Keith Kitson has been awarded the BCCA Master Title after accumulating the necessary 20 BCCA Master points – well played Keith! Keith won (or jointly won) five separate Class 3 Trio’s and also earned points from coming 2nd in the British Championship & 3rd in the British Veterans.

The full list of BCCA Title holders can be seen HERE

All members can see their current Points totals (towards the Master & Candidate Master Title) HERE This page is regularly updated.

The following players are confirmed as having entered the 2018 Medal tournaments. If you haven’t entered yet, there is still time (last date of entry 31 January). If you have entered & your name is not below, please contact me.

Webserver 

Postal

Neil Jefferson has won the 2017 Silver Medal tournament No.3 – well played Neil! See: https://www.iccf.com/event?id=65671 for the final crosstable.

It was a very close fought affair with the winner & 3rd place decided on secondary tie-break. Colin Cheek finished 2nd & Bill Lindberg finished 3rd.

The 2018 Medal tournaments are now open for Entry to all members!

Members can now submit their entry for the 2018 Medal tournaments. Simply go to the “Payment Page” & scroll down.  Prices have been kept low and are still only £3.00 for a webserver tournament & £2.00 for postal. Great value!

We look forward to receiving your entries!

Very sadly, we have to report the death of BCCA Life member John Toothill. Our condolences go to friends & family.

John’s name may not be familiar to newer members but he was the BCCA Best Games Secretary from 1996 until the termination of the competition in 2013. But you have to go back to the 1970’s/80’s from his CC playing career. In 1972/3 he won a British Championship Reserves tournament & was a prize-winner in the BCCA Handicap. Already a Class 1 player, John won a British Championship Candidates in 1973/4 & advanced to the Final. He came 6th in 1974/5 & 2nd in 1975/6. But it is on the CC International scene that he is best known, as part of the Great Britain team that won the Gold Medal in the 9th CC Olympiad 1982-87; the first & only time that a British team has won this top CC team event. At the time, this was a fantastic achievement beating the all-conquering Soviet Union team into 3rd place (West Germany were 2nd). John was also a member of Great Britain team in the 1st European Team Championship Final (1978-81), and a member of the winning England team in the 1st North Atlantic Team tournament (1981-4). He was awarded the CC International Master Title in 1981.

John was a strong OTB player playing for Windemere Chess club for over 40 years winning the County Championship on several occasions. He also led Windemere to victory in the BCCL 1975/6.

There are three excellent annotated games of John’s in Tim Harding’s superb book Correspondence Chess in Britain & Ireland 1924-1987 and he also featured in Grigory Sanakoev’s book World Champion at the 3rd Attempt.

RIP.

I would like to thank everyone who volunteered to play in this event. I could have filled the places two times over! The BCCA teams are:-

The tournament should get underway in the 2nd week of December. Hopefully, there will be 9 teams altogether.

If your name is not listed above (and you volunteered to play), then you will definitely be included in the BCCA teams to be entered into the Scottish Webserver Team Tournament. Those teams will be finalised in the next couple of weeks.

Bob Crawshaw has won the 2017 Postal Bronze Medal tournament with a score of 6/8 – well played Bob! The crosstable can be seen here: https://www.iccf.com/event?id=65661 A very close tournament where no player went undefeated. Bob wins an engraved Bronze medal & 3 BCCA Candidate Master points.

A BCCA team (BCCA Capablanca) has won the BCCTC for the first time in six years. The team crosstable can be seen here: https://www.iccf.com/event?id=61918 together with all the games.  The BCCA team consisted of Captain Trevor Carr, John Brasier, Peter Catt, Les Ellis, Yosua Sitorus, Dennis Broadway, Ian Mason & Richard Tillett. Each Team member wins a Medal & a cash prize – congratulations to them!

We have two upcoming tournaments on the webserver & I have around 40 places available for BCCA members. Do you want to play?

1/ Welsh Member Organisations Team Tournament: BCCA are affiliated to the Welsh CC Federation & we will be submitting four or five teams into this event. There will be five players per team & each player will play (probably) 8 or 10 games per player. Each board will have rating bandings as follows:-

Board One: Open

Board Two: No higher than 2,300

Board Three: No higher than 2,150

Board Four: No higher than 2,000

Board Five: No higher than 1,850

This should ensure even well-matched chess. Games will start in December.

2/ Scottish CCA Webserver Team Tournament: Organised annually & starting in January. We have submitted five teams in past years & I look to do the same again. There are four boards per team. There were three Divsions last season & the crosstables can be seen here:-
https://www.iccf.com/event?id=64080
https://www.iccf.com/event?id=64085
https://www.iccf.com/event?id=64090

All standards are catered for. Each player will probably play 6 games.

Entry is free to BCCA members for both of these tournaments! So why not make the most of your BCCA membership & enter one of them or both!

Please also bear in mind that BCCA Medal tournaments will be starting in February or March so I appreciate that playing an additional 6-10 games is a fair-sized commitment. So manage your game loads carefully.

Please contact me (Neil Limbert – see the latest BCCA magazine for my email address or contact me through this website) if you wish to play. I look forward to hearing from you! If you do wish to play, please specify which tournament you would like to enter, or simply state you are happy to play in either, or that you would like to play in both.