd
Simone Chisena 0-1 Andy Austen

The top 2 in the E division faced off, with the Veterans showing why they've finished the season unbeaten!

Nick was finished first. A gung-ho attack on the king side from Oakley exposed her king and Nick got a quick win.

Sachin got on top early against Janos and despite a bit of confusion over an illegal move at the end, Sachin got the win.

Simone played a good game against the division's top scorer and it was level for quite a while, but a piece blunder decided it in Andy's favour. He finishes the season with 7 wins from 7 games on board 4! His rating should be high enough to play above some of the others in the team next season now!

My Dad played in the B+C divisions in the 90's for Redcar B+C and has proved a useful reserve for the Veterans this season. He's played instead of each of the other 4 members of the squad at least once and finished with 4 wins from 5, only losing to Eva. He said Kabir was the best other he'd played this season, but after playing the opening well, Kabir played a couple of unnecessarily passive moves and my Dad capitalised. A chess.com rating of 1900 for this game shows at least some of his old magic is still there!

It was the last game of the season for both these teams. The Veterans have shown the advantage of a consistent keen squad. Only 5 players used in the 8 games! Despite the dominant looking 7 wins and 1 draw, they did not win any matches 4-0 and it took every player in the squad to grind out results when needed. The only draw was the previous game with the Falcons. Andy finished on 7/7, Alan 5.5/7, Ian 4/5, Nick 4/7, Janos 3/6 making the top 4 scorers in the division! Although Shanaya, Freya and Eva can get amongst them in the last Queens game.

The Falcons by contrast have used 13 players in 8 matches this season! Partly a reflection of the Fledglings team being split off to allow new players to come in. Kabir came in part way through the season and has done well with 3/5 on the higher boards. Sachin held his own on board 1 with 3/6. Isaac got 3/3 and as we already knew, he's clearly a talented player (he did beat Tashil to win the Teesside Junior Championships 3 years ago!), but unfortunately the way things worked out, he was not available for quite a few of the games. Grace, Simone, Oscar and Henry all got their first league wins, while Oakley, James, Joseph and Matthew all made their league debuts for this team. All in all the team has been a good development tool and they could still be promoted as well depending on results elsewhere.

Chris

Date:17/02/2026  Fledglings hold Queens!

Thornaby Queens 2-2 Thornaby Fledglings
Eva Harris 1-0 Henry Bishop
Clair Hartill 0-1 Noah Mulloy
Freya Hind 1-0 Oscar Youdale
Sarah Bishop 0-1 Matthew Hartill

The in form Queens were held 2-2 by the Fledglings this time. Isabelle was ill on the day and Sarah stepped in as a reserve as well as being the driver for the other teams top board!

Sarah has had some good results in the club championship, so this was a good win for Matthew. It was a typical attacking performance from him that resulted in a quick win.

Freya also won quickly. She got a piece up and then a pawn fork on king and rook effectively ended the game.

The other 2 games finished at exactly the same time. Noah seemed to be on top early and was several pawns up. He eventually mated Clair at the side of the board.

Henry blundered a piece early against Eva and although he played well from there, he couldn't get back into it.

The Queens need 1 point from their last game at Redcar to ensure promotion.

The Fledglings finish their season with 2 draws and 3 losses from 5 games. The team was 100% a development team when we added it halfway through the season and we can consider it a success. One of the main purposes of the team was to give Henry games on board 1 and he hasn't disappointed with 3 wins from 5 which has helped him into the national top 10 for his age. Only Eva and Tim (both 1300 standard at least which is the rating cap for this division) beat him. Noah has also stepped up over the last couple of months with 3 wins from 4 against some good players (only losing to my Dad who is again very strong for this level). Joseph, Matthew and Oscar have all got 1 good result each and will only benefit from the experience of playing for the team.

Chris

Date:17/02/2026  Derby win for Challengers!

Thornaby Challengers 2.5-1.5 Thornaby Chipmunks
Paul Douglass 0.5-0.5 Aryan Nalawade
Stephen Ollis 1-0 Tashil Lankapura
James Urwin 1-0 Joseph Machin
Phil Wales 0-1 Ajay Selvan

A narrow win for the Challengers puts them back in the promotion spots at the top of the B division.

Paul and Aryan were finished first. A good draw for Aryan, Paul said he played very well throughout the game.

Tashil was a piece for 2 pawns up when I first looked. Chris Ross has a phrase that the king looks "draughty". Unfortunately, Tashil's was more like in the middle of a hurricane! With no pawns in front of it and only 1 piece 3 squares away from it and Stephen's pieces in a good position to capitalise. I didn't see an immediate win or how it finished, but was not surprised when they came out a few minutes later with Stephen the winner.

Ajay put in a great battling performance against Phil. After going a piece for 2 pawns down in the opening, he then went a further pawn down. Phil forced the Queens off and I thought it was all over. Ajay battled on and managed to go into the endgame with a rook and 3 pawns against a bishop and 4 pawns. The pawns all came off and you would assume it should be a draw, but after a bit of manoeuvring, Ajay found a way to win the bishop and the game.

That meant the game between James and Joseph was decisive. As more games finished, the main room got quite cold and James and Joseph were coming into the bar area after each move (mainly to keep warm I think!). So I got a move by move account from both players of how it was going. Complicated, but fairly level was the consensus. Joseph had again used more time than his opponent, but towards the end he made a fatal mistake that allowed James to force a mate.

Another good effort from the Chipmunks, this was no easy game for any of the Challengers, but they did take the points in the end.

Chris

Date:16/02/2026  Bombers Crash at Hartlepool!

Hartlepool C 3-1 Thornaby Bombers
Bernie Price ½-½ Dominic Leigh
Peter Harker ½-½ Steve Rodgers
Michael Smalley 1-0 Maurice Olum
Kevin Waterman 1-0 Joe McGinnis

Disappointing, but not entirely unexpected defeat for the Bombers at Hartlepool. Mike was ill and called off in the morning, so I got to play myself. I proceeded to demonstrate why I haven't been selecting myself for the Bombers regularly this season. Got a reasonable position out of the opening and early middle game, then saw a move which threatened a Royal Fork. There was only one way to avoid it, but it wasn't hard for him to find so I didn't play it. A couple of moves later, Kevin launched a similar attack on my king's-side, threatening my queen. All of a sudden the Royal fork became an option again - let him take my queen, capture a pawn with check, capture his queen and threaten a rook, he captures a bishop with the threatened rook, I capture a knight and come out a pawn up and with a rook on the 7th rank. I spent quite a while satisfying myself that I was seeing this correctly and there was nothing unpleasant lurking 3 or 4 moves deep, then went for it with Nh5. He didn't take my queen, he took the knight which I had just placed en prise and unguarded.

What's even more annoying, I had seen this when I first considered the move ten minutes earlier - it was playable while he had a knight on f3, but if that knight moved, it would open up a route for his queen to capture on h5. I played on for a while, but it was pretty hopeless.

I didn't see much of the other games. Maurice was beside me, and looked to have the option of a perpetual check at least. What I hadn't seen was that his opponent had a pawn about to promote; I assume the second queen would have been able to get back and block the check. Two queens against one might have been interesting for a while, but the outcome was inevitable. The top two boards both looked pretty even at that stage, and so it proved; Steve and Peter Harker agreed a draw a few minutes later. Dominic and Bernie Price, after playing for well over 2 hours, had made it as far as move 18. Barring a blunder in time trouble, that one was heading for a draw when I left.

Joe

Date:16/02/2026  Blackpool Congress!

6 players from the club travelled to Blackpool over the weekend for the Blackpool Chess Congress. Brian was the stand out performer, joint winning the Minor section with 2 other players on 4.5. Full results:


Major
Francis Batchelor 2.5
Dominic Leigh 1.5

Intermediate
Sam Greig 3.5
Mike Creaney 1.5

Minor
Brian Ellis 4.5
Jonathan Feasby 3.5

Date:15/02/2026  Girls V Boys Knights Shield Final Preview!

On March 17th, it will be a big day for the club and for me personally. Earlier this week, our Thornaby Juniors Team narrowly won their Knights Shield Semi-Final 3-2. Last week our Thornaby Queens team won by the same scoreline. The Knights shield is a CCA (Cleveland Chess Association) knockout event for players rated Under 1500 at the start of the season. It is a great tribute to our club junior system that we've managed to get our main boys team and our main girls team into the final of this competition!

We have more than 30 under 18's playing for the club in the league now and some have made it all the way to the A team. That success hasn't come from nowhere and has taken a lot of time and dedication from me, Joe McGinnis and others. Brian Whitaker started our library sessions back in 2018. Both Joseph and Omi have been part of our club system ever since. Joseph started playing for the club's teams after covid and over the last few years, more and more young players have come through from our library system or joined the club directly. We've established a 7 stage pathway (the 5th of which is when they are ready to join the club) that has proved very effective over the last 3 years. It takes children right from showing them how the pieces move right up to studying more detailed tactical and strategic nuances and grandmaster games.

There was some discussion in the club at the start of the season about whether or not we should have a ladies team. Certainly nobody in the club thinks it's because they aren't good enough to play for our other teams, but it could have given that impression externally! When the club was smaller and we only had 1 team in each division, the teams were just picked on rating. Top 5 were the A team, next 5 were the B team etc. We have at least 3 teams in most divisions now and that means we can be a bit more creative with how the teams are split. What has worked best in previous seasons is to give teams a specific identity and purpose like Thornaby Comets, Thornaby Cadets and Thornaby Dynasties whilst also trying to put friends on the same team. The Queens team have been a definite success this season. The girls get on well, enjoy being on the same team together and supporting each other. Eva, Omi, Shanaya and Isabelle have also played for Thornaby Juniors in the league in the D division above, while Freya has played games for the Dynasties. Eva has also played and won in the B and C division this season. The Queens team has proved to be a great platform for developing the girls and giving them extra games. It's great credit to Eva that she has run the team so well in her first season as a captain and helped to foster a great camaraderie in the team.

For me, the Queens team are perfect for encouraging the younger girls in the club and library sessions. Having role models to point at is always useful. I've always thought the reason there weren't many ladies in the league is because there weren't many ladies in the league! A sort of vicious circle. That has changed a bit and the league has gone from 2 to around 20 registered in 4 years. Certainly in my work in primary schools there is generally no difference between the level of play of boys and girls. I already have a new generation of younger Queens coming through with Holly, Shivaee, Oakley and Paulina all making great progress in recent months.

The boys in the club have been making waves for some time. Sagar got to the final of one of our Rapidplay events 4 years ago and since then there have always been young players near the top of the standings in every internal event we've done. The top juniors have their own B division team now who are comfortably placed in mid-table and Aryan is a regular for the Aces team now. The Juniors team in the cup is slightly different to the league (it is not an all boys team in the league and Eva is actually a regular for the team). Jayden and Josh are in the middle of outstanding seasons and are both amongst the top 5 scores in the club this season. Faruk is also on a very good percentage this year. Zhuoyi is 1400+ rated and was in outright 2nd place in our Club Championship after 3 rounds. The team is completed by Dragoon's speed merchant George, with younger Teesside Champions like Henry Bishop and Isaac Machin available as reserves.

The boys will start as the favourites in the final, but that has been the case in both of the Queens previous 2 rounds as well. They won't care about that at all and will be looking to spring another surprise!

Chris

Date:11/02/2026  Respectable Dragoons lose to leaders!

Darlington D 3-1 Thornaby Dragoons
Malcolm Goldspink 0-1 Oskar Nicholson
Neil Sotheby 1-0 Mark Turner
Sachin Saggar 0-1 Harsimran Singh
George Butterworth 0-1 Charles Miller

Wednesday saw the Dragoons make the trip to Darlington to take on the current league leaders — never the easiest of assignments, but always a good test of where we really are. With our ratings lining up fairly evenly across boards 1–2 and 3–4, George and Sachin were able to negotiate their preferred colours, while Malcolm and I sensibly agreed that Malcolm — being in better form lately — should take the top board.

Darlington’s venue is excellent: plenty of space, a generous Board 5 area with large TVs, and even a laptop providing live updates from their A-team match. Proper professional stuff! We were seated in a neat row, meaning I had a perfect view of all the games — ideal for monitoring progress… and panicking in real time. Most games began in calm, symmetrical fashion. Except mine, of course. My Scandinavian Defence doesn’t really do symmetrical.

Board 4 – George vs Charles Miller (0–1)
George was first to finish — as tradition demands. Despite my pre-match plea for him to slow down, he was still making moves quicker than it took me to take a sip of my drink. At one point I’m fairly sure he’d played three moves while I blinked. Unfortunately, the speed didn’t bring success. His king was gradually forced into a corner and eventually mated by Charles’ queen. To be fair, his overall time usage was slightly better than usual — possibly because his opponent was trying to keep up.

Board 3 – Sachin vs Harsimran Singh (0–1)
Sachin played a tight and competitive game early on, but gradually began to shed pawns like loose change. By the time the endgame arrived, he was outnumbered and outgunned, and eventually had to concede. A tough loss in a game that was closer than the result suggests.

Board 2 – Neil vs Mark Turner (1–0)
My opening preparation lasted exactly three moves. Then Mark played something completely unexpected — he didn’t take the pawn in the Scandinavian. Who does that?! Apparently, Mark Turner. With my theory in tatters, we settled into a complicated (for me) middlegame with very little between us. I managed to trade two pawns for a piece, giving me decent long-term chances. Then I glanced over and saw Malcolm go a pawn down… and, out of sympathy, promptly blundered a piece myself. Solidarity is important in team chess! After a bit of soul-searching and frantic calculating, I spotted a back-rank mating threat and a tactical route into an endgame where I’d be two pawns down — but with a dangerous passed pawn already on the sixth rank. Mark spotted the treat and we traded down, and once the dust settled, it became clear my pawn couldn’t be stopped and my king was well placed to hold things together. Mark resigned, and I was very relieved to finally get off zero.

Board 1 – Malcolm vs Oskar Nicholson (0–1)
Malcolm’s game was fascinating. Despite being a pawn down, he looked very solid. Oskar’s pawns formed a strange zig-zag formation across the board — unconventional, but strangely effective. Although Malcolm’s structure looked healthier, there were no obvious weaknesses to attack. After the game, Malcolm admitted he didn’t see a clear path to victory, so he set a small tactical trap to see if Oskar might slip. Sadly, Oskar didn’t. With no way back, Malcolm eventually had to resign after a long, thoughtful battle.

Final Score: Darlington 3 – 1 Thornaby Dragoons
A defeat on paper, but a respectable one against the league leaders — especially considering their Board 4 was rated higher than our Board 1. In that context, the result was fairly predictable. Still, it was an enjoyable away match in a great venue, with plenty of fighting spirit and no major disasters (by our standards). On to the next one — and maybe, just maybe, George will spend more than 3 seconds per move.

Neil

Date:10/02/2026  Cavaliers go 2nd!

Thornaby Cavaliers 3.5-0.5 Redcar A
Santiago Palencia 1-0 Eddie Curphey
Joe McGinnis 1-0 Matthew Allan
Iain Mellis 1-0 Stanley Allan
Toefl Lankapura 0.5-0.5 Katherine Myers

The reverse of this fixtures was a 4-0 defeat with Joe getting locked in the Redcar building at the end for good measure! So this game couldn't really go any worse and it didn't! Another convincing win for the Cavaliers who are now 2nd in the table.

Iain had a relatively quick win. One of those games that was close until Stanley blundered a piece.

Board 1 was a C division clash of the titans! Santiago is on 100% in the C division this season, but Eddie Curphey is now the highest rated player playing regularly. Santiago came out on top in a good match.

Toefl was ahead if anything in his game, but Joe's position was complicated at the time and Toefl decided a draw was best to ensure the team result. Tashil was ill at home and this may also have influenced the decision!

Joe and Matthew were last finished of all the games in the main room. A great battle with Joe eventually coming out on top in the endgame. The 2 players who probably weren't happy with this one (apart from Matthew) were the players who finished first. Iain was driving Joe home and Stanley was of course getting driven home by Matthew!

So the Cavaliers are now 2nd in the table, 1 point behind the Comets, but with a better board difference.

Date:10/02/2026  Aces held at home!

Thornaby Ace 2.5-2.5 Hartlepool A
Paul Douglass 0.5-0.5 Takaedza Chipanga
Sam Greig 0.5-0.5 Bernie Price
Dominic Leigh 0.5-0.5 Peter Harker
Mike Creaney 1-0 Michael Smalley
Maurice Olum 0-1 Alex Kalyviotis

With a makeshift team, we came out with a reasonable 2.5-2.5 draw. Missing several players and a last minute dropout, it was a decent point in the circumstances.

Maurice stepped in at the last minute. It was a tough game, but it looked decent until Alex got his rook and queen deep on Maurice's kingside.

Mike got the win for us. He said he learnt from his loss against the Dutch v Steve Hollis last month and went two pawns up. "No need to say more!" in Mike's words!

The top 3 boards were all draw meaning the points were shared. The Aces are battling in the middle of the A division this season. A good run now and we can still finish in the top 2 or 3 though.

Paul

Date:10/02/2026  Juniors into final!

Thornaby Juniors 3-2 Thornaby Comets
Josh Clements 1-0 Ik Madueke
Jayden Wang 0.5-0.5 Alan Stockley
Faruk Serin 1-0 James Tones
Zhuoyi Lin 0.5-0.5 Manuel Lopez
George Butterworth 0-1 Malcolm Goldspink

For the second week in a row, 2 Thornaby teams produced a thrilling cup semi-final in the Under 1500 rating Knight shield that went down to the last board. The Juniors had a strong line up for this event with the top 4 boards all 1400+ now. Having said that, the first time I looked at the boards I thought the Comets were looking like 4.5-0.5 winners!

Jayden was first finished. He was a pawn down against Alan and chose a perpetual check to get away with a draw.

George played a good game and took his time a bit more in this one. He made it hard for Malcolm, but Malcolm is playing well above his rating at the moment though and his greater experience showed in the end.

Faruk looked to be in a bad endgame that was at best a draw, but a blunder from James gave him the win.

Zhuoyi got out of jail. A piece and a pan down, but a mistake from Manuel gave Zhuoyi the piece back and he managed to get a draw.

That meant it was 2-2 with Josh needing to win on board 1. He was a pawn down in a 2 rooks each endgame, but had a well advanced passed pawn on the b file. In the end he found a nice combination that meant Ik would either give away checkmate or lose his rook. A rook up, it was plain sailing and he put the Juniors through.

Well played to Malcolm's defending champions they made a real fight of it and can concentrate on the league now as they are going well at the top of the C division! We now have our boys team Vs our girls team in the final. A great achievement for both teams!

Chris

Date:10/02/2026  Ruthless Queens Join Promotion Race!

Thornaby Queens 4-0 Thornaby Destroyers
Eva Harris 1-0 Tim Hind
Shanaya Chauhan 1-0 Jake Taylor
Freya Hind 1-0 Kevin Runham
Isabelle Little 1-0 Wayne Mulloy

After last weeks nail-biting cup semi-final win, it was a more convincing win for the Queens team in this one.

Freya won in 13 moves. Kevin moved his f pawn forward without castling and a Queen and knight king side attack resulted in checkmate.

Isabelle's game was a lot longer in moves, but finished soon after in time. Wayne played an unorthodox opening opting for pawn pushes and pieces on the a and h file. He did get a reasonable position out of it and it was pretty even after about 20 moves. Wayne's position collapsed quickly though when a discovered attack from Isabelle won his queen and she followed it up with a fork on king and rook on the next move!

Eva made it 3-0. She trapped one of Tim's pieces and he couldn't get back into it.

Jake made it tough for Shanaya and they went into the endgame with 5 pawns and a rook each. Shanaya's rook was a little more active at the start though and she made it count.

The Queens have 2 games left and are in contention for promotion. They are 2 points behind the Falcons with a game in hand and a better board difference.

Chris

Date:09/02/2026  Dynasties held at Middlesbrough!

Middlesbrough Bishops 2-2 Thornaby Dynasties
Ged Murphy 1-0 Sam Stevenson
Chris Rumsey 0.5-0.5 James Mann
Colin Rumsey 0-1 Geoff Mann
Andrew Salter 0.5-0.5 Richard Stevenson

Based on the starts to the season by the 2 teams, the Dynasties may have expected to win this one. With Ged coming in on board 1 to steady the ship for Middlesbrough it was a much more even game on paper. It also proved to be over the board as well!

Geoff got back to winning ways after a surprise loss to Shanaya last week against Colin. Colin has a had a solid season in the D division so a good result for Geoff. Sam found Ged a step too far for now while James and Richard picked up solid draws against seasoned opponents.

The Dynasties remain in contention for promotion in 3rd place in the D division.

Date:09/02/2026  Comets Slip at Hartlepool!

Hartlepool D 3-1 Thornaby Comets
Ellis Roebuck 1-0 Stephen Ollis
Ashton Woodward 1-0 Maurice Olum
John Marsden 0-1 Malcolm Goldspink
William Greig 1-0 Janos Mehes

We suffered only our second defeat of the season tonight. Steve was unhappy with his game although he is still our top scorer. Maurice tried a risky gambit that didn’t pay off and Janos was up a bishop and pawn with the better position until a blunder gifted his opponent an easy mate.

I was happy with my game, tying up the kingside then pushing the queenside pawns forward, up two pawns and trading off pieces along the way. I forced a trade of queens when my pawns were in a chain stretching down to c6 and supported by my rooks. His rooks and knight were tied down by my attacking pawns and after forking his rooks it was a formality to get mate.

We are still top of the League and although Billingham have games in hand, if we beat them we will still stay ahead on points.

Malcolm

Date:05/02/2026  Debut win for Simone!

Redcar B 3-1 Thornaby Falcons
Helen Marsay 1-0 Kabir Rao
Jack Jiang 1-0 Kevin Runham
Zachary Thornton 0-1 Simone Chisena
Joseph Scrafton 1-0 Oakley Richmond

Falcons result from Redcar. I had quite a few players missing, so Kevin and Simone came in. Kevin for a Falcons debut and Simone for his Thornaby debut!

Helen has proved a solid player for Redcar so far. Kabir did have an advantage, but blundered towards the end.

Jack had only played 1 and won 1 before, so I've no idea of his level. 100% after 2 games though, he can't be too bad!

I work with Zachary at Errington school in Marske. He did qualify for the Gigafinal last year, so he's certainly a decent player for his age. A good win for Simone on his debut for us!

Joseph is completely new to me, but Oakley told me it was a tough match and she lost a piece and couldn't get back into it.

Chris

Date:03/02/2026  Chipmunks taken to school!

Thornaby Chipmunks 0-4 Thornaby Bombers
Tashil Lankapura 0-1 Dominic Leigh
Joseph Machin 0-1 Mike Creaney
Ajay Selvan 0-1 Steve Rodgers
Rhys Orton 0-1 Maurice Olum

There has been some debate in the club recently about which our best B division team is. The Bombers are our official B team, but logistical (car lifts to away games) and developmental (more opportunities for the younger players) reasons have meant our 3 teams are more even this year. The Bombers showed they are still our team to beat with a convincing victory. The scoreline was possibly a little flattering (all the games were long and hard), but for the Chipmunks this is a guide of the level you need to be at all the time if you want to play in the top divisions. One loose move or poor opening or a lack of endgame knowledge and you've probably already lost at this level.

Ajay matched Steve all the way going into a 6 pawns and no pieces each endgame. One bad move from Ajay in the endgame gave Steve the breakthrough he needed. He circled his king round with precise endgame play to win a crucial pawn and there was no way of stopping him from there.

Joseph and Mike's game sounded to me like a "Freaky Friday" style brain swap had happened at some point! Joseph used more time than Mike and went a piece for a pawn up. Then Mike played a rook sacrifice to break through on the queenside and force a win.

Tashil played an interesting gambit line against Dominic and had some pressure, but losing a 2nd pawn on b7 proved crucial and Dominic was too solid for Tashil to breakdown.

Most people would have guessed at the start of the night that this would be the last game finished and sure enough, Rhys and Maurice were still playing half an hour after the other 19 games in the room had finished. Rhys was a pawn up going into the endgame, but Maurice specialises in long hard fought endgame wins and he used his knight better than Rhys used his bishop to eventually go a pawn up himself and force the win.

Mike's report "A resounding win on the surface but definitely hard fought. Joseph offered me a draw with a lot of play left, but I declined thinking I could net a pawn ,so I did but got a knight trapped, instead of getting a rook for two pieces I left the knight to it's fate and attacked his queenside castled position hoping for salvation there, my attack was successful though I suspect the engine will tell us why I should have lost".

Chris

Date:03/02/2026  Juniors hold leaders!

Thornaby Juniors 2-2 Bllingham Dominators
Josh Clements 1-0 Graham Edwards
Faruk Serin 1-0 Bernie Callaghan
Isaac Machin 0-1 Paul Scott
Kevin Runham 0-1 Sean Cooke

Honours even in the top of the table clash. Big thanks to Kevin for stepping in at the last minute. Jacob withdrew at 10 past 6!

Faruk got a very quick win over Bernie. So quick, I didn't get chance to ask him what happened!

Isaac's game was also over quickly. Regular Thornaby nemesis Paul getting another victory against us!

The other 2 went on a lot longer. Sean said Kevin played well and found a nice tactic to get back into the game. It was fairly even when I looked, but Sean's greater experience told in the endgame.

Josh had a very good game with Graham. It looked quite complicated with his pawns a bit of a mess and his king was a little in the open, but he found the right moves to ensure the overall match draw.

Billingham stay 1st, Juniors are 2nd a point behind. All to play for still!

Chris

Date:03/02/2026  Veterans seal title!

Thornaby Fledglings 1-3 Thornaby Veterans
Henry Bishop 1-0 Nick Tadd
Joseph Hartill 0-1 Alan Bayne
Noah Mulloy 0-1 Ian Swales
Oscar Youdale 0-1 Janos Mehes

Experience counted in a match with probably the biggest overall age gap we've ever had! The Veterans clinched the E division title with a game to spare. An impressive achievement using a squad of just 5 players!

Alan and Joseph were first finished. Another good win for Alan which puts him on 5.5 out of 7 for the season so far.

Janos was next. Oscar blundered his queen and there was no way back from there.

An interesting game on board 3. My Dad taught me how to play chess when I was 7 and I taught Noah at Billingham South when he was 7. My Dad said Noah played some tricky moves and he had to play carefully, but just needed to slow down a bit. He did point out to Noah that he's been playing chess for 63 years! That win guaranteed the title for the Veterans!

Henry picked up another win on board 1. This one was decided by a king and queen fork.

Well done to the Veterans. It has been good to have the team in the division. It gives a proper idea of the level of some of the newer players in the club. For the most part, they have shown there's no substitute for experience!

Chris

Date:03/02/2026  Queens into final!

Thornaby Queens 3-2 Thornaby Dynasties
Eva Harris 0-1 Sam Stevenson
Omi Sibanda 0-1 James Mann
Shanaya Chauhan 1-0 Geoff Mann
Freya Hind 1-0 Tim Hind
Clair Hartill 1-0 Richard Stevenson

A surprise semi-final result on paper with Dynasties outgrading the queens by about 700.

First finishes was Freya who beat her dad in a short game. I saw Tims queen go pretty early and then he resigned.

Sam was next. He and Eva have played several times recently and it has been close. In this one, he won a piece early and then dominated to win.

James manged to get Omi's Queen on move 15 and it was straightforward from there.

I had my work cut out with Shanaya. She played extremely well and saw all my traps. I went to attack with my knight and rook and missed that she could trap my king to promote. I battled to the end but she got the mate.

Richard was last to finish. He was up a few pawns with a knight v bishop. However he miscalculated by sacrificing a knight thinking he could promote. Clair managed to take all his pawns and with a pawn and a bishop left, Richard resigned.

Well done to the Queens and good luck in the final!

Geoff

Date:02/02/2026  Challengers Defeat Leader!

Darlington C 1.5-2.5 Thornaby Challengers
Steve Halliday 0.5-0.5 Paul Douglass
Richard Harris 0.5-0.5 Chris Swales
Mark Turner 0-1 Phil Wales
Harsimran Singh 0.5-0.5 Iain Mellis

Darlington C were missing a couple of players who were in the A V B match that was going on at the same time. Nevertheless it was still a good team that we were against and we all had to play well to get the overall team result.

I was done first. An early Bg4 from me proved to be ambitious and Richard was on top for the rest of the game. I was slightly surprised when he offered a draw after move 20 and was happy to accept as he looked to be in a better position and I thought the other boards were slightly in our favour.

Phil played a very good game right from the start to chase his opponents knight back and leave his pieces looking very trapped on the queenside. A devastating attack on the king side followed and Mark resigned.

Iain was a pawn down, but played the endgame well to get the draw. His opponent fought all the way until there were just kings left on the board.

Paul was also a pawn down early on, but fought back to get his pawn back and probably have the edge. Once Iain was finished, Paul was happy with the draw to get the overall team result. He was watching Iain's game more than his own towards the end!

An excellent all round team performance to give us a very good win over the B division leaders that moves us temporarily into 2nd in the table!

Chris

Date:31/01/2026  Thornaby Debut in North East League!

Durham City 2.5-1.5 Thornaby
Fedir Dyshliuk (2017) 1-0 Dominic Leigh (1779)
Chris Snook-Lamb (1752) 1-0 Peter Harker (1686)
Raj Singh (1728) 0.5-0.5 Tashil Lankapura (1642)
Harry Grieveson (1620) 0-1 James Urwin (1637)

A new adventure for Thornaby club began on Saturday with the first round of Tim Wall's new North East League taking place in the ground floor foyer of Newcastle City Library. The league consists of 6 teams: two Newcastle teams, Leam Lane, Durham City, Durham University and Thornaby. There are 5 rounds taking place on Saturdays and will be hosted at venues in Newcastle, Durham, Gateshead and Stockton's Bar Loco. Games are both ECF- and FIDE-rated, so you have to be an ECF Gold member to play.

We had White on odd boards against Durham City, who had a large rating advantage. Our team was bolstered by Hartlepool's attacking maestro Peter Harker, who has joined the club to play for us in the North East League, but will remain a Hartlepool player in the Cleveland and Durham leagues.

The match also saw a return to action for James Urwin, who got us off to a flying start with superb and sound Nxf2 sacrifice to secure the win. James confirmed during the journey to Newcastle that he'd had his Weetabix and it clearly showed!

My teammates were clearly in an attacking mood as I also looked at Tashil's board and saw he was also a piece down, but his opponent's king was wide open. Tashil very humbly admitted that he was likely forced to give up the piece, but he was able to extract some compensation for it. Later in the game his opponent gave back the material and after queens were traded a draw was agreed.

Peter's Thornaby debut was a wild one. He sacrificed a pawn, but this left his opponent's bishop almost trapped. Peter also had great piece development and some attacking opportunities. A key moment in the game came when Peter took his opponent's rook on h1 with his bishop. His opponent replied f2-f3 trapping Peter's bishop and threatening to bring his own bishop (which had grabbed the pawn) back to e4, which would in turn launch a counterattack against Peter's king which was castled queenside - combining with a strong knight on c5. At this point Peter had to defend with engine-like precision to nullify his opponent's counterattack and retain his own advantage. Unfortunately the complications turned the game in his opponent's favour.

My game was more sedate as I looked to contain my stronger opponent. I thought I'd succeeded in transitioning the game towards an equal endgame, but my opponent unleashed a nice tactical flourish to end the game - taking advantage of his more effective opposite colour bishop.

The next round is in Durham at the end of February when we play Newcastle Dragons who won "the Newcastle derby" 3-1 on Saturday. I might have my work cut out as they had a FIDE master on board 1 on Saturday!

Dominic

Date:31/01/2026  Sam wins library Rapidplay!

The first of our Library Rapidplays took place in the library this morning with 20 children taking part. We run an ECF rated rapidplay on the last Saturday of each month from January to May to help get everyone used to playing in tournament conditions.

Sam has been a regular in these for some time now and has always been amongst the leading group, but today was the day it all came together and he finished ahead of the pack on 4.5 to take the £20 prize. Paulina was the girls champion and won the £10 prize! Age group prizes (mostly chocolate!) went to Callum, Jayden, Kris and Yenul.


Leading Results:
Sam Stevenson 4.5
Josh Clements 3.5
Jayden Wang 3.5
Ajay Selvan 3
Zhouyi Lin 3
George Butterworth 3
Kris Iyer 3
Isaac Machin 2.5
Caleb Lee 2.5
Manveer Singh 2.5
Yenul Karunathilaka 2.5
Paulina Roychoudhury 2
Raihan Malik 2
Noah Lee 2

Chris

Date:28/01/2026  Cavaliers Gallop to Victory!

Great Ayton C 0-4 Thornaby Cavaliers
Jim Rogers 0-1 Tashil Lankapura
Norman Cole 0-1 Joe McGinnis
Steve Gatenby 0-1 Santiago Palencia
Alan Jefferson 0-1 Sam Stevenson

The Cavaliers have been a little inconsistent this season, but when they're good they're usually very good. This was one of those games with Tashil, Joe, Santiago and Sam all winning for a 4-0 victory. The Cavaliers are in mid-table, but with every chance of pushing for promotion in the remaining games if they play like this!

Date:27/01/2026  Narrow loss for Aces!

Thornaby Aces 2-3 Great Ayton A
Francis Batchelor 0.5-0.5 Virgil Szekely
Paul Douglas 0.5-0.5 David Wise
Dominic Leigh 0.5-0.5 Andrew Smith
Aryan Nalawade 0.5-0.5 Martin McLaughlin
Steve Rodgers 0-1 Kegan Harrison

The instruction before the game was to try to avoid draws as we needed to win this match to try to close the gap on Great Ayton at the top of the table. Against a team of Great Ayton's quality that is a lot easier said than done though unfortunately! The top 4 boards all finished as draws. League secretary Kegan got the decisive result for them. Steve lost a pawn, but unfortunately it was a key pawn that was holding his position together!

Date:27/01/2026  Comets take charge!

Thornaby Comets 2.5-1.5 Thornaby Cadets
Stephen Ollis 1-0 Josh Clements
Maurice Olum 0-1 Jayden Wang
Ik Madueke 1-0 Zhuoyi Lin
James Tones 0.5-0.5 Faruk Serin

Board 1 was close for a while, but after Josh lost a pawn, his position collapsed fairly quickly.

Jayden managed to win a piece against Maurice with some rook pressure and a mistake from Maurice. He played the knight and 6 pawns against 6 pawns endgame well, there were potential pitfalls with Maurice having the more active king. Another good win for Jayden who is already up over 150 points this season to 1534 and could be looking at Aces games before the season is out at the current rate of preogress!

A rare appearance from Ike (he travels a lot for work) saw a fairly convincing win against Zhuoyi. I didn’t see what happened, but the first time I looked Zhuoyi was well down in the game and he was checkmated shortly afterwards.

Faruk managed to get ahead on board 4, but couldn’t close it out. A good battling draw from James which turned out to be crucial for the overall match result.

The Comets extend their lead at the top of the C division to 3 points! The Cadets are 7th of the 7 teams, but still only 2 points off 2nd place! In a close competitive division, this was actually top against bottom, but there was still very little to choose between the 2 teams!

Chris

Date:27/01/2026  Vital win for Dragoons!

Thornaby Dragoons 3-1 Middlesbrough Bishops
Alan Stockley 1-0 Chris Rumsey
Malcolm Goldspink 0.5-0.5 Colin Rumsey
Neil Sotheby 0.5-0.5 Andrew Salter
George Butterworth 1-0 Paul Bruce

Last night saw Thornaby take on the Middlesbrough Bishops in a crucial league clash. Despite an early warning last week that illness might prevent them from fielding a full team, the Bishops arrived at full strength and ready for battle.

On paper, Thornaby looked comfortably stronger. Over the board… it was anything but comfortable. With Thornaby propping up the bottom of the league and Middlesbrough sitting immediately above us, this was a genuine six-pointer. A win would see us leapfrog the Bishops and hand them the unwanted wooden spoon position. Plenty to play for.


Board 4 – George vs Paul Bruce (1–0)
George kicked things off on Board 4 against Paul Bruce. Paul politely asked how old George was when he sat down. I reassured him that George was definitely old enough for Paul not to go easy on him. I’d already had the traditional pre-match chat with George, gently pleading with him to slow down. Five minutes in, I checked the board: plenty of pieces already gone, George firmly on the attack. So while he may not have slowed down much, at least the game hadn’t finished in the usual 90 seconds. A few minutes later, George wrapped it up and Thornaby were off to a flying start. A strong, confident win — and credit to Paul for taking it in good spirit.

Board 3 – Neil vs Andrew Salter (½–½)
I found myself on Board 3 this week, which should have been a more relaxing experience after last week’s Board 1 ordeal. Andrew Salter accepted my Scandinavian Defence and, appeared to know roughly the same amount of theory as I did — which meant we escaped the opening and entered a playable middlegame. Then I did what I’ve been doing far too often lately: I saw a “free pawn” and reluctantly took it with my queen. This, unsurprisingly, was a mistake. My queen became almost trapped — a detail I failed to notice — and after the dust settled, I was a piece down and trading queens. To Andrew’s credit (and possibly because he was fuelled entirely by milk, while I was running on Coors), we ground our way to a draw. I managed to claw back some material and keep a solid pawn structure, but neither of us could make real progress. A fair result.

Board 2 – Malcolm vs Colin Rumsey (½–½)
Malcolm faced Colin Rumsey in a very steady game. When I first checked in, Malcolm looked slightly better — equal material, good structure, calm position. Later, I returned just in time to see them agree a draw in what looked like an extremely even endgame. Classic Malcolm: solid, sensible, and impossible to knock over.

Board 1 – Alan Stockley vs Chris Rumsey (1–0)
All eyes turned to Board 1, where Alan Stockley was battling Chris Rumsey.
Earlier in the evening, Alan appeared slightly ahead. As the game progressed, it tightened into a rook-and-pawn endgame: Alan with three passed pawns, Chris with two connected but non-passed pawns on the opposite side.
Malcolm and I retreated just out of earshot (not that Alan was likely to overhear us) to discuss the position. We both agreed Alan needed to activate his king — Chris’s rook was poised to give a checking attack with a dangerous pawn nearing promotion.
Alan duly made what we thought was the wrong move, offering a rook trade. Chris declined and delivered the exact check we’d feared.
At this moment, former Dragoons Board 1 Boss Maurice had joined the small crowd. He gave me a calm Paul-Douglas-style nod of approval just as I was thinking Alan had completely messed it up.
Then came the move.
Chris’s rook and king were sitting on the same file. Alan calmly pinned the rook, forcing the exchange anyway. With the rooks off, Alan’s three passed pawns were unstoppable. Chris saw it immediately and resigned.
A beautiful endgame finish — and proof that often experience wins out.

Final Result: Thornaby Dragoons 3 – 1 Middlesbrough Bishops
A huge result for the Dragoons. The win lifts us off the bottom of the table and sends the tough Middlesbrough Bishops the other way. A hard-fought match played in good spirit throughout. Well played to Middlesbrough, and a massive well done to the Thornaby team — especially Alan (the new Boss) for that superb endgame, George for starting us off in style, Malcolm for his usual reliability, and Andrew for surviving on nothing but milk.

Neil

Date:27/01/2026  Falcons keep up pressure!

Thornaby Falcons 2.5-1.5 Thornaby Fledglings
Sachin Saggar 0-1 Henry Bishop
Kabir Rao 1-0 Oscar Youdale
Grace Auty 0.5-0.5 Joseph Hartill
Bertie Mellis 1-0 Matthew Hartill

The Falcons kept the E division title race open with a narrow win over the Fledglings.

Bertie and Kabir both said similar things. Their opponents made a good start in the opening, but then blundered a piece. Bertie managed to turn it round from there and get a good attack going. Oscar’s mistake unfortunately lost his queen, so no way back from there.

Sachin was disappointed with his game as he felt he was winning, but Henry found a mate in 2. Henry is certainly not out of place on board 1 though

Grace got down to a Queen and King against a king, but accidentally stalemated at the end.

The Falcons are only 3 points behind the Veterans with 2 games to go. The teams meet on 17th February in what could be a title decider!

Chris

Date:22/01/2026  Veterans close in on title!

Redcar B 1-3 Thornaby Veterans
Kian Simpson 1-0 Alan Bayne
Helen Marsay 0-1 Nick Tadd
Keith Barker-Chapman 0-1 Ian Swales
Sonny Brodrick 0-1 Andy Austen

Andy won quickly on board 4 to keep his 100% record for the season so far.

My Dad felt he played the opening badly and was -1 according to the engine early on, but his opponent missed a way to win a pawn. A knight blunder from his opponent allowed him and his queen came in for the win.

When my Dad left, Alan was a queen for a rook down and he wasn't able to get back from there.

Nick sealed the match victory said his game was the "fight of my life"! He started badly getting in a mess on the queen side going 2 pawns down and not being able to castle. He managed to stabilise and some good swaps put him 2R/N/5P against 2R/B/6P entering the end game. Then his knight and king were just more active in the endgame and Nick promoted first.

Nick said "Everybody had gone home by the time we finished our game! I didn't see much of the others. I was still battling with Helen at a quarter to nine and there was only us and David Baillie there. I put the lights out on my way out!"

The win leaves the Veterans 5 points clear at the top of the E division and it would take a minor miracle for them not to win it now!

Chris

Date:20/01/2026  Bombers crash in top of the table clash!

Thornaby Bombers ½-3½ Darlington C
Dominic Leigh ½-½ Jonathan Sams
Mike Creaney 0-1 Steve Halliday
Steve Rodgers 0-1 Richard Harris
Maurice Olum 0-1 Bob Donner

1st played 2nd in this one and Darlington C made it 6 wins from 7 in the B division this season. Only the mighty Chipmunks have defeated them!

Maurice lost to the dangerous Bob Donner on board 4. Former Darlington player, Dominic was probably slightly ahead if anything, but a draw always looked likely.

Mike said he missed an in-between move which netted a piece for his opponent on move 23, the only likely result occurred 10 moves later!

Steve had no complaints. He said his opponent did not put a foot wrong and in trying to force things in a dead even position, he over-extended and lost a pawn which was key to his position. After which a quick collapse ensued.

Darlington go 3 points clear at the top. The Bombers remain in 2nd, but with 3 other teams within 1 point, the promotion race is wide open!

Date:20/01/2026  Chipmunks Join Promotion Chase!

Thornaby Chipmunks 3-1 Billingham Belasis
Tashil Lankapura 1-0 Darren Donnison
Rhys Orton 0-1 Paul Frank
Ajay Selvan 1-0 Gary Leighton
Josh Clements 1-0 Brian Whitaker

A good win for the Chipmunks that sees them overtake the Challengers into 4th place in the B division and only 2 points off the top. The day started with a bit of drama, with Joseph having to withdraw ill. Fortunately, Josh is a very able replacement!

Once the match actually started, the overall result never really looked in doubt from quite early. Unusually, Ajay was first finished. He got a piece for a pawn early on and then forced it to 2 rooks against 1. Gary had a passed pawn, but once Ajay forced a rook trade it was over.

Rhys went a piece down quite early and Paul was pretty ruthless from there. Rhys was 2 rooks down the last time I looked. I asked him afterwards why he didn’t resign and he said he thought he might as well play on while he was waiting for his lift home to arrive!

Josh went ahead as early as move 4. His unconventional b2, Bb3 opening proved effective. I was talking to Brian afterwards and he said I knew I just had to not move the dark squared bishop and then I did it anyway a move later! This allowed Josh to get the g7 pawn and the h8 rook for his bishop! Brian said he thought about resigning there, but he kept going and it did look like he might get back into it at one point. Josh forced his h and g pawn down to the end though and it was all over from there.

Tashil played a very good game. He was a pawn up, then a piece up and then 2 pieces up. I talked to Darren afterwards and he said Tashil played well throughout, saw everything and was a star of the future!

Chris

Date:20/01/2026  Revenge for Ruthless Dynasties!

Thornaby Dynasties 4-0 Thornaby Juniors
Sam Stevenson 1-0 Faruk Serin
James Mann 1-0 Eva Harris
Geoff Mann 1-0 Isaac Machin
Richard Stevenson 1-0 Kabir Rao

The Juniors got a surprise victory over the Dynasties earlier in the season, but they were in no mood to give anything away in this game getting an emphatic revenge for the previous fixture!

For the third week running I have managed to name the same team just changing Sam and James around on the top two boards.

First finished was myself in a very quick game. Isaac tried to skewer my rook and queen early but I fought away the attack and after forking his king and queen Isaac resigned.

Next was James in a close game. Both traded down to an equal amount of pawns and a rook each however Eva had two panes on the same file. James managed to get a pawn up and guide it up the board with his king. Just before promoting Eva resigned.

On board one was two of the top scorers on the league. After an extremely tight affair Faruk blundered a rook forgetting it wasn’t protected. After Sam took then Faruk resigned.

Last to finish was Richard who got a piece up early and managed to trade down to be left with a rook. Kabir never gave up and was close to getting a stalemate. Richard trapped the king on the b file and when promoted to a queen got the checkmate.

The Dynasties leap frog the Juniors to go third in table! I think the score was a little harsh on the Juniors and the top two boards especially could have went either way. Good luck for the rest of the season.

Geoff

Date:19/01/2026  Tough night for Challengers!

Middlesbrough Knights 3-1 Thornaby Challengers
Paul Perrett 0-1 Chris Swales
Nikhil Bhandari 1-0 Stephen Ollis
Brian Myers 1-0 Phil Wales
Jake Pearson 1-0 Nate Broadbent

Their board 4 was higher rated than our board 1, so this one was always likely to be a tough ask.

Nate got into a good position and had Jake worried. In the end Jake found a nice tactic with pressure on Nate’s king from too many angles. Nate certainly didn’t look out of place on his B division debut though and Jake said he played well. He thought Nate should have exchanged down earlier into an endgame.

I finished soon after at just quarter past 8. I knew Paul played fast, but he was even faster than I expected. He used less than 20 minutes to me almost using an hour! We were done by 8:15, but it felt more like 10 o clock to me as I seemed to spend the whole time on my own move. It was like playing Tashil or Jayden! The actual game was probably one of the best I’ve played. I was always on top, pushed him back and swapped off at the right time for a won endgame. Chess.com agreed, rating my performance at 2450, so overall I was very happy with my own game!

Phil started OK, thought he had a good attack going, but got a pinned piece in the middle game and lost it to a pawn. He thought there was a chance of holding, but Brian had a passed h pawn that proved unstoppable.

The last time I looked Stephen was even on material, but I liked his pieces. They were all on great squares and active. He felt he got into a strong position, but rushed it a bit at the end and let it slip.

Middlesbrough jump over us in the table, but at the halfway stage we’re in a nice position to challenge for promotion still. 4th place and just 1 or 2 points off the promotion spots (depending on other result tomorrow).

Chris

Date:15/01/2026  Cadets win on the road!

Redcar A 1.5-2.5 Thornaby Cadets
Eddie Curphey 1-0 Rhys Orton
Callum Hodgkiss 0.5-0.5 Josh Clements
Kian Simpson 0-1 Jayden Wang
Keith Barker-Chapman 0-1 Zhuoyi Lin

A good win for the Cadets last night in the C division. Redcar's top 2 boards are very strong for this level, so we needed Jayden and Zhuoyi to be alert against their 2 newer opponents! Eddie is up to 1683 rating and has won all 4 of his games this season (Joe McGinnis and Jim Rogers amongst the victims). Callum had 3 wins from 4 before this one. It would certainly be interesting to see how they'd do if Redcar had a team in a higher division.

The win lifts the Cadets up 2 place to 5th in the table. It is all very compact at the halfway stage and 5th is only 3 points off the top. Any team in the division can still make a run at promotion.

Also, thanks to Rhys for being the on the night captain!

Chris

Date:14/01/2026  Good point for Dynasties!

Darlington D 2-2 Thornaby Dynasties
Oscar Nicholson 1478 1-0 James Mann 1411
Mark Turner 1477 0.5-0.5 Sam Stevenson 1442
Harsimran Singh 1475 0-1 Geoff Mann 1420
Charlie Miller 1405 0.5-0.5 Richard Stevenson 1176

I changed the order around this week to give James and Sam a chance on higher boards where they should be on form.

I was first finished getting a point on the board against a really tough opponent. After sacrificing my knight for three pawns and keeping my rooks I managed to take all his pawns leaving him with a knight and two rooks against my rooks and 7 pawns. I managed to push two pawns protected to threaten a queen. My opponent then resigned.

James struggled in his game and was down throughout. His opponent just seemed to be outsmart him. Sometimes we have those nights.

Sam's game was tough and he managed to get up a pawn early on. After trading down to a bishop each, his opponent managed to stop all attacks with his light squared bishop stopping any chance of queening. A good draw for Sam.

Richard played extremely well and managed to be up a rook and a bishop, however his opponent cleverly played successive checks with his queen. Whilst they may have been a way out Richard thought he may blunder his queen so accepted a draw.

Overall a good result against a team higher rated than ourselves, especially on board 4. On another day we may have got the win but still a good result.

Geoff

Date:14/01/2026  Cavaliers Point on Travels!

Billingham Synthonia Chemics 2-2 Thornaby Cavaliers
Steve Clark 0-1 Tashil Lankapura
Andrew Herrity 0-1 Joe McGinnis
Graham Glass 1-0 Toefl Lankapura
Martin Curry 1-0 Tim Hind

I had a decent position against Andrew Herrity on Board 2 after 20-odd moves, which was the first time I checked the other games. Tashil was a pawn down against Steve Clark on 1, Toefl and Tim seemed OK on 3 & 4.

Toefl finished first, having found a way to trap his opponent's queen; sadly he had missed the only possible escape, which led to instant checkmate! 0-1.

Tim was next. In his own words: "Hard fought, good game. Just couldn't find a way through. It came out as a 1500 level game for both of us on chess.com - I'm very happy with that, being rated at 1260!" 0-2

I was now a piece up and confident of victory barring some horrible blunder - not impossible on current form, so I was being careful. Tashil was now 2 pawns down. I won at move 49, when I had two or three different mate threats which could only be delayed by sacrificing pieces to give pointless checks. 1-2

Tashil had a rook and three pawns against a rook and five pawns, which you'd have thought was pretty hopeless. But a closer look at the position showed that he had a passed pawn on the 6th rank, with another pawn and his king in support. Maybe there was a chance of swindling a draw?

What followed was an endgame masterclass. One pawn and the rook were sacrificed to promote the other pawn - queen and pawn against rook and four pawns. Tashil kept the pressure on with checks and careful captures when he was sure there were no dangerous checks coming the other way. Four pawns became three, then two, then one, then none! There were three or four times when I thought he'd gone wrong - just as well he was playing and not me. After something like 60 moves, Steve resigned when his only option was to capture the queen, but lose his rook in the process leaving a position when the remaining pawn was unstoppable. No doubt there were mistakes along the way on both sides, but when it came to the crunch in the endgame Tashil kept his head, played accurately despite the pressure, and delivered the win. WELL DONE YOUNG MAN! 2-2

Joe

Date:13/01/2026  Veterans Extend lead!

Thornaby Destroyers 1-3 Thornaby Veterans
Vikram Rao 0-1 Alan Bayne
Jake Taylor 0-1 Nick Tadd
Joe Vera-Sanso 1-0 Janos Mehes
Daniel Ayre 0-1 Andy Austen
The Destroyers handed out season debuts and put up a god fight against the E division leading Veterans team.

First finished was Andy. He was impressed with Daniel's improvement over the last few months, but a rook blunder eventually let him in for a 5th win in 5 in the E division this season. He continues to be the leading scorer in the division!

Nick was also impressed with his opponent Jake. He said he was under the cosh for 90% of the game, but found a rook sacrifice to open Jake's king and force a win.

Janos had a slight lead, but Joe had a solid looking position. A miscalculation from Janos allowed Joe to get a piece up and he played it pretty ruthlessly from there. A good win for him.

Board 1 was last finished of all the 8 matches tonight. Vikram said he enjoyed his game, maybe we can persuade him to play a bit more at the club! It was a really good game to watch. Alan eventually got a pawn up, but Vikram had threats on f2 and in an open position with both players having a queen, rook and bishop in the middle of the board, anything could have happened. The game was decided when Alan found a check that forced Vikram's king forward and then he was able to skewer it against the queen. Vikram played on for a bit, but it was effectively over from there.

Good to get 3 season debuts in for the Destroyers. The Veterans remain top of the E division and are looking good to seal the title!

Chris

Date:13/01/2026  Points shared in promotion battle!

Thornaby Queens 2-2 Thornaby Falcons
Omi Sibanda 0-1 Kabir Rao
Shanaya Chauhan 1-0 Bertie Mellis
Clair Hartill 0-1 Oscar Youdale
Paulina Roychoudhury 1-0 Oakley Richmond

2nd and 3rd in the E division table played out a good competitive match. The Falcons were missing several players and I had to get 2 "Fledglings" to play on the bottom 2 boards, while Bertie was playing his first game of the season. The Queens were also short of players for this one and Paulina came in for her league debut.

Paulina was first to finish. She managed to get a rook up and with Oakley's king chased into the middle of the board, it was over fairly quickly from there. Paulina has been a solid library player for quite a while now and it was a good league debut for her!

Shanaya made it 2-0 to the Queens. It looked fairly even the first time I looked, but Shanaya had smashed through Bertie's king side the next time and was well ahead.

The Falcons fought back though. I saw the key moment on board 3. Clair took something with a pawn, but unfortunately it was pinned to her queen by a rook and Oscar capitalised. There was still work to do, but that was always likely to be decisive for Oscar. Oscar's starting to get used to longer games now, a good win for him.

Kabir is very much an up and coming new player for the club and it was another good win for him, this time against Omi. He gradually increased his lead with some accurate play and ensured a point for the Falcons. Games in the higher divisions are likely to follow shortly.

A good point for both teams which keeps them in the hunt for promotion.

Chris

Date:12/01/2026  Young Juniors Win!

Middlesbrough Bishops 1-3 Thornaby Juniors
Chris Rumsey 0-1 Josh Clements
Andrew Salter 1-0 Isaac Machin
Andy Thomson 0-1 Shanaya Chauhan
Paul Bruce 0-1 Henry Bishop

A good result from last nights Juniors match. Several players were missing, but we still had 3 current and 1 former Teesside age group champion playing! Undoubtedly they are 4 of our most promising players for their ages, but it was still a good win for our young (even by Juniors standards!) team against 4 adult players. Opposition captain Ray's verdict, "They wiped the floor with us, especially on board 3 and 4!"

At the halfway point in the season, we're 1 point behind Billingham at the top end of the D division table with all to play for going into the second half of the season!

Chris

Date:08/01/2026  First Point for Fledglings!

Redcar B 2-2 Thornaby Fledglings
Keith Barker-Chapman 0-1 Henry Bishop
Helen Marsay 1-0 Joseph Hartill
Sonny Brodrick 0-1 Noah Molloy
Jack Jiang 1-0 Matthew Harthill

A good first point of the season for the Fledglings! It was all done and dusted pretty quickly, I think 19:42 is about the earliest a league match has ever finished!

Henry won first, a very quick attacking win which was over in about five minutes!

Matthew lost to Redcar newcomer Jack a short while after, they'd only played about 10 minutes each at this point.

Next finished was Noah who ensured at least a point with a checkmate against Sonny.

Joseph and Helen took the longest, Joseph resigned when he only had a knight left.

Clair

Date:07/01/2026  Dragoons Dominated!

Thornaby Dragoons 1-3 Billingham Dominators
Neil Sotheby 0-1 Sean Ridgeway
Malcolm Goldspink 1-0 Michael Joynes
George Butterworth 0-1 Bernie Callaghan
Nick Tadd 0-1 Graham Bartram

On Wednesday night we faced the Billingham Dominators, and unfortunately the name turned out to be less of a branding exercise and more of a statement of intent. The final score was 3–1 to Billingham, and while we didn't disgrace ourselves, we were fairly comprehensively reminded that confidence and competence are not the same thing.

I played my usual London-esque setup and, for a while, it worked beautifully. So beautifully, in fact, that I got carried away. I launched my rook, then most of my queenside, and generally went full “attack mode” without noticing one small detail: I had completely paralysed my entire kingside. At some point I realised none of my right-hand pieces had moved, couldn't move, and were essentially spectators to my own demise. They remained there, frozen in horror, until I was mated. Lesson learned: I love being aggressive — perhaps a little too much. Will I stop? Possibly. Will George slow down? Almost certainly not...

George, predictably, finished first. So fast, in fact, that even his opponent commented that he was playing too quickly. George took this as encouragement. A sharp game, lots of speed, lots of confidence — and another reminder that if George ever slows down, it'll be because someone has physically restrained him.

Nick played a really strong game and had Graham under serious pressure, building up what looked like a winning attack and sniffing out mate. Unfortunately, he forgot one crucial detail: Graham still had a bishop, quietly sniping down a long diagonal. That bishop not only neutralised Nick's attack, but then calmly joined in for the kill. Three mates on, Billingham already had the victory.

With us staring down the barrel of a whitewash, Malcolm did what Malcolm always does: stayed calm, stayed precise, and quietly went about his business. He picked up a small advantage, traded pieces methodically, and converted into a winning endgame with passed pawns on both sides of the board. No drama, no panic — just proper chess. A huge well done to Malcolm for saving us from a 4–0 and reminding us what composure looks like.

The only real excitement off the board was Alan Stockley arriving at 7:30pm, having only just seen my email and rushing down in case he was needed. Sadly, he was too late. I very much wish he'd been earlier — he'd have done a better job than me on Board 1. Even Graham from Billingham laughed and asked, “What are you doing on board one?” A fair question.

Final Thoughts A fairly uneventful match by our usual standards — no dodgy venues, no bar-related incidents, no door confusion. I blame the tame, organised layout. We clearly thrive on chaos, noise, and mild danger. Billingham deserved the win. Malcolm and Alan (in spirit) were the heroes of the night. The rest of us will hopefully learn from our mistakes — though history suggests that's far from guaranteed!

Neil

Date:06/01/2026  Bombers Fly to the top!

Thornaby Bombers 3½-½ Middlesbrough Knights
Sam Greig 1-0 Nikhil Bhandari
Dominic Leigh ½-½ Jake Pearson
Steve Rodgers 1-0 Brian Myers
Joe McGinnis 1-0 Ray Pallister

Excellent win for the Bombers in what was by no means an easy match, even though we had a slight advantage in overall ratings.

I was finished first, and for a change it wasn't because I'd blundered the game away. I did make one blunder, but it didn't cost me material - just allowed him to develop his bishop, free up his rook, retain a solid pawn structure and open up the f file for his queen and other rook. Fortunately he blundered back a couple of moves later, leaving a pawn en prise. I spent a fair bit of time looking for the trap, before deciding I might as well take it anyway. It turned out there wasn't one. Things got pretty complicated for a while, and I wasn't entirely happy even when I grabbed a second pawn as I still had a very weak isolated pawn on d3. I managed to keep it defended, won his bishop along the way, and eventually forced the queens off. It was still tricky after that as he had an awkward pin on my bishop, but I got my rooks working together and was able to deliver checkmate on move 40. He could have avoided it, but this would have resulted in all 4 rooks being exchanged leaving bishop and 3 pawns v a single pawn.

At this point the other games seemed roughly even. Steve was a pawn up, Dominic was level and Sam a pawn down. Ten minutes later and things had shifted decisively. Steve had won the exchange as well, Dominic and Jake had drawn and Sam, still a pawn down, had 47 minutes left against Nikhil's 12. Dominic said he had an advantage, but offered the draw knowing it should be enough to clinch the match.

Sam won his pawn back, seemed (to me anyway!) to turn down a chance to win one and/or force an exchange of bishops, then looked like he was going to lose a piece, except I hadn't noticed he'd captured a bishop on the previous move. Nikhil got a pawn to the 7th rank, but couldn't convert it and resigned with about 3 minutes left. Afterwards Sam said he'd had a horrible position and was lucky to win - but time management is an important chess skill as well!

Brian Myers was putting up a fight against Steve, whose clock was also ticking towards single figures, but he eventually managed to get the rooks exchanged; Brian resigned shortly afterwards.

The upshot of all this is that the Bombers are now top of B Division by 1 point from the Challengers, although Darlington C have 2 games in hand against the bottom 2.

Joe

Date:05/01/2026  Challengers held at Hartlepool!

Hartlepool B 2-2 Thornaby Challengers
Dave Kelly 0-1 Paul Douglass
Graham Matthews 0-1 Chris Swales
Alex Kalyviotis 1-0 Phil Wales
Ellis Roebuck 1-0 Iain Mellis

I was finished first, keeping a 100% record in the new lucky T-Shirt! A very short game (less than 30 minutes) where Graham lost a pawn and then missed that my knight was attacking his queen after taking the pawn! He resigned after moving something else and before I had even played my move. When we were chatting afterwards, I did ask Graham if he was worried about the snow and wanted to get home early, but he said he only lived round the corner!

Phil looked to have a reasonable position to me despite being a pawn down, with a nice open h file as compensation. Unfortunately, he managed to get his queen trapped. 1-1

Iain was a bishop and a rook against a queen, but Ellis had a strong pawn on the 6th ranks that ended up being decisive.

Paul was always on the attack against Dave, but was 2 pawns down at one point. Dave defended well for a long time before Paul eventually found a combination that forced mate. That ensured the overall draw for the Challengers.

The Challengers stay top of the B division, but a chance for others to overtake them later in the week.

Date:05/01/2026  Eva saves Chipmunks!

Hartlepool C 2-2 Thornaby Chipmunks
Michael Smalley 0-1 Josh Clements
Peter Harker 1-0 Jayden Wang
Kev Waterman 1-0 Sam Stevenson
Mark Priest 0-1 Eva Harris

Our teams were back in action yesterday with a trip to Hartlepool and I was a good result for our youngsters in the B division. The Hartlepool B and C teams are roughly equal strength and our opponents certainly looked like the favourites on paper. The Chipmunks were missing their entire normal squad (mostly due to mock exams). So this was mostly a Thornaby Cadets C division type team with in-form Sam also coming in from the Dynasties team.

Josh put the Chipmunks 1 up. An excellent win on board 1 over Michael who was runner up in the Cleveland Individual last year and very much a player on the up. Josh was a piece down for 2 pawns when I first looked, but the pawns were forming a formidable looking centre and Michael's knight couldn't get back to safety. Josh was winning anyway towards the end with his 2 pawn advantage, but a skewer on king and rook finished it for sure. This was Josh's 10th win of the season already. At the current rate, he could well be making an Aces debut before the season is out.

Peter equalised for Hartlepool C. Jayden got a bishop trapped quite early and although he created some counter play, he never looked like getting back into it. Peter had 2 very strong looking knights for a lot of the middle game.

Sam was making his B division debut and played a solid game against Kev, but eventually went the exchange down. With the queens off, it looked like an uphill struggle. Sam battled on, but Kev eventually got a pawn too close to the end to stop.

That left Eva needing a win to draw the overall match. It looked bad to me (despite being level on material) with her king uncastled and her rooks doing nothing still in the corners while Mark had all his pieces nicely in play. Eva is always a battler though and she created some threats on the b-file. Mark made the crucial mistake trying to continue his attack and ended up losing a piece for a pawn after exchanging the queens. There was still a bit to do, but a relatively easy endgame conversion for Eva from there.

Date:03/01/2026  Venue Change!

Happy New Year! Just a reminder that our normal venue is closed for cleaning and staff holidays for the first 2 weeks of the year. We have 4 alternative nights at Bar Loco in Stockton on these dates:
Monday January 5th, Tuesday January 6th, Monday January 12th and Tuesday January 13th.
The Mondays will be more like the bar area on a club night. The Tuesdays will be more like the back room as we have league fixtures on these dates:
Tuesday 6th: Bombers V Middlesbrough Knights (B Division)
Tuesday 13th: Destroyers V Veterans and Queens V Falcons (E Division)

For those who haven't been before, the address is:
Cafe Bar Loco
12 Prince Regent Street
Stockton-on-Tees
TS18 1DB

The timings of the nights are the same as normal, 7pm-11pm. We're back in our normal venue on Tuesday 20th.

Thornaby was already back on Saturday and both of our Library sessions will be on this week as normal. Friday (4pm-6pm) at Ingleby Barwick library and Saturday (10am-12pm) at Thornaby Central Library.

Chris