He may not have matched the 136 moves played by newly-crowned world champion Magnus Carlsen – but Shrewsbury’s Tony Purser had his own mammoth win while playing for the club’s C team online this week. Purser finally forced resignation from opponent Shane Sweeney after a jaw-dropping 102 moves in Shrewsbury C’s Shropshire online Chess League division two derby with Telepost C. But it wasn’t enough to stop the Cs – who handed a debut to new signing Richard Vernon – from slipping to a 2-1 defeat at the hands of their rivals on Tuesday evening. It was a night of mixed fortunes for the club’s online teams – Shrewsbury B…

An International Master could be lying in wait for Shrewsbury as the club’s three online teams are all in action this week. On Tuesday Shrewsbury B and C will take part in a town derby double header against Telepost D and Telepost C respectively in Shropshire Online Chess League division two. Then on Thursday, Shrewsbury A will “host” Oswestry B in division one. Despite being the club’s nominated B team, Oswestry fielded IM Paul Littlewood on top board in their opening 2.5-1.5 win over Telepost A last month. As all players play the online games remotely at their own homes, it is possible for teams to field players with no…

Shrewsbury Chess Club has a new home – and members are gearing up for their first night at the venue on Friday. Club officials have negotiated a deal to be based at the Nerdy Café in Mardol. The club will meet on the second and fourth Fridays of each month starting from January. The club will hold its first club night at the venue this Friday, and secretary Mark Smith said it was hoped as many members as possible could attend. The Nerdy Café is described as “Shrewsbury’s very own board game café” and has a library of hundreds of board games that enthusiasts can try – making it a…

Shrewsbury Chess Club stalwart David Everington will be remembered by his clubmates with a new trophy. The player who scores the most points representing Shrewsbury in over-the-board competitive chess over a season will be named the winner of the trophy. The idea was discussed at the club’s online annual general meeting on Friday, and comes after Shropshire Chess Association previously decided to name the Shropshire Chess League division one trophy in Everington’s memory. Everington was a feature at the elite level of Shropshire chess for some 50 years, winning the Shropshire Individual title on several occasions. He was also part of several title-winning Shrewsbury sides, including Shrewsbury’s unbeaten league-winning side…

You may have heard the sad news that David Everington died a few days ago. I have collected a few comments together from club members, as well as including a few pictures and games. Given that we are devastated at this loss to the Shropshire Chess Community, we can only imagine the loss to Jen and the rest of the family; our deepest sympathy and loving thoughts to them at this difficult time. Mark, our Club Secretary, wrote as follows: I’m sorry to have to report that David Everington has passed away. Most of you will have your own memories of David and I believe that Francis is going to…

Please note that the Club Championship page has been updated to reflect the 2020/21 information. Thank you to Tony Purser for organising this. A guide to using the LiChess platform can be found here. Good luck to everyone and please pass any thoughts for website material to me and I will endeavour to oblige. Francis Best

Greetings chess players! With over the board chess off the agenda currently, I thought it would be good to add some video content to our website. In response to my request, David Everington sent me the scores of two games he played last season where he had faced Owen’s Defence. Rather than just give you the scores of the games, I thought it would be nice to create a video of the analysis. So here it is: I’m still getting the hang of this video creation lark, so do bear with me. The best way of improving is practice, though, so I will try to produce some more, maybe covering…

Thursday 21st November saw Shrewsbury B travel to Newport for the second time in the space of a month to take on Newport B. At least this time we were able to field a full side and were pretty much at full strength. Newport were missing two of their big guns, with neither Athar Ansari nor Tony Holdford available. The match hinged on the result of two games as the other three were concluded peacefully quite quickly. I saw almost nothing of Ile’s game against Stuart Ross on board one, so am relying on Ile’s comments afterwards. Ile played his normal opening, which it seems Stuart was well prepared for.…

Peter has annotated his game against Matthew Clark here. Francis Best

Friday 1st November saw Shrewsbury B take on Telepost A in our third match of the season.  We were without Francis for this one, and Ted has now moved to Manchester, so Dan Lockett and Jim Wilkinson were drafted in. Telepost were also slightly under strength, without the services of Trevor Brotherton, Phil Zabrocki and John Bashall but they still looked a good side. A slight tweak was made to our board order as we swapped Ile and Peter around, with Ile now playing on board one.  This was partly to give Peter a bit of a break from board one, but also because Ile has played well against Nigel…