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]

Bourne Chess Club hosted a friendly against New England Chess Club who are based at the City of Peterborough Sports Club. New England is a well established chess club, having been in existence playing top rated chess in the region for decades. The club caters extremely well for Peterborough people with a vibrant Junior’s Club and yet also able to play chess of 2000 grade standard, and everything in between!

New England brought with them four players: Chris Russell, Peter Walker, Norman Wedley and Benny Sivaraj. The format/time control was entirely optional on the evening, as was notation. Very kindly, the two players on the top table, Peter Walker (New England) and Jason Dilley (Bourne) agreed to have the game recorded and featured on this website. It is not often that you get to see two heavy-weights in the chess world (circa 2000+ elo) playing at your local club – and Bourne Chess Club is very grateful to New England for taking the trouble to come and visit the club.

Here is the move list and a few stages of the game between Peter Walker (white) and Jason Dilley (black):

1. c4 e5 2. Nc3 Nf6 3. Nf3 Nc6 4. d4 exd4 5. Nxd4 Bc5 6. Nxc6 bxc6 7. g3 O-O 8.
Bg2 Bb7 $6 9. O-O d5 $6 10. e3 $6 Qe7 11. Qc2 Ba6 12. b3 dxc4 13. bxc4 Bxc4 14. Rd1
Be6 15. Bxc6 Rad8 16. Bb2 Bg4 17. Rxd8 Rxd8 18. Ne4 Nxe4 19. Bxe4 h5 20. Qc3 $6
Bd4 $3 21. exd4 Qxe4 22. Re1 $1 Qd5 23. Qb3 Qxb3 24. axb3 Rb8 25. Re3 Be6 26. Rc3
Rxb3 27. Rxb3 Bxb3 28. Kf1 f6 29. Ke2 Kf7 30. Kd3 Ke6 31. Kc3 Bd5 32. Kb4 $2 Kd6 $9
33. Kb5 Bb7 34. Bc1 Kd5 35. Be3 $6 g5 36. h4 $2 gxh4 37. gxh4 Ke4 38. Bh6 $2 Kf3 39.
Bg7 $6 f5 40. Be5 Kxf2 41. Bxc7 Ke3 42. Kc5 f4 43. d5 f3 44. Bg3 f2 *

English opening: 4 knights variation

After 10 moves it looked like this:

Castled same side. Fianchetto’d bishops. Even material. Two chunks of pawn islands for both players. Bishop pairs for both players. There followed a “brilliant” tactic by black using a sacrificed bishop to counter the mate threat at move 20, while also removing whites light squared bishop to expose many light squares around the King:

As the queens go off the board, and they enter the endgame, the bar on the left is still finely balanced, both players have the same number of isolated pawns, and there are no passed pawns:

Black manages to get up a pawn at move 28 with a passed pawn:

Time to activate the Kings!

A wandering bishop for white, tips the balance in black’s favour on move 39:

White resigns after move 44:

Black wins 0-1  A good game all round. Big thanks go to both players for allowing their match to feature on our website.

Sam Warner beat Chris Russell.

Norman Wedley and David Hemingway agreed to a draw.

Benny Sivaraj beat Ian Batchelor.

Bourne won on the evening: 2.5 – 1.5