Keverel Chess

Getting ready:

First morning of the 12th Royal Beacon Seniors Congress, here in the Royal Beacon Hotel, on Exmouth’s late 18th century development on the cliff-top overlooking Lyme Bay.

At 11 a.m. with 2 hours to kick-off, everything is more or less in hand, apart from one or two late withdrawals, counterbalanced by one or two late entries, all of which makes it difficult for Controller, Ewart Smith, to do the draw. He’s learned from past experience the dangers of doing a draw too early, as there’s many a slip…….

Overall entries are a little down again this year, possibly not helped by having another Seniors Congress, the ECF Seniors Championship, plonked onto the calendar within a week of this one, although there are understandable special circumstances involved. Dinah Norman has just arrived and she’s happy to be playing in both, and said there were 28 players involved in the ECF event, held at Gatwick, so perhaps it could be wrong to overstate things.

The Calm before the Storm - Ewart Smith contemplates the draw in an empty room.

By 1p.m. the scheduled starting time, most players had arrived, all bar four who were either delayed in transit or mistook the starting time as 2 p.m. A few words of welcome from Mr. Jones before handing over to Mr. Smith who finally got the show on the road.

Rd. 1 finally gets under way.

Bds 1 & 2 in the Seniors Section: Gosling v Dodgson & Footner (A) v Wiltshire.

Bds. 5 - 8: Roberts v Carr:: Welker v Sherriff :: Cranmer v Openshaw :: Adams v Hurn.

Marian Cox against the blind player Philip Gordon of the I.O.W. (0-1)

Rd. 1 results for the "Junior" event - i.e. the 50-somethings.

Seniors section - majority of Rd. 1 results.

Rd. 1 games come in 2 parts:

Part 1:   http://www.chessdevon.co.uk/HTML/bs2011/base.htm

Part 2: http://www.chessdevon.co.uk/HTML/bs2011a/base.htm

All junior games: http://www.chessdevon.co.uk/HTML/bj2011/base.htm