News

Date:23/12/2025  Stephen wins Christmas Rapidplay!

Despite it being only 2 sleeps until Christmas, an impressive 30 people attended our traditional Christmas Rapidplay! They included my Slovakian relatives who are here for Christmas and my Dad. All 3 finished on 2 out of 5, but my nephew Martin beat my brother (his Dad) in one of the rounds, so probably had the bragging rights on the car journey back to Redcar! It was also good to see Kaira back, I was tired just listening to the amount of after school activities she does at the moment, unfortunately hockey on a Tuesday evening is normally one of them! I did make her laugh when I asked "when do you have time to eat?"

Despite former club Rapidplay winners Joseph and Tashil not being able to make this one, the junior challenge was still expected to be strong. Sure enough, going into the last round 5 of the 8 players on the top 4 boards were under 18 with at least one on each board and 7 of the final top 10 were under 18. The juniors signalled their intent in the first round with Sam getting a surprise win over James Urwin and Nate's defeat Ik the 2 results that went against rating.

In the second round, top seed Dominic had his draw offer turned down by Josh who went on to clinically finish the endgame with a forced rook exchange leading to a won pawn ending. Round 3 saw me beat Josh (I seem to be a bogey player for him at the moment, only a matter of time before he wins of these) leaving me, Stephen and Aryan as the only players on 3 points.

Stephen played a good attacking game against me with black in round 4 and forced a mistake when I missed a pawn pin and lost my bishop. It was catastrophic as I then couldn't castle either and he finished it well with an overwhelming attack. Aryan played Andrew who was the only player on 2.5 at this point. They were still playing when I finished, but Aryan had an overwhelming lead at this point.

In the final round, Stephen and Aryan played off in what was the title decider. A solid game early on, but a blunder from Aryan gave Stephen an unassailable lead. Very well done to Stephen, this was no easy field to get through. Many of these junior players already get good results in the league, but they're even better in 15 minutes each games! Stephen has been on the up for 2 years now and playing well in the league again this season. He's one of our most meticulous preparers for games (he certainly played the openings well in this event) and is a big contributor to our WhatsApp "Chess Studies Group". In all honesty, I knew he'd be up there, but I didn't really have him amongst the favourites for this. I thought Dominic, me, James, Aryan or one of the other juniors would win! Bad on me, Stephen has 4/4 on top board in the C division this season and very solid B division results as well, so he was certainly a contender. He will be awarded the trophy at our AGM!

A big shout out to Sam. He came through the pack to finish joint 2nd with Aryan on 4 with a win over me in the last round. I've played him at the library many times before and although it has always been a close game for at least a year now, I do tend to come out on top. In this one, he handled my Sicilian better than he ever has. In the past he has played quite defensively against me, but he went for it this time and had all the pressure. He attacked my knight with a pawn and I moved it back to a nice safe square. It was safe for the knight anyway, unfortunately, he then played a sort of semi-smothered checkmate with his own knight! I'd blocked the only square for my king!

Faruk, Ajay and Jayden all played good events to finish in joint 4th with Dominic on 3.5. Nate and Josh finished in joint 8th on 3. Josh had a tough draw having to play both the top 2 rated played in me and Dominic, but was still on the top few boards throughout. A final round loss to Faruk stopped him finishing in joint 2nd.

Finally, thanks to everyone who played and Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the club!


Chris

Final Results:
Stephen Ollis 5
Aryan Nalawade 4
Sam Stevenson 4
Dominic Leigh 3.5
Faruk Serin 3.5
Ajay Selvan 3.5
Jayden Wang 3.5
Chris Swales 3
Josh Clements 3
Nate Broadbent 3
James Urwin 3
Ik Madueke 3
Jordan Broadbent 3
Andrew Salter 2.5
Alan Stockley 2.5
Jake Taylor 2.5
Malcolm Goldspink 2.5
Zhuoyi Lin 2
Martin Swales 2
Maurice Olum 2
Nick Tadd 2
Ian Swales 2
Rick Swales 2
George Butterworth 2
Isaac Machin 1.5
Grace Auty 1.5
Sachin Saggar 1
Richard Stevenson 1
Kaira Nalawade 1
Connor Broadbent 0

Date:16/12/2025  Juniors impress as Aces beat Dynasties in cup!

Thornaby Aces 15-12.5 Thornaby Dynasties
Francis Batchelor 4 – Geoff Mann 0.5
Paul Douglass 4 – James Mann 0.5
Aryan Nalawade 3 – Sam Stevenson 0
Tashil Lankapura 4 – Richard Stevenson 0
(Handicap +11.5 to Thornaby Dynasties)

After prevailing over Hartlepool A in an evenly matched fixture in the previous round of the Tom Wise Cup, Thornaby Aces had an entirely different challenge against the Thornaby Dynasties who started with a +11.5 handicap. This meant the Aces had to score a heavy victory to progress. Aryan Nalawade came into the Aces team for me, which meant I was spared the anxiety of needing to score around 3.5/4!

Things started well for the Aces with a 4-0 scoreline in the first round, but the second round proved trickier. Geoff scored a creditable draw against Aryan. James also had Tashil in trouble and at one point and was a pawn up, but Tashil was able to pull off a win.

The third round was also 4-0 to the Aces. This meant the Aces needed 2.5 points from the final round to win the match. Tashil was the first to finish, picking up a win against Geoff. Paul's match against Sam was his “most difficult” of the night and Sam outplayed him in the middlegame. Paul said he thought Sam could have won a pawn, but Paul was given a get out of jail card and ended up winning a rook through a fork. Francis beat Richard to secure the win for the Aces.

Aryan's game against James was the last to finish. Aryan won some pawns in the opening, but James had very active pieces and Aryan's queen was in danger of being trapped. At one point I thought the game might end in a repetition with James' bishop chasing Aryan's queen, but Aryan tried to play on given he was ahead in material. However, this ended up backfiring and James emerged up an exchange in an endgame. Aryan wisely put his pawns on the same colour as his bishop and tried to limit James' progress. After some exchanges of pawns, James had a rook against Aryan's bishop and pawn and a draw was agreed. After the game, Francis pointed out there might have been a checkmate for Aryan at some point, but James also had his chances to win the game.

Overall, the Dynasties overperformed their ratings and gave the Aces a bit of a scare. James in particular played very well and didn't get the results his overall performance deserved. On another night James might have won his games against Tashil and Aryan (which would have been quite an achievement!), which would have resulted in the Dynasties winning the match by half a point. Hopefully this experience will give him confidence and spur him on to keep improving.

For the Aces, Francis and Paul continued their excellent form this season, but the MVP was Tashil with 4/4. The Aces will play either Great Ayton A or Billingham Synthonia Synners in the next round.

Dominic

Date:16/12/2025  First Fledglings Fixture Finishes in Frustration!

Thornaby Fledglings 1-3 Thornaby Destroyers
Henry Bishop 0-1 Tim Hind
Noah Mulloy 1-0 Charles Hind
Oscar Youdale 0-1 Jake Taylor
Oakley Richmond 0-1 Kevin Runham

The first ever match for the Fledglings proved a tough one with the Destroyers getting their first win of the season. Board 2-4 were 3 young players from my Billingham South school lunch club who were all part of the team that won the CSC Team Championship in June.

Oscar had a bit of a short straw on board 3 as Jake has stepped up quite a bit over the last few weeks. A first league win for him at his 2nd attempt.

Kevin lost to Oakley last week in the mini-rapidplay and had a bit of trouble getting used to playing with a short time limit on a clock. This was his league debut and the preparation last week coupled with the extra time on the clock helped him out and he came out the winner this time.

Henry lost to Tim quite quickly, not sure what happened, but it was over 30 moves, so both players must have played fast.

Noah prevented the whitewash with an excellent win over Charles. I was playing a game myself in the mini-rapidplay, so didn't hear exactly what happened.

Many players in the CCA initially started playing chess with CSC (Chess in Schools and Communities), including a lot of our own young players. The Fledglings are a very direct example of this with all 4 players still directly benefiting from CSC sessions in schools and libraries now. Apart from myself, Tim Hind and Joe McGinnis, there are many others in the area who have or still do help coach some of our players through CSC. A good excuse to give a shout out to them: Sean Marsh, Catherine Lloyd, Nicola Harrington, Dave Edmunds, Sean Cassidy, Nicky Britton, Paul Weightman and Richard Harris.

The Fledglings team are now part of our Junior pathway within the club, we have 1 team in each of the B-E divisions devoted entirely to junior players: Fledglings, Juniors, Cadets and Chipmunks! With several of our other teams mostly or partly using younger players (notably the Dynasties and the Queens), there are plenty of opportunities for juniors joining our club. Aryan has already come through the pathway and is playing regularly for the Aces team in the A division this season. Several other players are looking likely to join him soon based on recent form. Soon we may need to create an adult pathway to help them break into the top teams instead!

Chris

Date:13/12/2025  New Club Merchandise!

Top Trumps as been around since 1978, but there's never been a pack as exclusive as the latest one: Thornaby Chess Club Top Trumps! Featuring the 32 players who played the most matches for the club last season, the statistics on each card are Approx Age, Rating, 24/25 Games, Teams and Potential. Favourite club legends such as Mike Creaney and Jayden Wang have their own cards. Your very own copy of this very limited edition pack can be purchased by contacting the club secretary!

Date:10/12/2025  New Library Master!

Darlington D 3-1 Thornaby Juniors
Oscar Nicholson 0-1 Josh Clements
Mark Turner 1-0 Eva Harris
Charlie Miller 1-0 Omi Sibanda
John Halliday 1-0 Shanaya Chauhan

Nice comment from Mark the opposition captain who sent me the final result: ”Your youngsters were a credit to your club Chris. 3 very close games. Eva fell for a trap she hadn't seen before but played well after that in an almost hopeless position. The other 3 games could have gone either way from what I saw. Overall, a 3-1 win to us”.

2 games were finished when Eva left:
“My match was over very quickly and I lost - badly! Mark played the Vienna and I took a pawn I have been told before not to take, not sure why I took it... Lost my queen very early on and I played on a bit but my position was just horrific no matter what I did - just one of those games!

Omi then lost a little after me. She said she went to move a piece then realised it was a blunder, but touch move meant she had to move it, and the game escalated from there. I didn't get much of a look at Shanaya or Josh's games but from what I saw, they looked relatively even when I left”.

After Eva left, Shanaya lost and Josh won. A second good win in 2 days for Josh. I believe this win will take him to the rank of “Library Master”, following hot on the heels of Jayden last month. I have an 8-stage certificate system in the library which starts with being able to move the pieces correctly (“Library Novice”). The last 3 are ratings based: “Library Candidate Master” (1250), “Library Master” (1500), “Library Grandmaster” (1750). We have no Grandmaster as yet, there was some debate this week about who would be the first, with Sagar hinting at a possible return to the club in the New Year just for this purpose! I chose the 1750 mark because my own high point was 1740, although on current form I'm playing more like a “Library Novice”! On Saturday, Jayden asked me what happened if he got to 2000 rating. I said, “You have to take over running the library sessions!” He said, “What if I'm busy!”

Unfortunately, Darlington overtake us at the top of the table, but we're still in a good position heading into Christmas. The Juniors tend to start slow and get stronger as the season goes on, so it has still been a good start to the season.

Chris

Date:09/12/2025  Dynasties win again!

Thornaby Dynasties 4-0 Middlesbrough Bishops
Geoff Mann 1-0 Andrew Salter
James Mann 1-0 Paul Bruce
Sam Stevenson 1-0 Colin Rumsey
Rosie Irwin 1-0 Default

For the second game in a row the Dynasties win and put themselves up to 3rd in the table.

The night started with Bishops only supplying 3 players, so unfortunately Rosie did not get a game. She did play in the mini-Rapidplay in the bar area instead and went on to win it, so it still turned out to be a great night for her!

The rest of the games were all finished after just 45 minutes. I did not get to see much of Sam's game but I was told he went up a pawn early and then dominated the game eventually getting the win.

I looked at James' match and noticed after about 5 minutes he was up a bishop and started trading off. James took his time and did not want a repeat when earlier in the season he was up material and blundered checkmate. This time he was more patient and ground his opponent down and mated with two rooks.

My game with Andrew was a repeat of a club championship game I played last year. That was tough as well as tonight. Andrew plays very fast, so having to slow down and think is the key. Andrew had a strong threat with 4 pawns advanced however after I managed to disconnect them, I took them. After trading my last bishop for his last knight, it was a race to queen which I won. Andrew tried his best for a stalemate but eventually I pinned his king and mated him.

We outrated them heavily tonight so a win was not a shock but you still have to go out and win! Onto next week when we play the Aces in the cup. It will be a good test for our young players.

Geoff

Date:09/12/2025  Return of the Matt!

Thornaby Aces 3.5-1.5 Middlesbrough Rooks
Chris Ross 0-1 Nic Tavoularis
Matt Jackman 1-0 Paul Gregory
Paul Douglass 0.5-0.5 Peter Ridsdale
Dominic Leigh 1-0 Paul Perret
Aryan Nalawade 1-0 Jake Pearson

The match ended in a 3.5-1.5 win for us. A great result! Dom, Ayran and Matt were the first 3 finished, all winning before 9pm and securing the overall win! Chris and I went on much longer.

A welcome return to the Aces team for Matt after a few months break. His game was a smooth win netting a vital couple of pawns after an invasion on the queenside. The final position ended up with too much pressure on Paul's kingside.

Dom's game was an opposite castling affair. He got some fantastic pressure on Paul's g and h file which netted the win!

Aryan outplayed Jake in an equally looking endgame, resulting in winning a couple of pawns. Really smooth win again from Aryan. He's playing fantastically well and will end up rising the ranks!!

Chris looked under the cosh for a while. His queenside pawns looked particularly weak, and Nick invaded the dark squares.

Peter Ridsdale and I had a really good fighting game. I missed a Rf2 but still retained a small bit nagging advantage. The endgame had myself with a bishop and 3 pawns versus a rook and pawn. The engine said it was a draw so fair result. We were the last one to finish. A rarity for me these days!

Another vital couple of points! Good end to the calendar year.

Paul

Date:09/12/2025  First loss for Comets!

Thornaby Comets 1.5-2.5 Redcar A
Maurice Olum 0-1 Matthew Allan
Alan Stockley 0-1 Callum Hodgkiss
James Tones ½-½ Stanley Allan
Geoff Howsden 1-0 Helen Marsay

We suffered our first defeat of the season tonight even though our team fought to the bitter end.

Geoff was first finished. His clinical attack was too much for a relative newcomer to chess.

Alan was next to finish. He was unhappy with how he had played against his opponent's French Defence. I didn't see the end of his game but he was a bishop down early doors and seemed to be on the back foot for most of the match.

James had an epic battle with Stanley. The game was very even and could have gone either way but ended with both players having a bishop and three pawns. Neither player could find the winning move and with only a couple of minutes on James's clock, Stanley offered a draw.

Maurice had another marathon game which he conceded when he was down to about 20 seconds. His vulnerable king was under attack from a rook, queen and bishop and even with more time the position was dire. Again, the game could have gone either way and both players said they thoroughly enjoyed it.

We are still top of the table, but can be overtaken by Hartlepool if they win their game in hand. Still, it's a pretty good position heading into Christmas especially as we are frequently playing teams with a higher points rating total.

We have the bye in the next set of fixtures, so quite a wait until our next game. It's at home against the Cadets on 27th January.

Malcolm

Date:09/12/2025  Cadets hold Great Ayton!

Thornaby Cadets 2-2 Great Ayton C
Ajay Selvan 0-1 Andrew French
Jayden Wang 0-1 Suresh Keswani
Josh Clements 1-0 Edward Alden
Eva Harris 1-0 Connor Wilson

A solid draw for the Cadets against a strong Great Ayton line up.

Ajay was first finished. Unusually quickly for him! The opening apparently went wrong and he was always on the defensive, resigning after 22 moves.

Jayden had a tough game on board 2 against Suresh. He was a pawn down fairly early, but kept it close for quite a while. Suresh got on top in the end though and Jayden ended up losing a piece followed by a rook soon after at the end of the game.

Eva played a dominant game against Connor. I was told she was the exchange down at one point, but apparently that was never the case. When I looked, she was 2 pieces and a pawn ahead with the queens off. Not sure why Connor was playing on at this point to be honest and Eva duly converted! A great result for her, I lost to Connor a couple of season a go the only time I've played him in a game that Great Ayton deemed worthy of one of their "Summer lectures"!

Josh was pretty even the first time I looked on board 3, but the position was complicated. Josh obviously got the better of the complications and was 2 pieces ahead next time I went over. Edward had possible mating/perpetual threats, but Josh was able to defend them and ensure the overall match draw.

The Cadets are on 3 points from 5 going into the New Year in 7th place, but the C division is all very close with 3 teams just above them on 4 points and every team looking like it could beat any other team on the day. Just how it should be!

Chris

Date:08/12/2025  Thornaby Extend Lead!

Hartlepool B 1.5-2.5 Thornaby
Ellis Roebuck 0-1 Dominic Leigh
Geoff Howsden 1-0 Malcolm Goldspink
Nick Henderson 0.5-0.5 Nick Tadd
Nick White 0-1 Neil Sotheby

Monday night saw us play Hartlepool B, geographically our closest opponents in the Durham league. As the underdogs and current leaders in the division it was important that we win the last game of the year so we can finish the year strong. This would take careful planning and strategic foresight and proper scheduling organisation to ensure we play the best team possible to keep our lead. Bearing this in mind I checked the fixtures the night before and to my horror realised I had totally forgotten about it and had no team organised.

I quickly emailed the squad and messaged my main team (Dragoons) to see if they could play. The pre-game Chaos:
I needed to somehow get a full team together as I had a prior commitment and couldn't make it myself. The fearless Sachin was first to respond with his standard "IM IN" response which I love, especially at moments like this. Malcolm and Nick were close behind followed by Dominic. Perfect, the team was sorted in minimal time thanks to my perfect planning and the Dragoons not wanting to let a fellow team mate down.

This meant that the slightly under powered Dragoons plus our secret tactical nuke codename 'Dom the Bomb' were ready.
In my absence Malcolm was wearing the captains arm band and we had the following lineup:
Board 1 Dominic Leigh,
Board 2 Malcolm Goldspink,
Board 3, Nick Tadd ,
Board 4, Sachin Sagar.

Opponents:
Ellis "The Deer" Roebuck,
Goff "I'm sure I recognise you from somewhere" Howsden
Nick Henderson and
Nick White.

Only minutes after the scheduled start of the game I received a call from Sachin asking where the venue was as he hadn't realised it was away, this could not possibly have been due to my hastily worded, paniced message the night before! Unfortunately after sending him the postcode I was told that this area was far too dangerous to attend and to count him OUT. (Remember not to pick Sachin for Peterlee!)

So, with me realising this may have had something to do with my terrible organisation I speedily pushed my girlfriend under the bus numbered "Neil's responsibilities" and jumped in my car to brave the dark alleys of Hartlepool.

I was able to follow some flashing blue lights most of the way there which helped me make Hartlepool in record time (maybe Sachin had a point I thought to myself) After parking behind the venue I ran to the venue saying "hi" to a very nice chap in the shadows with a XL bully and an unwashed look. I was obviously only running due to the time pressure.

Eventually getting to my waiting opponent I sat, shook hands and started the clock. I looked around to see Nick and Malcolm off to a good start with equal pieces, good positions and Dom as always taking it nice and steady before going 'ballistic'.

My opponent plays e5 allowing me to play my faithful Scandinavian defence and press the clock, at which point my opponent realises it isn't working correctly. After swapping clocks, pressing and holding every button in every combination and according to Nick "signalling SOS to him in morse code" on the clock we managed to get the time set and started again.

By this point I had managed to make the grand total of two moves and looked over to see how the rest of the team were doing. It still looked pretty even however the distress signal must have distracted poor Nick as he was now a pawn down but still had a nice position.

I played a little fast in my game but still managed to spot a slight mistake from my opponent and quickly took his bishop and then a pawn and we all know what its like after that... another piece then another pawn then it's all over. Well Not when I'm playing, he managed to fight back and pressure me a little but fortunately the lead meant I was able to play a few waiting moves until I was able to take another piece and back rank mate.

While I was switching between optimism and despair I kept glancing over to Nick who I saw even in the game again, just in time for a king and two pawns each end game resulting in a well fought draw.

Malcolm looked pretty even still also but as this was from a distance I missed the same thing he did and he was mated by this "familiar guy" Geoff. I can't say how Malcolm described his performance as Chris censors my posts enough already, but I'm sure you can imagine. (Editor note: Remember to censor Neil's sentence about my censoring!)

This left Dom to make or break the night. It looked very even and with the amount of time left on the clocks I had to return to my responsibilities and hope for the best. Fortunately I didn't have to wait long before I got the good news from Dominic which sealed the win for the team by beating Ellis with three connected passed pawns (and 2 rooks each still) managing to force a win by resignation with minutes to go. Well done Dom and thanks to the full team for getting me out of the (you know what) and securing the top of the table going into Christmas!

Neil

Date:07/12/2025  Thornaby win Durham League Team Rapid Event!

News of a trophy win for Thornaby in the Durham League's Ron Evers Team Rapid event today! Our team of Faruk Serin, Jayden Wang, Amit Chauhan and Shanaya Chauhan came home with victory, well done to all 4! Report from Amit, our captain on the day is below:

Ron Evers Day – Team Report

What a day! The team had an excellent outing at the tournament, playing four competitive rounds against strong opposition.

Round 1
I had a rough start—caught in Durham traffic and then struggling to find parking—which meant Shanaya unfortunately lost her first game on time. I never really recovered from that initial setback. But Jayden came to the rescue. He was on fire right from the start, winning his first game with a textbook endgame performance. With a pawn, bishop, and rook versus a pawn and rook, he calculated with incredible precision, calmly exchanged rooks, and then pushed his pawn with perfect coordination between king and bishop. It was one of the best endgames I've seen him play—possibly his best so far from all the games I've watched at the library and on Tuesday evenings. Faruk shared that he went a piece down early and wasn't able to recover. I had a promising attack with my queen, knight, and two pawns pressing against a castled king, but I ended up trapping my own queen and had to resign.

Round 2
Shanaya bounced back brilliantly, winning with a sharp attacking game. Jayden once again pushed all the way to the end—his game simplified to a king-and-pawn endgame and finished as a draw after a tough fight. I again fell short after going a piece and a pawn down early. Despite trying to complicate the position after exchanges, I couldn't find a way back. Faruk, meanwhile, started smiling by this point—he had realised he was up against much higher-rated players and was bravely absorbing the toughest matchups at Board 1.

Round 3
After a quick lunch, we regrouped. This is when the “handicap system” entered our lives. Faruk and I must have visited the organiser a dozen times trying to understand it—each time returning to the team with a mini-crash course. The conclusion? “We're going for gold!”
Our first strategy meeting happened right before Round 3.
Shanaya secured a draw, playing with the team strategy fully in mind. I'm not entirely sure what happened in Jayden's game, but I had a wild ride: I went up a rook and two pawns, then blundered a rook back. I offered a draw; he refused. Six moves later I won his rook and two more pawns. This time he offered the draw—but I pressed, promoted a pawn, and he resigned with a smile:
“I should have accepted the draw.”
This was definitely my favourite round:)

Round 4 – The Decider
By now we were near the top of the standings. Another trip to the organiser revealed we needed at least a draw to secure the trophy. Cue Strategy Meeting #2: offer draws every 10 moves! Shanaya and Jayden found this hilarious. But then—plot twist. Moments before the round started, we learned that we actually needed at least one win to avoid a tie for first place. So Strategy Meeting #3 began: “March forward—we have nothing to lose!” We were now facing Durham's main team, with an average rating somewhere around the 1800s.
Faruk finished first, taking yet another hit for the team at Board 1. Jayden offered a draw but was turned down. My opponent was extremely solid—I eventually went a knight and a pawn down and was later checkmated.
And then came Shanaya's moment.
Double rooks on the 7th rank. Queen poised for a one-move checkmate. Her opponent tried to check her by capturing her bishop, but it didn't help. He resigned.
Final, crucial win—and with it, the Ron Evers Trophy.

Yes — we brought the Ron Evers Trophy home to Thornaby! Well done team! A special thank-you to Jayden's mum for keeping spirits high and making sure our superstar Jayden stayed cool throughout the day.

Amit

Date:03/12/2025  Bombers into final!

Billingham Belasis 1.5-3.5 Thornaby Bombers
Brian Whitaker 0-1 Joe McGinnis
Gary Leighton 0-1 Phil Wales
David Rosca 1-0 Joseph Machin
Steven Clark 0-1 Maurice Olum
Graham Edwards 0.5-0.5 Rhys Orton

The Bombers defence of the Jeremy Burnett Plate is up and running after a successful trip to play Billingham Belasis this evening:

This was nothing like the team I had intended to field, largely because I hadn't checked the date of the match and it was a whole lot earlier in December than I realised, meaning I was sending out requests for players and fielding "unavailable" replies for most of Monday and Tuesday. However, I managed to identify five good men and true (at least 3 of whom had played matches the previous night), so at least we could put up a show. Sean Cassidy seemingly had similar issues; on arrival he said he certainly had 3 players and was hopeful of the other 2 showing up (which they duly did).

I then delivered another piece of inspired captaincy (along the lines of dropping myself from the semi and final last year). I had not intended to play myself in this match, as I have been playing with engine-like precision of late - not so much Stockfish, more Thomas the Tank Engine. However, since I had to play, I reckoned I was equally likely to blunder against a weaker opponent as a stronger one, so rather than blunder a game I should have won, I thought I might as well blunder one I might have lost anyway, so put myself on Board 1. In principle this should have made life slightly easier for Phil, Joe and Maurice.

I don't know what happened in Rhys' game - he finished first and I didn't know the result. I heard Gary offer Phil a draw at one point, with Phil responding "It looks that way, but I'd like to play on a bit" - good decision, Phil. When I did get a look at the boards, that game was level, Joe was a pawn down and Maurice a pawn up. I was engaged in an intense battle with Brian Whitaker; I think I'd just gone a pawn up at that point. Not too long afterwards, Joe resigned. I assumed the worst from Rhys' game, so thinking Phil was heading for a draw, we seemed to be up against it, with the 3 Blacks possibly getting us out of trouble if Maurice and I could both win - no certainty at that stage. I got to an endgame with 5 pawns v 4, a knight each, and opposite-coloured bishops, which could well have been a theoretical draw; I then found out it didn't matter, as Phil and Maurice had both won, and I'd been unduly pessimistic about Rhys - he'd got a draw, so we had 2.5 on the board and 3 Blacks, which would take us through regardless.

My game went down to the wire; I managed to win a second pawn, then missed a check which lost my passed pawn, then realised I could win another immediately and swap my bishop for his knight in the process. Brian fought on for a bit, but eventually resigned with 2 minutes on his clock to my 4. It felt like a good win, but I haven't analysed it yet. Probably we both missed things as the clocks ticked down in the endgame.

Never mind, we're back in the final!

Joe

Date:02/12/2025  First win for Dynasties!

Thornaby Dragoons 1-3 Thornaby Dynasties
Manuel Lopez 0-1 James Mann
Neil Sotheby 0-1 Sam Stevenson
Amit Chauhan 1-0 Jordan Broadbent
Nick Tadd 0-1 Richard Stevenson

The Dynasties haven't really got going yet this season, but they got their first win in this one. Both teams were missing several players. Neil needed to call on our D division backup players to fill his team and Manuel and Amit played their first games of the season while Nick was called up from the Veterans team to make up the 4.

The Dynasties also had team trouble before the game with a last minute drop out meaning Richard had to step in to play board 4. He turned out to be the hero of the team with a great comeback win against Nick. He was behind almost all the way through, but somehow found a win. This was the last game finished and for most of the night it looked like the overall match result would be a draw.

Earlier the Dynasties top stars Sam and James took care of the top 2 boards, but Amit got a good win over Jordan for the Dynasties on board 3.

Date:02/12/2025  Chipmunks go 4th!

Thornaby Chipmunks 3.5-0.5 Hartlepool B
Tashil Lankapura 1-0 Stephen Roe
Joseph Machin 1-0 Graham Matthews
Jayden Wang 0.5-0.5 Alex Kalyviotis
Josh Clements 1-0 John Marshall

Another good win for the Chipmunks saw them climb to 4th in the table. Josh was finished quickly, his opponent blundered a rook early in the game and decided to resign.

Joseph played 2 good sacrifices to get the win. A great attacking game from him which was fun to play through afterwards!

2-0 up after only about an hour. The other games lasted a lot longer. It was unusual to see Jayden and Tashil playing quite late for them, but then I looked at the clocks and discovered they were both an hour ahead on time!

Stephen made a key mistake under time pressure to allow Tashil the win.

Jayden was the exchange down, but he had a solid base that would have been hard to break through. Alex obviously thought the same and offered a draw with 2 minutes left.

The Chipmunks have only lost to the other 2 Thornaby teams in the B division and could be an outside bet for promotion going into the new year the way things are going!

Date:02/12/2025  Great Escape Steve gains Bombers point!

Thornaby Challengers 2-2 Thornaby Bombers
Paul Douglass 1-0 Dominic Leigh
Phil Wales 0-1 Steve Rodgers
Stephen Ollis 1-0 Mike Creaney
Toefl Lankapura 0-1 Maurice Olum

A top the table all Thornaby clash in the B division saw the top 2 teams face off.

Iain had some issues at work and Toefl stepped in at the last minute for the Challengers. Apparently he blundered a piece early, but Maurice almost immediately blundered it back! Although material was even, Maurice always looked to be in control when I looked. He had a lot of pressure on kingside and that told in the end.

I heard Mike was 2 pawns up, but apparently that was never the case. Stephen had a lot of pressure on the h file which Mike thought he could handle, but it turned out he couldn't. Another good win for Stephen.

Steve R was definitely 2 pawns down, but somehow fought back in the endgame to win. Someone in the club said we should call him Steve McQueen instead!

Paul and Dominic were even as far as I could tell each time I looked. The game ended suddenly with a piece blunder from Dominic.

The draw means Middlesbrough Knights overtake our 2 teams, on board difference, but both teams will head into the new year well in contention for promotion.

Chris

Date:02/12/2025  Veterans extend their lead!

Thornaby Veterans 3-1 Thornaby Queens
Ian Swales 0-1 Eva Harris
Alan Bayne 1-0 Shanaya Chauhan
Janos Mehes 1-0 Clair Hartill
Andy Austen 1-0 Isabelle Little

The Veterans extend their lead at the top of the E division. The overall match was close though. Both Shanaya and Clair certainly had chances in their games.

Andy won quite quickly. Isabelle played the opening better, but got in a mess after taking Andy's h2 pawn with her bishop. Her queen was on h4 and Andy's rook on h1. So despite going a pawn up, the pin caused her a lot of problems from that point on. She then castled king side and the open h file proved disastrous.

Shanaya played well, but a bad knight move lost her key e5 pawn and that allowed Alan in. He got 3 pawns up, but Shanaya had good pressure on his king and went the exchange up. A bad choice of plan that was too slow allowed Alan in with a devastating attack.

My Dad blundered his queen after an even looking game, a good win for Eva as his P rating was 1534 before this game!

Clair seemed to be on top against Janos, but it was a complicated position and she didn't quite manage to press home the advantage.

Another good competitive Thornaby local derby, but experience told in the end!

Chris

Date:27/11/2025  Thornaby go top!

Thornaby 3½-½ Bishop Auckland B
Paul Douglass 1-0 Deborah Edmundson
Dominic Leigh ½-½ Mark Edmundson
Joe McGinnis 1-0 Anthony Brown
Osman Yari 1-0 Ryan Bolton

A top of the table clash in the Durham league gave the expected result considering the relative strength of the two teams on paper. There was a panic before the start when Neil had to drop out hours before the game. I was made captain for the night and Osman was called in to play on board 4 sometime after 5pm!

Paul had done the bulk of the setting up by the time I got there, and proceeded to deliver over the board as well. Osman followed soon after, then Dominic agreed a draw. My situation was reminiscent of a match last year, when I won a piece early on but my opponent made a fight of it, so the match result was already settled by the time I finished.

For possibly the first time in my chess career, I set up an opening trap which my opponent (playing his first-ever competitive match, it should be said) walked right into. Some of you will know I've been experimenting with the Czech Pirc recently, and literally the last thing I did before leaving the house was revise how to use it against the London system. My opponent played the London.... (I won't go into detail in case I come up against a London player in the Club Championship!) I still had a chance to mess it up at the death, but I had already noticed the potential queen-winning trap he set a few moves earlier, and didn't forget it in the meantime.

An important result sees Thornaby overtake Bishop Auckland B to go top!

Joe

Date:26/11/2025  Comets Flying High!

Great Ayton C 1.5-2.5 Thornaby Comets
Jim Rogers 0.5-0.5 Maurice Olum
Edward Alden 0-1 Stephen Ollis
Suresh Keswani 1-0 James Tones
Norman Cole 0-1 Malcolm Goldspink

Another great win for the Comets! Gt Ayton were fielding their strongest team last night and we so nearly got a clean sweep. I had a hard game against a higher rated opponent – his current rating is 1586P. I lost a pawn early and he set up a pawn chain both sides of the board leaving us to fight over the open e file. We both castled queenside and he was in a very secure position until I sacrificed another pawn to open his queenside. I eventually managed a counterattack with my a pawn opening the file and following with a long diagonal with my queen to h2 checking his king. He made the wrong choice by moving the king to b3 rather than blocking. I followed up with rook to a8 leaving mate in 1 and he resigned.

James' game finished just before me and although he lost to a much higher rated player, he was in control for most of the game. A blunder from his queen cost him the game from a leading position. Steve played well on board 2, I watched from the exchange of queens leaving him with an advanced passed pawn.

I watched Maurice's endgame. Maurice had a rook and bishop to Jim's rook and knight. Maurice was more effective positioning his rook, mopping up Jim's pawns but with less than 9 minutes on the clock decided to offer a drawn which would win us the match. Jim played on but after another couple of moves decided a draw was better than a loss.

The Comets continue to set the pace at the top of the C division!

Malcolm

Date:26/11/2025  Emphatic win for Aces!

Billingham Synthonia Synners 0-5 Thornaby Aces
John Garnett 0-1 Chris Ross
Steve Cole 0-1 Francis Batchelor
Sean Cassidy 0-1 Paul Douglass
Paul Frank 0-1 Sam Greig
Gary Leighton 0-1 Aryan Nalawade

Board 1 - Chris (White) got a major kingside attack with all of the dark squares near John's king swamped by his queen, bishop, pawn and Knight. He eventually checkmated John on g6. Even John's dark bishop was miserably stuck on a7. A key defender of the dark squares shut out of the game. A masterly game, which I personally loved watching.

Board 2 - Still going strong when I left but Francis' usual line in the Sicilian resulted in good queenside pressure and left Steve with some weak lawns, which Francis won one and Francis' rooks and bishop looked set up to carve up the rest of the queenside when I left.

Board 3 - My game was another quick affair. Got a pawn storm on the kingside which was slightly halted by Sean's knight. A pretty passive position for black which resulted in me netting a key central pawn, and a lovely bishop on c5 taking away any key squares for his knight. As the game was hotting up with my rooks to penetrating Sean's d file, he dropped his queen. Sad end though the win looked likely.

Board 4 - Sam also played the Sicilian and ground down to the point were Paul dropped a knight on g3 and Sam secured the point by keeping his rooms doubled on c file after Paul tried a desperado sacrifice on Be6. And showing his commitment explained his route back home. Wow, I'm so close to the venue and Sam needs to get a train back home or if he missed that, wait until 2:30am for a Mega bus!!

Board 5 - Aryan arrived a bit late but was second to finish. He had a classy victory securing two connected passed pawns on queenside. Swapped off to a single rook endgame where he just motored those pawns to A6 and B6. Gary realising the futility of trying to defend that position, resigned accordingly

So, this win represents the Aces first win of the season. Bring on the home game against Middlesbrough Rooks!

Paul

Date:26/11/2025  Top board debut win for Jayden!

Billingham Chemics 3-1 Thornaby Cadets
David Rosca 0-1 Jayden Wang
Graham Glass 1-0 Josh Clements
Steven Clark 1-0 Zhuoyi Lin
Martin Curry 1-0 Faruk Serin

All 8 players involved in this match are within 100 of each other on the ratings! A close game was expected and it was delivered, but it didn't go our way this time.

Jayden has been moved up the board order after recent results, but playing on board 1 at this level for the first time made no difference to the result! Jayden continues to be amongst the leading scorers in the division with 3.5/4.

The others didn't fair so well. Faruk suffered his first defeat of the season, he was on 5.5/6 in all competitions going into this game. Zhuoyi always seems to run into the form player on the other team! His opponent Steven is now also on 3.5/4 like Jayden. Graham is a solid player at this level, although Josh is usually pretty deadly against anyone with a true level below 1500. Still a good week for him beating Maurice in the Cleveland Individual on Monday.

The Cadets lie 7th in the table, but it is very close and a couple of wins would put them back in the promotion chasing pack.

Chris

Date:25/11/2025  Santiago wins again!

Thornaby Cavaliers 1.5-2.5 Hartlepool D
Tashil Lankapura 0-1 Alex Kalyviotis
Joe McGinnis 0-1 John Marshall
Santiago Palencia 1-0 John Marsden
Sam Stevenson 0.5-0.5 Graham Marshall

A poor result for the Cavaliers. Tashil blundered a piece early and didn't come back. Joe lost to John Marshall. Sam got a good draw on board 4.

Santiago was the star for the team. He fought back from what seemed to be well behind to finish with a rook and king against a king checkmate. Santiago is one of the joint leading scorers in the C division with 4/4!

The Cavaliers have a bye in the next set of fixtures, so are our first team finished this calendar year. Currently 4th in the table, they're still in a good position to make a promotion challenge next year!

Date:25/11/2025  Narrow win for Falcons!

Thornaby Falcons 2.5-1.5 Thornaby Destroyers
Sachin Saggar 0-1 Osman Yari
James Scott 0.5-0.5 Tim Hind
Isaac Machin 1-0 Charles Hind
Kabir Rao 1-0 Clair Hartill

This one looked to be heading for a draw the first time I looked. The Falcons were well ahead on board 3 and 4 and well behind on 1 and 2. The difference maker was James, who managed to fight back against Tim on his league debut to force a draw. In the endgame, Tim was ahead on pawns, but James had a more active rook and that must have allowed him to equalise.

Osman is playing very well in friendlies in the club now. We may need to talk to the league about an adjusted estimate. No disgrace to Sachin to lose this one.

Isaac and Charles have played recently. Based on their other results and rating, you would expect games between them to be very close. Isaac seems to be able to get on top quickly and similar to their last game he was always on top, material up and chasing Charles' king around!

It was 1.5-1.5 with just board 4 to go. Clair got off to a bad start against Kabir and was always on the defensive. Kabir was making his Falcons debut and he played it well, keeping the pressure on from the start to give the Falcons the overall win.

The win means the Falcons are level on points with the Veterans at the top of the E division!

Chris

Date:25/11/2025  Club Championship Round 3!

The 3rd round of the Club Championship has been completed, full results are below. Some late entries mean there are 52 players taking part now! There weren't too many shock results in this round. Tashil beating Steve and Nick beating Malcolm were probably the most surprising, but not total shocks on current form. Maurice has negotiated the chaos to be the only player on 3/3! Zhuoyi is just behind on 2.5. The 2 will have a showdown on board 1 in round 4!

The full 4th round draw and latest standings are here:
http://www.thornabychessclub.co.uk/ClubChampionship.htm

ROUND 3 RESULTS
Joe McGinnis 0-1 Maurice Olum
Dominic Leigh 0-1 Mike Creaney
Tashil Lankapura 1-0 Steve Rodgers
Phil Wales 0.5-0.5 James Mann
Toefl Lankapura 0-1 Ajay Selvan
Jayden Wang 0-1 Jonathan Feasby
Paul Douglass 1-0 Sachin Saggar
Iain Mellis 1-0 George Butterworth
Zhuoyi Lin 1-0 Alan Stockley
Faruk Serin 1-0 Alan Bayne
Andrew Salter 0-1 Josh Clements
James Tones 1-0 Richard Stevenson
Nick Tadd 1-0 Malcolm Goldspink
Neil Sotheby 1-0 Andy Austen
Clair Hartill 1-0 Amit Chauhan
Shanaya Chauhan 0-1 Omi Sibanda
Henry Bishop 0.5-0.5 Isabelle Little
Joseph Hartill 1-0 Wayne Mulloy
Noah Mulloy 0-1 Sarah Bishop
Matthew Hartill 0-1 Oscar Youdale
Jake Taylor 0-1 Janos Mehes
Oakley Richmond 0-1 Kabir Rao
Daniel Ayre 0-1 James Scott

Date:24/11/2025  Cleveland Individual Round 3!

The 3rd round of the Cleveland Individual was played last night and there are still 3 Thornaby players in the joint lead. The top 3 boards were all draws, so Mike, Steve and me continue to be joint leaders with Graham Matthews from Hartlepool.

2 of the 3 surprise results of the round (on rating anyway) were provided by Thornaby players. Grace came back from being a piece down with some good attacking play to beat Neil while Josh defeated our current club championship leader Maurice with a solid performance. Eventually using his extra pawn to good effect. Josh and Dominic are amongst 6 players who are half a point off the 4 leaders.

Results:
Chris Swales 0.5-0.5 Mike Creaney
Steve Rodgers 0.5-0.5 Graham Matthews
Steve Cole 0.5-0.5 Dominic Leigh
Nic Tavoularis 1-0 Alex Kalyviotis
Josh Clements 1-0 Maurice Olum
Brian Whitaker 0-1 Sean Ridgeway
Eva Harris 0-1 John Marsden
Paul Bruce 0-1 Peter Harker
Nick Tadd 0-1 Malcolm Goldspink
Neil Sotheby 0-1 Grace Auty
Half Point Bye: Sachin Saggar

Standings:
Pos Player Club Rating Score
1st Mike Creaney Thornaby 1726 2.5
= Steve Rodgers Thornaby 1723 2.5
= Chris Swales Thornaby 1713 2.5
= Graham Matthews Hartlepool 1624 2.5
5th Nic Tavoularis Middlesbrough 2224 2
= Steve Cole Billingham Synthonia 1835 2
= Dominic Leigh Thornaby 1771 2
= John Marsden Hartlepool 1449 2
= Josh Clements Thornaby 1370 2
= Sean Ridgeway Billingham Synthonia 1370 2
11th Peter Harker Hartlepool 1641 1.5
= Alex Kalyviotis Hartlepool 1595 1.5
13th Maurice Olum Thornaby 1581 1
= Brian Whitaker Billingham Synthonia 1546 1
= Faruk Serin (G) Thornaby 1378 1
= Malcolm Goldspink Thornaby 1342 1
= Eva Harris Thornaby 1274 1
= Grace Auty Thornaby 1000 1
19th Bernie Callaghan Billingham Synthonia 1376 0.5
= Sachin Saggar Thornaby 1230 0.5
= Alan Bayne Thornaby 1183 0.5
= Nick Tadd Thornaby 1145 0.5
23rd Neil Sotheby Thornaby 1323 0
= George Butterworth (G) Thornaby 1199 0
= Jacob Waller Thornaby 1150 0
= Paul Bruce (G) Middlesbrough 1100 0

Chris

Date:19/11/2025  Challengers go Top!

Billingham Belasis 1.5-2.5 Thornaby Challengers
Brian Whitaker 0-1 Paul Douglass
Stuart McLaughlin 0.5-0.5 Chris Swales
Gary Leighton 0-1 Phil Wales
Graham Bartram 1-0 Iain Mellis

The Challengers go to the top of the B division table, but this one was a bit of a case of falling over the line at the end!

Paul was finished very quickly and only used about 7 minutes of his own time. His favoured line against the French defence looked devastating the first time I looked properly with a protected knight on the 6th rank and both bishops on very good diagonals. Brian had all his pieces on the back row and the 7th row tied up and blocking each other and his king uncastled. It looked like an embarrassment of riches for Paul in all honesty. I'm guessing there were any number of ways to win it at the end! Brian chose to resign rather than see which one Paul would choose!

Iain was finished almost immediately after. A surprise defeat against Graham. It looked like Iain had gone for a sacrifice as Graham's king was in the open, but Iain was a piece down. I saw Iain go for broke with a rook sacrifice, but Graham had enough to hold it.

So less than an hour in it was 1-1, me and Phil's games both barely out of the opening at this point.

I dictated the play in mine, but he always managed to find good defensive or good counter attacking moves. It suddenly got complicated when I got my rooks onto the 7th rank, but then realised I'd given him mating threats if I didn't play carefully. He also had an annoying knight that seemed like it was threatening forks pretty much wherever I moved in my own half of the board! Fortunately at this point, Phil's opponent Gary missed a tactic. Phil was able to take Gary's queen because the pawn he thought was protecting it was pinned by a rook, so he couldn't take back. Resignation followed immediately.

That made my job easier as I knew a draw was enough. I played Qa7 thinking I had him in trouble, but he was able to force the rooks off with a carefully calculated move that I missed and then he came down the board looking for a mating attack. I thought I'd lost it at one point, but I think I always had the moves to force a perpetual check or go material up if he chose not to accept it. This was clearly my best option to make sure of the overall match win. He was probably ahead if anything anyway, although queen and bishop against queen and knight with 4 pawns each was always likely to be a draw in the end.

Chris

Date:18/11/2025  Statement Victory for Chipmunks!

Thornaby Chipmunks 3-1 Darlington C
Aryan Nalawade 0.5-0.5 Jonathan Sams
Tashil Lankapura 0.5-0.5 Liam Bellwood
Joseph Machin 1-0 Stephen Halliday
Rhys Orton 1-0 Carl Stephens

I seem to be saying this a lot at the moment, but another fantastic result for our youngsters! This time for our elite Under 18 team, "the Chipmunks"! Darlington C are probably the strongest C team in the league, were previously on 2 wins out of 2 this season and they had their 2 big guns out on board 1 and 2! We were lower rated on every board and outrated by 500 points across all boards. It didn't make any difference though!

Joseph was finished first with a relatively quick win. He was confident it was going well when I saw him in the bar and had already finished before I'd looked at the boards just over an hour in.

Aryan wasn't long behind. A good draw against a very experienced and dangerous player in Jonathan Sams.

The other 2 games went on much later, until after 10pm. Rhys was a piece up, but with the queens on it didn't look certain. Tashil was in a very interesting game that most of the spectators from both Great Ayton B and Darlington C were watching closely. Tashil did miss a chance to win by moving out of check in a different direction, but then Liam forced a knight and 4 pawns each endgame. I thought Tashil might have a winning advantage, but Liam managed to swap his knight off for a key pawn and give himself 3 connected pawns. Tashil played it well from there to ensure it was at least a draw.

Rhys needed at least half a point to ensure the match win. He looked to be in a winning position anyway with 4 pawns, a knight and a queen against 3 pawns and a queen. There was always a chance Carl could get a perpetual check, but Rhys played it well to close out the match with a 3-1 victory.

An excellent performance from the team with none of our 4 players losing against their higher rated opponents. The current Aces team will need to up their games if they want to keep their places over the next few months and years! Mike described this one as a "statement victory"!

Chris

Date:18/11/2025  Destroyers hold Queens!

Thornaby Destroyers 2-2 Thornaby Queens
Tim Hind 0-1 Omi Sibanda
Osman Yari 1-0 Freya Hind
Charles Hind 1-0 Isabelle Little
Wayne Mulloy 0-1 Shanaya Chauhan

The Queens line up returned with 2 golds and 2 silvers on Saturday at the Thornaby Junior Chess Open, so all were playing well coming into this match. The games were finished quickly in this one. I didn't see a lot!

Wayne said he was "totally outplayed" by Shanaya. Charles told me he likes chess again! Our in-joke where his opinion of chess is always based entirely on the result of his most recent game! Omi managed to get Tim's queen for a great win on board 1 against the previously 100% Tim. Good news for Andy Austen who is now the only player on 3/3 in the E division!

Freya and Osman were last finished with Osman needing to win to tie the overall match. He played it very well and it looks like we've underestimated him in our initial estimate to the league (which was based on 1 week at the club). He did also beat me in a friendly after this game! So certainly no disgrace to Freya for losing this one.

Honours even and the E division remains wide open heading into the second part of the season. Anyone can still win, even the new Fledglings team who will at least be looking to mix things up as the season progresses.

Chris

Date:18/11/2025  Aces slump to defeat!

Thornaby Aces 2-3 Great Ayton B
Francis Batchelor ½-½ Steve Booth
Paul Douglass ½-½ Martin McLoughlin
Dominic Leigh ½-½ Kegan Harrison
Mike Creaney ½-½ Ray Honeybourne
Steve Rodgers 0-1 Suresh Keswani

A disappointing result for the Aces leaves them in the relegation zone of the A division.

Mike and Ray were first finished with the expected draw! The position was completely equal according to Stockfish. Mike's comment "Tony Miles and even Magnus would no doubt have played on and would have been able to squeeze something out of the position, but I have my own style!"

Paul said his game had no pawn hooks and ended up with rooks and queens. It was drawish all the way according to him.

Dominic was a pawn up against Kegan's Smith Morra gambit, but at the expense of development. His extra backward pawn was never very useful and in the end Dominic was happy with a draw.

Steve got off to an uncharacteristically slow start and was well behind on development after 10 moves. Suresh played it well and forced the issue with Steve finding just the right defensive moves for a while. Just when Steve thought there was light at the end of the tunnel, he missed a pawn push that ended the game.

Francis and Steve had another great game on board 1. They were both down to less than a minute at the end. Francis was a bishop and pawn up in the endgame, but Steve's rook was able to hold the position long enough for a draw to be agreed.

All the games were close and the team still have plenty of time to get going this season. The wins will start flowing soon!

Date:17/11/2025  Juniors go through!

Hartlepool D 2-3 Thornaby Juniors
John Marshall 1-0 Zhuoyi Lin
John Marsden 1-0 Josh Clements
Graham Marshall 0-1 Jayden Wang
William Greig 0-1 Faruk Serin
Nick White 0-1 Henry Bishop

Another eye-catching result from our youngsters to move through to the semi-finals of the Under 1500 rating cup. Hartlepool had 3 1400+ players on the top 3 boards including several of last seasons D division winning squad, so certainly took the event seriously. Zhuoyi and Josh should not feel bad losing to the 2 John's who are both on the way up at the moment. Without them, the other 3 would have had harder games instead and we wouldn't have won the match. Zhuoyi has a 100% record as captain so far after 2 tough games, maybe we should make him Aces captain next season!

Jayden was on board 3 on what I knew before the game could be pivotal in this match. Another scalp for Jayden. Graham's not quite in the Brian Myers league, but another very experienced veteran who has been around in the league for years. Certainly more years than Jayden has been alive, I remember playing against him in the 90's for Redcar!

Henry (age 8) was a last minute call up yesterday. He'd played a couple of E division games, but I wasn't totally sure he was ready for this level yet with his so far more illustrious team mates! He is undoubtedly one of our most gifted players for his age though and he got a crucial win on board 5 in this one.

Faruk was last finished. He thought Zhuoyi had drawn, so he only needed a draw to put the Juniors through! It could have been a bit of a disaster, but fortunately he managed to win the game anyway and put us through!

We play our own Comets team in the semi final. The defending champions will certainly not underestimate this team, it should be a great match!

Chris

Date:17/11/2025  Bombers sink to first loss!

Hartlepool B 2½-1½ Thornaby Bombers
Dave Kelly 0-1 Dominic Leigh
Graham Matthews ½-½ Mike Creaney
Alex Kalyviotis 1-0 Steve Rodgers
Ellis Roebuck 1-0 Maurice Olum

Another one we were expected to win out grading our hapless opponents, but it turned out to be a night to forget! A first loss of the season with only Dom emerging with credit. He went a piece up early, but his opponent had a big development lead. A rook sacrifice from his opponent followed, but Dom managed to find the moves to get his king to safety and it was comfortable from there.

I thought I was going to have an early night by winning a piece by 8 o clock, but of course I failed to consider my opponents defence. I still had had an early finish though, but with only half a point to show for it! The other two games I won't comment on to avoid embarrassment. Yes the endings were that painful!

Nevertheless, the Bombers are still top of the B division, but the chasing pack will be a lot closer by the end of the week!

Mike

Date:16/11/2025  Champions!

Despite players coming from all over the North East and other CCA clubs, Thornaby had 7 of the 8 champions in the event yesterday. A fantastic effort from our young players!

Eva, Ajay, Freya, Tashil and Shanaya are proven winners for us, so I was especially pleased for Paulina and Connor.

Paulina finished 3rd overall in the Under 11 section to be the top girl. She would even have been ahead of Jayden if a tie break had been needed! She's never had a lot of self-belief and doesn't enter many events, but she's been one of the top girls at the library for 2-3 years now and plays a very solid game. Hopefully this will be a big confidence boost for her!

Connor has played at Ingleby Barwick library and sometimes Thornaby library for a while now and has been getting better and better. I thought he would do OK in this, but winning the Under 9 section was well beyond my expectations at this stage given the standard of players there. Another player who looks like a great prospect for the club!

Chris

Date:15/11/2025  Thornaby Junior Chess Open Report!

Earlier today, a full house of 54 children took part in the Thornaby Junior Chess Open. It was great to see 12 or more entries in all 4 age categories, so none of the sections needed to be merged. Overall, it was a fantastic event with all of the children completing the full 5 rounds sportingly with no tears or arguments at all throughout the day. A big thank you to the "Village Green Venue" who were again superb hosts, the event ran very smoothly again. All of the children who completed the event were awarded a certificate of participation and a magnetic chess board courtesy of Chess in Schools and Communities (CSC). Well done to all 54!

Thornaby club were of course strongly represented in all 4 age categories, but there were plenty of good players from other clubs in the CCA and beyond. Especially from Durham City and the RGS school in Newcastle. There were also plenty of less experienced players from local schools and players competing in their first ever chess event. A special mention to one of these, Zoe from our library sessions who is only 6 years old and has only recently learnt how the pieces move, but had a really good go and was amongst the last to finish in several rounds. She finished with a very creditable 1.5 pts.

Our Thornaby Queens team dominated in the girls sections. Shanaya was leading the Under 9's throughout, but a last round loss to Joseph Hartill meant she finished joint 1st overall on 4 out of 5, but this was enough to finish ahead of Shivaee Nalawade from Durham City club (who also finished on 4) on countback to be girl's champion. Paulina was a late entry to the Under 11's, but finished 3rd overall in a very strong section to be the girl's champion. Oakley recently joined our club from Billingham South school and she finished as the runner up. Freya finished 5th overall in the Under 14's with 3 out of 5 and this was enough to finish ahead of Isabelle. It was a 1-2-3 for Thornaby in the Under 18's section with new member Grace playing in her first event and finishing 3rd. Eva and Omi met in what proved to be the decisive match in round 3. Eva won against Omi and that was enough to win the title.

Holly Tweddle only recently learnt to play with me at the Village Primary school in Thornaby, but she still managed to finish 3rd of the girls in the Under 9 section. Charlotte Geer from Skelton was 3rd in the Under 11.

The Under 9 section saw surprise early losses for my pre-tournament favourites Henry Bishop and Joseph Hartill which left the competition looking very open. There were some high standard games even in this youngest section and some of the players from outside the area impressed including Vikranth, Shivaee and Arthur who all looked like contenders in the early rounds. Connor Broadbent is likely to follow Dad and brother to the club soon and showed he is probably ready by negotiating the chaos in the field to be one of 4 players to finish on 4. Joseph Hartill recovered from his early setback to join him. The top 2 girls Shanaya and Shivaee joined them on 4, but the overall title went to Connor on the score of beaten tiebreak method. Jacob Metcalfe, Arthur Stainthorpe and Henry Bishop shared 3rd place for the boys with 3 out of 5.

The Under 11 section was a little more predictable, at least at the top spot. Tashil cruised through the field to win 5 out of 5. His toughest contenders were expected to be Jayden and Ethan Lim (from RGS) and these 2 did give Tashil the toughest games. Ethan beat Jayden in the last round to finish 2nd on 4/5. Jayden shared 3rd place with Noah, Paulina and Kit Stainthorpe from RGS.

The Under 14 section was quite open and this was the one that slipped from the Thornaby grasp! A new name to me, John Smith from Durham left a high standard field filled with several quality league players trailing in his wake to finish on 5/5. Sam, George and Marco Balocco from Durham City all finished on 3.5/5. With Zhuoyi, Freya, Stanley Allan from Redcar and Imraan Puri from Durham City all in contention going into the last round.

The Under 18 section was stuffed full of league players and there were tough games on every board throughout. It was a great tournament to watch with the winner only becoming clear in the last few seconds of the last round! Faruk was on board 1 for the first 3 games and was last finished in 3 of the 5 rounds. The long hard games probably took there toll in the end and he faded in the end to finish on 2 points. Nate has improved beyond recognition over the last few months and he took over the running by winning his first 4 games. Ajay drew with Steven Clark in round 2, but kept in touch with the leaders to be on 3.5 going into the last round. In round 4, he only had 10 seconds left on his clock against Faruk when he played the final check mate move! In the last round against Nate, he had even less with only 5 seconds left! Well done to Ajay, he certainly used every minute of his time to get this tournament victory! Leonardo Trevisan travelled down from the Newcastle area to compete and after an early loss to Josh, charged through to finish 3rd on 4/5. Chatting to him afterwards, he plays in the local Newcastle league for my new favourite team name "Forest Hall Penguins"! Even better than "Gosforth Jedi" and "Gosforth Sith"!

Overall it was a great event. Thornaby managed to win 7 of the 8 Championships on offer! More importantly, lots of children had a fun day, made new friends and became better chess players!

A full list of the results and winners is below. A gallery of photos from the event is on an earlier post.

Chris

Prize Winners:

Girls Under 9
1st) Shanaya Chauhan (Thornaby)
2nd) Shivaee Nalawade (Durham City)
3rd) Holly Tweddle (Village Primary)

Boys Under 9
1st) Connor Broadbent (Ingleby Library)
2nd) Joseph Hartill (Thornaby)
3rd=) Jacob Metcalfe, Arthur Stainthorpe (RGS), Henry Bishop (Thornaby)

Girls Under 11
1st) Paulina Roychoudhury (Thornaby Library)
2nd) Oakley Richmond (Billingham South)
3rd) Charlotte Geer (Skelton)

Boys Under 11
1st) Tashil Lankapura (Thornaby)
2nd) Ethan Lim (RGS)
3rd=) Jayden Wang (Thornaby), Kit Stainthorpe (RGS), Noah Mulloy (Billingham South)

Girls Under 14
1st) Freya Hind (Thornaby)
2nd) Isabelle Little (Thornaby)

Boys Under 14
1st) John Smith (Durham)
2nd) Sam Stevenson (Thornaby)
3rd=) George Butterworth (Thornaby), Marco Balocco (Durham City)

Girls Under 18
1st) Eva Harris (Thornaby)
2nd) Omi Sibanda (Thornaby)
3rd) Grace Auty (Thornaby)

Boys Under 18
1st) Ajay Selvan (Thornaby)
2nd) Nate Broadbent (Thornaby)
3rd) Leonardo Trevisan (Forest Hall)


Full Results:

Under 9
4 pts) Connor Broadbent (Ingleby Library), Shanaya Chauhan (Thornaby), Shivaee Nalawade (Durham City), Joseph Hartill (Thornaby)
3 pts) Jacob Metcalfe, Arthur Stainthorpe (RGS), Henry Bishop (Thornaby)
2 pts) Matthew Hartill (Thornaby), Vinnie Blacklock (RGS), Vikranth Vijayshankar (Sunderland), Pip Smith (Village Primary), Holly Tweddle (Village Primary), Leighton Smith (Billingham South)
1.5 pts) Jamie Richmond (Billingham South), Zoe Laranio (Thornaby Library)
1 pt) Violet Leonard (Village Primary)

Under 11
5 pts) Tashil Lankapura (Thornaby)
4 pts) Ethan Lim (RGS)
3 pts) Paulina Roychoudhury (Thornaby Library), Jayden Wang (Thornaby), Kit Stainthorpe (RGS), Noah Mulloy (Billingham South)
2.5 pts) Caleb Lee (Thornaby Library), Oscar Youdale (Billingham South)
2 pts) Asher Ejimofor (Billingham South), Oakley Richmond (Billingham South), Charlotte Geer (Skelton), Keith Barker-Chapman (Redcar)
1 pt) Mehek Malik (Thornaby Library)

Under 14
5 pts) John Smith (Durham)
3.5 pts) Sam Stevenson (Thornaby), George Butterworth (Thornaby), Marco Balocco (Durham City)
3 pts) Freya Hind (Thornaby), Ishaan Puri (RGS)
2.5 pts) Zhuoyi Lin (Thornaby)
2 pts) Stanley Allan (Redcar), Raihan Malik (Thornaby Library)
1 pt) Isabelle Little (Thornaby), Ian Laranio (Thornaby Library), Noah Lee (Thornaby Library)

Under 18
4.5 pts) Ajay Selvan (Thornaby)
4 pts) Nate Broadbent (Thornaby), Leonardo Trevisan (Forest Hall)
3 pts) Josh Clements (Thornaby)
2.5 pts) Steven Clark (Billingham Synthonia), Charles Miller (Darlington), Charles Hind (Thornaby)
2 pts) Faruk Serin (Thornaby), Eva Harris (Thornaby), Omi Sibanda (Thornaby)
1 pt) Tyler Anderson, Grace Auty (Thornaby)

Date:12/11/2025  Thornaby go top!

Peterlee A 1-3 Thornaby
Daniel Turnbull 0-1 Paul Douglass
Stephen Carter 1-0 Chris Swales
Jake Sheard 0-1 Neil Sotheby
Scott Mills 0-1 James Tones

Tonight saw us heading back to the lovely Peterlee where the drinks are cheap and so are the laughs... A scary but lovely group!

The rain was torrential and as designated driver, I was collecting some of the team before heading off (in the wrong direction). A 50/50 chance and I blundered before even getting to the venue. We got there eventually, if a little late where James was waiting for us raring to go after already playing a warmup game with one of the Peterlee guys. A terrible idea in my opinion as they would have a chance to suss him out, but I can't even drive in the right direction so I'm keeping quiet.

Once seated, we all tried to get in the zone. It's a little noisy in there at the start of the night as there are a few locals throwing pints in the main bar area initially. I don't know if there throwing them down their neck or at each other, but neither would be a shock.

Paul Douglas sat opposite Dan Turnbull on board 1 our "sure win". Chris sat adjacent playing Stephen Carter, Chris said they were closely matched during the journey, but I thought he may be playing it cool and it would be another certain win. That just left the two underdogs, James and I on boards 3 / 4. James being the way better player than me should have played board 3 but I (yes, me who can't drive the right direction with the aid of Google maps) thought I had a clever move! Not on the board but in-front of it. I would play the part of 'sacrificial lamb' and put myself on board 3, taking one for the team and praying that by putting James on board 4 he might stand a chance and either get a draw or hopefully a win. With the top two boards being ours and me a guaranteed loss this was my only hope!

My game started with my usual attempt at a London, but 5 moves in I have no idea what it was but looked as tidy as London after Notting Hill Carnival. His queen attacking my open king behind my pawns on the 2nd rank. How on earth can I be this bad so soon I thought to myself. I needed to take a moment so I rang the bell the bar (board 5) for some soothing refreshment. I look around, contemplating my life's decisions and what I could have done so wrong in my life for God to have let Jake do me so badly. I mean, it's going to be mate in less than 10 moves here. This shouldn't really be a surprise really as he's over 200 points higher than me and I am "the lamb" this evening... I sat back at the board and felt the disappointed gazes of my team as they took turns looking at my board.

He can't bring his Queen out that early I told myself as I block with my Queen. Turns out, you can! Especially when you have a Bishop in support throwing in another quick check... well, I managed to swap Queens, bishops and survive, bearly. He then made an error and allowed me back in the game albeit with half the material he had and terrible pawn structure.

I saw a nice tactic and went for it, he missed it and castled then hung a rook. I was no longer feeling like a lamb, I'm now Fantastic Mr Fox! Either the excitement or the Novacaine from my visit to the dentist yesterday had my face tingling. I'd almost brought it back to an even position, so I offered a draw. I don't know if it was the fact he was twice my rating, twice the size of me or because he had twice the pawns I had but he chose to decline so I went to work with my 'smart as a fox' idea. I saw another opportunity when I realised my bishop could move more than one direction and attacked his knight with mine. We swapped knights and then took his second by putting my Bishop in reverse! Well this more than equalled the board, one more mistake from Jake and I was punishing him with my Rook on the 7th rank looking for a mate. We traded pieces down until I was able to gain a passed pawn, promote and ladder mate. No lamb for dinner today Jake!

I finished just in time for my tunnel vision to widen enough for James' opponent to offer his hand out. It took me a while but then as James and his opponent started to discuss the next few moves it became apparent that James had a lovely Bishop on the diagonal preventing the king from escaping and a Queen moving in for the kill on the back rank. It looked quite even early on when I glanced over but a very nice mating pattern and a decisive win in the end for James.

James and I retreated outside to celebrate a little louder.

On our return we were treated to a master class form Paul who was swapping his pieces off and then sacrificing his rook for a bishop as his king was positioned perfectly to allow it to protect the last remaining pawn all the way to promotion. His opponent seeing the futility in this offered his hand, not in marriage (I don't think) just resignation. It was a good set of moves though so maybe we just saw our first over the board proposal!

Chris was playing a much steadier game with lots of pieces still on the board and us within grasp of a whitewash. Chris went to get his regular fix of J2O from the bar but you can't ask for a drink like that in a place like this! He was offered a pint or a punch. "We feed our babies Newcy brown round here mate, we don't do SOFT drinks" they laughed.

Chris returned to board 2 in shame while the rest of the team retired to board 5 to discuss our games and war stories. After a little while we went back to check on Chris. He was ahead on time which made me optimistic but not pieces unfortunately and I can't pretend to know what was going on but Paul gave a disapproving shake of the head with those closed lips and I knew it must be bad. I didn't know why but as it turns out Chris' opponent did. Two moves later and it was all over and Chris resigned.

3-1 to the underdogs tonight so a great night for our Durham league adventure. This takes us top of the table, even if it is with a game in hand.

Neil

Date:12/11/2025  Dynasties through to semis!

Billingham Dominators 1.5-3.5 Thornaby Dynasties
Graham Edwards 0-1 Geoff Mann
Sean Ridgeway 1-0 James Mann
Sean Cooke 0-1 Sam Stevenson
Nicky Britton 0.5-0.5 Richard Stevenson
Nicola Harrington 0-1 Nate Broadbent

On paper we outranked Billingham quite heavily, but this is chess played on a chessboard.

First finished was Nate who quickly beat his opponent. I didn't see much of the game but Richard said he was always ahead from early on.

Next finished was myself. Playing Graham is always tough as he has plenty of traps. Fortunately I managed to stop them and with a rook and 4 pawns against a rook and a single pawn, Graham resigned.

I got up and saw James up a bishop and Sam in a good position and I thought that was that. However, James finished next. He went for a queen trade, but didn't see there was a queen a bishop check mate!

Sam took his time and with a knight and a passed pawn that couldn't be stopped and his opponent resigned.

Last was Richard who really took his time. Played really well to promote a queen and a rook and then right at the end, stalemated his opponent!

The Dynasties are through to the Semi finals of the Knights Shield for the 2nd year running. We look forward to playing the Queens next for a place in the final. One Thornaby team will definitely be there this year!

Geoff

Date:11/11/2025  Hard fought draw for Comets!

Thornaby Comets 2-2 Billingham Chemics
Maurice Olum 1-0 Graham Glass
Stephen Ollis 1-0 David Rosca
Alan Stockley 0-1 Steven Clark
Geoff Howsden 0-1 Martin Curry

We had a very close and hard fought draw against the Chemics tonight. The draw keeps us top of the table.

Geoff was first to finish. After a difficult start where all his Queenside pieces were blocked in, he fought back to what seemed an even position. Martin then launched a Queenside pawn attack, backed up with his Queen and Knight and Geoff eventually resigned,

Steve and Alan both started their endgame at about the same time. Alan seemed to be coping ok, but resigned while I was watching Steve's game. Steve was down early on, but his opponent blundered a tactic which allowed him to get his piece back with a two pawn advantage. He entered the endgame with a Rook apiece, but two pawns and it was an easy convert from there with advancing pawns on the a and h files and David's King stuck in between.

Maurice and Graham had had a marathon game each with pawns on their respective 3rd and 4th ranks, and only the c file open, it lead to a tight game. Graham eventually forced a way through the g and h files and with about 10 minutes on each clock, looked as though he was going to promote. In desperation Maurice checked the King and with a lapse of concentration, Graham blundered allowing a fork on his King and remaining Rook. His resignation gave us the draw.

Our next game is away to Great Ayton C in 2 weeks time.

Malcolm

Date:11/11/2025  Cavaliers on top in local derby!

Thornaby Cadets 1-3 Thornaby Cavaliers
Zhuoyi Lin 0-1 Joe McGinnis
Josh Clements 0-1 Santiago Palencia
Jayden Wang 1-0 Toefl Lankapura
Eva Harris 0-1 Sam Stevenson

Jayden was first finished. Toefl was surprised by how much time he took and said he played very well throughout. A sign of his increasing maturity, it is probably the first time ever that Jayden has used more time than his opponent in the league!

Zhuoyi had a tough game on board 1 against Joe. The first time I looked he was 2 pawns down with the queens off and Joe converted from there.

Josh was disappointed with his result. He was well on top and even Santiago told me Josh had it won. Josh said that Santiago was very good at finding counter play and traps when he was behind and eventually he made something count.

Eva beat Sam at the start of her 5 wins in a row streak before this match, but Sam got his revenge this time. It was very even throughout again this time, but a mistake in the endgame from Eva swapping the last rooks off gave Sam a passed pawn and even though it was 4 pawns each, it was a clear win for Sam from there.

The Cavaliers have been inconsistent so far this season, but Santiago has 3 wins out of 3 and is one of the joint leading scorers in the C division. He found the B division in his debut year a little tough last season, but 1 year of experience makes a big difference and I suspect he will be back there again next season if not before!

All 5 of the youngsters are playing at the Thornaby Junior Chess Open on Saturday and this match will be great preparation for the event!

Chris

Date:11/11/2025  Falcons hold Veterans!

Thornaby Veterans 2-2 Thornaby Falcons
Nick Tadd 0-1 Sachin Saggar
Janos Mehes 0-1 Isaac Machin
Alan Bayne 1-0 Henry Bishop
Andy Austen 1-0 Oakley Richmond

The first time the Veterans have dropped points this season, but they still lead the way in the E division.

Oakley was making her league debut. In fact, her first time both using a clock and recording the moves. She played a good game, but Andy's experience was too much this time. He said she played well though and it lasted an hour and over 30 moves. Andy continues to lead the way in the E division top scorer charts!

Henry enjoyed his game and thought he played well. It went over an hour and lasted 58 moves, so certainly not an easy win for Alan.

Isaac was always on top against Janos from early on. He has always been one of our most talented players for his age (2.5 years ago he beat Tashil to win the Teesside Junior!), but since his move to secondary school in the Summer he has matured into one of our form players this season. 3 wins out of 3 in the league now, he's staked his claim for a regular D division spot.

Sachin has had a tough start to the season on board 1, we know he can do it because he's always done well in our rapid events. Possibly played a bit fast in some games this season, he took his time a little bit more in this one and came out on top against an in form Nick.

The Falcons look good for a possible title challenge, with several players coming into form now and one of our best recent newcomers James joining the team in the next match.

Chris

Date:10/11/2025  Rooks go through!

Stockton Loco 11.5-15 Middlesbrough Rooks
Joe McGinnis (1) - Nic Tavoularis (4)
Maurice Olum (0) - Paul Perrett (4)
Geoff Howsden (0) - Nikhil Bhandari (3)
Malcolm Goldspink (0) - Jake Pearson (4)

A tough outing for our Stockton Loco team in the rapid handicap Tom Wise cup last night. Middlesbrough Rooks are the current league leaders and they showed why, having no trouble overturning our 10.5 handicap lead. Any hopes that they might be more vulnerable in rapid play slowly evaporated and Joe was the lone winner getting a victory over Nikhil in the second round of matches.

Still great experience for our 4 players, getting 4 games against regular A division opponents. Probably none have played against Nic T (the 9 times Cleveland Individual champion!) before either. It was also a first for Maurice, representing his own bar in a competitive match! The opposite captain Jake said he enjoyed the night and praised our new Monday venue.

Date:08/11/2025  New team for Thornaby!

Due to several new members joining the club over the last few weeks, Thornaby will be entering an extra team in the E division for the 2nd phase of the season. "Thornaby Fledglings" will all be Primary school age players and will aim to build on the success of our recent Under 9 Teesside Team Championship winners.

The Fledglings will feature 3 of this team (Shanaya is staying on the Queens team), including Henry Bishop on board 1 as well as several other current and former Teesside age group champions and Gigafinal qualifiers.

The move allows the children to play on the same team with their friends in the club and also frees up space in the Falcons and Destroyers squads for our new players. So it should work well for everyone. The new team could certainly be a frightening prospect for the other E division teams!

Date:04/11/2025  Sam stops whitewash!

Thornaby Dynasties 1-3 Billingham Dominators
Sam Stevenson 1-0 Bernie Callaghan
Charles Hind 0-1 Graham Edwards
Richard Stevenson 0-1 Mike Joynes
Freya Hind 0-1 Paul Scott

A bit out gunned tonight on ratings but at least we got one win. Not sure how everyone's games went,

Charles said he had a good game and his opponent agreed and was full of praise saying Charles played really well. Freya was behind from early on and I was also in a poor position right from the early part of my game with my king getting chased around.

Sam got a couple of pawns up and won from there to prevent the whitewash!

Richard

Date:04/11/2025  Bombers continue to fly!

Thornaby Bombers 3-1 Billingham Belasis
Dominic Leigh 1-0 Darren Donnison
Steve Rodgers 1-0 Paul Frank
Mike Creaney 1-0 Brian Whitaker
Maurice Olum 0-1 Gary Leighton

Another match that we were favourite's for and duly delivered!

Dom finally got his act together and ended a long series of draws. Steve as usual with his new patient style took until a few minutes before last orders to end Paul's resistance. I played in my usual attacking style and as I frequently say checkmate ends the game! Maurice had things but unfortunately his opponent had more things!

The Bombers lead the way with 3 wins out of 3 so far in the B division!

Mike

Date:04/11/2025  Honours even in top V bottom clash!

Thornaby Juniors 2-2 Thornaby Dragoons
Faruk Serin 1-0 Malcolm Goldspink
Josh Clements 1-0 Neil Sotheby
Omi Sibanda 0-1 Janos Mehes
Isabelle Little 0-1 George Butterworth

Tonight saw the mighty Dragoons travel all the way to one of our furthest away fixtures of the season: 3.7 metres across the Thornaby map, to face the top-of-the-table terror squad — Thornaby Juniors.
Distance between clubs = tiny.
Distance between league positions = astronomical.
The Juniors rolled out:
• Board 1: Faruk “The Fonz”
• Board 2: Josh “Equal parts cool with his fresh hair cut”
• Board 3: Omi “Tactical Genius”
• Board 4: Isabelle “Chatterbox Assassin” standing in for Jacob.
Meanwhile, the Dragoons attempted to assemble a squad.
But apparently half the Dragoons were busy having some kind of party they forgot to invite their captain to. Most players “had prior commitments.”
Alan slipped up and admitted he was going to London, which sounded suspiciously like “the venue for the secret party.”

The Games

Board 2: Neil vs Josh — Loss
I struggled. Then I entered the game into chess.com afterwards…
…and realised I messed up not only in the game, but even earlier — in my score sheet.
ERRORS BEFORE THE ERRORS.
I stood no chance.
Well played Josh — and yes, I did the sighing this week in Sachin's absence.

Board 4: George vs Isabelle — Win
At one point I heard Isabelle asking George what you write for notation when a pawn promotes.
This worried me…
Until I turned round and saw George doing the promoting.
A few moves later — a clean ladder mate.
Well done George!
And well done Isabelle, thrown onto Board 4 last minute and still held her own bravely for 58 moves.

Board 3: Janos vs Omi — Win
Janos (dragged in with 3 hours' notice) was struggling vs Omi… not with the chess, but with the electronic clock.
Omi, according to Janos, is a “very clever girl”.
So clever she even offered Janos a draw while HE was winning considerably.
Janos laughed this off, declined politely, and converted like a man who's been checkmating since before the internet existed.

Board 1: Faruk vs Malcolm — Loss
This was the heavyweight bout. Malcolm vs The Fonz.
Malcolm dropped a pawn early — and against the Juniors, there is no such thing as “just a small mistake”.
Faruk, fresh from slaying giants in Durham, closed it out clinically.

Final Result: 2 – 2 DRAW
We're bottom.
They're top.
We got a draw.
That's basically a Stella Artois level premium result in my book.
Well done team.
Next week — we hunt for the first win of the Cleveland season while the Juniors “terror squad” still top the table!

Neil

Date:04/11/2025  Challengers in Convincing Win!

Thornaby Challengers 3.5-0.5 Hartlepool C
Paul Douglass 1-0 Peter Harker
James Urwin 1-0 Kev Waterman
Phil Wales 1-0 Ashton Woodward
Stephen Ollis 0.5-0.5 John Marsden

A convincing win for the Challengers in the B division. Hartlepool's B and C teams are roughly equal in strength, so this was by no means an easy game.

An unusually quick win for Phil on board 3. I saw Ashton afterwards and said something like Phil's a very solid player and hard to beat. He said it was the opposite and Phil played a very aggressive attacking type game and he couldn't stop him!

Peter and Paul played a wild looking game on board 1. Peter went all out with a queen sacrifice that almost paid off, but Paul's bishop on d3 proved to be his MVP and managed to cover the key moves Peter needed to make it count.

Good to see James back! The last time I looked, he had Kev's king looking a bit exposed with James' queen and 2 knights all taking up very dangerous positions nearby. I didn't see exactly how it ended, but it wasn't long after!

Stephen was last finished. It sounded similar to recent games players from our club have had against John. Stephen felt he was on top, but couldn't find any decisive advantage.

A good win that leaves us "challenging" near the top of the B division!

Chris

Date:03/11/2025  Defending Champions through!

Stockton Loco ½-4½ Thornaby Comets
Janos Mehes 0-1 Bill March
Osman Yari ½-½ James Tones
Jake Taylor 0-1 Neil Sotheby
Kabir Rao 0-1 Malcolm Goldspink
Oscar Youdale 0-1 Nick Tadd

The result from tonight's match does not reflect the closeness of some of the games, but the defending champions progressed in the Knight Shield (for under 1500 rated played).

My young opponent had me struggling for most of the game after I blundered a knight early on. Perhaps he was getting tired or panicked at my desperate counter-attack, but he moved the wrong pawn and gifted me a checkmate. Nick said his opponent played very well and it wasn't an easy game. He was first finished and said he was quite worried when he viewed the other boards.

Neil also said he had a tough game, but his experience showed in the end and after forcing Jake to crowd all his pieces in the centre to defend his king, he calmly picked them off piece by piece. That gave us the win and shortly afterwards James agreed a draw with Osman after a very even game.

Janos battled on to the end with his king and one pawn versus Bill's two rooks, Knight and five pawns! Bill said he would never have guessed Janus's grading to be under 1200, as he had much the better of the opening and had a clearly better position until he blundered a couple of pawns.

We did what was necessary and got the win. The semi-final will be played in February against the winners of Hartlepool D V Thornaby Juniors.

Malcolm

Date:03/11/2025  Tashil inspires convincing Aces cup win!

Hartlepool A 4.5-11.5 Thornaby Aces
Takaedza Chipanga (3) – Francis Batchelor (3.5)
Bernie Price (1) – Paul Douglass (3)
Michael Smalley (0.5) – Dominic Leigh (2.5)
Ashton Woodward (0) – Tashil Lankapura (2.5)

Thornaby Aces started their Tom Wise Memorial Cup campaign with a tricky away trip to Hartlepool to play their A team. We were expecting a difficult match and put out a strong side with Francis Batchelor, Paul Douglass, captain Dominic Leigh and Tashil Lankapura - who was making his debut for the Aces.

Hartlepool had recently registered a very strong player called Taka Chipanga, who was previously rated at around 2100 ECF and had represented Zimbabwe in a Chess Olympiad 20 years ago. When we saw his name on Hartlepool's team sheet in his first Cleveland match, we thought we'd have our work cut out. Their team also featured Bernie Price, Michael Smalley and improving youngster Ashton Woodward. The Aces had a slight rating advantage overall, but not enough for a handicap to be in place.

The first round of rapidplay games saw the Aces sweep the board and go into a 4-0 lead - with Francis beating Taka on board 1 to continue his excellent form from the recent Scarborough Congress.

The second round of games saw Tashil pull off an upset win against Cleveland league veteran Bernie Price. Francis and Paul also scored wins against Michael and Ashton. I got quite a big advantage in my game against Taka, but he managed to turn it around when I got short on time and got Hartlepool's first point on the board. At this point it was 7-1 to the Aces.

I managed to bounce back in round 3 and beat Ashton. Francis and Tashil drew their games against Bernie and Michael. Paul lost against Taka, although he might have had the upper hand earlier in the game. So after the third round, the Aces had racked up a 9-3 lead - meaning we'd already won the match with a round to spare.

The final round saw Taka pick up a win against Tashil to take his individual total to 3/4 on the night. Francis and Paul won their games and I drew with Bernie.

The final score was an emphatic 11.5-4.5 win for the Aces. Well done to Francis who led the line superbly on board 1 with 3.5/4 on the night. Paul also continued his excellent form with 3/4 in his games. Tashil and I both scored 2.5/4 with 2 wins, 1 draw and 1 loss each. Overall a very strong performance by the whole team - and huge credit to Tashil for showing he can compete at a high level. Onwards to the second round of the cup we go!

Dominic

Date:03/11/2025  Amazing Chipmunks!

Middlesbrough Knights 2-2 Thornaby Chipmunks
(1835) Paul Perrett 1-0 Rhys Orton (1514)
(1795) John Pallister 1-0 Zhuoyi Lin (1414)
(1736) Brian Myers 0-1 Jayden Wang (1370)
(1606) Ray Pallister 0-1 Eva Harris (1274)

Chris: With 5 players unavailable including my top 4 rated players, on paper the Chipmunks appeared to be totally outgunned in this one and in all honesty I would have been delighted with any score that wasn't 4-0! So this represents an amazing result for our youngsters against several players who were part of the team that walked this division last season. Well played all 4, brilliant result! Report from acting captain Rhys is below, it sounds like even the 2 losses were good close games:

My game was back and forth but still of really high quality, but I ended up losing after a mistake in the endgame due to time pressure. A very fun game overall.

I didn't see the others games too much but I remember a bit:

Zhuoyi's game looked as though he was winning but lost it in a complicated position where he had a pawn on the 2nd rank that he couldn't promote.

Jayden was ahead most the game and converted to a win. A fantastic result against a very experienced player.

Eva had more pawns than her opponent in the mid game and won which is all I remember. Some revenge for Eva who lost her first ever league game against Ray's granddaughter Yasmin!

Rhys

Date:01/11/2025  Massive rating boost for Eva!

Members of the club will know that the first of a month is new rating list day for me. I had a shock this morning to see that Eva had gone up by over 100 points in the last month! She's played 4 and won 4 in October, all against higher rated players, so it is totally deserved. The increase puts her in the top 10 (at 6th) on the national list of most improved players in the last month!

I'm not surprised by the increase, just the short time it was achieved in! Certainly the biggest monthly increase anyone in the club has had while I've been here. Over the Summer, she narrowly lost to Mike Creaney in the Summer Series with Mike down to his last minute and also gave me a tough game in the Cleveland Individual, so I did expect a big increase this season. Even before those game, I always felt her level of play was significantly higher than 1200's. She is a great role model who learns from losses and always listens to and uses advice from more experienced players (like me and Mike!).

This increase also makes her the highest rated female player in the whole of the CCA. Eva is passionate about getting more girls playing chess and she volunteered to captain our Thornaby Queens team this season. The first time we've had an under 18 captaining a team and also the first on the club committee.

A measure of how well our youngsters have started the season is that we actually have 2 other juniors in the national top 20! Josh is 16th, up 80 points. Faruk is 18th, up 78. No wonder our Junior team currently sit at the top of the D division! Eva's fellow Thornaby Queen Freya also just makes the top 100 at 97th!

To put these numbers into context, the most improved player in the club last season (over the full 12 months) was Jayden (up 179) with Tashil and George the only other players who went up by more than 100. All 3 will be knocking on the door of our B division teams now and if they continue improving at this rate, who knows, maybe even higher!

The full national list of the most improved players is here:
https://rating.englishchess.org.uk/players/top-players?env=N&domain=S&age_class=none&age_limit=none&age_limit=none&age_limit=none&age_col=age31dec&gender=&nation=ENG&type=improvement

Chris

Date:29/10/2025  Thornaby beat door defence!

Peterlee B 1.5-2.5 Thornaby
Logan Richardson 1-0 Joe McGinnis
Paul Noble 0-1 Neil Sotheby
Ian Hunter 0.5-0.5 Jordan Broadbent
Andrew Moore 0-1 Nate Broadbent

Our latest Durham League adventure rolled on with an away trip to the mighty Peterlee — and, as tradition demands, it began in utter disarray. With only me confirmed the day before, a desperate last-minute grovel around our expansive pool of players somehow produced a full team. I went with Joe on top board, Jordan and Nate Broadbent (our new father-and-son combo) on 3 & 4, and me foolishly/optimistically on 2.

Arrival – The Door Defence
Joe and I arrived early and immediately lost our first battle: entry to the venue. The sign outside said 7:30 start, which worried us, but the real problem was the door. We pushed. We shoved. We strategised. We were beaten… by a “PULL” sign. Not the brightest start.

While wrestling with the mechanics of modern architecture, we were greeted by two young locals — the kind of lads who looked like they'd just finished a long day of “entrepreneurial activity” and were unwinding with a balanced mix of lager and something Eric Clapton may have made a song about. They didn't say much, just gave us that kind of intense stare that makes you wish you'd parked closer to the door. Eventually, we gained entry, only to find the Peterlee team had cunningly arranged the room so that they got the comfy chairs. Subtle psychological warfare — I like it!

Board 1 – Joe vs Logan Richardson (0–1)
Joe was first to finish. I knew it wasn't going well when I heard the words, “I have nothing,” followed by resignation. I had a long look at the board, trying to understand what went wrong — but honestly, it was more complicated than the door. His opponent tried to explain, but I nodded like a man who understood quantum physics and went back to my game. Joe told me later he got on the back foot and was under too much pressure and lack of tempo from his opponents fianchettoed bishop staring at his King.

Board 2 – Neil vs Paul Noble (1–0)
My game started steady. I glanced to my right — Jordan was smiling confidently, Nate looked solid — all was well. Then, in a tragic display of synchronicity, I hung a knight and Jordan immediately blundered something in solidarity. Classic Thornaby teamwork.

I gritted my teeth and carried on. Then, fortune struck — my opponent blundered (or heroically sacrificed, depending who you ask) a bishop. I spotted a sneaky opportunity: a queen sacrifice that led to forced mate. The kind of move you see in tactics books but assume normal people never get. Like en passant, when it's there, you have to do it. I slammed my queen down, he took it instantly, and I leaned back, calmly writing out the next three moves with a neat little # at the end. A few checks later, he smiled, shook my hand, and I allowed myself a celebratory sip of my “energy drink” (Coors Light).

Board 3 – Jordan vs Ian Hunter (½–½)
Jordan, who had been in control early on, decided discretion was the better part of valour and accepted a draw. A sensible decision — no need to risk a perfectly good result for the thrill of a glorious collapse.

Board 4 – Nate vs Andrew Moore (1–0)
Nate was the last to finish, and by this point half the room had gathered around. He calmly promoted a pawn to a queen against a lone king. The only danger was stalemate, but he handled it like a seasoned pro — precise, patient, and cool as you like. Checkmate soon followed, and Nate beamed like he'd just won the World Championship. His first Durham League win — brilliant stuff!

Final Score: Peterlee B 1½ – 2½ Thornaby
A fantastic away win and a big moment for the new lads. Joe's sacrificial door work, Jordan's solid draw, Nate's clinical finish, and my accidental brilliancy combined to give us our first victory of the season — taking us, temporarily, top of the table. Sure, it's only until the other teams finish their second games… but for one glorious moment, Thornaby ruled Durham. A great night all round: new faces, new blunders, old beer, and a door that still won.

Date:29/10/2025  Eagles come close at Billingham!

Billingham Synners 14-13.5 Thornaby Eagles
Steve Cole (3.5) - Eva Harris (0)
John Garett (3.5) - Sachin Saggar (0)
Sean Cassidy (3) - George Butterworth (0.5)
Andrew Herrity (4) - Nick Tadd (1.5)

Tom Wise Rapid tonight saw our Eagles team travel to Billingham. It was a big mismatch in ratings and that meant an 11.5 start for us on the handicap system. So despite it being 14-2 on the night, there was only half point in it after the handicap! We entered some of our lower rated good rapid players on the same team with exactly this in mind, but they couldn't quite find the extra half a point they needed against what was pretty much Billingham's normal A team in the league.

A special mention for Nick who managed 1.5 points out of 4 games with 2 great results! A draw against John Garnett and a win over Sean Cassidy! While George managed a draw with Steve Cole. Our opponents must have been worried after round 2 which had the 2 draws and round 3 when Nick beat Sean! Billingham had to win 4-0 in the last round to progress, but they managed it. Well done to them! Also, special thanks to Eva for being the on the night captain and getting her head round the new format before the game.

A good effort from everyone on our team, hopefully it was some valuable experience against some top level players from another club and they were only half a point off a shock result!

Chris

Date:29/10/2025  Makeshift Aces hold Darlington!

Darlington B 2.5-2.5 Thornaby Aces
Luke Owen 0.5-0.5 Paul Douglass
Nick Webb 1-0 Dominic Leigh
Liam Bellwood 0.5-0.5 Steve Rodgers
Richard Harris 0.5-0.5 Jonathan Feasby
James Garner 0-1 Iain Mellis

A great result after a bit of a nightmare getting a team out for this one with 2 players dropping out through illness on the day of the game! Darlington's 2 A division teams are quite evenly divided and their so-called B team actually finished 3rd in the league last season and beat their own A team a few weeks ago!

A big thank you to Jonathan for stepping in in the morning and Iain for stepping in almost literally at the last minute after a frantic phone round! Great performances from the 2 to get 1.5 points on the lower 2 boards. A good advert for our strength in depth, I don't think many other clubs in the league could put their 26th ranked player in on board 5 in the A division and expect to get a win!

Iain was first finished (early enough to remember to get a photo of the other 4 boards!). He played an aggressive game and eventually forced a mistake winning a rook. With the queens already off, his opponent had little to play for and resigned.

Steve's game looked he had much the better of the draw. Domination of the e-file, particularly on e6. And queen / bishop combination on g6 looked a possibility until Liam having to play Kf7 to rebuff that potential sac.

Dominic eventually succumbed to defeat against his good friend Nick. Dominic had a kingside attack, but Nick's better centre pawn mass prevailed.

At the end, draws were agreed on boards 1 & 4 when all players had limited time left. Paul's game was a pretty closed affair. A closed sicilian, so perhaps that's why! He played a line with c3, but it weakened his d3 pawn and he was constantly needing to defend that. That's where the game centred. Towards the end Paul made some kingside pawn moves which helped weaken Luke's king and some possibilities of sacrificing on e5, but as time was getting precarious a draw was agreed. Paul's verdict "A good tough battle!"

Overall a very good result given the last minute nature of the team and the rating differences!

Date:28/10/2025  Dragoons fall to Darlington!

Thornaby Dragoons 1-3 Darlington D
Alex Jamieson 0-1 Osmar Nicholson
Ifeanyi Madueke 1-0 Mark Turner
Neil Sotheby 0-1 Charlie Miller
Sachin Saggar 0-1 John Halliday

Last night the Dragoons returned to action — well, three Dragoons and one returning university student. With our match clashing with a Comets fixture, the squad was thinner than my endgame theory, but thankfully Alex returned from Uni and was launched straight onto Board 1. Darlington rolled out Osmar Nicholson, Mark Turner, Charlie Miller, and John Halliday.

Board 4 – Sachin vs John Halliday (0–1)
Sachin was first to the gallows, accompanied — as tradition now demands — by an audible sigh of doom. I looked over to see him lining up what looked like a crushing queen attack — ready to win a rook and sweep the board. Then came another sigh, deeper and darker… Turns out John had calculated the exact same tactic but better, and scooped up Sachin's pieces like they were pick'n'mix. Resignation followed swiftly.

Board 2 – Ifeanyi vs Mark Turner (1–0)
Finally, some joy! Mark was a piece up but got overeager, and Ifeanyi pounced. One mistake by Mark later and the board collapsed in Ifeanyis favour and he converted cleanly. Our lone hero of the night — well played!

Board 3 – Neil vs Charlie Miller (0–1)
My game was… educational. I spent the opening playing an unusually solid, defensive structure — so out of character I nearly confused myself. Charlie set a cute trap: a “free pawn” bait that would fork my king and queen. I smugly spotted it and thought: Not today, sunshine. I spent time calculating a brilliant counterattack — and in executing this stroke of genius, I clean forgot that my queen was ALREADY under attack. Oops. Queen gone → hope gone → handshake.

Board 1 – Alex vs Osmar Nicholson (0–1)
Alex held out longest. Despite being a couple of points down, he was defending bravely with an exposed king. Then Osmar blundered a bishop — and we all sat up. Alex took it (as any sane person would), only for Osmar to reveal the trap: check → fork → resignation incoming. Brutal.

Final Score: Darlington D 3 – 1 Thornaby Dragoons
That puts us rock bottom of the table. No bagpipes to blame this week, just our own hands. Not the fairytale start — but it was on-brand for the Dragoons: chaotic, dramatic, loud sighs, and a single heroic win to stop the clean sweep. Onward. There's only one direction a team at the bottom can go… (Well, unless someone brings bagpipes.)

Neil

CS Ik is the most successful photo dodger in club history! So instead, we have to make do with captain Neil!

Date:28/10/2025  Comets go top!

Thornaby Cavaliers 1-3 Thornaby Comets
Joe McGinnis 0-1 Stephen Ollis
Jonathan Feasby 0-1 Alan Stockley
Santiago Palencia 1-0 Malcolm Goldspink
James Mann 0-1 James Tones

A great win for the Comets tonight against a much higher rated team!

James was first to finish in the battle of the James'. His game was a surprisingly straight forward Caro-Kann win, which James is very familiar with. He ended up in a good position applying pressure with rook and queen on the 2nd rank. With limited options to defend a mate in one, James M made a mistake and lost his queen and bishop and the game was over shortly afterwards.

My game finished second. It was close for a while, but Santiago played well and was too strong in the end.

Steve had multiple threats attacking Joe's King. Joe's Queen was in a poor position and ineffective and after Steve pinned a pawn and captured a Knight, Joe resigned.

Alan entered the endgame equal on pawns with a Rook apiece, Alan with a Bishop and Jonathan a Knight. Alan offered a draw , which was declined, and promptly captured the Knight. A few moves later he lost his bishop and Jonathan forced an exchange of Rooks. This left two pawns each but Jonathan held back with his King enabling Alan to place his King in a dominant position and Jonathan resigned.

This win puts us top of the C Division. Well done everyone, it's a brilliant start!!

Malcolm

Date:27/10/2025  Cadets Defy Ratings!

Hartlepool D 1-3 Thornaby Cadets
Alex Costello 0.5-0.5 Zhuoyi Lin
Mark Priest 0-1 Josh Clements
John Marshall 0-1 Jayden Wang
John Marsden 0.5-0.5 Faruk Serin

Our top board was lower rated than their board 4, but it made no difference to our youngsters and they achieved a fantastic result at Hartlepool on Monday! The opposing captain John initially messaged me the result and he said our team played “very well”!

Acting captain Zhuoyi said he was getting tired towards the end and accepted the draw. It was 2-1 to us at this point with just Josh left playing. He took us over the line with an excellent win over Mark.

A great first win of the season for the Cadets who all played their part. There were certainly no easy games on the opposing team. I took 40 moves to get any sort of advantage over John Marsden in the Cleveland Individual last week and he beat Joe McGinnis in the league the following night. He was on board 4 in this one, so that says something about the strength of the rest of the team!

Chris

Date:26/10/2025  Another title for Jayden!

4 players from the club travelled to Gosforth for the first of 3 legs of the new North East Junior Grand Prix.

In the Under 10 section, Jayden finished on 5.5/6 to be the overall champion! A great achievement against some of the best young players across the whole of the North East. Shanaya finished in joint 3rd on 4, which also made her the best girl.

In the Under 14 section, George and Isabelle were at the young end of the age category, but still finished on a respectable 2 points. Isabelle was the top girl in the section.

The most surprising thing to me in the results was that there was a second Jayden Wang in the Under 10 section from the RGS school in Newcastle. From our club's perspective at least, there's only 1 Jayden Wang!

Well done to all 4 for children for representing the club so well!

Date:26/10/2025  Francis goes close at Scarborough Congress!

5 players from Thornaby played at the Scarborough Chess Congress over the weekend.

Francis was playing in the Challenger section for under 2050 rated players and as expected proved to be strong at this level. He won his first 4 games to give himself a title shot in the last round. He came up short in the end though against Jael de Sousa Muachikape from the Alwoodley club in Yorkshire, which is heavily linked to the very successful Leeds Junior club. Alwoodley are basically the Thornaby of Yorkshire! Still a great performance from Francis to finish in the money in joint 2nd.

Dominic and Steve Rodgers tested themselves by also playing in the higher Challengers section and both finished on a respectable 2/5. Dominic only lost 1 game, but had 4 draws.

In the intermediate section for under 1750 rated players, Jonathan was again in the mix on the top few boards for most of the event. He lost in the last round to finish on 3/5. While Tom Marwood finished on 1.5 in the same section.

Date:22/10/2025  Juniors Dominate Dominators!

Billingham Dominators 0.5-3.5 Thornaby Juniors
Bernie Callaghan 0-1 Faruk Serin
Graham Edwards 0-1 Josh Clements
Sean Ridgeway 0-1 Eva Harris
Sean Cooke 0.5-0.5 Shanaya Chauhan

A great result for the Juniors on Wednesday who were lower rated on 3 of the 4 boards.

Eva was finished quickly in just 12 moves. A well prepared opening trap gave her a 3rd win in 3 days!

On board 4, this was the first time Shanaya has ever drawn a standard length game! A mind blowing stat to me, I once had a run of 10 draws in a row! Good result for Shanaya, Sean is a lot better than his rating and tends to score well on board 4 in the D division. This includes a win over Shanaya towards the end of last season, so definitely a sign of progress for her.

Faruk and Josh continued their strong starts to the season with wins on the top 2 boards to complete a dominant victory. Josh played a well calculated bishop sacrifice to break through and force the win.

All 4 of our players in this match are bang in form with the top 3 regularly beating higher rated players. It looks good for the team who traditionally start slowly and pick up as the season goes on as the youngsters get more experience. After 2 games this season, the Juniors sit top of the D division table with 4 points from 4 and an excellent board difference!

Chris

Date:21/10/2025  Bombers go top!

Thornaby Bombers 2½-1½ Hartlepool C
Dominic Leigh ½-½ Peter Harker
Mike Creaney 1-0 Michael Smalley
Steve Rodgers 1-0 Ashton Woodward
Joe McGinnis 0-1 John Marsden

I suppose we were expected to win this. From what he was saying, I think Joe would rather forget this game and it's oversights! Dom played his usual steady away draw if the opponent doesn't give him anything.

I had an earlyish finish when Michael played the wrong recapture when I had just a slight edge dropping a piece to a Queen check netting the now undefended Bishop. He played on for a few moves, but soon realised the futility of continuing against a known legend at the club, so I repaired to the bar and proceeded to lose 3-0 to newcomer Simon!

Steve took long enough to convert playing below me, he reckons it's his new patient style! A controlled performance where his opponent was slowly crushed and he picked off pawns in the endgame before his opponent resigned to the inevitable.

4 points from 4 for the Bombers who top the table and look good to mount a challenge this season to bounce straight back to the A division.

Mike

Date:21/10/2025  Challengers Conquer Chipmunks!

Thornaby Chipmunks 1-3 Thornaby Challengers
Tashil Lankapura 0-1 Paul Douglass
Ajay Selvan 0-1 Jonathan Feasby
Joseph Machin 1-0 Phil Wales
Rhys Orton 0-1 Stephen Ollis

The Chipmunks were missing Aryan who is away on holiday for a couple of week, but still put up a good fight. The Challengers were also missing their star player (not really, I was referring to me!). I decided to do some squad rotating with having a game on the previous night and not wanting to beat players I coach!

Paul and Tashil were finished relatively quickly. Tashil blundered a piece and there was no coming back from there against a player of Paul's quality.

Joseph equalised the match. He played a knight sacrifice, but unlike his one against Steve a couple of weeks ago, this one was sound and he was on top against Phil for most of the game.

Stephen and Rhys were level on material for a long time, but Stephen always seemed to have the space advantage. He eventually converted that into a 2 pawn advantage and won the endgame from there.

Ajay and Jonathan were last finished of all the games with this one going on well past 10pm. Ajay was a pawn up, but Jonathan had good compensation with Ajay not castled and his pieces looking a little disjointed. Jonathan had some good pressure on the e-file and finished it off when he found a nice checkmate involving queen and bishop from distance.

Chris

Date:21/10/2025  Falcons swoop to victory!

Thornaby Destroyers 1-3 Thornaby Falcons
Tim Hind 1-0 Sachin Saggar
Charles Hind 0-1 Isaac Machin
Jake Taylor 0-1 Henry Bishop
Oscar Youdale 0-1 Grace Auty

There were 3 league debuts in this one for Jake, Henry and Oscar.

Tim was first finished on board 1. Sachin played quickly and missed a pin on the pawn in front of the king which allowed Tim to checkmate.

Isaac played a bishop sacrifice (such moves run in the family apparently!) to open up Charles' king. I didn't see exactly how it finished, but Isaac's pieces were hovering menacingly around Charles' king and I wasn't surprised to see them come through to the bar area 5-10 minutes later.

A first league win for Grace ensured at least a draw for the Falcons. Her experience showed, with her 1 previous league game to Oscar's 0 probably helping a bit in this one!

That left Jake and Henry playing. Despite the age difference and both players making their league debuts, Henry has been in our library system for 2 years now and has a lot of tournament experience in junior events. Whereas Jake only joined the club a few weeks ago and this was his first competitive game of any kind. Jake found the clock and writing the moves a bit of a distraction and got into a mess early dropping a piece. Henry went on to convert the win ruthlessly!

A first ever win for the Falcons, while for the Destroyers, it is 3 wins out of 3 for Tim this season and he joins Andy Austen on 2/2 at the top of the E division top scorer list!

Date:21/10/2025  Queens progress towards crown!

Thornaby Queens 3.5-1.5 Redcar A
Eva Harris 1-0 Stanley Allen
Omi Sibanda 0.5-0.5 Katherine Myers
Freya Hind 1-0 Sonny Brodrick
Isabelle Little 0-1 Helen Marsay
Shanaya Chauhan 1-0 Bye

A great win for the Queens to progress to the semi finals of the Knights Shield!

Redcar were a man down at the start, so unfortunately Shanaya got a bye.

Freya made short work of debutant Sonny with a 2nd win in 2 nights. A great season for her so far, she is Thornaby's leading scorer across all teams!

Isabelle had her opponents queen, but it wasn't for nothing (I didn't work out exactly what the material situation was) and it was a complicated position. Helen had some strong piece activity around Isabelle's king and nice open files for the rooks. I didn't see what happened in the end, but Helen won soon after I looked.

In form Eva also won her 2nd game in 2 nights with a strong captains performance against Stanley. Doubled pawns proved decisive and Eva played the endgame well to take the Queens through.

There was still a bit of play in Omi's game and she probably had a slight edge if anything, but decided a draw was OK with the overall match result settled.

Chris

Date:20/10/2025  3 of a Hind at new Middlesbrough venue!

Middlesbrough Bluebell 1-4 Thornaby Allstars
Chris Rumsey 0-1 Jordan Broadbent
Andrew Salter 0-1 Tim Hind
Colin Rumsey 1-0 Nate Broadbent
Paul Bruce 0-1 Charles Hind
Yassir Ammaru 0-1 Freya Hind

Thornaby had the honour of sending a team to play a friendly on the opening night of the new Middlesbrough venue. A good competitive match on all boards finished with Thornaby on top!

First finished was myself. In an oddly quick game where Andrew carved out the upper hand and looked set on a victory but took his eye of the ball (or the board) and I managed to use my rooks to back him onto the back rank and into a checkmate. We played another 3 games before the next to finish.

Next to finish was Freya who played a very attacking game and was on top every time I managed to get a look. Her opponent was overheard talking to a friend saying "she is a pro", Freya didn't correct them! This win puts her level with Paul Douglass as Thornaby's top scorer so far this season on 2.5.

Third up was Charles. A very tense game with a knight pinned to his king, he was able to make good use of his other knight rook and queen. Giving very little breathing room to Paul he forced his king into a mating position and finished with a checkmate with his queen.

Fourth was Nate. In a very back and forth game where each time I looked over the player in the leading position seemed to have changed. A possible drop in concentration led to Nate blundering his queen, which was closely followed by a frustrated resignation.

The game on the top board was an excellent, tight game with Jordan commenting that every move he made he felt even more fragile. The last time I looked at his game he had a nice position with his bishop cornering the king and a promising attack with his rook and knight. He won soon afterwards.

The venue looks very much like a positive step for Middlesbrough club. A whole room reserved at the back and the staff are lovely too. Jordan echoed my sentiments saying, "The venue was great. Everyone seemed really welcoming".

Tim

Date:20/10/2025  Thornaby players lead Cleveland Individual!

After 2 rounds of the Cleveland Individual, several Thornaby players are near the top of the standings!

Thornaby Aces regulars Steve Rodgers, Mike Creaney and Chris Swales are 3 of the 4 joint leader with 2/2. Dominic is just behind on 1.5. The 2 small surprises so far were from the 2 Thornaby Under 18's in the event (Josh and Eva), who both beat higher rated players in round 2.

With Middlesbrough's Nic Tavoularis unable to attend on the day, the tournament is wide open and Thornaby are right in contention! The 3rd round will be at Middlesbrough club in their new Bluebell venue on Monday 24th November.

LEADING STANDINGS
1st) Mike Creaney (Thornaby) 2
= Steve Rodgers (Thornaby) 2
= Chris Swales (Thornaby) 2
= Graham Matthews (Hartlepool) 2
5th) Steve Cole (Billingham) 1.5
= Dominic Leigh (Thornaby) 1.5
= Alex Kalyviotis (Hartlepool) 1.5
8th) Nic Tavoularis (Middlesbrough) 1
= Josh Clements (Thornaby) 1
= Brian Whitaker (Billingham) 1
= Eva Harris (Thornaby) 1
= Sean Ridgeway (Billingham) 1
= Maurice Olum (Thornaby) 1
= John Marsden (Hartlepool) 1

ROUND 2 RESULTS
Malcolm Goldspink 0-1 Graham Matthews
Alex Kalyviotis 0.5-0.5 Dominic Leigh
Mike Creaney 1-0 Maurice Olum
Brian Whitaker 0-1 Steve Rodgers
Chris Swales 1-0 John Marsden
Peter Harker 0-1 Steve Cole
Bernie Callaghan 0-1 Josh Clements
Sean Ridgeway 1-0 Jacob Waller
Neil Sotheby 0-1 Eva Harris
Alan Bayne 0.5-0.5 Nick Tadd

Date:16/10/2025  Murphy's Law for Cavaliers!

Redcar A 4-0 Thornaby Cavaliers
Eddie Curphey 1-0 Joe McGinnis
Matthew Allen def-0 Jonathan Feasby
Callum Hodgkiss 1-0 Jordan Broadbent
Kian Simpson 1-0 Nate Broadbent

This match reminded me of Murphy's Law: If anything can go wrong, it will! 2 of originally selected team unavailable. 1st reserve unavailable. 2nd reserve unavailable. Board 2 player is delayed and doesn't turn up (0-1). Redcar field a much stronger team than in their previous match, so Jordan & Nate Broadbent (3rd & 4th reserves) had tougher opponents than I expected (0-3)!

I have an even game against Eddie Curphey for 18 moves in which nothing has been captured. I find a combination which wins a pawn and makes it a protected passed pawn on f6; engine evaluation has me +3 at move 21. From then on it gets gradually worse and worse as I miss the best moves repeatedly, till we get to equality at move 28, slight edge to Black at move 29, Black up 1.8 at move 31. I blunder a piece on move 33 but he misses it, then I blunder into a mate in 1 on move 38. By that time it was 4.75 to Black so a losing position anyway. Redcar A 4 Thornaby Cavaliers 0.

I then find myself locked in the building and set off the burglar alarm trying to get out. It seems nobody noticed I had gone to the toilet; fortunately they were still in earshot of the alarm. The scene which followed was like something out of Laurel & Hardy; the glass door was so thick, and the alarm so loud, that I couldn't hear anything. Thanks to a combination of sign language and lip-reading, I eventually worked out that they had put the keys into a letter-box which I could get at from the inside.

Hopefully all our bad luck for the season has been used up in one match. I did briefly wonder if the chess version might be Morphy's Law, but things usually went right for him!

Joe

Date:16/10/2025  Thornaby draw on Durham League return!

Thornaby (DCA Return!) 2-2 Durham City D
Paul Douglass 1-0 Harry Grieveson
Faruk Serin 1-0 Philip Brooks
Neil Sotheby 0-1 Louis Meadows
Sachin Saggar 0-1 Oliver Belcher

Our grand return to the Durham League began, appropriately (for me), in total disarray. After some light “discussion” at the AGM about whether we should even enter, I decided the only logical next step was to say yes — mainly because I quite like travelling to away matches and evaluating board 5. Apparently, most of the rest of the club doesn't share my enthusiasm for 40-minute drives, late nights, and lukewarm beer.

The struggle began when I tried to assemble a team. My first few messages were met with either polite refusal or total silence. Thankfully, Sachin immediately replied with an emphatic “I'm in!” — proof that there's at least one man in Thornaby with poor judgement equal to mine. Faruk was a last-minute “do you fancy playing this Thursday?” recruit, confirmed about two minutes before his Tuesday league game began (the kind of multi-tasking I truly admire). Paul, of course, was always my pick for Board 1, so with me on 3, Faruk on 2, and Sachin on 4, the “Fantastic Four” were ready to ride.

Our opponents were Harry Grieveson, Philip Brooks, Louis Meadows, and Dr. Oliver Belcher — all at least 100 ELO points stronger than us on the lower 3 boards. We were clear underdogs, but optimism (and Madri) were flowing.

Board 4 – Sachin vs Dr. Oliver Belcher
Sachin was first to finish… After hearing a loud sigh, I looked over just in time to see him push his queen seemingly very quickly, followed by an even longer sigh. A few minutes later, he resigned. We've all been there, Sachin — I call it “the sound of experience.” My ‘special' moves seem to be becoming popular!

Board 3 – Neil vs Louis Meadows
Next to crumble was me. I went a bishop down early and, despite my best efforts, could never recover. I kept it together, made no major additional blunders, but it was like trying to put out a bonfire with a damp teabag. I did, however, notice that Louis also “enjoys board 5”. I'm not saying it's a tactical weapon, but I'm bringing a crate next time for him, just in case.

Board 1 – Paul vs Harry Grieveson
While I was drowning my sorrows at board 5, Paul emerged victorious, cool as ever. The man's composure is frightening — I'm convinced he plays better when the rest of us are losing. 1–2, and the comeback was alive.

Board 2 – Faruk vs Philip Brooks
All eyes turned to the final game. David vs Goliath. Philip had the rating advantage, but Faruk had something far rarer: the calm, unflappable coolness of The Fonz. Nothing rattles him. He declined a draw offer (bold move) — maybe because he sensed blood in the water, or maybe because the Fonz doesn't settle for half points. The atmosphere had changed, there was real electric in the air… along with the sweet smell of Madri.

I'd like to say the room fell silent but… it didn't… The bar next door had been taken over by The Divers — a group of men who were clearly “diving” into something other than water at a terrifying rate. Between their laughter and a random bloke giving bagpipe lessons (on what turned out to be a single plastic pipe that sounded like a duck dying through a recorder), the tension was electric.

I checked the clocks: Philip – 15 mins, Faruk – 55! Hope flickered. Paul nodded approvingly at one of Faruk's moves, while Louis began wringing his hands. Moments later, the expressions swapped — then swapped again. I watched as Faruk's mam join the spectators, just in time to witness the climax.

Then I saw it — the checkmate pattern! My heart stopped. Faruk looked up, smiling. My heart stopped again — because the checkmate square was guarded by a knight. I prayed he'd seen it. Thankfully, he had. One cool adjustment later, he swung his rook into the attack and sealed the win. Pandemonium (quiet, chess-appropriate pandemonium anyway) erupted.

Final score: 2–2 draw. Not bad for our first Durham League outing in over a year — especially for a team thrown together with equal parts hope, WhatsApp panic, and pub-level preparation. As for the bagpipes and “Divers” in the bar… well, let's just say the acoustics weren't ideal. I've heard quieter nights at the Oddfellows karaoke.

Not the perfect start on paper, but a brilliantly chaotic one in spirit. A 2–2 draw against stronger opponents, a debut performance to remember, and enough drama for a Netflix miniseries. Here's hoping the rest of the Durham campaign brings fewer sighs, fewer bagpipes, and slightly more chess!

Neil

Date:14/10/2025  Comets Hold Hartlepool!

Thornaby Comets 2-2 Hartlepool D
Maurice Olum 0-1 Alex Costello
Stephen Ollis 1-0 Ellis Roebuck
Malcolm Goldspink 1-0 Dave Berry
James Tones 0-1 John Marsden

We got a well deserved draw against one of the strongest teams in C Division and we now tie with Hartlepool for first place in the C Division.

I had a tough game against Dave Berry and we were the last to finish so I didn't get much of a chance to see the other games. I did check at about the hour mark and everything looked even in both position and pieces. James got a rough break against their second strongest player on Board 4. Stephen's opponent made a blunder attempting to pin a knight, but leaving a queen check and capture of a bishop. Game was really done at that point, but he played on for a while. Stephen was a rook and two pawns up when Ellis resigned.

In my game, Dave opened with d4 and me d5. I secured the centre and advanced my Kingside pawns very early supported with Queen, Rook and Knight. He made the mistake of castling into my advancing pawns and soon got bogged down. I castled Queenside to give me extra firepower. We swapped a Rook and I moved my remaining Rook to h8. His remaining pieces were hampered by my advanced pawns and it was a simple move to capture his h pawn with a check and move to h1 for checkmate. My g pawn was on g3. Sounds simple but it was a 2+ hour game.

A good draw that keeps us in contention at the top end of the table. Our next match is a tough one in two weeks time against our own Cavaliers team.

Malcolm

Date:14/10/2025  Swifts progress in cup!

Thornaby Swifts 9.5-9 Hartlepool B
Santiago Palencia (3) – Peter Harker (3)
Iain Mellis (3) – Dave Kelly (2)
Josh Clements (1) – Alex Kalyviotis (2)
Faruk Serin (0) – John Marshall (2)

Hard to report on this one! As it isn't just 1 game each. This was the first ever match for any teams in the new rapid play Tom Wise Cup format.

Hartlepool fielded a stronger team than I expected, with 3 recent A division players as their top 3. Partly because their D team were playing the Comets on the same night. The rating difference was 554, so a 2.5 head start for our team. Santiago and Iain proved to be a very solid top 2 with 3 wins each. In fact, Iain's only loss was to the lesser known player on the opposing team in John. Josh's win against John in the 3rd set of games proved crucial in the end with the Swifts sneaking it by half a point! Faruk played well and was close in most of the games, good experience for him against some top level players.

A good win for the team, which puts them through to the semi-finals! Much more importantly for me as the tournament organiser, my calculation of where the handicap should be looks reasonably good!

Chris

Date:14/10/2025  Veterans continue winning start!

Thornaby Veterans 3-1 Thornaby Destroyers
Nick Tadd 0-1 Tim Hind
Janos Mehes 1-0 Charles Hind
Alan Bayne 1-0 Wayne Mulloy
Andy Austen 1-0 Noah Mulloy

The Veterans kept up their winning start with a 3-1 victory over the Destroyers.

Tim finished first with a well calculated attack, one of his best games according to him! The score soon turned though. Wayne and Noah were making the league debuts and both finished around the same time and both found their more experienced opponents just a little too strong. Wayne said he did enjoy his game, while Andy's win over Noah saw him move to the top of the division scorer list with 2 wins from 2!

That left Charles and Janos battling it out. This one took a lot longer than the others. Charles lost his queen, but for a rook and a piece, so certainly had chances. In the end, he got short on time and resigned with just 12 seconds left!

The Veterans look like they might be the team to beat in this division, while the Destroyers will only get more dangerous with more experience as the season goes on.

Chris

Date:14/10/2025  First win for Queens!

Thornaby Falcons 1-3 Thornaby Queens
Sachin Saggar 1-0 Clair Hartill
Joseph Hartill 0-1 Freya Hind
Grace Auty 0-1 Isabelle Little
Matthew Hartill 0-1 Shanaya Chauhan

A first ever league win for the Queens! They did have the edge on experience with 3 players making their league debuts for our new Falcons team.

The match overall contained 3 of our new Teesside Under 9 team champions! Teammates Matthew and Shanaya were against each other this time on board 4. Shanaya's greater league experience showed in this one, she was just that bit more solid in the opening and middlegame.

Isabelle's second league game brought her first league win. I didn't see what happened in this one, but Grace said something like “these young players are all really good!” to me afterwards.

The first time I looked, Freya had a powerful attack on Joseph's king side and when the queen came into f2 there was nothing much Joseph could do to prevent mate shortly afterwards.

Sachin prevented the whitewash for the Falcons. Clair stepped in after the clocks had started with Omi running late. It was a good competitive game, but Sachin was too strong in the end.

I'm almost certain this is the first time an all ladies team has won a match in the league (just because so few have played in the league in the past, we are getting more and more now), so a bit of history for the team and club there! Well done to the girls and captain Eva!

Chris

Date:13/10/2025  History made on Aces Board 1!

Hartlepool A 3-2 Thornaby Aces
Bill Wilson 1-0 Aryan Nalawade
Bernard Price ½-½ Dominic Leigh
Michael Smalley ½-½ Steve Rodgers
Peter Harker ½-½ Mike Creaney
Alexandros Kalyviotis ½-½ Chris Swales
It was a bit of a late night. The games were close and we had advantages in 4 of them, but unfortunately we lost 3-2 in the end.

I didn't see that much of Aryan's game. He was making his board debut for the Aces, but still seemed to have a decent position whenever I looked. I later heard that he was the exchange up and Bill said that if he'd played 1 defensive move in his last 4, he would have won. So despite the defeat, it was a very good performance against a player of Bill's quality.

Chris was slightly ahead for most of his game, but couldn't find a decisive move to breakthrough. It fizzled out into a 4 pawns and 2 rooks endgame with neither player able to progress. Both Mike and Steve had the better of it in their games and were a pawn up. However, their opponents got enough counterplay to make securing a win difficult. In Steve's case, he ended up dropping his extra pawn and after that they agreed a draw with Steve starting to get low on time. Mike ended up with Rook and 2 pawns v Rook and 1 pawn with all the pawns on the same side, so Peter was able to hold a draw.

I had a bit of a dodgy opening and suffered for most of the game, but I eventually managed to untangle and exchange off pieces leaving a same colour bishop endgame. Bernie was still pressing for a win as he had the better bishop, but wasn't able to make any progress. I was also getting very low on time, so alas I had to accept Bernie's draw offer - even though it meant the team would lose.

Dominic

A bit of history for Aryan as he became the youngest player ever to play on board 1 for our A team. In fact, only the 13th player in the club's history to do so. He's got a few games to catch up to David Wise! The full list is:

David Wise 64
Francis Batchelor 58
Mike Closs 48
Brian Ellis 29
Chris Ross 18
Paul Douglass 17
Mike Creaney 9
Matt Jackman 6
Norman Stephenson 5
Philip Mitcheson 3
Ernie Lazenby 2
Ray Honeybourne 1
Aryan Nalawade 1

Chris

Date:07/10/2025  Bombers Spoil Chipmunks Party!

Thornaby Bombers 2½-1½ Thornaby Chipmunks
Dominic Leigh ½-½ Aryan Nalawade
Mike Creaney 1-0 Ajay Selvan
Steve Rodgers 1-0 Joseph Machin
Maurice Olum 0-1 Tashil Lankapura

The first league game for our new all under 18 B division team was a tough internal match against our own Bombers team.

Dominic and Aryan's game was fairly even throughout. The pieces came off quickly and a draw was agreed.

I had a relatively comfortable win against Ajay who didn't cope with the Black side of the KID Samisch which has been one of my mainstays since the late seventies!

Joseph tried a trappy sacrifice against Steve which looked good on the surface, but Steve thought for some time and saw further.

Maurice was a piece up against Tashil at one point, which should be enough, but if you're not extra vigilant you will suffer.

Final score 2.5-1.5 to the Bombers and both teams look like they should be competitive this season.

Mike

Date:07/10/2025  Mr Harris inspires Darlington!

Thornaby Challengers 1-3 Darlington C
Paul Douglass 1-0 Jonathan Sams
Chris Swales 0-1 Liam Bellwood
Phil Wales 0-1 Stephen Halliday
Iain Mellis 0-1 Richard Harris

To one member of our club at least, the opposition contained the chess equivalent of a rockstar! Isabelle was taught chess for 2 years by Richard at Throston school and when I went back to the bar area with the suitcase, she said to me "that was Mr Harris!" in an excited voice! She wanted score updates whenever I was back there, so she'll be pleased that her hero didn't let her down!

A measure of the strength of Darlington's club is that their C team has a player of "Mr Harris'" strength on board 4. This team will certainly be there or there abouts come the end of the season. We put up a good fight, with all games going close to 10pm and all 4 finishing after all of the other games in the main room. Even Iain's which was a surprise to me!

Paul again showed that he has not lost too much over the last 6 years with an excellent win over Jonathan Sams. I was on the board next to him and it was a typical complicated Jonathan game where if you didn't look closely, it sort of looked like someone had just scattered the pieces randomly all over the board! Paul managed to get in first, but there was certainly a lot of danger on both sides.

The rest of us faired less well. I did go a pawn up against Liam and established a nice pawn centre. Unfortunately, he just went round the centre with a devastating attack on my king side! Phil's game was close most of the way. It was one of those that was going OK until it suddenly wasn't! Iain played an aggressive game with a sacrifice to get Richard's king in the open, unfortunately Mr Harris played very accurately (in fact with 0 inaccuracies according to chess.com!) and was just too strong in the end. At least one member of our club will be happy with this result though!

Maybe one day I'll be famous and hear, "That was Mr Swales!" in a game at another club!

Chris

Date:07/10/2025  Surprise win for Juniors!

Thornaby Juniors 3-1 Thornaby Dynasties
Faruk Serin 1-0 James Mann
Eva Harris 1-0 Sam Stevenson
Jacob Waller 0-1 Charles Hind
Isaac Machin 1-0 Freya Hind

Given the line ups, I would class this as a slight shock result. None of the individual results surprise me, it's just in combination the Dynasties team had a bit of an edge in both experience and ratings.

Isaac was finished first. He won Freya's queen early in the game and followed it up with an accurate attack.

Faruk got one of his best wins to date against James. James has a better than 50% record playing on middle boards in the C division and is certainly a very good player at this level. It was close all the way, but Faruk got ahead in the endgame.

The last 2 games finished at almost exactly the same time. I could see it might happen and I stopped playing my own game for a while to watch the endings, fortunately Liam was sill thinking when I went back to my board! On board 2, Eva managed to outmanoeuvre Sam in the end game and avoid any stalemate traps Sam was looking to set. The decisive move was a nice one that involved forcing a bishop off a key square. Charles avoided the whitewash for the Dynasties with a 2 queen checkmate. Jacob blundered early in that one, but played a very good game from that point onwards to make it difficult for Charles.

A good start for another new look Juniors team (most of last years team are playing in the C division now) which historically tends to take a few league games to get going in a new season!

Chris

Date:04/10/2025  Thornaby Library Team Make History!

Earlier today, Thornaby library were represented at the Yarm School Teesside Team Tournament in the under 9 section by a very strong team consisting of Henry Bishop, Shanaya Chauhan, Joseph Hartill and Matthew Hartill.

The tournament has never been won by a library before and never been won by any team from Thornaby before. For at least as long as I can remember and probably quite a bit before that, Yarm School's A team have been the champions. I did have high hopes for this team changing that, they are all proven winners in age group competitions and all 4 are playing at the club now, but Yarm school always have a lot of good players, so it was far from a certainty that they would win.

The key match against Yarm A finished 2-2, so the title was decided by results in the other 4 rounds. The Thornaby team powered through to only drop 1 point from a possible 16, while Yarm A dropped 2 against their own B team and 1 more in another round. Meaning Thornaby won with 17 points ahead of Yarm A's 15.

Shanaya was the individual star (just!) with 5 points from 5, but the 3 boys all scored 4/5 across the 5 rounds. Well done to all 4, a fantastic team performance which shows our library system is still turning out our stars of the future! I was very proud!

Another of our library players, Jayden Wang, was playing for Yarm's A team in the Under 11 section. They dominated the competition finishing with a perfect 20/20, with Jayden of course scoring 5/5.

Chris

PS Before going to the competition, I ran the normal morning library session. We were missing 6 of our regulars who were at the tournament, but the top group of 8 still consisted of Sagar, Tashil, Sam, Rhys, Josh, Zhuoyi, Nate and Jordan! I'm glad I wasn't in it! Our under 9's have played and lost to these guys many times, but it is that level of competition every week that helps to push them on.

Date:02/10/2025  100th Thornaby Game for Chris!

6 years ago I walked into the pavilion indoor bowling centre after my wife spotted an advert for Thornaby chess club on Facebook. Something she's probably regretted ever since! I spent my first 4 weeks losing lots of games to Mike Creaney, Dave Richardson and Brian Whitaker. Despite this, I was assured I was good enough to play for the teams and I made my league debut desperately hanging on for a draw against Middlesbrough's Alfie McMonagle. Next game I managed to go a pawn down in just 4 moves and was utterly crushed by the late Ron Stather. The club persisted and I did get better. After a couple of years, I finished as top scorer in the B division playing for the Bombers and found myself on the Aces team.

I learnt to play in primary school in the 80's, but chess really became a big hobby for me in the 90's at college, then York university and then at Redcar club before I moved down South for work in 1999. The 20 year gap playing competitively didn't take as long as I expected to be forgotten and I was soon back playing at close to the same level. 6 years on, chess is now my hobby, my part-time job and something I also put a lot of voluntary time into for the club, the league and teaching youngsters to play.

There have been a lot of highlights over the last 6 years, but 2 stand out. Playing on the same team as Chris Ross, Francis and Matt away against champions Great Ayton and winning 3.5-0.5 was definitely the best moment. Next was the first time I played for the Aces with Sagar on the next board to me. My long-term ambition at the library has always been to get enough young players to a level where I can't get into the Aces team myself! I always get a feeling of pride playing on the same team as them now or when they win our internal events.

I am also quite proud of the milestone of 100 games for the club. It was slightly annoying to finish last season on 99! The club has grown a lot since I joined and as well as some of the new players, some of the youngsters I've helped coach are starting to overtake me. I may not get many more, but I was pleased that my 100th game was still on the Aces team in a big game against the champions!

Chris

Date:01/10/2025  Aces hold champions!

Great Ayton A 2.5-2.5 Thornaby Aces
Virgil Szekely 0.5-0.5 Francis Batchelor
David Wise 0.5-0.5 Paul Douglass
Andrew Smith 1-0 Dominic Leigh
Martin McLaughlin 0-1 Aryan Nalawade
Kegan Harrison 0.5-0.5 Chris Swales

A new look Aces team fielded 3 players making their Aces league debuts and managed to hold the defending champions to a draw. None of our new players are exactly rookies though! Aryan did play 1 game in the cup last season, Paul played when our top team was just plain and simple Thornaby A and Dominic has lots of A division experience at Darlington.

Apparently when we played Great Ayton in the cup semi final towards the end of last season, I said to one of our junior players (probably Jayden), "Watch and learn, these are a lot of the best players in the whole area.... plus me and Kegan." Something Kegan remembered better than me, but I did remember saying it when he mentioned it! I did still feel a bit like that on board 5 yesterday against the same opponent, but neither team was completely at full strength this time and we were closer in rating to the rest of our teams. The game itself was fairly tame with both of us having very high accuracy ratings according to the computer, thanks to a high familiarity with this type of Nimzo Indian opening. Although I always had a slight lead according to the computer, the pieces went off quickly and it ended with a queen and 7 pawns each. A dead draw with no real chance of progress for either player.

On board 4, Martin went all out attack with a sacrifice early on, but soon levelled the material and had Aryan's king in the open. Aryan managed to stabilise the position and it looked to be heading for a draw until an uncharacteristic rook blunder from Martin. Martin said it was good to get his blunder of the season in early! Nevertheless, a fabulous result for Aryan on his Aces league debut!

On board 3, Dominic looked to be in trouble early, a pawn down and Andrew having a forward majority on the queenside. He wasn't able to generate enough counter-play for the pawn and Andrew ground out a result.

Paul was playing only his second standard game in 6 years. When I saw he was playing David Wise, I did think to myself, "there is throwing someone in at the deep end, but this is more like throwing him in at the deep end when it is full of sharks!" Any doubts we might have had that Paul could still play at this level are certainly wiped out by this result! David hasn't lost a game in the CCA for over 3 years, so a draw is about as good as you can hope for. Paul's report: It was a very defensive affair. He played Nc3/Nge2 against the French. Admittedly not playing against this for yonks, I forgot some of the lines so played for a e6/d5/c6 setup as I didn't want to trade my dark squares bishop. We both had dodgy bishops throughout the game. Mine was the typical French one and his the dark squared one. I managed to get a kingside fianchetto, after a lot of manoeuvring which kept any aspirations of a kingside attack at bay.

On board 1, Francis was level on material with no obvious advantage either way for most of the time. It looked like Virgil had opted for an f5 king side attack against Francis' normal opening from what I could see. It was a very solid affair overall. Queens off early, an exchange of rooks and despite Virgil having a worse kingside pawn structure, it was difficult to see any penetration squares to occupy.

Chris

Date:30/09/2025  Cavaliers put C team to the sword!

Thornaby Cavaliers 3-1 Great Ayton C
Joe McGinnis 1-0 Jim Rogers
Jonathan Feasby 0-1 Andrew French
Santiago Palencia 1-0 Kevin Wilson
Tashil Lankapura 1-0 Peter Archer

Great start for the Cavaliers against strong opposition.

I was last to finish so didn't really see any of the other games. The first indication of how things were going came with a mild expletive from Kevin Wilson, from which I gathered he had made a fatal blunder! I had high expectations for Tashil against Peter Archer, and he duly delivered. Jonathan seemed OK against Andrew French on the few occasions when I looked, but something evidently went wrong and he eventually resigned.

Jim Rogers is a pretty strong player for C division - I have played him a number of times in B Division and it's always been a good battle. This one was interesting. I blundered a pawn with a silly move 9; this gave him a passed pawn on c6, and the next 15 moves were all about me trying to get it back, and him finding ways to defend it. White's advantage was something like 1.8 or better for this whole period. The game began to turn when he played what should have been a temporary knight sacrifice. Now, I know that chess.com's characterisation of moves as "great" or "brilliant" needs to be taken with a pinch of salt, but I think I can be pleased with a sequence of 3 consecutive moves which went "great - brilliant - brilliant"! He just seemed to pick a couple of poor options which set this up. (My next move was a mistake, but I won't mention that.) Another passive move from him allowed me to win queen and pawn for rook and knight, and it was fairly straightforward from there, though I very nearly moved my remaining rook and allowed a back-rank mate. Afterwards Jim said he had tried to open up lines for his pieces, but had succeeded only in opening things up for mine.

I was a bit lucky really; he played well for most of the game, and had me in trouble. His mistakes were far from obvious - like moving a rook away from an attack, when the right option was to allow it to be captured.

Joe

(Chris note : I stole this headline from the Great Ayton blog! http://www.aytonchess.co.uk/)

Date:30/09/2025  Narrow win for Comets!

Thornaby Cadets 1.5-2.5 Thornaby Comets
Rhys Orton 0-1 Maurice Olum
Josh Clements 0.5-0.5 Bill March
Jayden Wang 0.5-0.5 Alan Stockley
George Butterworth 0.5-0.5 Neil Sotheby

A good competitive local derby from our 2 C division teams with the Comets coming out on top in the end.

George and Neil were both on Dragoons duty last night, so a quick 2nd game of the season for them. At one point, me and Malcolm were both worried our board 4's were running late until we realised Neil was probably bringing George! As often happens when 2 players know each other well, it finished a draw.

A big age difference on board 3, but very little difference in the ratings. It showed in the game with Jayden and Alan close all the way until a draw was agreed in a very level looking rook and pawn endgame.

Maurice made the decisive breakthrough for the Comets on board 1. Rhys said to me afterwards it was a really good game and he enjoyed it. Rhys did get a pawn up, but Maurice is one of our in form players at the moment and showed why with a good fight back to win the endgame.

Bill and Josh finished a full 40 minutes after any of the other 13 games going on last night. A real battle all the way and both players ended up with less than a minute on the clock at the end before a draw was finally agreed!

A good start for the Comets who have lost Phil (he is too high rated for C division now) since last season, but Maurice looks like he will be a very able replacement!

Chris

Date:30/09/2025  Experience counts for Veterans!

Thornaby Queens 0.5-3.5 Thornaby Veterans
Eva Harris 0-1 Nick Tadd
Freya Hind 0.5-0.5 Alan Bayne
Isabelle Little 0-1 Ian Swales
Shanaya Chauhan 0-1 Andy Austen

2 new league teams for us this season played out a good quality match in the new E division. It was probably closer than the final result suggests with all 4 games going well over the hour mark (E division time limit is 1 hour each) and none of the girls getting outplayed in any of the 4 games.

The Queens had a combined age of 46, which is less than me and significantly less than each of the members of the Veterans team! Having said that, Eva, Freya and Shanaya all have a full season of league games behind them. Alan was making his league debut and Ian was playing in only his 2nd competitive game in 25 years, so the chess experience gap was not as big as the age experience gap!

Shanaya and Andy were first finished. Both players had a good attack going, but Andy managed to get in first to force a mate.

Isabelle was making her league debut and a couple of errors left a piece and a pawn down. She did have a good attack going though with a lot of pressure on the king side and missed a chance to get the piece back. The game finished on an innocuous looking move from Ian which threatened checkmate and this was missed by Isabelle.

Eva and Nick also had a close game, but Nick managed to play the endgame slightly better to get a pawn to the end.

Freya and Alan were last finished. Partly thanks to a clock error which was giving them 10 second increments! Freya did get a pawn up in this one, but the position looked pretty equal all the way through. In the end, she had Alan's bishop pinned against his king with her queen and an active looking knight. Alan didn't like the look of any other options and decided to play a perpetual check with his queen to get the draw.

It's great that we can field an all girls team and an all over 70's team which can play good quality matches like this. Overall, a good start for both teams which shows they should both be competitive on all 4 boards this season.

Chris

Date:29/09/2025  Chaotic start for Dragoons!

Middlesbrough Bishops 3-2 Thornaby Dragoons
Ged Murphy 1-0 Neil Sotheby
Chris Rumsey 1-0 Malcolm Goldspink
Colin Rumsey 1-0 James Tones
Paul Bruce 0-1 Nick Tadd
Yasmin Pallister 0-1 George Butterworth

A new season, a new team, and the Dragoons ride again! This year we bid farewell to our stalwarts—Maurice “the Boss,” Phil, Ollie, Joe, and even the last-minute veterans Andy and Janos. In their place, we welcomed our new recruits: Sachin, Nick, Alan, and the fresh-faced league debutant James Tones. Holding the fort are Old Reliable Malcolm, Young-but-usuall-Reliable George, and Never Reliable Me (still somehow captain).

Our campaign kicked off at the ever-lovely Middlesbrough Conservative Club—a venue I'd call a “love–hate” affair. We love Ray, the Middlesbrough captain, and his teams, but the barmaid… well, let's just say she has the warmth of a Siberian winter. Last season she complained about us fielding a “little girl” (George), which caused such drama we decided to bench him rather than risk a scene. I can only assume with George's chequered past he may be on the Pub Watch barred list.

Fast forward to this year: Ray assured me it was fine, and in fact, his granddaughter was playing, so “the little girl” (George) could join too—what a perfect pairing! What could possibly go wrong?

Well...

First, in my infinite wisdom, I put James, our new player with exactly zero league games under his belt, on Board 1 against their most experienced player. Genius captaincy right there. To save face, I gallantly offered to swap. James agreed—probably delighted to have someone else blunder on his behalf.

Then, at exactly 6:58pm, the barmaid spotted George near the bar and loudly announced, “Little girls aren't allowed in the bar after 7.” Cue me bundling poor George away before he could be turned into contraband by pub law. By 7:02pm, Ray looked pale and admitted the club secretary was on the way to eject our “dangerous little girl.” (To be fair, given George's violent hobby of jujitsu, maybe they weren't entirely wrong… things can turn ugly in an instant with all of the pressures of the chess board). He is also technically a registered weapon!

Moments later, Ray was chatting with George, then with his granddaughter, then inexplicably on George's phone talking to George's mother, who understandably wanted to know why her son was apparently being carted off to a strange old man's house. After a huddle, it was agreed George and I would relocate to Ray's dining table, under the watchful eye of his very lovely wife—who thankfully kept the peace (and the telly volume under control).

At Ray's house, George quickly redeemed all this chaos by beating Yasmin with style and speed. A great win for him, especially as Yasmin beat Eva last year—so much for “experimental.”

Meanwhile, I played four glorious opening moves before disaster struck. On move five, mid-air, I realised I didn't want to move my bishop but was forced to plonk it on a horrific square anyway. Cue me running around in circles, trying to fix the mess while Ray blasted Bargain Hunt at full volume until his wife kindly “suggested” what he should do with the remote.

Back at the Conservative Club, reports trickled in. James and Malcolm both fell to their opponents, Nick scored a win, and by the end we had a respectable 3–2 defeat. Though personally, I'd call it 4–2, since when I returned to collect our boards, I discovered the barmaid had poured my untouched pint straight down the sink because I “wasn't there.” Honestly, customer service at its finest and my second defeat of the night. Fortunately, Middlesbrough are moving to a new venue at the end of this month!

Final Thoughts

Not the dream start to the season, but certainly an eventful one—full of chaos, comedy, and character. With any luck, we've got all the drama, disasters, and errors out of the way early… though with this team, I wouldn't count on it!

Onward, Dragoons!

Neil

Date:27/09/2025  Thornaby Junior Chess Open!

The 2nd Thornaby Junior Chess Open will take place on Saturday 15th November from 10:30am-3pm in the “Village Green Venue” in Thornaby.

Everything will be similar to last year's successful inaugural event. There are 4 age categories and trophies and medals for the best boys and girls in each category. There are a maximum of 50 places, so please try to get in quickly if you want your child to play. Last year it sold out well before the deadline and we expect it to again this year.

For details on how to enter, please contact us on mail@ThornabyChessClub.co.uk.

Chris

Date:26/09/2025  New Regular Chess Night in Stockton!

Following our successful trial, Maurice will be running a regular chess night on Mondays in his Stockton bar.

The sessions are open to players from all clubs for social chess. "Stockton Loco" will also be entering teams in 2 of the knockout cups this season with a view to running league teams next season.

As well as getting in extra practice, Thornaby players can also use these sessions to play their club championship games if they prefer.

Date:25/09/2025  Unprecedented league entry for Thornaby!

The league fixtures have been published and the games come thick and fast starting from Monday next week. Thornaby have registered 76 players and entered an unprecedented 14 teams in the CCA league this season. They include our new ladies team "Thornaby Queens" and our new over 70's team "Thornaby Veterans". 4 of the teams are entirely devoted to Under 18 players including one in the B division for the first time "Thornaby Chipmunks" (their name choice, not mine!) A measure of the continuing development of our young player and our confidence in them. Several of the other teams will also feature young players, including our popular family based team "Thornaby Dynasties".

With this number of teams, we have to nominate 21 players in total and they include 5 of our under 18's. The Aces team will be looking to challenge for the league this season and are headed by 2 former internationals Chris Ross (England blind) and Francis Batchelor (Scotland schoolboy) along with former Cleveland Individual champion Matt Jackman. The addition of Paul Douglass and Dominic Leigh over the Summer along with our youngsters starting to push their way into contention, undoubtedly makes our Aces team the strongest it has ever been.

Our B and C division teams are well balanced and we are hopeful of pushing the top teams in all 5 divisions this season. It should be another great year for the club!

Chris

Teams entered:

A Division
Thornaby Aces

B Division
Thornaby Bombers
Thornaby Challengers
Thornaby Chipmunks

C Division
Thornaby Comets
Thornaby Cadets
Thornaby Cavaliers

D Division
Thornaby Dynasties
Thornaby Juniors
Thornaby Dragoons

E Division
Thornaby Destroyers
Thornaby Falcons
Thornaby Queens
Thornaby Veterans

Nominated players:

A DIVISION

Thornaby Aces
Chris Ross
Francis Batchelor
Matt Jackman

B DIVISION

Thornaby Bombers
Sam Greig
Dominic Leigh
Steve Rodgers
Mike Creaney

Thornaby Challengers
Paul Douglass
Chris Swales
Phil Wales
James Urwin

Thornaby Chipmunks
Aryan Nalawade

C DIVISION

Thornaby Cavaliers
Joe McGinnis
Santiago Palencia
Jonathan Feasby
Tashil Lankapura

Thornaby Comets
Stephen Ollis
Maurice Olum

Thornaby Cadets
Ajay Selvan
Joseph Machin
Rhys Orton

Date:24/09/2025  Record night for Club Championship Round 2!

It was a record night in the club yesterday for the 2nd round of the club championship with 44 players in the main room. The most ever! Partly thanks to accelerated pairings and partly thanks to several draws yesterday, only Joe McGinnis, Maurice Olum and Jayden Wang are on 2 points after 2 rounds. Maurice got a surprise victory over Steve when Steve left himself too short on time. Joe managed to do a pawn fork on Tashil to get a piece for a pawn up and kept the lead throughout from then onwards. Jayden played a patient game to beat Richard.

The draw for the 3rd round has been made. For the next few rounds, games are played on mutually agreed dates. The deadline for Round 3 is Tuesday 25th November. Full details of the competition are here:
http://www.thornabychessclub.co.uk/ClubChampionship.htm

Full Results:
Steve Rodgers 0-1 Maurice Olum
Tashil Lankapura 0-1 Joe McGinnis
Toefl Lankapura 0-1 Dominic Leigh
Sam Stevenson 0-1 Mike Creaney
Malcolm Goldspink 0-1 Phil Wales
Amit Chauhan 0-1 Ajay Selvan
Jonathan Feasby 1-0 Josh Clements
Stephen Ollis 1-0 James Tones
Sachin Saggar 0.5-0.5 Iain Mellis
Alan Bayne 0.5-0.5 Zhuoyi Lin
James Mann 1-0 Neil Sotheby
Geoff Mann 1-0 Eva Harris
Jayden Wang 1-0 Richard Stevenson
Omi Sibanda 0.5-0.5 Andrew Salter
Alan Stockley 1-0 Joseph Hartill
Noah Mulloy 0-1 Faruk Serin
Sarah Bishop 0-1 Jacob Waller
Andy Austen 1-0 Oscar Youdale
Henry Bishop 0.5-0.5 Wayne Mulloy
Shanaya Chauhan 1-0 Isabelle Little
Clair Hartill 1-0 Daniel Ayre
Grace Auty 1-0 Matthew Hartill

Chris

Date:23/09/2025  Excellent wins for Joseph in Darlington blitz!

Yesterday saw the Gary Hewitt blitz competition in Darlington. Always a very high standard event with a lot of good players from all over the CCA area.

Joseph has performed well in this event before, but surpassed himself this time with wins over top Darlington players Steve Dauber and Giuseppe Magazzu to be in joint 2nd on 5 points after 7 rounds. He could only manage half a point from the last 2 rounds, but still finished in joint 6th on 5.5

Meanwhile Nate and Jordan also took part with Nate finishing in joint 9th on a very creditable 5/9 and Jordan was just behind on 4/9.

The event eventually finished with a 3 way tie between Giuseppe and Darlington stars Luke Owen and Liam Bellwood all with 7/9. Neither actually played for Darlington last season and their return could signal another serious league title challenge from them in the coming season.

Well done to all 3 Thornaby players for representing the club so well and thank you to Carl Stephens for organising the event and inviting players from other clubs.

Date:15/09/2025  Cafe Bar Loco Chess Night!

Monday's special chess session at Cafe Bar Loco was a great success with more than 20 people in attendance. It looks like it could be a good new venue for chess in the area and Maurice is keen to organise more events there including a possible tournament soon. Watch this space!

Date:12/09/2025  Stockton Chess Session!

On Monday 15th September, there will be a special chess session in the centre of Stockton! Maurice joined our club last year and has made a big impact at the club. Some people will know that he is a DJ by trade and he is now the owner of a bar in Stockton. The "Loco Lounge" on Prince Regent Street (very close to the Arc) is normally closed on Monday's, but Maurice is keen to try chess in the venue and is hosting the night from 7pm-11pm.

Everyone is welcome to attend, it is intended as an informal social chess session and it is not restricted to Thornaby members. Any level of player from anywhere is welcome!

Maurice is known by some in our club as "the coolest guy in chess" (taking over from Peter Harker)! It would be great if as many people as possible can come and support this session as it could lead to a regular thing and maybe even the return of club chess to Stockton one day.

Full information is on the attached poster.

Chris

Date:10/09/2025  Club Championship First Round!

The first round of the Club Championship was played yesterday. There were quite a few surprises with Tashil, Toefl, Richard and Nick all beating higher rated players and Alex getting a draw with Dominic. Tashil defeated Mike despite going a pawn down. Toefl beat Phil after a rook blunder from him. Richard surprised everyone (especially Sam!) with a win over Alan Stockley. Nick played out a good competitive game with Faruk and came out on top in the endgame.

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

The accelerated pairing system means some players on zero are likely to come back strong, but it was certainly a good set of results for Steve who is the top-rated player on 1 point and already has none of his nearest 4 rivals on the same score!

Date:08/09/2025  Shanaya qualifies for Challengers stage!

Over the weekend, Shanaya took part in the online Gigafinal. The final one of the 4 qualifiers in the Delancey UK Challenge (the other 3 are over the board Scotland, Northern and Southern). These are near enough national level competitions and Shanaya put in an amazing performance to finish on 5.5/7 and qualify for the national challengers stage in the 4-star "Mercure Daventry Court Hotel".

Shanaya is only the 3rd player ever from the club to make it this far, following in the footsteps of Sagar 3 years ago and joining Tashil in this years event. She has been one of our top juniors for her age since she joined the club and we've always known she has a lot of potential. She has won several titles already, including the CCA Ladies Quickplay in February, but this is a real step up. Very well done to her!

Date:08/09/2025  Record Entry For Club Championship!

The draw for tomorrow's first round of the Club Championship has been made. A record 44 entries this year! With Francis opting not to play this time, we have our most open competition in years (possibly ever). There are 3 sub-sections within the event. The overall winner is the club champion, but there will also be an Under 1400 rating winner, a Club Junior Champion and for the first time ever a Club Ladies Champion. Just like the main championship, all 3 sub-sections have plenty of contenders, everyone has something to play for apart from the chance to play more games and boost their standing within the club!

Newly returning Paul Douglass leads the entry list on rating, but Steve Rodgers, Mike Creaney and Aryan Nalawade all made significant climbs in the ratings last year to go over 1700 and will all likely be up there at the end. Another favourite for the title is my former nemesis Dominic Leigh. A former league winner with Darlington, he has joined the club over the Summer and is 2nd on rating. There are plenty of others who are further out in the ratings on paper, but heading the right way who will fancy their chances including Jonathan, Ajay, Tashil, Phil, Stephen and more.

The Under 1400 competition looks like it will be a youth vs experience affair. Our oldest member Alan is slightly below 1400 at 1396, but last years winner Sam and other top youngsters Josh and Jayden are all over 1350 as well. James and Malcolm have both had good Summer Series, while Sachin always performs well in our quick events. It's only a matter of time before he starts taking that game into longer ones.

Aryan starts as favourite for the junior title, but Ajay and Tashil will provide stiff competition. Sam, Faruk, Jayden, Eva and Josh are all well capable of finishing high up the list and it would be no surprise to see some of these challenge the big 3.

Eva is probably the one to beat in the ladies event. However, the younger players could certainly challenge. Shanaya is the current CCA Ladies champion and Isabelle was runner up to Tashil in the Teesside Junior Championships in June. Clair is getting better all the time and we expect to see wins from her this season, especially as she will be playing more in the league as well. Sarah is new to the club, but has been playing at Ingleby library for 2 years and could be a wild card.

The first 2 rounds will use the accelerated pairing system which means players on a 1400+ rating are drawn as if they already have 1 point. The first round draw is below:

ROUND 1
Ajay Selvan V Paul Douglass
Dominic Leigh V Jonathan Feasby
Stephen Ollis V Aryan Nalawade
Mike Creaney V Tashil Lankapura
Iain Mellis V Steve Rodgers
Phil Wales V Toefl Lankapura
James Mann V Joe McGinnis
Maurice Olum V Geoff Mann
Richard Stevenson V Alan Stockley
Faruk Serin V Nick Tadd
Andy Austen V Jayden Wang
Josh Clements V Henry Bishop
Isabelle Little V Sam Stevenson
James Tones V Clair Hartill
Joseph Hartill V Malcolm Goldspink
Neil Sotheby V Noah Mulloy
Oscar Youdale V Amit Chauhan
Eva Harris V Sarah Bishop
Wayne Mulloy V Sachin Saggar
George Butterworth V Shanaya Chauhan
Matthew Hartill V Alan Bayne
Reserve: Daniel Ayre
Half Point Bye: Andrew Salter

Chris

Date:06/09/2025  Library Return!

The Thornaby library sessions resumed this morning after our Summer break and it was a packed session. There were plenty of new faces, old faces and club faces! More than 20 players altogether with children aged between 6 and 16 and several adult players as well.

The sessions have been changed slightly so there are 3 groups:
Beginners/Novice 10am-11am
Intermediate 11am-12pm
Advanced 10am-12pm (drop in)

This worked well and we had some nice competitive games in all 3 groups. This week, the beginners group concentrated on mini-games to learn the piece moves, the intermediate group worked on opening principles and the advanced played a mini-competition.

if you would like to take part, please get in touch. Players from our club also run the Ingleby Barwick library sessions on Fridays from 4pm-6pm.

Date:04/09/2025  Sam becomes Junior Captain!

Following our AGM, the club committee have chosen Sam Stevenson to be our new junior captain. Our junior captain has a role in encouraging and developing our younger players both at the club and the library, helping with the smooth running of our junior teams and being a role model to our youngsters.

Sam was the unanimous choice of the committee. Feedback was all positive. A selection of comments: He is a good role model, friendly, very calm, takes his time in games, helps young players, set up a club in his old primary school, excellent choice, sensible, hardly misses a library or club session, takes his chess seriously, enters external competitions. In other words, the perfect choice!

Sam has also won and placed in many junior events over the last few years. Amongst his best achievements, he was joint Teesside Champion for his age in 2024 and he is the current holder of the Thornaby Junior Chess Open title. He also won the club Under 1400 rating championship last season with 3 victories over 1400+ rated players.

Sam is only our second junior captain. The role has been filled by Joseph since we created it in 2022. Joseph is now a contender in all of our internal events (winning 1 in each of the last 2 seasons) and will continue to be a great role model and asset to the club. With him starting college now, it seemed like the right time to pass it on. Good luck to Sam, we're sure he'll be excellent in the role!

Date:02/09/2025  Paul marks his return!

Our Summer blitz competition took place yesterday with 24 players entering, initially split in 2 groups of 12. Blitz is not everyone's cup of tea and distressingly, I once again found myself as the oldest player in the event! While some (mostly older) players played more sedate chess in the bar area, the action was fast and furious in our main room.

He's not quite in the Mike Creaney category, but last week we had the very good news that former club legend Paul Douglass is returning to chess after 6 years. Paul was an original member of the club when it was founded in 2007 and has played 79 times for our A team (putting him 5th on our all time list). A very strong player, his last rating puts him straight in at 4th on our list. Incidentally, I did ask Paul about Mike and he said, "I've always thought that if Mike cuts himself his blood would come out in black and white squares!"

Despite all this, I was not sure how well Paul would do in a blitz competition after 6 years playing no over the board chess. The cobwebs were soon blown off however as he breezed through his group with 10.5/11, then beat me, Toefl and Jonathan in the knockout stages to win the title! Good to know that the old magic is still there!

Group A finished with Jonathan and Toefl on 10/11. Toefl won the group as he beat Jonathan in their game, his only defeat was to Joseph M. I was only on 1.5 after 4 games, but with the 3 hardest games out of the way, I won the next 7 to finish 3rd in the group with 8.5. Joseph M took the last qualifying place with 8. Jacob, Sam, Eva and Maurice were all there or there abouts on 5 and 6 at the end. A great first event for Jacob to take 5th place in the group.

Group B saw both Tashil and Paul win 10/10. Their last game decided the group winner. It was a draw, so Tashil won the group on ROB. The battle for the other 2 spots was very close. I thought Zhuoyi was out of the race after a surprise early loss to Grace. Zhuoyi has had a break over the Summer, but he soon found his form again to finish in 3rd with 8/11. The last spot was a 3 way tie between Sachin, Jayden and Josh, but Sachin took it on countback. Meanwhile, a good first event for Grace saw her finish in 7th with 3.5.

The Quarter Finals saw no big surprises with the group winners and runners up showing why they'd got there. Tashil, Jonathan, Toefl and Paul all won. There was still a possibility of an all Lankapura final going into the semis. They both won their groups, so had choice of colour. Toefl chose black, but found Paul too strong. Tashil chose white and looked to have a slight edge for most of the game before Jonathan crashed through to find a middle of the board checkmate. The final between Jonathan and Paul was a good competitive game with all the action on the queenside. Paul had castled that way and Jonathan threw his pawns forward in characteristic style. He missed a move and Paul captured one pawn and that changed the direction of the game. Shortly afterwards a knight fork on queen and rook followed by the capture of another pawn left the game well in Paul's favour. He marched his pawns forward and there was little Jonathan could do.

My favourite part of the night was not on the chess board. After 8 rounds of the groups, Tashil came over and asked me who was doing well in the other group. When I said, "your Dad is on 8/8", the look on his face and the subsequent "Whaaaaat!" was priceless! Slightly disappointingly, when I said, "he beat me," there was no reaction or surprise at all!

Full results:

FINAL
Jonathan 0-1 Paul

SEMI-FINAL
Tashil 0-1 Jonathan
Paul 1-0 Toefl

QUARTER-FINAL
Tashil 1-0 Joseph M
Jonathan 1-0 Zhuoyi
Toefl 1-0 Sachin
Paul 1-0 Chris

GROUP STAGE

GROUP A
Toefl 10
Jonathan 10
Chris 8.5
Joseph M 8
Jacob 6
Eva 6
Sam 6
Maurice 5
George 3
Joseph H 2.5
Clair 1
Shanaya 0

GROUP B
Tashil 10.5
Paul 10.5
Zhuoyi 8
Sachin 7
Jayden 7
Josh 7
Grace 3.5
Oscar 3
Andrew 3
Isabelle 3
Neil 2.5
Matthew 1

Chris

Date:31/08/2025  Thornaby Show!

Earlier today, Thornaby Chess Club attended Thornaby Show. Chris S, Chris R, Rosie, Nick, Phil, Stephen and Joe McGinnis were on the stall at various times during the day. We had a great time and spoke to lots of different people and handed out leaflets about our club and library sessions.

Members of the public could win a box of chocolates by beating our experts. In previous years, we've only given out 1 and most of the chocolates have gone back home with me! This year we gave out 5, partly thank to a couple of ringers in attendance! Some people who follow this page may have heard of Ernie Lazenby! Ernie was a high level league player for many years at several clubs including Thornaby before he retired from chess. He won several games against Rosie and Nick, but generously told me to give his prize to a youngster who gave us a good game, but didn't actually win. We picked 2 children later on, including a young 8 year old girl from Thornaby Village school who I taught chess to recently who really made Nick work for a win.

We also had a former Elmwood Junior and former Elmwood club champion in Matthew Gee-Smith who managed to beat Stephen in a very good game. Matthew can't play in the league at the moment due to family commitments, but may well be returning at some point. Former club member Wasim managed to get a draw with Nick and we paid out in chocolate! Hopefully we may see a return to the club from him soon.

The only player to win or draw with no previous connection to chess in the area was someone I know very well. Les Harrison is the 5 times club champion at my bowls club and I knew he could also play a reasonable game of chess. I didn't think he would have much chance against Joe though, so very well done to him on a well fought victory! Shame he plays indoor bowls on Tuesdays!

It wasn't really about winning though. There was a wonderful mix of people at the show with a massive variation in interest and skill level at chess. They included 2 guys dressed as giant flower pots (see photo!). I always hear different excuses why people don't want to play our experts. "I haven't got any arms and I'm not clever enough anyway, why do you think I'm dressed as a flowerpot" does rank right up there as one of the best!

Chris

Date:28/08/2025  Library Return!

We're pleased to announce that after our Summer break, the popular Saturday morning Thornaby library chess sessions will be returning on Saturday September 6th at 10am.

The sessions run with 3 groups:
Beginners/Novice 10am-11am
Intermediate 11am-12pm
Advanced 10am-12pm (drop in basis)

The Beginner and Intermediate sessions run as 10 week courses (new people can't join after week 2). The Beginners course covers the rules and the basics of how to think. The Intermediate course covers more about how to play well (tactics, opening principles, mating combinations etc) and thinking ahead 2+ moves. Advanced is for players who have mastered the first 2 and would include most club level players.

The first set of 10 week courses will run from September 6th to November 8th.
The second set of 10 week courses will run from November 15th to January 24th.

If you'd like to sign up for the first set of Beginner or Intermediate courses or for any further information, please contact the club via mail@ThornabyChessClub.co.uk.

Date:27/08/2025  Steve finishes Runner Up!

Over the Summer, 5 Thornaby players have been taking part in the 8 round Vince Skillcorn Memorial event at Billingham club. The event that our own Summer Series is based on. All 5 have performed well over the last 14 weeks and several Thornaby players have been amongst the leaders throughout.

Steve had a fantastic tournament for 7 rounds, drawing with the top 2 Billingham players John Garnett and Steve Cole and winning his other 5 games. That left him half a point clear with only his great friend and rival Mike to play in the last round. Mike managed to win the game allowing last seasons A division top scorer John Garnett to overtake Steve. Steve still finished in outright 2nd place, an excellent performance given the quality of some of the players in the field. The win for Mike gave him a 3 way share of 3rd place with 5.5. Jonathan had another good tournament and finished in 6th place on 5 points. Meanwhile, Malcolm finished with 3 points from 8 in joint 16th.

Josh continues to improve and an excellent win over A division player Stuart McLauglin in the last round saw him finish in joint 10th with an even 4 across the 8 rounds. As the only under 18 player in the event, this is a great performance and he finished alongside some of Billingham's most experienced players in Paul Weightman, Bernie Callaghan, Brian Whitaker and Darren Donnison.

Well done to all 5 of our players, great preparation for the new season. The good news for Steve is that Mike is on the same team, so he won't have to play him in the league! Also, thank you to Paul Weightman for organising the event and inviting players from other clubs to take part.

Full results:

Pos Name Club Total
1st John S Garnett Billingham 6½
2nd Stephen Rodgers Thornaby 6
3rd Stephen Cole Billingham 5½
Michael J Creaney Thornaby 5½
Dave Elsdon Billingham 5½
6th Jonathan Feasby Thornaby 5
7th Michael Smalley Hartlepool 4½
Ashton Woodward Hartlepool 4½
Andrew Herrity Billingham 4½
10th Darren John Donnison Billingham 4
Bernie Callaghan Billingham 4
Josh Fisher Thornaby 4
Paul Weightman Billingham 4
Brian Whitaker Billingham 4
15th Gary Leighton Billingham 3½
16th Stuart McLaughlin Billingham 3
Graham E Edwards Billingham 3
Sean Ridgeway Billingham 3
Sean Cooke Billingham 3
Kevin M Waterman Hartlepool 3
Malcolm Goldspink Thornaby 3
22nd Graham Bartram Billingham 2
23rd Bill Wilson Hartlepool 1½
Keith Harrison Billingham 1½
Nicola Harrington Billingham 1½
26th Sean Cassidy Billingham ½

Date:26/08/2025  AGM and Awards Ceremony!

A fantastic 40 players turned up for yesterday's AGM and Awards Ceremony. The mood of the meeting was very positive and upbeat after a great season for the club. We'll be fielding more teams than ever next season. Most of the committee has stayed the same for next year. Great news that all of our captains from last season will be returning and Eva will be a new captain of a new team.

The awards ceremony section saw our top player Chris Ross presenting the awards. The club championship winners and internal quick event winners collected their trophies. There were also medals for the players from our cup final teams and league teams that finished in the top 3. Our top scorers in each division were honoured with medals or trophies for the players who topped the whole division scorer list.

Aryan's rapid rise to 5th on our rating list made him the easy choice for our young player of the year. The most improved player award went to Jayden who finished 2nd in the D division scoring charts and went up over 170 rating points over the year. Newcomer of the year was a difficult choice, but Phil was the committee choice after a very consistent season in our internal events and in the league. Clubman of the year went to Neil for his determination, enthusiasm and humour and hardly missing a night at the club this year.

At the end of the meeting we took the opportunity to congratulate Joseph, Aryan and Eva on their exceptional GCSE results last week. 3 intelligent young people who are a credit to the club and themselves.

Full list of award winners:

Trophies were awarded to:
Club Champion : Francis
Club Junior Champion : Tashil
Club U1400 Champion : Sam Stevenson
C Division Top Scorer : Phil
D Division Top Scorer : Maurice
Young Player of the Year : Aryan
Most Improved Player : Jayden
Best Newcomer : Phil
Clubman of the Year : Neil
Xmas Rapidplay Winner : Francis
Spring Rapidplay Winner : Tashil
Spring Blitz Winner : Francis
Summer Rapidplay Winner : Joseph

Medals were awarded to:
Thornaby A Division Top Scorer : Francis
Thornaby B Division Top Scorer : Steve and Mike
Plate Winners : Aryan, Sagar, Steve, Mike and Phil
Knights Shield Winners : Malcolm, Bill, Alan, Maurice and Phil
Knights Shield Runners Up : Geoff M, James M, Tashil, Toefl and Sam S
C Division Runners Up : Malcolm, Maurice and Phil
D Division 3rd Place : Kaira, Jayden, Josh, Faruk, Tristan and Zhuoyi

Chris

Date:19/08/2025  Summer Series Joint Champions!

The Summer Series concluded yesterday and it was a very successful event with 44 players taking part over the 6 weeks! Full results and the final standings are here.

It was a very close race for the title all the way with 10 players finishing within 1 point of victory. Mike and Phil managed to negotiate their way through the chaos to finish on 4.5/6 and share the title. Well done to them! I played both in the last couple of rounds and couldn't find a way through against either.

Myself, Maurice and Joseph finished in joint 3rd with 4 points. Joseph only played the 5 rounds after his GCSE's, so a special well done to him. A further 5 players finished on 3.5 to round out the top 10, including a great start to competitive chess for James Tones. Joe, Stephen, Ajay would all expect to be there, but it was also a good tournament for Malcolm to finish in the top 10, he has definitely stepped up over the last few months.

The standings are a little random further down as some players only played a few rounds and some late starting players (including Aryan and Pete) were given dummy scores for the purpose of pairings to make better matches for them and everyone else. The intention was always to try to give good matches for everyone rather than a totally fair competition and we had lots of new and young players getting valuable experience.

Thanks to everyone who took part!

Chris

Date:07/08/2025  Chess Returns to Thornaby Show!

After a gap last year due to paperwork, chess returns to Thornaby Show this year! The show is on Sunday 31st August from 10:30am-4:30pm.

Thornaby Chess Club have a stall where you can find out more about chess, opportunities to play locally and bringing chess into schools. Of course you can also play chess against some of the members from our club.

Come along to visit, if you can beat one of our experts you do win a box of chocolates!

Chris

Date:06/08/2025  Summer Series Update!

With 1 round to go, club legend Mike Creaney leads the way in our Summer Series tournament! Last night his opponent was late and with Eva's opponent having to withdraw on the day, Mike played her as an alternate. It was a tougher than expected game with Eva having some threats throughout the game and Mike ending up with only 1 minute left on his clock when he eventually forced a mate. The other 2 players going into the round on 3 (me and Phil) played out a draw. Phil had the better of the game overall and missed a couple of winning chances, but in the end it was a dead draw.

The format has worked reasonably well with anyone who is there getting a game every week even if it means switching opponents. It avoids the byes we often end up with in the Club Championship. Plenty of real game experience for everyone and some of our youngsters have had some good performances and results. New players Alan Bayne, James Tones, Oscar Youdale, Noah Mulloy, Wayne Mulloy and Isabelle Little have all made their standard game debuts in the event and all look ready for the league next season.

The last round will be fully drawn next week when people have had chance to register half point byes, but it will certainly have me vs Mike on board 1 with Mike just needing a draw to win the event.

Full details of the tournament can be found here.

Chris

Date:02/08/2025  AGM and Annual Awards Ceremony Date!

Our AGM will be on Tuesday 26th August. A draft agenda has been circulated to all members.

If anyone would like to stand for any position, please get in touch with Chris. We always needs willing captains!

There will be several awards given out in section 4 of the meeting including trophies for the winners of our quick events during the season, the club championship and our prestigious young player of the year award! Also, the most eagerly anticipated award of all, our now famous “Clubman of the year” award!

Date:15/07/2025  Joseph wins 2nd Rapidplay!

Our traditional Summer rapidplay took place on Tuesday with 33 entrants. So many in fact that there was no room for me in the draw! This event is played under the same format as the football world cup and we had the full 8 groups with 4 players for the first time ever. As always, the first 90 minutes of the event contained 100 times more twists, turns, shocks and excitement than a typical England match!

Tashil and Jonathan were my 2 favourites to win at the start. I overlooked Joseph as he has been studying hard for his GCSE's this year and hasn't played as much chess as he normally does. The last couple of weeks it has been great to see him back to himself, enjoying chess again and playing well. He came through a tough draw throughout to take the title. This format definitely suits him and his win follows his Easter Rapidplay triumph last year!

In the final, he played Jonathan. It was an even game and both players agreed a draw with nothing much happening for either player. That meant a blitz play off and Jonathan had a slightly better position, but at the expense of being down by 2 minutes. He looked to find a way through, but in the end a mad scramble happened and Jonathan lost a rook to a fork and then ran out of time.

In the semi finals, Jonathan overcame "Mr Consistent" Phil after he dropped a piece. Phil always seems to finish in the top 5 of every competition we do! Joseph has had a hard time against Tashil recently, but had a much better looking pawn structure when they went into an endgame. He used his rook to control the position well and ended up queening a pawn.

The Quarter finals saw the end of the runs of the 2 surprises of the event. Nate lost to Phil after blundering his queen and Sachin lost to Jonathan. Ajay was eventually ground down in and endgame by Tashil and Joseph won on time against Joe.

The last 16 mostly went to form. Joseph defeated Teesside Megafinal Champion Josh while Maurice lost to Joe on time when 1 move away from checkmate! Clair's run came to an end at this stage at the hands of Ajay.

The group stages saw a clear group of death (Group C) with Tashil, Phil and Iain all drawn in the same group. Tashil topped it with 3 out of 3. Phil has become a bit of a nemesis to Iain and he claimed the 2nd spot. Group A was also a tough one with Joe, Rhys and Toefl all together. Joe and Toefl made it through. Eva beat Maurice earlier on and just missed out on qualifying from Group F after drawing with Noah in the last round. Group H proved to be the closest and saw all 4 players on 1 point after 2 games. Clair won her last match to top the group. Group G saw a great battle for 2nd place after Sachin topped the group, George and Joseph H both finish on 1.5. That meant a blitz playoff and they managed to draw 2 of these before George eventually won to sneak through to the last 16.

A great event and fantastic to see so many people at the club on a warm day in the middle of July! Well done to Joseph!

Chris

Full Results

FINAL
Joseph Machin 0.5-0.5 Jonathan Feasby (Joseph won blitz play off)

SEMI FINALS
Tashil Lankapura 0-1 Joseph Machin
Phil Wales 0-1 Jonathan Feasby

QUARTER FINALS
Tashil Lankapura 1-0 Ajay Selvan
Joe McGinnis 0-1 Joseph Machin
Nate Broadbent 0-1 Phil Wales
Jonathan Feasby 1-0 Sachin Saggar

LAST 16
Tashil Lankapura 1-0 George Butterworth
Clair Hartill 0-1 Ajay Selvan
Joe McGinnis 1-0 Maurice Olum
Josh Fisher 0-1 Joseph Machin
Nate Broadbent 1-0 Malcolm Goldspink
Andrew Salter 0-1 Phil Wales
Jonathan Feasby 1-0 Toefl Lankapura
Sachin Saggar 1-0 Nick Tadd

GROUP STAGES
GROUP A
1) Joe M
2) Toefl
3) Rhys
4) Joe V

GROUP B
1) Jonathan
2) Ajay
3) Neil
4) Alan B

GROUP C
1) Tashil
2) Phil
3) Iain
4) Andy A

GROUP D
1) Josh
2) Nick
3) Janos
4) Isaac

GROUP E
1) Nate
2) Joseph
3) Manuel
4) Avanish

GROUP F
1) Andrew
2) Maurice
3) Eva
4) Noah

GROUP G
1) Sachin
2) George
3) Joseph H
4) Matthew

GROUP H
1) Clair
2) Malcolm
3) Oscar
4) Wayne

Date:12/07/2025  Tashil qualifies from Gigafinal!

Over the weekend, Tashil was one of several of our players who took part in the Northern Gigafinal. There are 3 Gigafinals across the UK and the top performers in each age group qualify for the national Challengers stage. Tashil scored an excellent 5 out of 7 to make it to finish in joint 5th and make it to the national stage. The first player from our club to do so since Sagar in 2022. A fantastic achievement which puts Tashil amongst some of the best players of his age in the country!

Henry Bishop (so good they named a chess piece after him) was the best of our other players. He missed out on the national stage by 1 point after finishing on 4/7 in the Under 8 Boys section. Shanaya finished in 12th place on 3 in the Under 8 girls section.

Meanwhile, Ajay finished on 3/7 in the Under 18 section. A great performance as this section had several players rated over 2000 including Fide Master Stanley Badacsonyi (2436) and Candidate Master Theo Khoury (2270). Eva found this section a step too far, but still acquitted herself well over 7 games. Josh struggled in a very strong Under 14 section and finished on 0.5. George finished on 2 in the Under 12's. Noah also finished on 2 in the Under 10's while our newest member Oscar finished on 3 in the same section.

Jayden was away on holiday, but did play in the Scottish version a few weeks ago. Jayden is at the young end of his age category this year, but still finished on 3.5. Alongside another top local player in Teesside Megafinal winner Dara Jafari. Henry and Shanaya played in the Scottish version as well and both finished on the same scores with Henry on 4 and Shanaya 3.

Well done to all of our players, the Gigafinals are pretty much a national level youth competitions with 2000+ players in most of the sections and plenty of other players who are heading there if they aren't already. To be at all competitive at this level is a great achievement.

Full Thornaby Results:

Under 18
Ajay Selvan 3
Eva Harris 0

Under 14
Josh Fisher 0.5

Under 12
George Butterworth 2

Under 10
Tashil Lankapura 5
Jayden Wang 3.5
Oscar Youdale 3
Noah Mulloy 2

Under 8
Henry Bishop 4
Shanya Chauhan 3