Welcome
The Wellington Chess Club meets every Thursday evening (excluding January) at the Wellington Bridge Club, 17 Tinakori Road Thorndon. The Junior club is at 6:30pm, senior competition starts at 7:30pm
Please don't park at the Bridge Club, there's plenty of parking on Thorndon Quay (under the motorway) just a short walk away (free in the evening only).
Arthur Pomeroy
Arthur Pomeroy, our club captain, passed away on January 7th. Arthur has been very ill in recent months. He faced his situation with great courage and good humour. RIP Arthur. For more information please see this updated post on NZCF.
Opening Night
The chess club is just in the process of waking up from it's January slumber for another year. The plan is to run a casual night on January 30th and to start the Summer Cup on February 6th. Sorry, a 2025 Schedule and other things will appear in due course. Note to self, we urgently need to find a venue for the Wellington Open at Easter!
What's Luke Warm Right Now
On the final night of the year (December 19th) we had our traditional bring-your-own-refreshments-for-sharing get together and a fun blitz tournament, won by Anthony Ker.
That's it folks, another year at the Wellington Chess Club comes to an end. See you all again some time near the end of January for another year of competitive chess.
The Club Champs is over. The final night saw (amongst other things), Black wins for each of Dive, Ker and Croad. It's deja vu all over again! Russell Dive and Luke Chang emerged as sole winners of the A and B Grades respectively.
Thanks to all the competitors and congratulations to the winners;
A Grade
1st IM Russell Dive 7.5/9
2nd IM Anthony Ker 7/9
3rd= FM Nic Croad, Thomas van der Hoorn 5.5/9
B Grade
1st Luke Chang 8/9
2nd Edward Tanoi 7/9
3rd= Alan Aldridge, Matthew Keith 5.5/9
Swiss Tournament
1st= Yigit Saglam, Zachary Thirkell 8/11
3rd= Eushin Kang, Lucas Qu, Elliot Grant 7.5/11
Do check out the games. There are hidden gems in there, for example a stunning sacrificial win from the normally staid Jim Rose in the last round of the Swiss! Thanks to Azra Saglam and Aidan Malcolm for helping (a lot) with game entry.
NZCF asks all players to register in the new NZCF players database using this form. See the tournament webpage. for all the details including an almost complete collection of the games.
The acting club captain is Aidan Malcolm aidan.malcolm@outlook.co.nz, thanks to Aidan for stepping up in our time of need.
Thanks as always to the regular game submitters, John Marney, Eric Ulm, Andrew Brockway, Leo Hupert, Aidan Malcolm, Michael Ashe, Ian Sellen, Ryan Winter. We don't try to get 100% game coverage any more (it's too much work. If you want your games recorded in the club records, submit them. Or failing that, play good games with clear handwriting!
We have played (and won!) our first Bledisloe Cup Online Hybrid match, against Hawkes Bay (and our second versus Canterbury).
Games Database - Here is the Wellington Games Database, through the end of 2023: PGN
What's Coming Up
Congress in Auckland!