Bourne Chess Club has many resources available for use by its members. One of the goals of the club is to assist members in improving their chess. The following is a list of the resources that are available to members:

• Chess Up 2: An electronic training aid that assists all levels by suggesting strengths/weaknesses of the next move, connecting with chess.com, and in-built coach. Includes complete set of promotion pieces.
• Magnetic display board: A large visual representation of a chess board to help demonstrate/analyse key features of a game, openings, tactics, puzzles.
• Chess books: The entire Chess for Heroes series and a variety of other chess books.
• Reference material: Current month’s ECF ChessMoves, ECF 2025 Yearbook, FIDE rules of chess, ECF and Bourne Chess Club Safeguarding Policy
• Learning classes hosted by top-rated chess players
• Juniors Club
• Internally created “Inter-league” tournaments: rated and unrated

Members are invited to request any other resources for consideration to add to the above.

On 27/08/25 Melton Chess Club, headed by Shaun Cope, hosted a friendly against Bourne Chess Club at their British Legion home venue.

There were many games played on the night, with Bourne fielding a cross-section of the club members including: Sarunas Barstys, Onel Madanayaka, Sam Warner, Matt Bailey, David Hemingway and Tom Ingram.

Melton have an extremely vibrant venue which was well attended and the chess room that they use creates an ideal chess playing environment. Bourne is very grateful to Melton for the hospitality and matches, and hope to see Melton Chess Club again very soon.

The British Chess Championships 2025 were held at Liverpool’s St George’s Hall and the Holiday Inn next door to it, The 30+ events were covered from 31/07/25 – 10/08/25 and here are daily reports.

The main championship was being defended by last years winner Gawain Jones with company from the other top two seeds at the English Championship: Nikita Vitiugov and Mickey Adams. Two thirds of the pack of 100 participants had a title, 14 of those being GM’s including Stuart Conquest, Daniel Fernandez and Stephen Gordon.

As has been the way in recent times, juniors featured large in the competition and performed extremely well. Interestingly, only one of the above top three seeds remained in the leading group a third of the way through; giving some indication of the strength of the chasing pack.

By the mid-way point, Mickey Adams had secured a half point lead with three more rounds to go – there was little room for error.  A highlight of round 7 was a near on 5 hour marathon between Ameet Ghasi and Supratit Banerjee that ended with them agreeing on a draw. Banaree who is 11 years old and a former Scottish junior but he has now moved to London, scored an IM norm and the round previous (round 6) beat GM Simon Williams

It was an extremely tight conclusion in the last round with a three-way tie for first place, not seen in the British since 1986: Peter Roberson, Mickey Adams and Stuart Conquest. The eventual play off final being between Stuart Conquest vs Mickey Adams. Mickey (53) went on to win both matches to secure his 9th title having faced six GM’s in the nine rounds with a 7/9 performance. One of the highlights of his nine rounds was against 16 year old English GM, Shreyas Royal, one to watch for the future.

Next year’s, 112th event is being held at Coventry, 1-9 August 2026, having hosted the event 11 years previous in 2015.

The schools tournaments that the ECF runs under the excellent stewardship of Alex Holowczak has been reviewed to make admin a little easier for schools from 01/09/2025 onwards.

Bourne Chess Club is located in the heart of very active school chess clubs in the region and hopes to host school tournaments in the future.

The three school tournaments that the ECF runs have had a makeover for the entry fees. It has introduced a new Schools Membership Scheme, which is a one-off charge at the start of the academic year. The benefits for the schools include free entry for unlimited teams in any of the schools’ events organised by the ECF. Schools will also be able to nominate students to become ECF Junior Bronze members for that school year. The fee varies depending on the numbers, see this link for more information.

The fixtures for the EACU County match dates for 2025/2026 are now showing on the ECF LMS:

[correct as at time of publishing – check on LMS]